About the project:
Life is hard, life is short, and life don’t owe you a goddamn thing. But you are extraordinary. In this land of raw opportunity nothing can limit what you can become – not race, nor gender, nor how few dollars you have in your pocket. It don’t matter where you come from, or what you’ve done before, you make yourself in the West, and the West makes you.
Tales of the Old West is the tabletop roleplaying game of gritty, hard-hitting action and adventure set in a historical recreation of the 1870s American West, a world where the dangers you face lurk in the hearts of other folk, or from the very land beneath your feet. It uses Free League Publishing’s award-winning Year Zero Engine, adapted to fit the Western theme.
Let me take you back to the Old West, in the year 1873… – the game is a historical recreation of the way the Wild West was, back in the day. Blessed by opportunity, cursed by hardship, and riven with conflict and struggle, life on the frontier is challenging – and the rules reflect that reality. It’s easy to get hurt, and gettin’ hurt is bad. In fact, everything can go south darned fast. So pardner, if you’re gonna draw your gun, you better be ready for the consequences.
The West makes you – it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, or what you did before, in the American West you can be whoever you wanna be. The rules encourage players to explore the lives of any and every person who once lived in the Old West, without casting those characters into old and worn stereotypes.
The Tales of the Old West Core Rulebook will be released as a circa 200 page, US letter format, hardback book, printed by Standart, Lithuania. Within, you will find:
- All the rules you need to create your character and take them out into the Old West, including six Archetypes: Gentlefolk, Grifter, Homesteader, Tracker, Ranch Hand, and Trader.
- Details of your sixteen abilities and more than 50 talents, each with a basic and advanced level of expertise.
- Rules on Social Conflict, when the strength of your personality or your gift of the gab will win the day.
- And rules for when you can’t talk your way out of trouble, for Fighting and Ranged Conflict.
- More than 25 individual weapons, each with the advantages and disadvantages of the weapons of the day.
- Innovative critical injury and called shot / called blow mechanics.
- A new take on mishaps, called Trouble.
- The means to build your home town into the shiny place on the hill you want it to be, and the rules for the business outfit you want to run there.
- Eight different breeds of horse, and the means to train your perfect steed, and the other Old West wildlife you might want to avoid.
- And an introductory adventure, Patience Is A Virtue.
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The project is definitely worth a look and with the core rule book pretty much finished, I don’t think this is one to fall short of what it promises. There are some nice actual plays around to have a look, e.g. “Biting the Dust in Albuquerque” on my channel.