Wild West Game Experiences

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

If your players are used to forgiving genres, it might be a good idea to run a test combat or two to demonstrate that being shot once is bad news, taking cover is important, and so on. Old habits can be hard to shake, and it sounds like you don't want to work through two or three parties until the players stop being tenderfeet.

Edit: Here is a famous fictional description of the problem from the 1990s, when the Knights of the Dinner Table tried Cattlepunk http://www.kodtweb.com/2016/06/10/the-wild-riled-west/


It sounds like you already made that choice when you wrote your character creation guide. If you want the PCs to be the guys who have long serial adventures, its a good idea to give them advantages like Luck and Serendipity. If you want them to be random people who might die from the first rock thrown in the riot or might survive untouched, then don't.

High points can somewhat mitigate this, but by default GURPS is like real life- sometimes the professional boxer is sucker-punched from behind, falls badly, and dies.

Stories, whether academic histories or the pulpiest novel, tend to be about people who have the bad luck of getting into trouble and the ability and good luck to get out of it. The guys who drop out along the way, or die from being kicked by a horse or drinking unclean water, tend to be pushed to the side.

Oregon Trail often kills people off by mundane things like that doesn't it?

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Oregon Trail often kills people off by mundane things like that doesn't it?

But that's because you don't have medicine for even common diseases. :P

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Tallor

But that's because you don't have medicine for even common diseases. :P

Wouldn't that be relevant in a California-mining setting? It is true that you are near settlements so whatever local cures are available are available. But that was a time when nobody could count on efficient medicine. Moreover what counted as state-of-the-art then wouldn't be reaching California in large enough batches to supply the influx of population.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Oregon Trail often kills people off by mundane things like that doesn't it?

It does, but I seem to remember playing a family not just an individual, and a tolerance for "it takes two or three tries to get through and survive" like in Fighting Fantasy and Chose your Own Adventure and other gamebooks. That was traditional in early D&D (with a pool of wandering adventurers in town to replace the fallen), but I don't think it is what VariousRen wants.

Troupe-style play (where each player plays one soldier in each squad of the platoon, or a wizard, a guard, and a villager so any one character being killed, captured, crippled, or sent away for an extended period is no big deal) can work, but ditto.