Pine Box Ridge

How a gunfight works

Both sides plan the next five seconds in secret. You might draw, take a slow aim and fire. The other fellow might draw and fire straight away. Neither of you can see the other's plan. Then both plans run at once, a tenth of a second at a time, and you find out whose was better.

The dice are out in the open. When you plan a shot, the game tells you its chance, and after the turn it shows you what was rolled. Cover blocks the parts of you it covers, so kneeling behind a water trough changes where you can be hit as well as how often. Lying flat makes you hard to hit and slow to reload. A bad wound to your other arm slows reloading too.

So far there's a duel on Main Street, a four-a-side fight in a corral, a bank job fought between buidlings, and Broken Country, which lays out new ground and new fighters every time.

The saloon

Some fights start at a bar. In the Saloon you can talk to people, lean on them, stand them a drink or pay them off, and each of them is after something you can't see. There are no numbers here. You only get what people let slip, like a hand that won't keep still, or somebody who keeps looking at the door.

What you're carrying matters. Walk in with a rifle and your threats land, but nobody believes you came to talk. If it goes wrong, it turns into a gunfight, played the same way as any other. The fight report also notes whether you shot anybody who had their hands up.