Beds and more

 

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. 

Tommy Topper Card (above) shows that his profession is Gunman and was Born in 1847 my game is currently in 1875)

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):

The notes at the bottom indicate he was sentenced to two and a half years in July 187474 (for goodness knows what!)

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.  

 

 

The "Big Hotel"- progress!

 This last week has seen me continuing to work on the rejuvenation of my 54mm western projects, although a lot of the time has been waiting for models to dry thoroughly. Most of the work has been repairing the ‘Big Hotel’. Upstairs needed a lot of walls re-attaching, furniture (tables and beds) needing repair whilst the outside staircase needs replacing, having completelt disappeared without trace ! The balcony rail (completely missing) and several doors also need attention.

Downstairs, the internal stairs needed repairing (but at least it was all there); upper floor supports needed repairs; furniture mostly need the odd leg or two glued back in place; a few walls needed re-attaching and the floor was given a supporting block glued to the underside.  The ‘stove’ was in two pieces (built from a funnel) and easily repaired, but still need to be glued in place.

The furniture was all repaired and replaced inside, but there seemed to be no room for the roulette table!

The back room, that had been the worse for wear, was given a new lease of life too.

A lot of other furniture was also repaired, knocked off my table and repaired again (damn you woolly cardigans!).

The photos show most of the above plus my small collection of American Revolution figures (Timpo and Britains) plus my ACW cavalry - with the added bonus of the obligatory blurry pic of my ACW infantry !

Heres a good pic f the "Bingo" boards I 've used in most of the construction of my western models:

In other news, I’ve still been looking at ways of converting my old campaign to the new system I intend to use using TRWNN. Converting three character types to four; the three mains characteristics of Melee, Handgun and Rifle skills to a system that doesn’t have any have all been under my consideration too this last week. I was aided by the finding of my rather yellowed, tattered and coverless “Old West Skirmish Rules” and inspired by my copies of Mike Blakes (iirc) write-ups ten of their group’s games (less the front page).

Thanks to Ray (of his “Don’t Throw a One” blog fame), pointing me back in the direction of Dave “Doc” Dochery’s blog “One man and hisBrushes”, I’ve downloaded his version of  the TRWNN – “Blazing Dice” and his Serenity Campaign – all inspiring stuff !

That’s it then for another week; this version of blogger is still tedious and I feel very unsatisfied with my blogs atm.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always, your comments are both  welcomed and appreciated.

TRWNN - my take

Once more, I'll be attempting a post using the new blogger format - what a rigmarole, just to get a post!

For those that don't understand the abbreviation in the title it stands for "The Rules With No Name" and I'll be taking a look at these rules and comparing them to: a) Firstly what I'd expect from a set of "western gunfight" rules. b) Comparing them to what I've been used to since about 1970 (Old West gunfight skirmish rules) .

The photographs throughout this post are random, merely showing what I've been discovering and cleaning in an attempt to have something to post about and maybe a game or two somewhere down the line (as well as having a self-indulgent, nostalgic, trip down memory lane).

As one would expect from any set of western rules, shooting and movement rules in TRWNN take pride of place with melee rules becoming "optional". I'm used to having all the rules, not basic, advance or "optional" rules.

Characters are classed either as Citizens (yuck), Gunmen, Shootists or Legends. So four categories, from worst to best. "Citizen" is not a label I like, even "Civilian" would have been better or maybe "Greenhorn". Similarly, "Legend" is not a term I've come across, save in modern writing. Gunman, gunfighter, shootist and "pistoleer" are all better suited imho. Nevertheless, they're all better terms than the "Novice", "Average" and "Veteran" terms that I'm used to. Without delving into the 'skills' that can be added to characters, generally all characters of a class are identical in shooting, fighting, etc. - not something I'm used to. I can't have a 'citizen' with huge fighting skills, taking on a weedy 'Legend' and similarly with shooting situations. Fast draw situations are well covered (if you like Hollywood), but to my knowledge, only one definite fast-draw situation occurred, with the possibility of a couple of others.

The inclusion of “Nerve” (read morale) is a welcome addition, completely missing from my games in the 70’s, but doesn’t go far enough imo. I’d like to have seen a little less chance of fighting to the last man and a little more “running away scared”. One thing, I really don’t like is that no-one has to take a ‘nerve’ to melee with another character, strange as fighting seems to be a lot deadlier than most shooting. My characters never had morale tests, but were played according to their eight characteristics, which were in addition to their melee, handgun and shoulder arm factors (on a scale of 1 to 10) and the addition skill of fast, medium and slow draws. Other skills were also present and used when needed, whether they were horsemanship, throwing (knives, hatchets etc.), swimming etc. These are fairly well covered in TRWNN, with the addition of hated characters and ‘evil’ characters – we had many Happy, Vicious characters in comparison.

Character progression is covered, so campaigns can have some meaning with wounding enemies the criteria needed to advance. My characters advanced by taking part in fights (being shot at or shooting at others), but needed many fights to advance to the next level. The one major thing missing from TRWNN is “Doctorin”, but I have found some rules covering this online, so no problem there”

The biggest bugbear I have with TRWNN is their use of cards to initiate movement (of random variable distances), shooting and other actions. Having to prepare a minimum of six action cards and a character card for every involved figure is slightly restrictive to the number of figures that can be involved and a lot more effort needed to prepare for a game.

Overall, TRWNN are a good, simple set of rules with a lot of possibilities for fun games, but I am already looking how I can incorporate my old way of playing with these relatively new rules. That's it then for another week, once more it has been complete torture getting thiost done Thanks for visiting, commetns etc. always welcome.

Trinity City

Having cleaned all my western buildings (or so I thought), I discovered another two buildings, a general store made from a Timpo store, doubling its size. The other made from a Timpo Saloon is my undertakers.

Upstairs of the undertakers

Undertakers, downstairs

The Store

After clearing off my table of "Jimland" detritus I set out "Trinity City"as best as I could remember. Here's the photos

Originally Trinity stood on a table 8'x 6', cuurently it is sitting on 6'6" of my four foot wide table. There's a lot of repair work to do on these buildings. That's it for this week, it's been difficult typing without seeing what I was typing -Hence the stunted sentences. Thanks for taaking the time to visit, comments are welcomed and appreciated as always.