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Rider

Independence Games

Independence Games

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Independence Games is heading to the Wild West in 2021!

I have always wanted to do a Western game and here it is! After years of working on this, I'm finally to a point that I am ready to announce that Rider is in the latter stages of writing. I feel confident enough that it will be ready in the first quarter of 2021 to go ahead and make this announcement.

Rider will use the Cepheus Engine rules as a base with modifications made to fit with the "Old West" setting. Rider will draw inspiration from both fictional and historical Western lore but will definitely side with fictional portrayals. To paraphrase Larry McMurtry (who was misquoting "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence"), we will be "printing the legend".

Among other things, Rider will feature improvements on the same sort of character generation system you will find in Clement Sector and Earth Sector. We continue to follow the Independence Games tradition of giving characters full backstories but will also be giving the player a greater control over that backstory while maintaining the fun of random character generation. You'll hear more about this as time passes.

Rider will feature 23 Career Paths with everything from Homesteaders to Vagabonds. You'll find Clergy, Doctors, Gunslingers, Con Artists, Soldiers, Outlaws, and many more.

There will be special rules for train heists, bank robberies, and, of course, the showdown at High Noon!

We're really looking forward to bringing this to you!

G8py02il.jpg
 
Interesting, this should go along with Sword of Cepheus. You do have plenty of historical bad guys to work with, along with some who worked both sides of the law.
 
Rider is on the way! The book will be available at DTRPG and the Independence Games webstore on February 4!

I have always wanted to do a Western game and here it is! Rider uses the Cepheus Engine rules as a base with modifications made to fit with the "Old West" setting. Rider will draw inspiration from both fictional and historical Western lore but will definitely side with fictional portrayals. To paraphrase Larry McMurtry (who was misquoting "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence"), we will be "printing the legend".

Among other things, Rider will feature improvements on the same sort of character generation system you will find in Clement Sector and Earth Sector. We continue to follow the Independence Games tradition of giving characters full backstories but will also be giving the player a greater control over that backstory while maintaining the fun of random character generation.

Rider will feature 23 Career Paths with everything from Homesteaders to Vagabonds. You'll find Clergy, Doctors, Gunslingers, Con Artists, Soldiers, Outlaws, and many more.
There will be special rules for train heists, bank robberies, and, of course, the showdown at High Noon!

So look for it on Thursday!
 
I purchased the book from DriveThru on Thursday, and I have been skimming through it. You might want to adjust the age for some of the careers to 14, as boys grew up fast on the Frontier. Billy Dixon, of the long shot fame, was a member of a bull train hauling cargo for the government when he was 15, and was hunting buffalo not much later. In turns he was a cargo hauler, buffalo hunter and fought at the 2nd Battle of Adobe Walls (along with Bat Masterson), was an Army scout and received the Medal of Honor for the Buffalo Wallow Fight, and then became a farmer and rancher. Bat Masterson was a buffalo hunter, then a lawman in Kansas, then a gambler and gunfighter, and finished up as a sports reporter in New York City. He was also a friend of President Theodore Roosevelt. Jesse James was riding with William Quantrill before he was 15, and had already killed several men by the time he was 15. Frank James, his older brother, also started early. Emmett Dalton was only 21 at the time of the Coffeyville, Kansas Raid which resulted in the Dalton gang being wiped out, but had been an outlaw for several years. Billy the Kid was killed by Pat Garrett when he was 21.

For some ideas as to adventures or campaigns, a referee might want to look up the Northfield, Minnesota Raid of 1876 by the James-Younger Gang: the Coffeyville, Kansas Raid by the Daltons in 1892;.the Adobe Walls fights; the Fetterman Massacre;. the Wagon Box Fight; and the Nez Perce Campaign of 1877. Robert Utley's two books on the U.S. Army and the Indian, Frontiersmen in Blue and Frontier Regulars do a very good job of covering the Indian Wars from 1848 to 1891. The Montgomery Ward catalogue of 1894-1895 is loaded with data on how much things would cost, and you might find one on interlibrary load, along with the Utley books. Then there is Triggernometry by Eugene Cunningham for great information on the Western gunfighters, and it is available currently in paperback reprint.

For fictional characters, it would be very hard to beat any of the Louis L'Amour books, which very likely a library would have or could get on interlibrary loan. A few can be found on archive.org. Then there is Project Gutenberg, with the original story of the Lone Ranger, the Hopalong Cassidy stories, along with accounts of the Vigilantes. If you hit Project Gutenberg Australia, you have all of Robert E. Howard's "Breckenridge Elkins" stories, along with more serious ones. Project Gutenberg also has the original "The Mark of Zorro". I really did like that TV show, and you can find the episodes on YouTube.
 
No Sasquatch/Bigfoot either. However, Safari Limited does have a Cryptozoology Designer TOOB® that has a nice Jackalope, along with a nice Yeti/Abominable Snowman and Sasquatch/Bigfoot, for those who would like miniatures for running a game. Safari Limited does have a pretty good selection of tubes for use with either Sword of Cepheus or Rider, in terms of both people and creatures, both real-world, extinct, and mythical.
 
kilemall said:
I didn’t realize Bass was so DFW. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Meaning exactly what?

DFWDrug-Free Workplace
DFWDown For Whatever (song by Pretty Young Things)
DFWDrop, Fail, Withdraw (academics)
DFWDon't Fool With
DFWDead Freaking Wrong (polite form)
DFWDoesn't Freaking Work (polite form)
 
BlackBat242 said:
Meaning exactly what?

DFWDrug-Free Workplace
DFWDown For Whatever (song by Pretty Young Things)
DFWDrop, Fail, Withdraw (academics)
DFWDon't Fool With
DFWDead Freaking Wrong (polite form)
DFWDoesn't Freaking Work (polite form)
Click to expand...
Dallas Fort Worth metroplex, which includes Denton and most of the surrounding counties.
 
Here is another good source that would fit nicely in the Rider universe. It is a copyright-free download.
The title is
ALL HE COULD CARRY
US ARMY INFANTRY EQUIPMENT
1839-1910

cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org

General Military History

The purpose of this publication is to demonstrate, through the study of nineteenth and early twentieth century United States infantry field equipment, that a more complete understanding of the individual components can be gained by studying them as parts of larger, more comprehensive systems...
cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org
 
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