The Challenge of an Old West Campaign

It's always been a problem with the western game - what do you do? Kind of like Traveller* it inevitably descends into one of two main types: it seems to be either bank robberies and mayhem or something "weird" like when our old Boot Hill campaigns used that section in the DM's Guide and started going into D&D modules. They may start as a Roy Rogers movie but they end up a Tarantino film.

It's a strange problem considering how much old west media is out there, until you consider a whole bunch of that deals with lawmen vs. criminals and that the criminals are usually having more fun. You'd think that the TV series would provide a decent model for a western campaign but nobody seems to want to play a location based campaign like "Bonanza" or "Gunsmoke" or even "Deadwood"- they want to play Butch and Sundance roaming about the country having adventures.

I had thought Aces and Eights would solve this by putting in actual game systems for things like running a ranch or managing a cattle drive but it has not taken off here. Maybe if I presented it more as a "Cowboy Kingmaker" campaign it would strike more of a chord with players. That's actually an idea worth some additional thought.

For now Deadlands is the best western option for us - fight monsters  and have adventures with magic and steamtech seems to be the ticket. I pondered one type of campaign years ago but never got to run it. I am going to try to keep each session as one episode though, with a clear ending, to avoid player attendance issues. The way the campaign is structured in the book makes this fairly easy to do as most of the individual "plot points" look like a session's worth of action. There are roughly 15 episodes directly related to the big story, add in some interesting side trips in the Maze and the rest of 1880's California and I easily have 20-24 sessions. If we stick to the once-a-month plan I should have 10 sessions the rest of this year so I'm looking at wrapping this up end of next year. I'm kind of hoping though that we find chances here and there to work in an extra session. Not because I want to rush through it but because we're already having a ton of fun and I'd like to get deeper into it quicker.



*in my experience Traveller games almost always go merchants, mercs, or mayhem, and even if they start as something respectable, it almost always goes criminal at some point. The published adventures almost universally promote this so it's not just a reflection on the players. 

Building a Deadlands Campaign

I've wanted to run a sustained Deadlands campaign for a long time, but the opportunity never really came about. Now that it has, I had to start figuring out what I wanted it to be. Free-form, open range, sandbox type game? Could be fun, but I'd like a little more structure to the thing. There are a bunch of short adventures out for the game, and at least one town-based long adventure (Coffin Rock), but there are also four full campaign books which are similar to an adventure path for other games. Since I didn't have a specific concept in mind already I decided to go with one of those.

Which one though?

• The Flood - California after the "big one", San Francisco, lots of steampunk tech, lots of Chinese culture
• The Last Sons - The Dakotas, Deadwood, lots of Sioux culture and shamanic type magic
• Stone and a Hard Place - Arizona and New Mexico, Tombstone, and it's the most "classic western" of them all, probably spaghetti western in particular. 
• Good Intentions - Utah err, "Deseret", Mad Science, and a lot of action around Salt Lake, aka the "City of Gloom"

I have all of these (the last one was Kickstarted last year and is PDF only until the books come later this year) and they all have definite points of attraction. I was initially set on either The Flood or Stone and a Hard Place, so I re-read both of them. 

Stone and a Hard Place is really good, and while reading it I had pretty much decided to run it first. It starts with Tombstone, the Earps, the Cowboys, and yes you do get to be a part of the OK Corral situation. Being a huge fan of the "Tombstone" movie it's definitely a very attractive adventure, and it gets better from there. If you want a very "western" campaign with your party in pursuit of a single major antagonist, one where it gets very personal, this is a great campaign. 

Then I read The Flood and things started to turn. While Stone is awesome, I don't think it is as good as The Flood as an introduction to the Deadlands setting. The Flood makes a great effort, particularly early on, to give players a sense of what's going on and why with the Weird West. It's not something I had really considered before, but I've been reading and occasionally running Deadlands stuff for 20 years and never really had the chance for my players to see the big picture. There is evil in the world, but it's evil you can fight. It's a big part of the setting and there are even mechanics for what your party can do to roll back the damage. Once you understand this as a player, you can make plans for it. it and make a big difference in the world beyond just shooting monsters. It's a cool aspect of the game that I've never been able to use but I think I will get to do it now.

My concerns with the Flood are that it's a little more "out there" than say, Stone. The Maze is a great setting for a game but it means you may be spending a fair amount of time on steam-powered boats in the maze fighting Chinese pirates using martial arts weapons and not riding horses chasing bandits as you might expect in a western type RPG. There's room to add in more of the traditional elements for sure, but the backbone of the campaign involves a fair amount of deck time, martial arts, and magic. I don't want my players asking where the "western" went halfway through the game so it's something I'm going to have to keep an eye on.

The Flood also sets up some things nicely. Early on the PC's meet Dr. Darius Hellstromme, one of the big movers and shakers in the setting. He figures prominently in Good Intentions, so by doing Flood first my players will know who he is if we get the chance to play that one. They also meet some other known setting NPCs who are threatened or play another role in some of those other books.   

So I have settled on The Flood for this campaign and I am very happy with it now. Our first session is complete and went well and I am very optimistic for the future. 

Sorry guys, we're going to California - maybe next time!

Bonus: This is also good refresher training in running an ongoing Savage Worlds game which a) makes me happy anyway as I love the system and b) helps me figure things out that will make the inevitable Savage Rifts game that much better.

Mood-setting media ideas: For this campaign I'd say Tv shows The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Kung Fu, and the classic film Big Trouble in Little China (originally conceived as a western) set the right tone. Heck, just being able to cite those as relevant to a game I am running makes me pretty happy.

Deadlands - Return of the Clampett Gang!

Our Deadlands campaign "continues" from where it started (almost 3 years ago! - that went by quick!). Having boarded a west-bound train in Missouri, the next leg of the trip will take them across the great plains of Kansas. Next stop is Andover Station, followed by Barlowe Station, then Varney Flats - and veterans of the Weird West probably know where this is heading now.

For now though, we have a brief stop in Andover to change crews and take on water and coal. To pass the time our heroes (gunslinger Will Treaty (Blaster), huckster Isaac O'Hardy (Red), and new scientist Doc Lightning (Who)) stop in at the saloon after the mad scientist stops in at the general store and buys some "junk". Conversation at the sparsely-populated bar reveals nothing of interest locally and the boys are resigned to drinking to pass the time.

A shout from the street brings rouses the bored patrons. There is a group walking towards the town from the north, and as someone recognizes them - "It's the Clampett Gang!" - doors and shutters start slamming as the well-known local criminals make their approach. The gang hasn't been seen in these parts for months but their reputation does not seem diminished. The sheriff is not in town as he rode out to deal with trouble on a farm this morning and hasn't made it back. As the other townsfolk run for cover our heroes are perfectly fine taking on the gang.

Will Treaty calls out that they know who the gang is and the town doesn't want any trouble. The criminals continue to approach without making a response.

Isaac calls out that the gang needs to stop at the edge of town. The criminals continue to approach.

Will fires a rifle shot over their heads as a warning. Nothing changes.

Doc Lightning charges up his lightning gun and moves to a better position, grinning.

As the gang closes in, it looks like the biggest member, Jethro, is in the lead, along with the sharpshooter Ellie May. Jed, shotgun man and the leader, and Granny, his adviser, are behind them. Drysdale, the knife specialist, and Hathaway, the pistoleer are spreading out to the flanks. Our heroes take cover and prepare to fire and note an odd, shuffling gait to the intruders.

Then Doc Lightning rushes from cover, closes in on Ellie May, and realizes she does not really match the tales of her comliness, what with the oddly colored skin, open wounds, and groaning sounds coming from her mouth instead of speech. He unleashes the power of the lightning gun on her  as she raises her pistol and puts an end to whatever problems she is having.

This opens the festivities on a high note and in less than a minute a tremendous volley of shots, electricity, and flying magical cards are blasted all over the place. The gang is clearly some kind of walkin' dead and their well-known gun prowess appears to be vanished but they are still firing. Gunslinger Will drops his rifle and fans the hammer on Jethro and Hathaway as Huckster Isaac drops a huge blast of green flame to finish them off and Granny is blown away by lightning. Drysdale almost gets close enough to use his knife on the huckster but falls to urgently-tossed magical bolts and a bullet as the fight ends.

Art by DrStein - lots of good stuff here

Shaken, the grateful townsfolk thank the travelers. Drinks are on the house, and the sheriff returns before the train leaves and gives them a reward - "well, I don't know what they were but they're dead now so you can claim the reward" is pretty much the extent of the discussion.

DM Notes: This was a short "shake the rust off" encounter to get us back on track with Savage Worlds and Deadlands. It was a couple of hours of digging out character sheets, re-gathering the props (poker chips, cards, hat for the fate chips, miniatures) and bringing them back up to speed on the situation. I like my "westbound train" campaign kick-off idea and I'm going to stick with it for the first few sessions. Sure, it is literally a railroad, but they don't have to leave the train station/saloon and go looking for trouble - that's strictly up to them. Once we reach California they will have more options as the Great Maze is just full of interesting things.  

The session went well with some socializing and haggling followed by combat. I think the walkin' dead having guns was a surprise but they handled it (and they only have a d6 in shooting anyway) and they all got some glory time in. They're pretty enthusiastic about it and they've been asking to play again ever since but with vacation in there we haven't had time, or rather I haven't had the energy after being out on the boat all day. We will try to pick it up again this week and move on down the line to Barlowe Station.

Go Fer Yer Gun

In the midst of "gigantic new release" season I thought I would squeeze in a look at a game that is neither new nor gigantic. It originally came out in 2005, but I only discovered it earlier this year so it's new enough to me. There was a mini-wave of western d20 games back then with "OGL Wild West" from Mongoose (great name for that one), Sidewinder Recoiled based on d20 Modern, Deadlands d20, and probably some others I am forgetting.

My background: Played a fair amount of Boot Hill back in the 80's, fooled around with a little Western Hero and GURPS Old West in college, Spent some time with Deadlands in the 90's (both original recipie and d20 flavors). Own Aces & Eights but have never run/played. The only old west fun we've had in recent years is with the Savage Worlds flavor of Deadlands.

First thing: It's a free PDF! Available here. I like free, free is good.

It's 70-off pages long about half of which is all about making characters. It uses the standard d20 set of attributes, scores, and modifiers. It does use what I believe is C&C's approach of 2 primary, 2 secondary, and 2 tertiary attributes for task resolution. Instead of having a long list of skills and DC's by level the base difficulty is 12 for a check involving a primary stat, 15 for a secondary, and 18 for a tertiary. You make a check by rolling a d20, adding the relevant attribute modifier and the character's level to beat the target number described above. There are other possible modifiers - an opponent's level for example - but that's the basic system. Your class determines one primary attribute and the player allocates the others as they see fit. I like this as it does allow a simple way of defining what your character is "good at" in a completely different way from class abilities. You could have multiple characters of the same class that play very differently using this system. Heck, this has me wanting to go back and look over Castles and Crusades again. In the context of a western game I think it has a lot of potential to liven up what sometimes turn into cardboard characters.

Classes run from levels 1-20 and there are 3 different experience tables - sigh. Each class has an attack bonus that increases per level, a defense bonus that increases per level, and a hit die progression that ends after a few levels. So the Brave gets d10's for hit points but only thru level 4 - after that they get +3 hit points per level. There is also a list of fairly specific powers for each class from combat and healing abilities to defining what they can do without needing to make a check. Classes include:

• Brave
• Doctor
• Drifter
• Gunslinger
• Maverick
• Mountain Man
• Muckraker
• Preacher
• Scout
• Wrangler
• Optional: Wandering Monk, in case you want to "wander the earth like Kane from Kung-Fu"

Multi-classing (two classes at the same time) and dual-classing (switching from one to another) are options. Fairly old school options, but they are in there.

The classes are an odd mix in some cases - the doctor is almost an alchemist with the ability to whip up all kinds of things given access to the right ingredients and tools. The gunslinger is a combat monster with ranged attacks. The mountain man is a beast in melee. The preacher can hand out bonus to allies, debuff opponents, and generally looks a lot like a 4E leader type class. Most class abilities are fairly specific so it's difficult to really judge them without getting in some actual play time. The damage capacity of a level 20 Mountain Man is far beyond anything resembling "realistic" given a heavy pistol's 2d6 damage, but hey, level 20 should be legendary in some ways.

Gear: there is a short gear section mostly focusing on weapons. If you're thinking about running a sustained campaign then a GURPS or Deadlands book would be a good resource to expand this.

Combat involves a d20+ attack bonus vs the target's defense class. There are modifiers for things like darkness or shooting from the back of a moving horse. It's lighter than typical d20 and is not tied to a grid. Characters can move and attack once per round or do one other action instead.

There is a section on NPC's, critters, and opponents that is a solid starting set but will be exhausted pretty quickly in regular play.

The book wraps up with some sample adventure ideas (no maps or statblocks here) based on some pretty standard western plots,

So to me, in the end, it's a relatively rules-light western game that has a lot of potential as a con game or a system for some one-offs, but I'm not sure I could run a sustained campaign with it. It benefits from being a d20 game so there is some familiarity on the part of almost any potential player. The task resolution is fast and flexible and so should be both manageable and fun even with a bunch of players who don't know each other. The class mechanics could be fun for a session or two but probably don't come frequently enough or have enough chrome to them to keep a lot of modern players interested - in that sense it is fairly old-school. It is also less cinematic than something like Savage Worlds as low level characters are fairly vulnerable to damage and there is nothing like bennies or hero points or action points to save one's bacon or allow for scene editing.

For a sustained campaign there is the standard question with a play-it-straight western game: what do you do? Sure bank robberies are fun, but are not particularly sustainable. Much like Traveller the PC's tend to slide towards criminal activity rather than heroism and given the state of medicine in the time that leads to a steady flow of dead characters. There's a reason stuff like Deadlands is more popular than any realistic western game - because the supernatural gives you some non-mundane character options and it gives you something to fight besides the law!

I do like the game and for a "pure" western game its particular combination of mechanics hits a sweet spot for me. Heck it's free, so if you're even slightly interested in old west RPG's go download it and take a look.

Deadlands - A Campaign Discussion

Begin: It's 1876 and the PC"s are on a train headed through the Rockies to Denver. This is the starting adventure from the older GM's book and it makes for an easy justification of why a diverse group of characters might end up stuck together. Unless one of them decides to play an old ways Indian - still not sure about that but my players tend to like their guns so it's not likely to come up.


-ANYWAY-


That gets the characters acquainted and has one adventure binding them together. I see this as being a more episodic approach with each session being somewhat independent of the others and whichever players can make it determines which characters show up. I see this as being a tour of the Weird West for a while - Texas, Denver, Salt Lake, the Great Maze & Lost Angels - hitting the high points.  Then there would be a sort of finale of the big trilogy of linked adventures that I would convert over from original flavor Deadlands to wrap things up for "Season 1".


Keeping the scenarios short enough to fit into one 4-6 hour session would be a specific major goal. I haven't tried to run an explicitly episodic game since a Shadowrun game several years ago. That one had mixed results as my ideas were hard to fit into a single session's worth of time and so we had a lot of "two part episodes". I think Savage Worlds as a system is a better bet for this approach as it plays faster than just about anything I have tried. The one-sheet adventure is also a popular format for it, featuring an adventure that fits onto one sheet of paper (front and back) with the assumption that it's one session's worth of fun. I also think that the Western genre is friendly to this approach as so much of it built up in half-hour or one-hour TV shows that quite a few of the basic plots one could steal are fairly short. The basic idea is that the characters enter the town (or the mining camp, or the ranch), discover a situation, get involved, and resolve it, most likely leaving behind friends, enemies, or corpses - all within one session. Next week, it's all new. After a while, past encounters might show up again in some way via NPC's or enemies or news from a town they know, but I wouldn't want to go overboard on that.


The advantage for the DM if you can pull it off is that a) you get to try out a lot of different ideas and b) if only players X,Y, and Z can make it one week but only players A,B, and Z can make it the next week then you don't have to deal with the sudden appearance and disappearance of PC's in the middle of a situation. It also means you don't really have to worry about the passage of time as you're not playing a linear, continuous campaign. If they're in Denver one week and in Fort Worth the next, then in Tombstone the next we don't have to worry about rations and horses or train tickets and stage schedules every session - we just start with "As you step off of the train, you hear gunfire coming from downtown Tombstone and see people running past you, presumably fleeing."


Original vs. Published? Probably some of both. There are quite a few online freebies for Deadlands Reloaded, plus I have quite a bit of material from the first go-round including the Devil's Tower trilogy. I would mainly want to spend some time in each of the high-profile areas to see which of them connect the best with my players and to give them maximum exposure to the lore of the game. For a hypothetical "Season Two" I would consider settling down in one area, maybe focusing on one town, with some old and some new characters, close to whatever region/threat/plotline they liked the best. The amount of published material used would mainly depend on whether it fit into these plans.


A Planned Campaign: This means it would be planned to have a start and a finish. Say we planned to start in January 2012 and run for one year of real time - this would be the "2012 Dealdands Campaign"-  figure 2 sessions per month for 24 sessions. Make a rough outline of what 24 things I would like to cover, work out some details on the first 3 or 4, then go! One of the benefits of doing it this way (episodic and planned with a definite end) is that it doesn't really matter if some of the PC's die or are replaced as the sessions aren't linked in a serial fashion. Some bad guy NPC or organization might show up a few times in different sessions both in the background and as direct opposition to set up the finale, but it wouldn't be a running chase from one to the next unless I saw a really good opportunity to work that in.  One alternate approach is that if you're tied to a school year, then plan your campaign based on that - start in the fall, mini-climax at the break, picks up again in the new year, then runs to May and the big finale. Season Two? See you next fall!


Oddly enough this is a complete 180 from the approach I believed in the first 20 years or so of this whole thing. I was "raised" to think that the open-ended-multi-year-ongoing campaign was the "right" - heck the "only"- way to do it and any campaign that we started was expected to go on forever unless it was explicitly stated to be a one-shot up front. Now this didn't happen - every campaign petered out eventually due to player and DM fatigue or interest in trying out whatever shiny new game someone had just acquired. This can lead to some churn in both players and campaigns and it also means that some adventures end in the middle, with no end to the story - did we finish off the giants? Did we stop the drow? For some parties we will never know, because we stopped in the middle and never got to the end. Putting a definite timeframe on the campaign avoids that issue, assuming you can stick with it all the way through. Hmm, maybe I should shoot for a 12-episode mini-series...


What to include? Well I really like the Great Maze region - City of Lost Angels, Shan Fan and the Kung Fu thing, maze dragons, ironclads, ghost rock mines - that's an area I want to spend some time exploring. Heck, I'll run a thinly disguised version of Big Trouble in Little China set in Shan Fan - there's one! I also think that Salt Lake, Helstromme, automatons, steam wagons, and the worms are important enough to spend some time on too. In between I think some more traditional western locales like Tombstone and Deadwood are worthy of some time. I feel like I should work at least one brush with the Blue vs. Gray in there too. A few "normal" western problems like rustlers and bank robbers would help set off the weirdness too, so I would want to work those in as well. I think there's plenty of material there to fill 24 sessions and let them start to figure out what's *really* going on.


Of course all this only matters if I run it as the "main" game. If it's only one of my "games of the month" with the Apprentices then I only have 3 sessions to worry about anyway, and now I'm overstocked with ideas. Someday...


Tomorrow: A very similar post about a completely different game

Deadlands crawls into the light

The other game we played over the holiday was Deadlands, specifically the Savage Worlds version. I got interested in Original Recipie Deadlands back in the 90's and have a just-about-complete collection of it and the nuclear version as well. I got interested in Savage Worlds back when it was just a discussion on a mailing list in the early 2000's and own quite a bit of material for it. That said it was a looong time before I got to run either one. I've mainly run Neccessary Evil in Savage Worlds (a Supers campaign) so I was very pleased to have the chance to run Deadlands in it. Finally!


Apprentice Who isn't as excited about cowboys as he is about Star Wars or Superheroes so he decided to take a pregenerated character I downloaded from the Pinnacle site and scurried off to play some Xbox while Red and Blaster made their own characters - even at this stage of their gaming careers they absolutely hate running characters that they did not create. That said Who did pick a winner. He was seriously considering the Guy With the Lightning Gun but ended up going with the Guy With the Gatling Shotgun. It's hard to go wrong with a gatling shotgun.


Apprentice Blaster was flipping through one of the older books and decided a Texas Ranger looked pretty cool and so went with that as his concept. He's big, tough, strong, and not too bright, but he's good with a rifle and in a fight so he was happy. No, we don't have a name yet.

Apprentice Red was instantly hooked on the Huckster concept. He's pretty smart but not much good in a hand to hand fight. Fortunately his magical abilities mean he doesn't need to  be up close to hurt people. His card tricks allow him to attack a single target at range, cause an explosion, and protect himself. Again, no name yet.

After all this character building time was growing short so I told them they were at a small town in Missourri waiting on a train headed for Denver. They had arrived separately but realized they were headed for the same destination and so spent several hours getting acquanted in a local saloon. Now it was nearing sundown and they decided to take a shortcut through a wooded area to the train station.


As they move through the brush, wolf howls break out and soon enough six wolves move into sight. The two men stop to see what the wolves are about. The pack catches the scent and charges in. Cards are dealt out and combat begins!


Blaster's Ranger puts a rifle round into one of the lead wolves and drops it in one shot. Red's Huckster tries to blast one of them but is off just a little bit. The Ranger drops one more with a shot from his rifle. Then the card-slinger drops a perfectly placed blast on top of the main pack and blows 3 of the wolves away in a storm of burning cards. One wolf manages to run up on the huckster and gets his jaws on one arm but the Ranger blows it away at point blank range. The two then hustle on towards the train station, arriving in time to catch the ride to their next adventure.


I do like the SW initiative system - using the the cards just feels so different that it breaks the typical D&D mindset and puts us in a different place. It worked well enough with superheroes but it feels even more "right" with western heroes. Switching initiative every round was something the Apprentices were also unused too, as most of our games use a more static system.

Combat moves fast, very fast, and I was once again elated to play with the awesomeness that is No Record Keeping - Basic NPC's and monsters are either Up and Fine, Shaken,  or Dead, sort of like minions in 4E D&D. Special characters (called WIld Cards) can have up to 3 wounds but these are marked with poker chips instead of being tracked by hit points or on a chart. I use white chips for Shaken, red chips for Wounds, and blue chips for any oddball status I need to mark which is pretty rare. Unlike my usual campaign logs where pages are covered in long descending hit point tracks, my notes for a session of this game just covers actions of note and lists which opponents or NPC's were encountered.


Playing it again, even as just a brief warm-up, reminded me all over again why I like this game so much. It's a beautiful system which feels like you're getting a lot done in a short period of time but with enough detail to make it worth doing. It is very much on the "Cinematic" side of things with characters blazing away, shaking off wounds, and moving on to the next big action sequence. It is more detailed than say ICONS, but less complex than M&M. There's enough mechanical crunch to make it interesting but not enough to need rules-heavy supplements. Most of the supporting material is campaign material with a few rules tweaks or additions to flesh out that particular universe - superpowers in Neccessary Evil, expanded rules for sailing ships and ship combat in Pirates, more 1870's-specific gear in Deadlands, 1960's gear in Tour of Darkness, etc.


This session also helped me recognize bits of other games in there too. There are elements of d6 Star Wars  in Savage Worlds that really jump out at me now after having gone through that system in some detail, including changes that I would make to that system as far as movement and actions and paring the skill list down to its core. I think if I ever go for a lighter Star Wars game it will use these rules.


In addition to the official material, there is a very strong community attitude of do-it-yourself online. There are numerous conversions of other games out there and numerous home grown sets of campaign material. Check out this page - everything from Harry Potter to World of Warcraft to TORG to Eberron to Star Trek and Warhammer 40,000 - that's a pretty wide range!


So this session got things started - what's my plan? Not sure. I'm going to run them through the old Deadlands starter adventure "Comin' Round the Mountain" (which I have never gotten to run) because I think it looks like fun. Hopefully that will happen this weekend and we can include Apprentice Who in this one. After that I may run a little thing I had written up years ago set in the Great Maze and after that well we will just see where things go. It's very unusual for me to go into a potential campaign situation without some kind of outline but I don't really feel the need for that yet with this game. Since we already have ongoing D&D 4E, Star Wars, and ICONS games with occsional forays into D&D Basic and MSH I don;t thin I need to over plan this. Plus I don't have a really compelling idea for a long term campaign of this yet. I'm feeling it as more of an episodic thing, more like "this week on Deadlands - the Night Train!" rather than a zero to hero epic that spans 50 sessions and 2 years of real time. I think the more segmented approach will work here so I'm going to try it that way for now.

Some Love for the Western Game

This one is going to be somewhat shorter than my last two posts

Someone finally brought Boot Hill to our little group about 1983 and we played it a lot. I ended up with this cover (below) but the contents were the same

This was a fun if limited game focused mainly on shootouts. You could do whatever you wanted but most of the rules centered around gunfights. We quickly grew tired of this and used the conversion rules in the DM's Guide to mix it with D&D as that was a LOT more exciting. I spent more time in the Lost Cavenrs of Tsojcanth with a group of bank robbers running from the law than I ever did with a regular D&D party. Hostile elves (er, "Funny Lookin' Indians)? Gatling gun. Angry hill giants? Dynamite. It's fun and I recommend it to everyone at least once.

That was the majority of my cowboy gaming for a long time. There have been a few others over the years - GURPS Old West, Western Hero were both nice treatments of the historical aspects but didn't add much. Aces and Eights is a really nice game that actually lets you run a real western campaign without mixing in D&D with rules for ranching and cattle drives and a cool combat system but I've never been able to talk anyone into playing it. It's unfortunate but true as it's a really well done game.

There's only one other Western game worth mentioning in my opinion:

One of my favorite games that I've never played and only run a bit is Deadlands. It's everything cool about westerns + some D&D types stuff + alternate history + interesting mechanical systems - a home run on every level. There was a ton of supplementary material released for it from short story collections to a miniatures game to adventures and regional supplements. The whole thing is great and while it's not a truly historical or realistic old west game (there are mad scientists and magic-users) it is the coolest one by a mile.

If you don't like the original, occasionally clunky system then you are in luck as there is a GURPS conversion. a d20 version, and a Savage Worlds version. I'm a big fan of the original system but I would probably run the Savage Worlds version nowadays - it sacrifices some detail but it works really well. I thought the d20 version was fine but lost a little flavor and the GURPS version is...well...GURPS. It's the same concept expressed in a very different mechanical way and one that might lean a little too far towards "realism" to truly reflect the atmosphere of the original. If you can find a way to work in the cards and poker chips of the original into your system of choice then you are that much closer to capturing it.

As much as I love it I've only run it a few times and all of those were one-off's. Even in Texas (or maybe because we live in Texas*) no one I know has ever wanted to play a long-term western game as the primary or even a secondary game.   It's a hard sell it seems and I don't know what it would take to change it if the coolness of this game can't break through the barrier.

I know there are some other western games out there but these are the one's I've played and love so I can't say much about the rest.   If you think there's one that's contributed to the genre then let me know in the comments.

*yes I own 4 pairs of boots, no I don't own a hat or a duster (come close a few times though) and no I don't own any cows or oil wells - just to get that straight.