If anyone owns this 1981 classic (ahem) from FGU please contact me. I need to get a certain piece of artwork out of it and I would rather not pay the $70 Wayne's World of Books wants for it for one admittedly badly drawn picture...

... of course, if someone has a copy for a more reasonable price or for a trade of some kind I might be persuaded...

Allen

lokiwookie wrote:Which artwork? I can post it here if you want.

(I am in love with FGU games!)

I do not remember what page it is on, but its a picture of a man, possibly a gunfighter, wearing a suit, a full-length drawing. It always reminded me somewhat of Gary Cooper.

FGU did indeed make some good games. Wild West always fascinated us because it had those horse rules

Allen

Sorry, I forgot this post    you found a copy?

Allensh wrote:
There had been one on sale via Amazon Marketplace for some time, I finally cracked. It was sort of a "cheer myself up" gift.

Great!  

serleran wrote:How is this game? Is it decent?

Back in '81 when Wild West came out, there was only Boot Hill. Thus, we found the game interesting because of its differences.

Boot Hill was essentially glorified gunfight skirmish rules with slight RPG elements grafted in. Wild West was designed as an RPG from the get-go. mind you, a typical FGU game with a lot of attributes and somewhat complex combat systems, but it had things like skills!

Boot Hill pretty much glossed over the subject of horses, listing them only by quality (Poor, Fair, Good Excellent). Wild West actually had a sheet for rolling up your horse! And horses had skills too! I remember my friend Greg being fascinated by this and rolling up tons of horses...which he never used because he never actually ran the game.

The skill system in Wild West was interesting...each skill has a CV based on one or more of the characters stats. For example, Marksmanship Pistol was based on Accuracy. You then had experience points that went with each skill. As you accumulated XP, they did not raise the CV, but you used the Roleplaying Probability Chart, which had two lines, one for CV's, one for XP. You laid a ruler on the chart where your CV was, angled said ruler until it passed through the line on the second scale corresponding to your XP, and this gave you your roll on percentile dice to use that skill. It sounds clunky but the one time I did run the game, it actually worked fairly well.

The combat system consisted of filling in boxes on a sheet that said what you were doing for each segment of the turn. Much like pre-plotting moves in some wargames. It worked ok..but Boot Hill's system was somewhat easier.

it had one thing that was VERY cool..a big map of a large region of the West on one side, shwoing railroads and cattle trails...and a huge map of Dodge City on the other (unfortunatley without a grid for movement but it did have a scale at least).

Allen

Allensh wrote:
Now I just need Trouble at Widow's Peak

here

and..nobleknightgames,com had that too

As far as I know, aside from a review that may have appeared somewhere, that issue of Space Gamer contained the only magazine articles about the game.

Allen