Despite the many recent posts on this blog referring to Deadlands - and my long-history of fanboying over the game and its Weird West setting - I'm pretty certain my all-time favourite Western roleplaying game system is much the more modest Go Fer Yer Gun!
Written by the prolific games creator Simon Washbourne, and published by his Beyond Belief Games in 2010, Go Fer Yer Gun! (GFYG!) is a "mere" 77-page long, including a character sheet and a copy of the OGL.
Based on the ubiquitous d20 mechanics of a certain fantasy roleplaying game, GFYG! is a streamlined game with easy to grok stats and character classes, hit points, defence class (in lieu of armour class), equipment lists, weapons charts, etc.
As well as the delightfully thematic character classes with their specialised abilities, the game's novel tweaks include only rolling extra hit die for characters up to fourth level, so that guns are still dangeous - and potentially lethal - weapons, even when fired at high level characters. None of your Dungeons & Dragons superheroes here!
There's also statistics for a handful of generic folk and critters, as well as non-player characters, as well as three short scenarios.
While modern Deadlands is full of glossy and colourful art and slick layouts, GFYG! is black and white with public domain illustrations and a basic layout. However, both approaches serve the systems they are pushing.
Of course, the great thing about the minimalist approach of GFYG! is that, should tastes demand it, it's very easy to add elements to the rules. For instance, if I sought to Deadlands things up by introducing the supernatural, magic et al, I could easily lift chunks of my shelved Frankengame almost wholecloth to add into the mix.
On top of all this, a major selling point of GFYG! - should I ever try and convince the Tuesday Knights to trust me running another campaign - is that the "classic" d20 mechanics are easy for any reasonably seasoned gamer to quickly pick up. Even if they're not 100 per cent au fait with the setting, it's one less thing to have to worry about.
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