Equipment: Guns

What defines a western? That’s not really a question I’m prepared to definitively answer, but it’s an interesting question. We all have certain things we think of when we hear the word. For the purposes of a TTRPG though, one of the most important aspects is the gun. Usually a revolver, sometimes a rifle or shotgun. It’s so defining as a symbol of the genre that if a character is carrying a revolver, it’ll probably be assumed to be a western no matter what else is going on. It’s as ubiquitous in westerns as the cowboy or open frontier, if not more so. If you tell someone you’re playing a western RPG, they’re going to assume you’re going to get into a gun fight or two.

So the gun list is one of the most important parts of a western RPG. But it can get overwhelming quickly. Other games have pages of guns, with special rules for single action revolvers vs double action, different caliber ammunition, slightly different ranges or damage for slightly different models. Those games have an impressive list, but does it matter?

I argue “not really,” and, like the rest of the weapons, err on the side of simplicity. We want a wide variety of types of guns, not necessarily of the guns themselves. This fits better into the XWN framework and to my own sensibilities. Since this was originally meant to cover more eras than just the late 1800’s, we have to expand the list a little.

There’s a lot of guidelines out there for firearms in the Without Number games. The Atlas of Latter Earth covers “primitive” firearms, while both Ashes and Cities Without Number cover more modern but less futuristic weapons. So I had a pretty strong base to work with. Though of course I had to mess with it some.

One thing I did was give muzzle-loading guns a “Limited Armor Piercing” trait. It bothers me that a musket would have the same bonus against armor that a rifle 100 years later would have, so the muzzle-loaders only get armor piercing in short range. It also applies to the derringer, in an example of making mechanics work with the fiction. A derringer is supposed to be a short range weapon, it makes sense for it to work better at 10 feet than 30 ft.

I also streamlined the reloading times and definitions. There’s Muzzle Loading, which take 2 rounds to reload. Then there’s Long Reloading, which takes a full round to represent loading multiple rounds, and Slow Reloading to represent single breach-loaders and takes a Main Action. There are no firearms that do regular Reloading; that’s reserved for bows.

As I’m typing this, I’m wondering if an exception should be made for loading single shots into a Long Reloading weapon like a revolver. Pondering this now, I’m thinking there probably should be, as I can see it coming up a fair amount. To keep it simple, a single round can be loaded as a Main Action. Easy enough.

Finally, there’s dynamite, which fluctuated between here and the Artillery table. Mechanics wise it just functions as XWN grenades, but I thought it would be fun to let experienced users time the dynamite to explode when they want, and to be able to bundle single sticks together to make a bigger explosion.