I've been a fan of the Western genre ever since I was a little kid watching old Westerns with my grandfather, and from the day I began playing RPG's, I desired an Old West-themed role-playing game. My very first D&D character that I played when I was thirteen may have been a Sorcerer, but he was dressed like a cowboy from the Wild West with his boots, broad-brimmed hat, and long duster coat. However, it wasn't until I was much older and started to get involved with the OSR and began delving deeper into the history of D&D and the greater RPG hobby that I learned about Boot Hill, TSR's second RPG after Dungeons & Dragons and one of the earliest role-playing games ever.
I briefly played in a forum-based Play-by-Post Boot Hill game that used the Second Edition rules from 1979, and I enjoyed the fuck out of it. Sadly, I had to bow out of the game due to real-life complications taking precedent.
To put it bluntly, the Easter holiday and severe weather delays threw me off and I could no longer follow what was happening. But it was fun while it lasted and I would love to play another game of Boot Hill one day.
I do not own a hard copy of the rules, but I have read scanned PDF's of both the First Edition and Second Edition rules online. I doubt that the scans were fully legal, so I'm not going to link them here or anything like that. I realize that there was a third edition of Boot Hill released in the early 90's during the heyday of Second Edition AD&D which introduced an entirely different set of game mechanics, but I have not read nor played that version of the game, so I can't really comment on it.
However, I do like the Second Edition of Boot Hill, originally released in 1979 (the first edition came out in 1975, and the third in 1990) and while I am not used to percentile-based systems, I did enjoy playing the game online and the system itself seemed fairly light. Boot Hill is notorious among gamers for two things.
One of these things is that Boot Hill is rather obscure compared to D&D and the other is that it is extremely lethal compared to D&D, with character deaths being a common occurrence by comparison. The lack of classes and levels probably adds to this reputation.
Many people give Boot Hill a lot of flak for not having as detailed of a setting or premise as other games like Dungeons & Dragons. But to be fair, the Western genre is so ingrained into our pop culture that one could make the argument that it didn't need to explain the premise of the game all that much. You could easily just watch a Western movie or TV show, or read one of those paperback dime novels.
I get the feeling that Gygax and his buddies at TSR didn't feel the need to explain the premise of Boot Hill, especially given that the Western genre was a lot more prominent in the 1970's than it is today in the 2010's.
I personally love the game, despite its sparse material and highly lethal combat system. I would love to run some campaigns or write some fan fiction based on Boot Hill in the near future.
I've also considered doing crossovers with Boot Hill and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (there's even material covering such a concept in the First Edition Dungeon Master's Guide for AD&D) and I will be covering that specific concept in another future blog post.
Good post.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I appreciate it.
DeleteI too love Westerns & I always wanted to play one, but they usually had 3.5 or card based rules which were not my thing (outside Malifaux Miniature Skirmish game).
ReplyDeleteI never cared for card-based rules myself either, which is why I like Boot Hill, which was based on percentile dice.
ReplyDeleteMe neither. Me too.
Delete"My very first D&D character that I played when I was thirteen may have been a Sorcerer, but he was dressed like a cowboy from the Wild West with his boots, broad-brimmed hat, and long duster coat."
ReplyDeleteThat sounds badass, Doc.