Jump to content

BRP Western


Kloster

Recommended Posts

I think the first thing you need to decide is an era. That way you can try to get information on costs and availability for the period you're looking at. I don't know much about the hstory of the Wild West myself, but I'm sure costs must have been very different depending on when the game is set. You also need to set the era so you can create your weapons tables.

Looking at Wikipedia, the Wild West is from the American Civil War to 1890. But, that doesn't really take into account the mass influx of settlers post 1815ish.

So, it would depend on what kind of Wild West you wanted.

The expansion period is roughly 1815 to 1848 when the USA gained many areas from Mexico following their war. This is when settlers flooded through the mid-west, through Indian lands, and settled many of the areas claimed by Mexico. More settlers travelled the Oregon Trail westwards until 1869 when the Railroad made wagon trains obselete. So, this is the period for wagon trains, raids by Indian tribes, land grabs and so on.

After the Mexican War, soldiers headed westwards and this fuelled the Wild West. The American Civil War had a number of irregular armed gangs acting on both sides, raiding their enemies. After the war finished, they moved westwards and became outlaw gangs and gunfighters. The railroad linked east and west in 1869. This is the time of cowboys, the Indian Wars, range wars, the Califormian Gold Rush, gold towns, ghost towns and so on.

The other approach is to try to do a 200-year (or so) book showing everything with an availability range ( like 1790 to 1830) and a price range. As others have said, location will also be a factor.

I wouldn't do that, really. Having rough periods with equipment lists might be useful, but if you want a Wild West supplement then list the Wild West periods and equipment availability.

But, I'm not American, so what do I know? :)

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 104
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Does it suck? Absolutely not.

I liked the font, liked the layout and the stats.

:D

It's nice to please somebody some of the time. :D

Now if only I could find some authentic prices lists and see what they say. I suspecting that the differences I'm seeing could be partly due to import costs (a Springfield Rifle was probably a lot cheaper in Massachusetts than in Texas or New Mexico).

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest the Bromgrev

Cost should definitely vary with location. Was it Cults of Prax (RQII) which had cost modifiers for metal goods in the wilds? That sort of approach might work best, having a base price and then giving multipliers to different towns and areas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cost should definitely vary with location. Was it Cults of Prax (RQII) which had cost modifiers for metal goods in the wilds? That sort of approach might work best, having a base price and then giving multipliers to different towns and areas.

The "basic" rule in RQ3 was that every time you took something a step away from it place of manufacture you mutiplied the cost by 2.5. While I'm not sayingg that was the case in the US in the 1800s< it does make the price descrpancies clear up.

If a Peacemaker was $6 in the East, 6=2.5=$15 in the est, and 15x2.5=$37.50 for those hard to reach places.

I've got 4 Western RPGs, and some sourcebooks, but don't have much in the way of authnetic prices.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Firearms Table covering the 1873-1885 period has been uploaded and is available in the Downloads/Other section.

This is the first draft, so people can look it over and see if it looks to be heading in the right direction, or if I need to adjust some numbers.

Note that this is the "master" table, and that I plan to do a "handbook" with photos of the firearms and a bit more detail, as well as some explanation of some new terms, add-ons, and rules for fan-firing, etc.

Most of the terms on the table are self-explanatory. But here is a little more info that will help.

Damage (CoC): This is the weapon damage in Call of Cthulhu terms. Note that the weapon damages are slightly lower in the Old West, due to the use of blackpowder rather than nitrocellulose, and most weapons had lower pressures than their modern counterparts.

Damage (rev); THis is an alternate Damage Value I'm been toying with.

Attacks Per Round 1-2: Typically a Double Action revolver. Limited to one shot on the first turn, but allowed two shot thereafter.

A 2* means that the shotgun can fire both shots in a round but suffers a -10% to the second shot for doing so due to excessive recoil.

Era Cost: The price for the weapon "out west". Prices at the point of manufacture would be much lower. The Colt 68c Open Top Revolver could be order for as little as 68 cents from Sears & Roebuck, plus S&H (that P&P to those in the UK), assuming you have time to wait.

Malf: Malfunction chance. Yeah these look high to me, but then so do the number in CoC. For the most part the older weapons are slightly less reliable than modern ones. There will be info on using certain high powered loads that do more damage but reduce the reliability of the weapon.

Draw: This is the weapon's modifier to the shooter's Fast Draw skill, and will be used in "Draw" situations to determine who gets off the first shot. Useful for when a town just isn't big enough for the both of you.

Con: This is the weapons modifier to the conceal skill of whoever is trying to carry the weapon unnoticed. Note that this is assuming that the character is wearing something that is capable of concealing the item. So if someone wants to "conceal" their Winchester Rifle they had better be wearing a longcoat, and keep it closed.

Reload: The first number it the number of combat rounds it takes to fully reload and ready the weapon for use. The number in the parenthesis tis the time it takes to open and empty the weapon plus the number of bullets you can reload in a round plus the number of rounds it takes to ready the weapon for firing).

The second value is useful for when your gun is empty, but you need to load a round or two fast, like when someone is running at you waving a knife.

Note the typo for the Colt Pocket Pistols. The full reload time for the Open Top pistol should be 10 rounds, and the New Line 9 rounds. I'll fix this on the sheet when Triff gets back and can delete the original. Sorry. :o

Weight: is the Weight in kg, rounded off to the nearest 0.5 increment as in RQ ENC.

The Colt Navy, Peacemaker, Frontier, and the S&W American can all have stocks attached to then. Stocks cost $5 and increase the base range by 15m (20 for the buntline special), but reduces Draw and Con by 10%.

The Sharps Buffalo rifle was often fitted with a tack, or peep site that aids in long distance shooting. Tack sites cost $4, and increase the base range from double to triple when used with precision aiming.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The blank section of the sheet mean that the stats are identical to the ones above it. This is for weapons like sawed off shotguns or pistols with a alternate caliber cartridge that are otherwise identical to the original weapon.

How's that for a start?

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Firearms Table covering the 1873-1885 period has been uploaded and is available in the Downloads/Other section.

It looks good. The table is cramped but that's probably because I am viewing it in a browser.

This is the first draft, so people can look it over and see if it looks to be heading in the right direction, or if I need to adjust some numbers.

There seems a lot of 1D4s, but that keeps rolls around the average. The damage seemed on the low side, but nobody wears armour so it's probably pretty deadly.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The blank section of the sheet mean that the stats are identical to the ones above it. This is for weapons like sawed off shotguns or pistols with a alternate caliber cartridge that are otherwise identical to the original weapon.

Do sawn-off shotguns do the same damage as normal ones? I'd have though the close-up damage would be higher and the far-away damage would be lower. But perhaps I am misreading the table.

How's that for a start?

Pretty good. Quite often it doesn't matter if things are 100% accurate or even mostly accurate - what's important is that they are out there and usable. People change things anyway, so get more stuff like this out and people will use them.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, since I spent the holiday at hone, I started putting together stuff for BRP Old West. So far I"ve started work on:

Firearms Tables, by era

Firearms full write-ups by Era

Heavy Weapons

Professions

New Skills

Spot Rules

Critters (with a special section on Horses)

Comprehensive Price list with a quick conversion method so you can use it for any year from 1800 to 1910. It will probably be the next thing uploaded.

Wages

A Cover (okay, It was a looong weekend)

I have also thought about, but haven't put together ideas for:

History/Timeline, with emphasis on the major things like the Civil War, War of 1812, Gold Rush(es), Railroads.

Geography

Notable People

Geography

The Military (North & South)

Native Tribes (and how the got hosed and when)

Weird Stuff-Hidden valley with dinosaurs, the Phantom Empire (it's PD now, and if I were doing this professionally it would probably be a supplment with stats for BRP, SotC, and a few other pulp games).

Did I miss anything?

Who knows, maybe this will evolve into a actual supplment?

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks good - but what about a bibliography/filmography?

Yeah, probably. Not a high priorty though.

Also - a discussion of typical themes/cliches/etc found in westerns as ideas for a GM?

Yup. That would be the "how to run a Western Campaign" sort of thing. Probably very useful, too. If enough of the technical stuff gets taken care of, that would be useful.

Probably would need to differentiate between the historical and cinematic west. I suspect most people will play something more like the latter.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks very promising. The download section is really starting to fill up with some files. Gotta add some more categories and organize when I'm back home! :D

For the western weapon tables I would like to see only one damage table (+ eventual fatality rules) if this ends up in a published supplement though. (2 seems kindoff undecisive.)

D4 could be used for handguns (making it somewhat the "gun" dice in addition to being a damage mod. dice), if this fits better with realistic damages. D4 for rifles and shotguns however, leads to too many dices IMO. The bigger dices does a better job there and keeps it more in line with previous supplements.

Great work though! :thumb:

SGL.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What kind of critters have you got for the Bestiary?

I'm assuming it contains wolves, bears, cougars, bison, deer, dogs, cattle, moose and snakes (especially rattlesnakes). You might need rules on anthills (for when people are staked out covered in honey/syrup).

What about fantastic/mythical creatures? Red Indians (*) have Skinwalkers, The Wendigo is a cannibalistic spirit (like a passion spirit in RQ) but that's all I can think of. It would be nice to have some supernatural creatures for those who want more than gunfights, range wars and dodging outlaws.

(*) Not politically correct and even possibly offensive, but you can't have a Wild West setting talking about Native Americans.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What kind of critters have you got for the Bestiary?

I'm assuming it contains wolves, bears, cougars, bison, deer, dogs, cattle, moose and snakes (especially rattlesnakes). You might need rules on anthills (for when people are staked out covered in honey/syrup).

What about fantastic/mythical creatures? Red Indians (*) have Skinwalkers, The Wendigo is a cannibalistic spirit (like a passion spirit in RQ) but that's all I can think of. It would be nice to have some supernatural creatures for those who want more than gunfights, range wars and dodging outlaws.

(*) Not politically correct and even possibly offensive, but you can't have a Wild West setting talking about Native Americans.

Currently the critters chapters has: Bobcat, buffalo, cougar, wolverine, horses, rattlesnakes, bears (including the Kodiak), armadillo, coyote, donkey, burro, mule, jackrabbit, scorpion and wolf. Deer, cattle (including longhorns) dogs, elk, moose and such should make it into it.

I'm thinking that the supernatural stuff would work better if kept to it's own chapters. That way people who want to include it can do so, while those who don't want it, can just ignore those sections. A chapter of two on unusual stuff could be nice (anyone see that old western with the vampire in it?).

I agree that there should be some native American stuff in it. I'd like to see different info on the different tribes, too. Any sort of fair treatment really shows how screwed they got. While researching stuff on the net, I found a page that lists which treaties the US government broke by year. Just to cover the 1873-1885 period would probably take 2 or three pages. Even the "friendly" tribes got hosed.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi guys,

I’m sorry that I’ve missed this thread up to now, I’ve been researching an Old West campaign for a number of months now and have been looking for a group of likeminded hombres to chew the tobacco over with.

I’ve wanted to run a supernatural Western from point dot but after looking at Deadlands I was put off on just how much supernatural content there was in the system, so I fell back on the idea of BRP which has been my system of choice for 25 years or so. (All hail RQ2, all hail CoC, all hail Ringworld. Lol).

Anyway on with my point.

About the differing era’s of the west? (And please remember I’m a Brit doing his first research into such things, so I hope my remarks make some kind of sense rather than seem too naive). Surely because of the constantly changing geo-political map of the west beyond the ‘Permanent Indian Frontier’ post 1845, it would be very difficult to set out eras of play in the Old West? I can see that for technology and manufacture it might be quite simple, but for ‘cow-towns’, settlements and Indian nations indigenous locales, setting an era would be a difficult exercise at best and a gross distortion (if you wanted a historical setting) at worst.

I’ve found Dee Brown’s (the author that wrote ‘Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee), ‘The American West' to be a rich source of material and ideas. Well worth a look IMHO for anyone wanting to get a feel for what is was like striking out into the West.

As for Native American culture, I’m only just beginning to see what a difficult task it will be to gazetteer America into its areas of indigenous cultures and beliefs. I’ve found out all along the way that the easiest way to tackle writing a campaign is to set the year(s) first and then identify the locations of Indian Nations, Ghost-towns, U.S. Army/Fort movements etc.

Thanks for listening to my rant  Please feel free to put me right on any points I make and thank you all so far for making a very interesting thread.

Ken

125/420

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Was it Space 1999 that had the "resdkins" as martians?

Maybe an Interplanetary crossover? :D:P

Err, actually in Space:1889 the Martians referred to the white Europeans as "the Red Men", because in the thin air when they exerted themselves they went red in the face... Specifically, the usage is in reference to the ex-patriot earthmen who fly aerial flyers on Mars - the so called "Red Captains".

Reminds me, when I get the book, must do a BRP Space:1889 write up for d100.org and here...

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

Link to comment
Share on other sites

About the differing era’s of the west? (And please remember I’m a Brit doing his first research into such things, so I hope my remarks make some kind of sense rather than seem too naive). Surely because of the constantly changing geo-political map of the west beyond the ‘Permanent Indian Frontier’ post 1845, it would be very difficult to set out eras of play in the Old West? I can see that for technology and manufacture it might be quite simple, but for ‘cow-towns’, settlements and Indian nations indigenous locales, setting an era would be a difficult exercise at best and a gross distortion (if you wanted a historical setting) at worst.

THe era thing isn't that tough. Basically (and I do mean basically-I'm skipping a lot, like we the US stole a bunch of land from Mexico) you got War of 1812, the time between the two wars, the California gold rushes, , the Civil War years, the post war years, the Yukon Gold Rush, and finally the end of the west.

It is because of the changing geo-political nature of the west that you need some sort of rough eras. Area that start off as wildlands end up going through stages of colonization.

The big thing from my point of view (as in as far as writing stuff up goes), is noting the differences in technology. The telegraph, railroad and steamship all played a big part in opening up the west. As did the improvements in firearm technology.

But overall different regions would be at divernt levels of "wildness/civilization" at different times, so it isn't like we can llok at a date and say "all cities now have toliets" or some such. More like 1820-San Francisco is a little hick town, 1870-San Franciso is the largest city West of the Mississippi.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That would be cool. :thumb:

I remember watching that series as kid. I liked the ship and their guns.

Uh, Space: 1889= Victorian-era RPG based on the concept that Verne and Burroughs' concepts were real. Man colonizes MArs and it was a nice place except for all the bloody foreigners.

Space: 1999 = Gerry Anderson TV show and moral lesson as to why it isn't a good idea to use a Moon as a nuclear waste facility. (Why didn't they just send it towards the Sun?).

But, just for that I'll think I'll try writing up an eagle with my Vehicle Design Rules. And I always wanted to run UFO.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Uh, Space: 1889= Victorian-era RPG based on the concept that Verne and Burroguh concepts were real.

Space: 1999 = Gerry Anderson TV show and moral lesson as to why it isn't a good idea to use a Moon as a nuclear waste facility. (Why didn't they just send it towards the Sun?).

But, just for that I'll think I'll try writing up an eagle with my Vehicle Design Rules. And I always wanted to run UFO.

hehe...yeah saw the numbers and was thinking of the TV series. I still stand by my statement that it would be cool though ;)

BRP Ze 32/420

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hehe...yeah saw the numbers and was thinking of the TV series. I still stand by my statement that it would be cool though ;)

Not too tough, either. The tech level is well within Future world specs. No FLT travel for the main characters. I'll surf for some Eagle specifications and use it for a test design.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...