Quote from: RPGPundit;715062Aces & Eights is made for sandbox play, though I wish the full rules were just slightly less complex, or the basic rules just slightly  more complex.

Even so, its full of very awesome sub-systems to handle all kinds of "Wild West" activities (prospecting, cattle driving, western courtroom drama, gambling, etc).

One thing I miss in A&E systems is a hunting minigame.

The review for the A&E gm guide was promising, so I scooped the two core books up.  More than I typically want to pay for pdf, but I am confident I will enjoy reading them, at least.

Quote from: Erstwhile;712750Hm, if you have Netflix you may want to check out AMC's Hell on Wheels.  It's post-Civil War, but based around a railway town/camp - probably not great inspiration for a sandbox campaign, as such, but perhaps some inspiration for NPCs (or something to encounter in the characters' travels).  

And hell, Cullen Bohannon - the protagonist - is basically a PC, hunting down the soldiers who killed his family in the Civil War.

We're almost done with the series, and if nothing else, NICE TIP!

We had the chance to play a short session this weekend.  We rolled up characters as best we could with my being completely unprepared.  ("No, you can't take astrophysics as a skill.  Derringer?  That does the same as a hold out blaster, let me find the stats...")  Some ruffians attempted to rob the train, but the ex-soldier and the fair haired maiden of the west put the hurt on them from afar.

I need to find the rules for aiming in D6, and I need to shore up my rules for reloading.

For the latter, I ruled a single-shot cartridge weapon could be reloaded with a single MAP, but six rounds in a revolver and/or reloading a cap-and-ball pistol took an entire turn.

Quote from: mcbobbo;713178Holy crap.  It's a real thing - //www.cowboyethics.org

That's almost creepy...

Initially, it seems refreshing, marketed to people as a contrast to the "$ Uber Alles" that is America these days, but then you get to the webstore, the speaking engagements, the books and it looks exactly like any other quasi-philosophy site designed to be the next big thing the Corpbabblers will be spouting as management theory for the next decade.

Quote from: RPGPundit;715062Aces & Eights is made for sandbox play, though I wish the full rules were just slightly less complex, or the basic rules just slightly  more complex.

Yeah I know what you mean.

Quote from: RPGPundit;715062Even so, its full of very awesome sub-systems to handle all kinds of "Wild West" activities (prospecting, cattle driving, western courtroom drama, gambling, etc).

The cool thing is, those subsystems can be plugged into other games as well.

A&8 is near indispensable as a resource for any western rpg.

Yes, definitely!

Tell me more about Aces and Eights. The DnD campaign I'm in is going to wrap up soon and we're looking for something to do. I especially don't want to play more DnD. This thread got me to thinking and I pitched running a western campaign. Everyone seems to like the idea so now I need a system.

Is it more a simulation of actual history or is it more Hollywood? Somewhere in between? How do people handle printing the "shot clock"?

From my limited reading of it, I find it... um... eclectic.  As Pundit said above the basic game is pretty basic.  And as you have gathered there are different charts and whatnot to roll against.  These all seem to use different resolution methods, which probably isn't a big deal once you get used to it.

The advanced game seems pretty crazy to me.  It not only considers things like the facing of minis but silhouettes.  Very little abstraction there...

Quote from: mcbobbo;712482Any suggestions?

Kung Fu - biggest Western sandbox there ever was.

Quote from: Thanos;719792Tell me more about Aces and Eights. The DnD campaign I'm in is going to wrap up soon and we're looking for something to do. I especially don't want to play more DnD. This thread got me to thinking and I pitched running a western campaign. Everyone seems to like the idea so now I need a system.

Is it more a simulation of actual history or is it more Hollywood? Somewhere in between? How do people handle printing the "shot clock"?

For shot clock printing, go to any decent xerox point and they should have transparent paper - it's nothing expensive, I've got all the prints and they worked like a charm.

There's an alternative history setting in the book, but I (and I suspect most of people) tossed it away, since nothing in the ruleset really is tailored to that particular thing anyway. Maybe except gun lists, but I'm not a gun nut, so I've assumed cinematic technology myself when running a game in 1866 - all guns are available.

It draws a fine line between simulation of history and emulation of genre, so to speak - fights are pretty deadly, the price list is good, life of a cowboy's nothing glamorous, but at the same time, guns are still cool (rather than overheating like hell ), desperados are assumed to roam the countryside, and your reputation means everything.

I have mixed Western and fantasy, by adding the guns to D&D, I've played sidewinder d20, it was a good system, boot hill was good also, read westerns take fate core and build a Western that way.

Quote from: lacercorvex;962414I have mixed Western and fantasy, by adding the guns to D&D, I've played sidewinder d20, it was a good system, boot hill was good also, read westerns take fate core and build a Western that way.

Wow, that's quite the revival of an old thread!  

I agree, Sidewinder was pretty good.

As far as guns and D&D, I almost always have guns in my D&D games.  Dark Albion has rules on very early gunpowder weapons, for example. At the start of the campaign period, they're incredibly rare. By the end of it, they're quite common for purchase in the bigger cities in Albion and the price has gone down considerably.