The Business: Reconsider "Boot Hill" As A Direct Braunstein Derivative

The other day Alexander Macris took to his Substack column to publish an article on niche protection in RPG design. You'll find it here. Take the time to read it, because I'm about to take an observation therein and expand upon it.

Specifically, this:

I actually discovered the true importance of niches in TTRPGs by attempting to create a realistic Western RPG. There was to be no magic, no miracles. There was to be not even pseudo-magic, no saloon keepers who could pour wine down the throat of an injured gunfighter to restore him to health after he’d been shot, no preachers who could inspire better marksmanship with a good quote from Revelations. No, this game was designed to be a true emulation of gritty Western action.

When the time came to playtest the game, Brian decided to play a tough gunslinger with a fast draw and sharp eye. Chris decided to play a rough but golden-hearted gunslinger with a fast draw and sharp eye. Newton decided to play a soft-spoken but loyal gunslinger with a fast draw and a sharp eye…

It’s hard to blame them. Pick any popular Western novel or movie and 99% of the time its protagonist will be a gunslinger with a fast draw and sharp eye, someone who is a skilled shooter, rider, tracker, and outdoorsman. As a rule of thumb, if the protagonist of every book in the genre has the exact same set of skills, that’s a genre that affords very little niche protection.

Because it has almost no niche protection whatsoever, the Western is, perhaps, the worst possible genre of escapist fiction to attempt to emulate with an RPG. It’s certainly one of the hardest for which to design a fun game. There’s a reason that almost nobody ever played Boot Hill.

Do not take this as me gainsaying Macris' observations. Given the common presumptions of tabletop RPG play, he is correct about Westerns and the other adventure genres that have rarely had a breakthrough in terms of commercial viability.

It is not an accident that Alderac Entertainment Group's Spycraft broke through because it shunned a lot of the "realistic" assumptions, and the same applies to Palladium's Ninjas & Superspies while RECON remains obscure for reasons that are not just because Palladium does nothing to promote it.

As I said above, there are common presumptions about tabletop RPGs that interfere with the success of RPGs that don't have "magic".

• Tabletop RPGs are played by groups.
• Tabletop RPGs are played by groups playing as a group.
• Tabletop RPGs are played by groups playing as a group operating as a unit.
• Tabletop RPGs are played by groups playing as a group operating as a unit against common opposition.
• Tabletop RPGs are played by groups playing as a group operating as a unit against common opposition and must do everything together.
• Tabletop RPGs are played by groups playing as a group operating as a unit against common opposition and must do everything together so everyone plays only one character.

This is the root of the need for niche protection, as a unit of specialists working together are more effective than an individual operating alone. Scale that up, and you have crews, armies, and fleets.

The taboo against having multiple characters per player is the source of the trope regarding character mortality and involuntary downtime.

The common error is the disavowal of the wargame roots of the tabletop RPG medium. Adhering to those roots solves all of these problems.

The way to design, sell, and play a game like Boot Hill is to disavow the tabletop RPG assumptions and Regress Harder- to Braunstein.

Yes, I mean to the mode of play that originated as a skirmish-scale double-blind Napoleonic wargame scenario where two players fight for control over the fictional village of Braunstein and their actions are ajudicated by a neutral Referee. This would soon expand to include non-partisan players with their own objectives, such as the major of the village, and the game turned into a mixture of standard Napoleonic wargames and Diplomacy.

This, as those familiar with Jeffro and the #BROSR recognize, is the Patron and Domain level of play that Original D&D through to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition presumed as normal.

I tell you that Boot Hill, Gangbusters, Top Secret, etc. are better served by being adaptations of Braunstein and that mean accepting the fact that you are going to attract a different audience--and thus the custom thereof--of a more competitive and ambitious sort of player, a wargamer at heart, rather than selling as if it were the presumed norm of tabletop RPG that is now better done by videogames of various sorts.

Would this require extensive mechanical redesign? No, I don't think so. What would be extensive is the technical writing of the manuals.

You now have to explain to the user that cooperation is not presumed, that players are free to work at cross purposes--to even directly oppose one another--instead of presuming cooperation, and that playing multiple characters is not only allowed but recommended. As appropriate, to emphasize the Rogue-like nature of one's characters; once they're maimed, crippled, or killed that's it- they're done.

The players are now expected to be all sides of a scenario's conflict, not a unit on one side representing one party. They can, and often will, have conflicing Win conditions and differing resources available to achieve them. In short, this is a wargame and it should not shy away from those norms. If it can be watered down to a Murder Mystery Party then this is not a bridge too far to reach.

Let's see who out there is ready to take up this challenge and profit accordingly.