[Gaming History] Power Gaming -- Boot Hill NPCs

As a fan of Westerns, I've always wanted to play Boot Hill. I've owned a copy of the Second Edition of the game -- the one that came in the box and was published in 1979 -- for many years, but I have never had the chance to sit down and actually play a session of the game.

This isn't to say that the players I have gamed with over the years haven't been up for Western themed gaming.  I've played sessions of Avalon Hill's Gunslinger (not an rpg) and sessions of Deadlands.  We've always had a good time.  I've just never had a chance to play Boot Hill.  This being the case, it wasn't until recently that I began to read the rules to examine them for play.  The Old School Renaissance, combined with the recent release of Dungeon Crawl Classics, got me into a nostalgic mood.  So the other day, I opened up the rulebook to learn how to play so I could pitch a session to my gaming group.

The first thing I noticed was that while Boot Hill is a role playing game, it is largely a Tactical Tabletop game.  The campaign elements while "role playing" oriented also allow for players to play against one another -- but doesn't require it.  Some players will play "law men" and others "outlaws."  This isn't to say that one couldn't create a more "PCs are a team" style campaign, just that the rule book is written to allow for player dictated storylines where other players can react.  The campaign system is set up so that the individual players can play their own individual stories regardless of other players' activities. I think that this mode of campaign play is interesting and definitely echoes the style of a Braunstein game more than the D&D rules did.  

One of the things that many in the OSR community find appealing about old school games is the lethality of the systems and the lack of "superheroic player characters."  OSR players often want the characters played by players to feel some what mortal.  This sentiment likely stems from the fragility of 1st level characters in D&D, especially Magic Users who are notoriously fragile at low levels.  PCs in a 1st edition D&D game are often one small mistake away from death.  In fact, in the first D&D rules set while characters where rated for their physical and mental attributes, having highly rated attributes had little effect on game play in comparison to later games.  A Fighter with a high Strength score gained very little immediate benefit from the score, though that character would gain experience more rapidly than his/her compatriots.

It didn't take long for that to change though. It was in the Greyhawk supplement that added ability score modifiers for combat.  And once a character's strength score affected one's combat ability, every player wanted to have a higher strength score.  After all, who doesn't want to hit opponents 10-15% more often and to deal 2 to 6 more points of damage per hit?

The 1979 rules of Boot Hill definitely demonstrate the transition from ability scores being primarily a measure that influences speed of advancement to things that immediately and directly affect combat.  D&D used a bell curve that was close to a Normal Distribution with a range of 3 to18.  The bonuses roughly falling along lines of standard deviation especially in the Moldvay/Cook edition.  Boot Hill, on the other hand, has different distributions for Non-Player Characters and Player Characters based on percentile rolls.

Player Characters are far more proficient than randomly generated NPCs.  Take a look at the following two tables illustrating the probability of a character having a specific "Speed" rating.  The first illustrates the chance of a randomly generated NPC having a given modifier.  These range from - 5 to +22 and 0 is described as "average" in the descriptor.  The second illustrates a Player Character.  Once again, 0 is "average."

NPC Speed Probabilities

PC Speed Probabilities

Two things stand out to immediately.  The first is that the character generation system doesn't generate "average" characters on average.  An NPC has only a 10% chance of being "average," and has a 15% chance of being "above average" or "fast."  PCs are even more powerful than NPCs, as they are completely incapable of being "average."  Given that the -5 to +22 is a modifier to initiative, and that one sees similar though not identical distributions for Gun and Throwing Accuracy, one wonders why the game's mechanics didn't scale down toward average actually meaning average.  This could have been done by deciding that a majority of NPCs have a speed of x, and that the majority of PCs have a speed of y.  The speed of x could have been called average and have provided no bonus or penalty.  Instead, Boot Hill uses a counter intuitive system where an average roll (50.5) results in a "quick" NPC (+4) or a "Very Quick" PC (+6).

A part of me could forgive the non-intuitive use, if it wasn't for the section of the rules listing "The Fastest Guns That Ever Lived."  According to this chart, Billy the Kid has an unachievable Speed of +23 and even Ike Clanton has a +12.  All of the "Fastest Guns That Ever Lived" are extremely fast and seem to me to reflect a kind of power creep in the rules.  What is most remarkable is how many of these characters have Speeds of 18+, with many having more than 22.  One might say, "but they are the 'fastest' aren't they?"  Okay, but does the name Bob Younger really bring to mind speed with a pistol?  Besides, the point of having these gunslingers listed is for use in the game.  If all of them are so quick, then there is no real distinction among them.  The slowest of the fastest guns has a +6.  Why not set +6 as average?  It seems to be the average of the NPC distribution -- or at least close.

I can say that the first thought I had looking at these numbers was that none of my players would want to even try a character who didn't have at least a +9 in their Speed Stat.  I think that a system having bonuses that directly affect the probability of actions makes players more likely to worry that their stats aren't high enough, and to try to power game a system.  As time has gone by, I'm becoming more convinced that maybe statistics should matter less mechanically than they do.  Players might obsess a little less about what their Speed score is if they aren't worried about someone with a +25 (Wes Hardin) bringing the gun to bear.

Oh...and the list completely leaves out Bass Reeves.  How can you leave out Bass Reeves?

Hulu Recommendation Friday: Angel and the Badman

John Wayne didn't receive formal accolades for his acting ability until his 1970 performance as Marshall Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn. It is often argued that the reason the Oscar, and Golden Globe, was awarded is due to the fact that in playing "against type" John Wayne finally proved that he was a capable actor. Those who make this argument often point to the John Wayne film, The Shootist, as another example of how the "usually cardboard" Wayne was able to bring another powerful performance to screen.

Those who believe that John Wayne only came into "deep" acting later in his career are wearing some fairly narrow blinders and have to ignore a long list of worthy performances.

Wayne's performance in The Quiet Man is simultaneously vulnerable and powerful, passionate and reserved, melancholy and puckish. The film is a joy to watch for a wide variety of reason, but John Wayne's wonderful performance is one of those reasons.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a movie where Wayne simultaneously plays the stereotype and breaks it wide open, Wayne's performance uses the audience's knowledge of his past films to good effect. Audiences were used to seeing the tough Wayne who met challenges head on, kills the bad guy, is fawned upon by the community, and who often ended up with the girl -- a perfect example of this character is Wayne's performance in Rio Bravo or Stagecoach. But Tom Donophon, Wayne's character in Valance, only accomplishes two of these line items. Donophon does that most remarkable of things. He gives credit, and all the rewards due to the individual to whom credit is given, to another man -- a man he believes to be better than himself. The film is a perfect argument against Machiavellian style politics, and a presentation of true heroic virtue. Donophon refuses to take any credit for a heroic deed, even though it means he must live without the woman he loves. He does this because the community needs him to do it. Wayne's performance is powerful in this film, and his heartbreak is palpable.

There are several other examples in Wayne's career of great performances, The Searchers and Red River also immediately jump to mind, but one of those performances that is often overlooked is Angel and the Badman a film in which we see glimpses of the actor's potential to break free from the cardboard hero in a screenplay were the audience, like in the later Valance, can see that there is more to the Western than good guy kills bad guy.



In Angel and the Badman, we see Wayne without the scaffolding of Howard Hawks or John Ford. This time, Wayne is directed by James Edward Grant who is better known for his screenplays than his directing, and who no one would argue was an auteur. The film is a vehicle for Wayne as "John Wayne," but it ends up being much more than that.

The film's story is a simple one. Quirt Evans is a man of the West. He largely lives outside the law, taking what he wants, and living life to its hedonistic fullest. Quirt isn't a purely evil man, but he is an amoral one and his flexible morality has come into conflict with another outlaw named Laredo Stevens.

So far, the names and character types are almost caricatures from a bad dime novel. Quirt? Laredo? These aren't names of characters one expects in a film of substance. That's typically true, but Grant -- who also wrote the screenplay -- is about to take our expectations of a cardboard tale and throw it for a loop.

As might be expected, Quirt gets injured in a rundown with Laredo. Quirt's injuries are not small and he ends up demanding to be cared for by a family of Quakers named Worth. Penelope Worth (Gail Russell) -- again with those obvious names -- takes a high interest in Quirt and the two eventually develop an emotional attachment. In the end, Quirt must choose between love and violence, between living a moral life or defending those he has come to love by murdering the villain Laredo.

This would all be typical stuff, and the audience can see which way the wind is taking Wayne by the color of his hat in a given scene as it alternates between black and white, except that Grant is making a more sophisticated argument than one might initially expect -- and Wayne is able to portray the moral complexity of the character required to advance that argument. Grant doesn't merely give us a tale where pacifism equals moral virtue and violent action equals moral vice. The film is as complex as High Noon in the way it balances legitimate authority and pacifism.

The Worth family, while happy, is suffering due to their religious practices and it is only Quirt who can convince their neighbor to give them the water they need to thrive. It is the threat of implied violence that accompanies Quirt that initially changes the mind of their Scrooge like neighbor to share water with the Worth family. The neighbor shares because he is scared that Quirt will kill him if he doesn't comply. What makes the scene powerful is that Quirt went to the neighbor unarmed, and with good intentions, and that the bond of neighborly friendship is cemented by the kindness of the Worth family. There is another scene where the threat of Quirt using violence saves the lives of the family.

Grant's argument in the film seems to be that violence, and the threat of violence, isn't in itself evil, but that the application of violence is only moral when done through proper authority. There are some great parallels between this film and the earlier mentioned High Noon, of particular interest is a comparison of the endings of the two films, and both films require subtle performances from underrated actors. Wayne's portrayal of Quirt begins as you might expect a Wayne performance to play out, but as it continues and Quirt transforms from Badman to Man it is Wayne's performance that makes it work. One can see glimpses of the performances Wayne would later bring to the screen, and one also gets to see how a writer can use the clichéd tropes of a genre and manipulate them into a more complex tale than one usually expects.