[makke]

First of all: Thanks for your replies! I'm very sorry that I couldn't answer any earlier but I had two really busy weeks. :-/

Originally Posted by trooper6

Which means the PCs would have to be shot a lot in order to die. Why are your PCs sticking around for that much damage? Is this a player problem? Where your players decide they can never retreat and have to stick out battles to the very end? Because that will get them killed and if they are a bit wiser, they should be able to make it through.

It was a mixture between some rather insane luck on my part (2 crits in 6 rolls during the "boss-fight") and some really bad tactics. From the bandit leaders perspective it was a rather epic fight - he was the only bandit left and gunned down five formidable shootists (skills ranging from 14 to 18) one after another, finally killing the last of the lot with his *very last* bullet... ;)

So what happened is basically that they split up to cut off the bandits escape and then tried to storm the last train wagon from both sides at once. So far so good but after that some of them did the grave mistake to storm the cornered bandit leaders hideout (a sleeping room) more or less singly... only to be shot down instantly. It so happened that the only real gunslinger died in that first few seconds so that noone was left standing who could have gunned down the bandit in a fair fight... instead of turning to flee to some cover they tried to put some more pressure to him which finally lead to their untimely deaths.

Originally Posted by trooper6

I've run games set in the modern day with much more dangerous weapons without cinematic rules--mostly Espionage. The first adventure, all the PCs died. Then they made new characters, and none of them ever died again...because they realized they weren't playing D&D and had to be more strategic. They all took death more seriously and stopped making really, really poor decisions. And they all made it out of their battles.

That is one of the reasons why I made the decision to start with a oneshot and not directly with the campaign - I was rather sure that at least a few of the PC's would die from poking his head around a corner too much... ;)

Originally Posted by trooper6

If you had your PCs with HT12+, most PCs aren't going to die until they get to -5xHP. So we are looking at 60hp damage or so (less if the odds are against them).

The fun thing is that the bandit needed only one salvo per player character to lower them to something between -20 and -50 (3x2d6x3~63damage). They were rather lucky with their HT-rolls which is why none of them was in a worse condition than dying that is all of them could have... at least in principle... been rescued. The only problem being that no-one was left who could have cared.

Originally Posted by Maz

I think the fact that "if you get shoot you die" seems to fit rather well with most Old West-movies. Especially the "not right away, but several hours later from bleeding"-part.

I agree and it worked out rather nicely in that regard - or rather it would have if at least a few of them would have... :)

Originally Posted by Maz

And on top of that allow PCs access to Feverish defenses and often have cover al lover the place when a fight breaks out.
There is a reason you see people hiding behind rocks and corners and in windows in old west movies!

I hope that is something my players have finally realized, too, but I'm rather optimistic about that...

On a related matter: What really worked nicely for us is a slight adaption of the dodge rules - they were only allowed to dodge if some kind of cover was available behind which they could jump or at least duck/step. Got the flair rather well in my eyes ... after all you don't see ppl dodging a lot in the movies.