The Gunslinger for DCC

(Oct. 1, evening)

I have this DCC Weird West Barrowmaze thing, ostensibly starting up a couple of weeks ago and creaking to life slowly.  Spurred forward by the arrival on the scene of the Black Powder, Black Magic zine by Stormlord Publishing and also my grokking of the terrific Shudder Mountain Boxed Set.  It set in motion some hankerin' for some 1870's-era quick draw things, and so I present to you a rudimentary version of the DCC Gunslinger.  I found a couple of different systems for Wild West games, namely 2nd edition Boot Hill (which is clumsy and needs patching but has a distinct merit about it), a little free thing called Go Fer Yer Gun! which I have linked to in the past, and obviously Carl and Eric's stuff in BPBM 1.  That is shoehorned on top of Transylvanian Adventures' fumble/crits/fear/general play system and further sprinkled with Autarch's Ravenloft book for d20, as well as Barrowmaze Complete.  Why?  I don't know.  Why not?

If you choose to be a gunslinger, what you sort of are is a base Warrior from DCC core book, but you take away the mighty deeds with various weapons and specialize with a pistol of some kind (in my brain imagination zone there are different flavors of pistols, but we'll see how it plays out) or pistols, generally.

You get a d10 fast draw die, which you add to your initiative with pistols (and maybe to Reflex saves in a pinch), in addition to your Agility initiative bonus and level.  For shots or trick shots with your pistol, you also get your Agility and level.  You get the fanning feat from BPBM 1, which is cool, and all your shots with pistols count as short range, within the normal range of the pistol.  You can burn a Luck point to avoid jams and fumbles with your pistol, and your crit range is equal to your Level (so 20 at Level 1, 19-20 at Level 2, etc).  You do get a Trick Shot die with pistols, same as a regular Warrior but you lose deeds with other weapons.  Further, you can burn 1 Luck to move your critical hit result up or down 1 as you like, whichever suits you best.

NPC's banditos/bad guys/Cowboys are generally going to have the quick draw die, and an agility mod, HP and that's it.  I mean, no need to get complicated with stats etc.  I have been working on a Rogue's Gallery thing with 100 Western NPCs, but it's more an experiment in Excel than anything else (note I did this once before for vanilla DCC).  A pretty cool thing about Boot Hill is that it has stats for all kinds of thugs and luminaries from our actual (regretably gun-violence oriented) Mythical American Past, and some of these cats were really sunsabitches of the worst sort.  Even the Earps and Doc Holliday were prone to casual murder...  (Funny, I examine this last sentence here, and maybe I don't need to post a thing about gunslinging today, owing to all the horrible news... I just took the wind out of my own sails with reality.  Gonna park this one here and come back to it tomorrow or something.)

Let me tell you later about the Dalton Gang and Coffeyville, the Death of Johnny Ringo, the Le Mat 9-shot pistol, and some other things.  But not today. Also, following Boot Hill 2.0 I think everyone probably ought to have a Gambler Rating

More later

Running Ideas

Bear with me I'm testing out the voice recognition app. On my run today I developed further a couple of ideas I had while I was falling asleep last night.  Had a bit of a fugue while I was jotting down the various encounters from the FF book Forest of Doom (for my next brief project). No pictures - too lazy.

1. Gigolo or houseguest elf who comes to the houses of lonely wives and widows and eats all the food and sires children.  He is magically able to be to most houses in the realm on any given night, but always leaves when the meal is eaten or when other pleasures are complete.  He always swears his mistresses to secrecy, as a matter of course, and if the secret is out, then he stops visiting forever, whatever happens. According to Elf Law the fathers of half elves are entitled to their children's treasure when the children die and so by siring as many children as possible and pushing them into the dangerous adventurer's career he is wealthy beyond his wildest imaginings. He's actually an agent of the Elf King that disrupts human politics and economies.  The Elf Kingdoms won't hesitate to press legitimate ( under their law) legal claims and try them interminably in court or else resort to boots on the ground interventions.  All half-elves in this region all have cuckold's horns to start, so as to clear up whose children are whose - the human cuckold's horns are only metaphorical/figurative.

Listen to I Can't Get Enough by The Dead Brothers on @AppleMusic.

https://itun.es/us/lNXzq?i=275192272

Second – and I may have regurgitated this one – mummy dust junkies ( I'm actually impressed with the way this app recognizes my voice ). You see long-ago the nobility wrapped their dead in muslin infused with lotus resin, opium gums and various psychoactive alkaloid preservatives.  The full gamut of colors of lotus were represented and the alchemy that obtained from the mummification process is powerful. The fermentation of the remains of the dead (many of whom dabbled in the Black Sorcery of Stygia and The Aegypts) infuses the wrappings and corpses with subtle spiritual vibrations.  Any who consume (smoke/eat/inject/tea/snort) the ground powder of mummies from this region become subject to various random effects of the compounds within, and further are subject to brief hauntings by random NPC ghosts. I don't see fit to make a little chart. There's a lot of those. The rule is the reaction must be determined randomly ( in the negative direction preferably) l with every interaction/use, per batch.  Exempla gratia if you have 5 packets of green lotus-and-scorpion-venom-infused mummy powder, and make a tea, you will meet the spirit of the noble whose corpse this was.  he or she may be angered at being ripped from the netherworld to answer your questions and these Aegyptians were spiteful and jealous and entitled, mostly.  Addiction ought to be a foregone conclusion, although it ought to spur some locales and spells and treasure, also.  It is possible to distill the active alchemical ingredients from the powder with a more pure process, but most Powder Heads don't bother to take the time. If a more refined process is used (chemistry/alchemy check) then what you get is much more potent and brief acting but the negative side effects are also much more long lasting and the ghost will remember who you are. Eventually, the Powder Heads become mumbling, confused, twitchy wrecks, literally haunted by long-dead spirits of powerful wealthy people (who know how to possess weak-willed subjects). My memory is spotty in terms of #Narcosa and all that stuff, and I may have stolen this'ns unwittingly but without malice. If it's really your idea and I stole it, I apologize

thanks, neighborhood opiate injectors, for this bit of inspiration while I was running from Zombies today after work.

A game of Appalachian Knocker-Mines tonight, and then post the Schweig's Dungeon Tool of this Forest of Doom thing maybe tomorrow