GURPS OLD WEST: Intimidation and the Movies

[hal]

In the Unforgiven - William Munny (Just watched the movie before retiring for bed last night) held off a LOT of men while using his shotgun. Then, Gene Hackman's character, who didn't start drawing a weapon and firing, did step forward saying words to the effect "He's only got one barrel left. After he kills me, draw your pistols and gun the <censored expletive> down."

William Munny of Missouri had a major reputation to begin with. After being beat bad (kicking until he had to crawl out of the room), and then reappearing before the same crowd that had been present for the beating, one could easily assume that these men were cowed.

But note here, that the men didn't run away in mindless fear prior to the owner of the establishment being killed with the first shotgun blast - they just didn't start blazing away. When the propriator was shot (presumably killed), the rest of the armed men didn't rush because of the remaining shotgun barrel presumably being ready. And even when there was a mis-fire, William Munny had time to draw a pistol and blaze away (seemingly without fast draw - I'd model that as William Munny having combat reflexes and EVERYONE being surprised that the last shotgun shell being a dud).

I noted that William Munny crouched when he took his shots (Going from fully erect to almost kneeling) - which in GURPS coupled with combat reflexes - probably was worth a -2 for being hit, and gave him what he needed for his "dodge" rolls.

After the initial blazing away of fire more or less settled down - William Munny told the remaining frozen men "If you want to live, leave the back way" in which a lot of the establishment's patrons left in a major hurry.

So - in this case? Walking in with a loaded shotgun, ready for bear might have given William Munny a +2, His reputation for killing anything that walked (in the movie, it was reputed that he had done so by his opposition, for which Clint's character said he'd killed anything that walked at one time or another) probably was worth a -2 give or take. The thing about Munny's reputation was - no one recognized him directly, but everyone knew his reputation by name. In some respects, I wish GURPS had given a little more of a "fine tuning" set of rules for how often someone is actually recognized by face versus how often their name is recognized <sigh>.

In any event - even with a successful intimidation per se, many of the men didn't run off in abject terror, but merely froze in place. How would that be modeled per se in GURPS?