Aces & Eights.

[Legionnaire]

Good stuff gentlemen. Seeing now that I won't have the time to do the characters before 17/5, we'll set off an hour or two on that Sunday for creating the characters and then we'll play. Would therefore appreciate if people could turn up as close to 1230 Hrs as possible to get going.

There's basically two ways we can handle this:

1) The characters are brothers/ cousins looking for a new future in the Shattered Frontier (basically what's New Mexico/ Arizona these days). The west is full of brothers/ cousins, take the Clantons, McLawreys (?), Earps, James' and Daltons for instance. This way everybody will have a shared background.

or

2) The characters will be waking up in the local "hoosegow" (the Nick) after a rowdy evening, having spent basically their last dollars. Promting for to quickly find a job and opportunities for joint ventures. This way you all have diverse backgrounds.

Your choise.

Quick briefing upon Character Creation.

1) Roll 3D6 AND 1D100 seven times. If you end up with at least two attributes at or below 9, you may re-roll one of these ONCE for free. If you roll real crap, you may of course re-roll all of it.

2) You get 75 pts. that you can (in part) raise your attributes with. Each point spent increases the D100 value of that attribute by 5%. If you exceed 100% you up that attribute by 1. (Ex. Your Wisdom score is 11/78%, if you spend 3 BP you increase it by 15%, reading 11/93%, and if you spend 5 BP you increase it by 25%, reading 12/03%). This way it's possible to increase attributes in a campaign, implying you dedicate time and effort to better yourself).

3) Keep the BP points you've got left over from attributes and roll your background, which in turn will provide more BP's (maybe) and bonus skills.

4) Buy skills, merits, quirks/ flaws. The skills you buy in "tallies" meaning the first time you pay the listed cost, the second time double, third time triple etc. Each time you take the corresponding attribute and roll a die, depending on the skill. You subtract that value from 100, resulting in the lower skill you get, the more proficient you are.

[Stephen Mawson]

Is it worth you bringing the Aces & Eights stuff down on Monday, just try and get a brief overview of the rules in before D&D starts.

[Legionnaire]

I certainly could bring it down on Monday.

[joeoe18]

I am excited! Both about the roleplaying, and about this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDJj4Pmj8fE

[Legionnaire]

Oh yes, I remember playing Red Dead Revolver on the ol' XBox. Sadly I never finished it, the End Boss was such a Royal Pain in the ... that I gave up after dying umpteen times. But all in all, not a bad game. Looking forward to this new title, in my opinion there's way to few western games out there.

[Legionnaire]

Here's the link to the games homepage; www.kenzerco.com/aces_n_eights/

The character generation rules don't really mean much, because it's for the basic game, where you only have Speed and Accuracy. Worth checking out though.

[Legionnaire]

I'll bring down the rulebook on Monday 11/5 so anyone interested can have a look. Characters will be made on Sunday (or Monday 11/5 if time given).

I'll bring my wild west miniatures along (25 odd ones) if you (Stephen and Joe) like to you can bring yours but it's not necessary. If you've got any civilians they're more important.

The plan is (in case of a gunfight ) to maximize the props we've got, minis, floorplans, buildings and such. Because everything's measured in feet or miles in the game, a tapemeasure will be utilized for movement and distance (hopefully it won't bog down the game too much, we're all learning during the first session). Each inch measured corresponds to 5 feet.

Also, if anyone possesses tiny markers of many different colours (like your beads Chris) I'd appreciate if you could bring them. Essential for the Speed-track to determine when people move and get to shoot, so each participant will get a colour for that purpose. 10 colours or so would be good.

[Legionnaire]

As there's a plethora of Advanced Rules in the game, we're obviously going to start out easy. Meaning:

- The Time Track will be used, each 10 Count corresponds to 1 second of real time. (For instance, it normally takes 5 Counts to draw a revolver from a holster or 0.5 seconds).

- The Shot Clock in all it's glory will also be used.

- The damage rules will be used. On a maximum roll, you roll again and subtract 1, each consequtive maximum roll adds to the damage (always apply -1). Therefore it's possible for a 1d6+1 damage to result in 15 points, given enought 6's are rolled. In HTH combat even rolls of 1 penetrate downwards, resulting in less than normal damage, even 0 is possible. From firearms there's always a minimum of 1 damage done.

- A damage of less than 5 to a body part is not bad, 6-8 is and anything above 9 is pretty serious (permanent damage providing you survive). They're counted wound for wound though, so it's perfectly possible to have two slight wounds to the abdomen for instance, they don't add together for wound severity, but are deducted from your total HP (normal people have got 21-24 HP, at 0 you're dead or if the bodypart damage says so, head, neck, chest or abdomen).

- I'm not gonna bother with extra time or accuracy penalties for shooting at targets on your side or behind, at least not to begin with.

- There're special rules for Brawling that requires poker chips instead to handle. As I've not read these rules yet, we'll stick to simple such. Your Damage with a fist is 1 plus your damage bonus. You can still try to grapple someones gunhand and wrestle though.

I'll try to run a few battles for myself to get used to the combat rules, hopefully they'll run reasonably smooth then.

[Legionnaire]

The way it will work:

- You decide whether you're related or total strangers to each other. That decides the background. If no-one's got any preferences, I say you're strangers thrown together, making it easy for me.

- There's no strict professions per se, at the start of each session the player decides what line of work they'll pursue for the session. Therefore you might start out as a coach driver, but with a bit of training you might become a doctor a few sessions later! (Providing you've got the necessary skills, or you might get very few clients...). As you progress within the profession, fulfilling different requirements you earn BP's that you can distribute to raise abilities, buy skills or even talents.

- Because (hopefully) it's going to be a campaign, the game will be run according to a calender (got the printouts), where I easily can tick off weeks, months and even year-to-year. 1 BP will be earned/ month passed in game time (on top of other earnings).

- Because it's the west, of course there'll be a certain element of danger and derring-do, but it's not going to be the central point. I'm not going to run endless, back-to-back gunfights, although there's nothing wrong with the occassional one.

- Just so everyone's aware, one of the first things that'll happen is a gunfight actually, just to demonstrate what it's like. That in turn will be turned into a plot device, that hopefully will spur the characters on to get going.

- If you want to get some kind of understanding how it's going to be, expect a lot more Unforgiven, Appaloosa, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Heaven's Gate, The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Tombstone (the costumes are brilliant as well!) than any of the Spaghetti-westerns. And if you've seen the series Deadwood, there you'll have it.

- If you wish to play any other gender than male, feel free. It's a much less restricted society than it was in real history, but some professions are still out of the question, like Judge, Lawman or any kind of Politician for instance. There's no list to refer to what you can choose or not, but let common sense prevail.

[joeoe18]

Hoorah! Looking forward to this. Need to sink some thought into what sort of character I want to be, although a slightly longer look at the character sheet/generation rules might be required for that.