Gunslinger

GUNSLINGER qualifies as a role-playing game only by the most slender of margins, that being that the rules mention the words “role playing” somewhere. The role playing rules are extremely abbreviated – essentially, everything that happens outside of a gunfight is abstracted out, and player-characters are expected to have about one gunfight a month for two years or so, at which point the role-playing game ends.

So what I’m really saying is that GUNSLINGER is actually a tactical game of gunfights in the Old West with a thin, skimpy veneer of role-playing tacked on just so they could mention it on the back of the box. But as a tactical game, it’s actually not bad. It’s a “sequenced” system were you lay out five action points’ worth of activities per turn using cards, and the cards tell you up front how long each action takes. Each turn lasts about five seconds, so each “sub-turn” lasts about a second, which is plenty detailed enough for the purposes of shootouts in the Old West. Instead of rolling dice, players draw from a shuffled deck of about 110 “event cards” every time a dice would normally be rolled. It’s mostly a gimmick, but a harmless one (and one borrowed from the Avalon Hill “Strat-O-Matic” sports games, I think).

It’s an interesting system. It’s different from the system in BOOT HILL, but about as much fun to play. Not quite as deadly, though. BOOT HILL was rightly infamous for its profusion of one-hit, one-kill gunfights. Such things aren’t as common in GUNSLINGER; people seem a bit more resistant having their heads shot off, I guess. It’s more likely that you’ll be wounded and bleed until you pass out than be completely killed with one shot. Chances are you’ll die anyway – you take “supplemental damage” during the dealing process, presumably the result of cod liver oil and bloodletting and trepanning and tuberculosis and whatnot, and that’s usually enough to do you in. The point is that though characters don’t croak quite as often during the shootouts, their lifespans still aren’t terribly long and you still shouldn’t make wedding plans for them more than about two weeks in advance. (Actually, it's entirely possible to have a major exchange of gunfire in GUNSLINGER and never hit anything. More than once I've seen players unload all their weapons at one another without hitting anyone. The smoke clears and the posse and the gang are still standing there, wide-eyed and completely unhurt, and the drama then revolves around who can reload the fastest.)

Where GUNSLINGER really shines compared to BOOT HILL is graphical sophistication. GUNSLINGER has eight or ten full-color geomorphic maps, usually with some kind of rural terrain on one side and a town building on the other. No end of interesting map configurations are possible, and the game had nice round counters for the characters, weapon counters, a stagecoach/buckboard, horses (both alive and “lying down”, as we don’t want to tell my wife that horses can be shot), and counters for things like bales of hay, whiskey bottles, pitchforks and the like. There are even floor plans of four additional buildings printed on the backs of the player aid cards, a nice touch and a nice use of otherwise blank paper. GUNSLINGER also has quite a brace of nice optional rules for things like sun dazzle and ladders and whatnot.

In other words, BOOT HILL offers a good character generation system, better role-playing rules, an area or strategic map, and ideas for things to do when one isn’t right in the middle of a gunfight (and it has that masterstroke of Old West RPG design, "Greased Lightning" speed). GUNSLINGER has pleasing, colorful and useful components and nice special and optional rules. Combine the two and you might really have something.