Closing out my review of all the Boot Hill modules, previous are:
Yes... I know I did the first four back in 2012...Anyway.
BH5 Range War! is the final official module for Boot Hill, released in 1984 and written by Philip Taterczynski. After years of hunting for a reasonably priced copy, I finally got my hands on one. It was worth the wait, though it sits firmly in the same tradition as the modules that came before it.
The premise is straightforward and classic Western. The Civil War is over and the player characters have inherited 640 acres of land in Grant County, Oregon. Wheat fields, apple orchards, and Douglas firs come with the package, along with a family legend about a buried fortune. The catch is that the land sits right between powerful cattle ranchers and stubborn sheepherders. Both sides want it. Cattle rustlers want the barn. The townspeople want the business. The sheriff wants help. The characters have to decide whether to hire on as guns, turn outlaw, pin on a badge, or try to settle down and farm.
That setup alone puts Range War! on solid ground. The conflict between cattlemen and sheepherders is one of the oldest and most authentic sources of trouble in the American West. It echoes real range wars and gives the referee plenty of room to work.
Like the other Boot Hill modules, this one leans heavily on a large cast of NPCs. Over two hundred of them, according to the cover. That is a lot of names and backgrounds, and once again I find myself wondering how many of those details will ever see actual play. The local saloon keeper matters. The names of every ranch hand’s cousins probably do not. Still, the sheer volume of material does make Promise City and the surrounding range feel populated.
The module includes twelve scenarios, six pre-generated characters, detailed descriptions of buildings, ranches, and farms, and a city map of Promise City that reuses the Boot Hill street map. It also provides background for starting a longer campaign. In other words, it is trying to be more than a single adventure. It wants to be the foundation for an ongoing game set in the middle of a range war.
That ambition is both its strength and its limitation. As with BH4 Burned Bush Wells, the structure feels more like a film script than a traditional RPG adventure. Events are laid out, tensions escalate, and the characters are expected to get pulled into the conflict one way or another. It works if you treat it like a Western movie. It can feel restrictive if you are looking for a pure sandbox.
The cover art is by Larry Elmore, and it does the job. By 1984 the graphic design of the Boot Hill line had clearly shifted to match the rest of TSR’s output. The modules no longer felt quite as distinct as the earlier ones.
Range War! is a fitting close to the official Boot Hill module line. It takes a classic Western conflict, surrounds it with a large cast and a usable town, and leaves the referee with enough pieces to keep a campaign going. It never quite solves the structural problems that ran through the entire series, but it does not need to. By this point Boot Hill was already a secondary product for TSR, and the fact that it received five solid modules at all is something of a small miracle.
If you have the earlier modules, this one belongs on the shelf next to them. If you are just now discovering Boot Hill, Range War! is a good example of what the line did best: take a real piece of Western history, drop the player characters into the middle of it, and let the guns and the grudges do the rest.
There it is, all the classic Boot Hill modules reviewed. What are your thoughts on these under appreciated modules and system?
