This week I’ve done very little that can be shown as mostly I’ve been working on the necessary cards for TRWNN and my ideas for converting my Old West rules and character stats into something suitable for the TRWNN rules.
In a few idle moments, I’ve worked on a few beds for my Western Town ‘Big Hotel’ from the original incomplete ones. The photos show the basic construction.
TTWNN have four character classes, with abilities ranging from -1 (Civilians, Citizens, greenhorns etc.) to +2 (‘Legends’) giving a range of ‘four’ in difference, whilst the OW rules have character abilities ranging from 1 to 10, in three abilities (two of shooting - pistol and rifle and a hand to hand or melee ability). Halving these abilities and rounding up gives a range of 1 to 5 - very close to TRWNN.
The next step was to look at advancement as in TRWNN all civilians have the same factor, all ‘Legends’ etc., but in the OW rules Civilians (Novices) can have abilities ranging from 1 to 6 with maybe an exceptional 7! Similarly, ‘Veterans’ in my OW rules (equating to ‘Legends’ in TRWNN), generally have high characteristics about ‘7’ to ‘10’, but a Veteran character can only have a single ability (of the three) at ‘10’.
Not liking the ‘-1’ given to Civilians in TRWNN I decided to add one to their standard starting ability, giving them a starting ability of ‘0’ and consequently all the three other classes had to have one added to their starting scores giving the following shooting ability (in number of extra dice thrown)
Civilians – 0; Gunmen +1, Shootists +2 and Legends +3
However, this is their base score for starting characters and I’ve added that each of their abilities can be increased at start up, by throwing a die for each of three abilities Pistols (revolvers), Shoulder Arms (Rifles, shotguns) and Hand to Hand (Melee, Brawling), replacing the all-encompassing ability of the four classes in TRWNN.
In the OW rules, I had advancement from Novice to Average after five gunfights (or equivalent) and from Average to Veteran after an additional fifteen (!) gunfights, making twenty fights in all.
This slips nicely into TRWNN, with its four categories, the characters needing to live through five gunfights between each ‘upgrade’.
At the start of a ‘career’ a civilian, throws a die: 1,2 or 3 gives no change to the characteristic of ‘0’,; 4 or a 5 they get an increase of ‘+1 die’ and a ‘6’ gives them ‘+2 dice. This happens at every level ‘upgrade’ with the proviso that no characteristic can improve beyond ‘5’ and no character can have more than one characteristic at ‘5’
A starting ‘legend’, character should really have dice thrown for the three preceding stages too, but this is really up to the scenario, players etc.
The next eight numbers show he is Happy; likes Drink and women; generous, totally loyal; undistinguished features; popular; very intelligent and Idle and sluggish.
I took all these characteristics from “Setting up a Wargames Campaign” by Tony Bath
The next line shows he’s an Average gunfighter, Hand to hand 5, revolver skill of 5 (with an average draw) and a Rifle ability of 7
He has been in 7 fights, shown by the tally marks (probably only two in reality a she got 5 just for being an ‘Average’.)
His weapons are a Colt 45 (Peacemaker) and he has a Winchester Carbine too,
Pic from Tony Bath's book, (we only used the first eight lines):
In the TRWNN conversion he’d be a gunman, with ‘2’ hand to hand, ‘2’ pistol’ (fast draw) and ‘3’ with a rifle.
I’ll have to have a think about his other –non fighting characteristics.
I’ve also found the extension for the Undertakers shown in the photos below and with the additional photo of a bed (yet again) to show the scale (figure is 54mm – reminder)
On other news, Blogger seems to working much like it did in the "Legacy Version" and is much more user-friendly, but then again I haven't tried anything 'clever' this week !
That’s it the for another week, thanks for taking the time to visit, it’s been another painful experience with blogger of course, but it’s another post at least!
Comments, of course are always welcomed and truly appreciated.
Thank you for my regular monday treat.More ideas to play with.
ReplyDeleteThanks Douglas, I've been 'working' on my conversion ideas ever since I got the rules. I do like the rules though and they would be probably be just as good as they are.
DeleteLike the detail in the bedding on the beds Joe, adds another level. The extension to the undertakers looks great, would it be a storeroom or a workshop ?
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing how your adapting the rules, as that's always interesting to see how others develop their rules
Thanks Dave, the 'detail' is because my granddaughter has no grown out of it ! The brushwork could have been done with a 3" brush, it's so slp-dash. Thanks for making me chuckle!
DeleteI've aquired a lot of ideas from reading others' 'home' rules and will be using some of their ideas too.
Another very interesting post Joe & very cool to see your stat sheets from way back when & a great level of detail in them even how long someone went to jail for :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Frank, tbhe cards were really roough and ready, but at the time we all knew what the stats stood for and could also recognise many of the characters by the figure alone.
DeleteI do know that one charater had been a civilian (Novice at the start) and has now had twenty-one gunfights !
Thoroughly enjoying your enthusiasm for this project, Joe. And spookily I was thinking the same thing about Blogger today when I was working on one of my other blogs.
ReplyDeleteThanks Blaxx, my enthusiasm for this goes up and down like a bride's nightie.
DeleteBlogger is definetly easier to use, though I haven't tried manipulating photographs yet.
Great looking beds Joe.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ray, a well used half an hour or so
DeleteReally great looking stuff sir!
ReplyDeleteThank you Michal, slowly getting there.
DeleteThat undertakers extension looks good, always good to have lots of beds!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Thanks Iain, I had forgotten all about the Undertaker's extension, but the coffins found inside were a good reminder!
DeleteI did try to have a bed for most everyone that had a job in mt towns, but it wasn't always possible.
At this scale it's far easier to make a few bit of furniture to bring the inside of buildings alive and can be good cover, barricades etc. (olus they really hard to find ready-made and/or cheap!)
Crikey - Tony Bath, there was a man who was an inspiration to a generation of campaigning wargamers and no mistake. Somewhere I have a box full of cards like yours based on the Robert Howard Conan novels. Happy days.
ReplyDeleteI have the TRWNN but never played them, I don't like fixed classes in a rule system, it shows very little imagination imho, the world is not like that. Then to compensate for rigid classes they have to introduce traits, or edges to differentiate characters. What you are doing is a much better approach as was the original OW if I remember it correctly.
It's interesting to see what you're doing here. What made you decide to move from the old to the new rules?
Thanks Vagabond, when I started playing wrgames, there were very few resources to inspire gamers, Tony Bath and Don Featherstones books being amongst the most important to me, along with H.G.wells' "Little Wars". Affrdable figures chices were also very limited, being mostly Airfix and Minifigs.
DeleteI was always encouraged by anything new in the wargaming world and of course the original Skirmish rules by Ian, Steve and Mikegreatly influenced my thoughts and wargaming direction.
The OW rules encouraged differeing character abilites, within their classes of Novice, Average and Veteran and as I suggest above, it's the track I took.
I liked TRWNN mainly because of the many aars by fellow bloggers (Colgar6 in particular), they looked to be fun and easily ammended with 'house rules'. The character classes were too strict for my liking though.
The advantage with TRWNN is their apparent speed of play, a 30 second gunfight using the OW rules could last four hours or more ! Their disadvantage thoughis their cardrequirements, though I guess when these are sorted then it's all plain sailing so to speak.
Skirmish rules are ideal for characterisation and getting far more attached to our figures and I wanted somethingmore than "he's a 'citizen' with these rigid abilites", as even with a skill attached, they're very much identical.
I ask thing like "What about a professional bare-knuckle fighter" - he'd be great at Hand to Hand fighting but probably sh*t scared of someone with a gun! (I also doubt renknowned shootist Annie Oakley would have kept her unmentionables dry in a gunfight!)
Cheers Joe, we are on a very similar if not the same page with our thinking on characterisation. I have looked at Colgar6 blog occasionally in the past, I don't remember western games but I'll go and have another look.
DeleteCheers
Hey Vagabond, I was always pretty sure that we had very similar thoughts on skirmish games, they really do need a btter characterisation of individuals, as it's a single figure game.
DeleteC6 has many good ideas on TRWNN and ecellent write-ups.