Six-Gun Sound

Western Gunfight Rules

by Steve Winter

Designed by Ed Teixeira, from Two-Hour Wargames

Six-Gun Sound is a set of fast-playing Western gunfight rules. When I say fast play, I mean Bill Hickock fast. These rules are geared more toward Old West gang fights a la the OK Corral, the Lincoln County War, or the bloody Northfield, Minnesota raid than a one-on-one showdown between Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid or betwixt Shane and the evil, slinking Wilson.

The rules have only three basic rules mechanisms.

The first is fixed movement distances depending on situation and modified by rough terrain.

The second is shooting (or attacking in general). Roll a dies and look up a chart. The chart has the modifiers for situations built in. Most players have it doped out after two or three shots.

The third mechanism is reactions, and they are what makes this game so much fun. Whenever something alarming happens to a figure — an enemy pops into view or rushes at the figure, it gets shot at or wounded, that sort of thing — the player makes a reaction check by rolling two dice and comparing them individually to the figure’s coolness rating. If both dice “pass” (are equal to or less than coolness), the figure can do whatever the player wants — shoot at the target, duck behind cover, grab the payroll. If one die passes and one fails, the figure usually quails in some way — ducks when you wanted it to shoot, shoots when you wanted it to charge. If both dice fail, the figure usually goes looking for more substantial cover farther away from the shooter.

This simple, quick reaction check has all sorts of wonderful effects on the game. The most important is that figures move around from cover to cover and get involved in gun battles almost entirely on their own. You can move them like robots before they meet the enemy, but once lead starts flying, it’s as if your figures develop little brains of their own (which, by the way, makes this game well suited for solitaire play).That’s not to say that you have no control over your forces, but that they react to situations and not only to the players’ whims. A figure that “feels” threatened will abandon a perfectly good location for another one further back or duck behind cover instead of taking a perfectly good shot.

There are nine generic scenarios in the book (cattle rustling, pursuit by posse, jailbreak, and so on). They can be linked in an ongoing campaign by a nifty little set of rules. The outcome of one game determines the scenario that will be played next.

There’s a lot left out of Six-Gun Sound. You won’t find any detailed hit locations or extensive rules on the effects of wounds. The weapon table lists only nine generic weapons, and dynamite isn’t one of them. If you keep the same band of characters from one scenario to the next (a core feature of the campaign), those that survive have a tendency to become supermen a bit too fast. The use of only six-sided dice places some unfortunate limitations on the game’s probability plots. There are no illustrations at all in the book, and even the photo on the cover is poor quality. More significantly, the book is poorly organized and some of the rules, despite their absolute simplicity, are still not well explained. The happy news is that the designer’s intention is always apparent, so where the letter of the law is unclear, questions are pretty easily resolved by resorting to the spirit of the rules. If that fails, just about any action a figure might want to undertake can be subjected to the arbitration of the dice. As the reaction check is the only mechanism in the rules for resolving actions, it’s an easy step to apply it to whatever silly thing a player dreams up. Whether Pegleg Pete wants to leap from the saloon balcony onto a moving horse or the Hunkpapa medicine man comes face to face with the great white buffalo, a reaction check is the perfect response.

I won’t say Six-Gun Sound is the only set of Western gunfight rules I’ll ever use again, but I will say that they’re the only ones I’ll be using for quite a while. They are an excellent alternative to Desperado and The Rules With No Name, with a distinctly different feel. Six-Gun Sound manages to be simpler than both of those games, yet the reaction checks make it feel more authentic in play. I highly recommend it.

Available as a comb-bound book for $10 from Two-Hour Wargames at http://www.angelfire.com/az3/twohourwargames/.

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