Boot Hill RPG – Fast, Deadly, and Perfect for Old West Campaigns

 

 

There are some great role-playing games out there that I’ve known about for years but never played, and this is about one of them. Boot Hill written by Gary Gygax and Brian Blume was one of TSR's first games released.

Anyone remember those “Gateway to Adventure” advertisements that came in the D&D boxed sets? In my case, mine came via one of my Christmas gifts in 1982 from an aunt: the Moldvay boxed set of Dungeons and Dragons Basic. The box and the advertisement are long since gone (I still have the rules), but the memory of looking through them still lingers on, sort of like looking through Sears and JC Penney catalogs as a kid to look at the toys.

I would pour over it, looking at all the cool ads for games from TSR in addition to D&D, the blurbs Gangbusters, Gamma World, Boot Hill and Top Secret. Out of them, I only played Gamma World a bit, as we mainly focused on D&D and AD&D as kids.

A few weeks ago I was thinking of that old ad and I started thinking about Boot Hil. Out of all of those old games, the only one I never read through was Boot Hill. So I got a set of rules and was surprised by two main things as I read them: 1) the combat system (rightly) is deadly, and 2) the system is rules-lite and more spartan than OD&D.

As I get older, crunchier systems fall by the wayside as gaming time is a finite commodity at this stage of my life. While Aces & Eights (see below) and Deadlands are interesting (and I like the Savage Worlds rules), I’m less inclined to invest in them, mainly from a time perspective.

Boot Hill, on the other hand, is fast and furious and has a lot of possibilities. (Yes, I know that’s what

"One bad-ass movie."

Savage Worlds says, but I’m not talking about that rule set right now!) The other interesting aspect is that because the rules are only 34 pages, the possibilities are wide open. 

The rules themselves are deadly, be warned. Characters are no where near as robust as they might be in other RPG systems. Firearms deal some impressive damage relative to the durability of the characters.

While there are modules for Boot Hill which I'll cover in future posts the might not be needed. For source material there is more than a person could ever hope to read or watch in their lifetime when it comes to Westerns.

For my own part, I’m slowly collecting the Time-Life Book series from the 70s/80s, The Old West. There are 26 volumes, so I have a long way to go, but there are many more sources. For further inspiration there are movies, movies, and more movies.

Owing to the fact that I was born in the early 1970s, I’m not as big a fan of the serial westerns or 30s–50s stuff. I’ll probably get there, but I’m more in the mold of Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, A Few Dollars More, Fist Full of Dollars, Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Ride and of course Unforgiven. I’m also partial to Dances with Wolves, Tombstone and Open Range. I’m also partial to Dances with Wolves, Tombstone, and Open Range. For classics, John Wayne is okay (True Grit), but the likes of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in westerns appeal to me more.

On the subject of great Westerns, Tombstone that has way too many great scenes to count but this one in particular is epic:

So in reality, what more could you ask for from a Western RPG? Boot Hill is a fast and light system for gunfights and a very open rule set that you can combine with AD&D as needed. Some people dislike the 1st/2nd Edition rules, saying that there isn’t much for campaign play. They’re right, there isn’t, and that’s the beauty of it. The way I look at it, the more open the better, and it’s not like there is no material on the American Old West, as I mentioned above.

For me, if I run a game of Boot Hill I’d modify the skills from 3rd Edition for use in 1st/2nd, after that the sky is the limit. Think of the great Western films: most of the action is against factions, against people and their interactions. So it takes a different mindset to play because it’s not “open door, kill monster, take treasure.” Sure, you could do that and it’s probably not a bad idea for training wheels at the start. But after a while it gets more episodic.

Where I differ is that the times I’ve seen or read about people mixing the two genres it’s usually AD&D with some Boot Hill. Imagine a campaign of Boot Hill with a minimal amount of AD&D, or none at all. If I ran a game of Boot Hill, that’s what I’d aim for.

I also read about a great house rule for Boot Hill on a forum (forget which one, might be the ODD Boards): if your character dies you have to go to the kitchen and roll up a new one. If you get him completed before the action is over, you can reenter the same gunfight! Sounds like FPS players will like this as a “respawn.”

In closing, Boot Hill looks like a great system. It’s also cool to see that TSR’s advertisement worked on me, 30 years after the fact!

As a side note, there are places to discuss Boot Hill on the web, like the ODD Boards.

As noted above, for those who don’t know (or must be aware of), Aces & Eights has a hidden meaning for the title of their game. When Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed in Deadwood, South Dakota in 1876, he was playing five-card draw poker. In his hand were the two black aces and the two black eights, forever known from that point on as a “Dead Man’s Hand.”

There are differing opinions on whether or not this is true, along with what the exact cards he had in his hand when he was shot and killed in Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota Territory, on August 2, 1876.

To close, Boot Hill is a fine game. The word I've used over the years is "skeletal" in terms of the rules being very bare bones.

 

What are your thoughts on the Boot Hill? 

 

NOTE: and excellent resource can be found here for nearly all of the Boot Hill products from TSR.