Any Old West gaming fans? (Sidewinder: Recoiled)

**dr_venture** · January 22nd, 2011, 03:01

(I posted tis in the "Other Game Systems" category - not sure what's most appropriate)

I've been working on running an Old West game for my son - settled on the Sidewinder: Recoiled rules, a OGL-based ruleset which I'm really enjoying for the most part. I'm using Sidewinder: Recoiled, which is an OGL/d20 system.

Anyway, it occurred to me that there might be some fans of Old West gaming out there - especially folks non-US folks who might like the genre and enjoy a game run by a guy living in the heart of the Motherlode... but anyone who's interested, really.

I can't do this right away, as I'm still on a satellite Internet connection (I'm out in the sticks, actually), which I have found won't work for hosting games. I'm supposed to get access to DSL-speed wireless at some point - dunno when that's going to happen, but supposedly before too long.

I just figured I'd put up this note and see if anyone was interested in doing a little adventuring in the American west of the 1880s.

**phantomwhale** · January 22nd, 2011, 10:58

I'm running some American west / 1880s stuff myself, but under the weird west guise of Deadlands:Reloaded. So no good for joining you in a game, I'm afriad.

However, worth noting if you want to trade Wild West resources at any point (maps, tokens, "real world" price lists, etc...) as I'm always looking for bits and bobs like that to boost up my game.

**GunnarGreybeard** · January 22nd, 2011, 11:34

Not sure I could make it, depends on the days and times, etc but I will definitely be following this thread. I'm also not up on any of the d20 stuff (I'm a Harnmaster/Rolemaster type) so hopefully that wouldn't be too much of an issue.

**dr_venture** · January 22nd, 2011, 18:46

phantomwhale: I appreciate the resource sharing offer. Right now I don't have too much to offer - I have zero tokens, or any FG resources whatsoever, other than about 2 dozen character portraits I put together from historical photos. I'm also assembling random generators for Inspiration Pad Pro based on the 1880 census data, so I have a pretty decent random male/female name generator (when I generated "Rufus Temple," I deemed it Old Western-enough). Working other generated content.

In fantasy games I use overhead tokens for facing issues, but I guess that's less important with a shooting game, so I might just use portraits there... dunno.

GunnarGreybeard: I'm actually not a d20 guy at all, but it was the only system that I knew would work in FG... and it actually slips quite seamlessly into the 3.5 ruleset with only a couple exceptions. No worries on whether you know d20 or not... it's the character generation that's the most onerous - we'd work it out somehow.

Actually, I would have preferred to use the Rolemaster-based Old West game, but I've been having ongoing crash problems with Rolemaster in FG that I've whined about over in that topic. I don't see that getting addressed anytime soon. To FG's credit, they have been reasonably responsive, and after it became clear that the issue looked to be ongoing, they eventually gave me a credit over at RPGNow to try another ruleset. I used it to get Castles & Crusades, which I really like, so in the end I'm grateful to get the opportunity to be exposed to something excellent I might never have tried otherwise.

**Oberoten** · January 22nd, 2011, 18:52

https://oberoten.dyndns.org/cc/click.php?id=10 Western-Skin

**dr_venture** · January 22nd, 2011, 19:06

Oh, phantomwhale, I forgot to mention that on the real world price lists, since my game is roughly set in the 1880s I'm going with catalog prices from Mongomery Wards and Sears, maybe adjusted up 20% to 50% for purchases from local businesses (just a guess on my part). Those catalogs are mostly available for the late 1890s, but there are a few much smaller ones from as far back as 1860. Just ordered an 1870 Wards repro for about $4 from Ebay.

From what I've seen in the 1880 census data which contains a small sampling of goods prices that goes back sometimes to 1800, while there was over-all a small amount of price inflation, the prices individual items like a pair of boots was all over the map... and in fact work boots were cheaper in the 1880s than earlier in the century. Since I'm not trying to be too anal about all of that stuff and I don't want buying bacon and coffee to be an exercise in mathematics, I'll probably just use catalog prices - we'll see.

Where are you getting your prices?

**dr_venture** · January 27th, 2011, 03:50

There is a handful of fields that are specific to Sidewinder that I needed to add to the ruleset, so I just made a couple very minor changes to the d20 ruleset and added a bunch of graphics (I'm kinda particular about teh look of the layout, and I'm kind-of a graphics guy). So I made a bunch of changes to the look of the ruleset. If anyone would like to download it (below), take a look at the layout, and let me know what you think, I'd appreciate it. I want the graphics to really evoke the Old West/Victorian era, but other than that tend to be unobtrusive. I'm particularly concerned that teh framed image in the middle of the desktop might be visually obtrusive on a small screen than mine.

Anyway, if you'd care to tool around a little and let me know what you think, it'd be appreciated.

https://castlecorps.com/Sidewinder Recoiled.zip

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