Review: Boot Hill

by Damien Moore

Boot Hill is the newest in the TSR stable of fabulous roleplaying games. Moving away from the traditional fantasy centred games, and even from TSR's science fiction games Gamma World and Alpha Complex. Boot Hill is set in the Wild West, giving the players a chance to play outlaws, lawmen, ranchers and so on. More than ever, the players get a chance to make a game "much like the unfolding story of a novel or movie

Boot Hill is laid out in a way that makes it fairly easy to take in a first read - Basic Rules, such as character generation, training equipment and combat, which are the core of any good roleplaying game - Advanced and optional rules - Campaing rules - and Appendices

The system

In a fairly dramatic break away from the system of D&D and AD&D, Boot Hill relies on a percentile based system. Fortunately, the set comes with two ten sided dice, not 1 100-sided one! One of the d10s is rolled to be the "1"s and the other to be the "10"s. This fairly radical change to TSR's usual systems is just one of the exciting new developments.

Characters are represented by their speed, accuracy, strength, bravery and experience which you roll for when making up your character, as usual. The higher the skill, the better you are at that skill. Experience, unlike the collect it as you go system that we are all used to, is a measure of how many gun battles you have fought in, and survived. By surviving more gun battles, you can improve your skills. This truly is character development honed to its very essence.

Gun battles are frighteningly realistic - the mechanics take into account movement, including through buildings and mounting and dismounting. Wounds and draw speed affect your chances of surviving until the next battle. For those frustrated by the all-in nature of D&D combat and its lack of realism, characters must contend with a viewing distance and scope. In a dramatic shift away from the hit point system, Boot Hill instead provides for wounded characters to suffer modifiers to their abilities, depending on the wounds they have suffered!

Advanced and Optional rules

TSR's penchant for providing easily extendable systems from the simplistic to the convoluted has shown itself once again in Boot Hill. The Advanced rules allow for simultaneous actions, hidden movement, firing while moving and mounted targets. For those who want to run modules involving those pesky indians, there are rules covering basic archery, and character morale for non-player characters and minor characters.

The optional rules present even more oppurtunity for roleplaying the rough and ready folk of the Wild West - sharpshooting, gambling, stray bullets, stunning, dynamite, gatling guns, intoxication, misfires and (allowing for those who really> want that Fireball spell) canons!

Other Features

Boot Hill offers a few more features to the seasoned roleplayer. The equipment list which lets you load up your character with the firearms they will need to survive (and other items useful in passing to character background) includes a rough guide as to what date certain guns and munitions were available in different decades - something that many of us have often wished was available in AD&D!

The chapter on campaign games provides information on long term Boot Hill games - taking the character out of the town and onto the trail. This is a bit like moving the action out of a dungeon and into the wilderness, so its only for the experienced DM.

The appendices hold a considerable amount of useful information too for DM who wants to stick to historical accuracy. Lists of the fastest guns in the west, converted to the Boot Hill system so your players can gun down historical fast shooters like Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday - how's that for a thrill!

Other appendices supply example towns and scenarios - one of them plays out the Shootout at the OK Corral, letting you and your players possibly change the outcome of one of the most famous gun battles of all time. The sort of loot that outlaws might garner from wagons and fallen gunmen is also listed for the DM so that your players don't get out of hand, and sudden wind up the richest, fastest guns in the west.

And the one final surprise - cross gaming tables, converting between this new system and AD&D and Gamma World! Always wanted to have gunfights in your dungeons - dwarves should have canons? - well, now you can.

Overall

Overall, the combination of an accurate and realistic gunfight system, and the usual complex detail that TSR provide make Boot Hill a superb game, and one that I can see gracing the shelves of your local gaming store for a long time.