Huckleberry: A Wyrd West RPG (BackerIt Campaign)

[deaddmwalking]

I've mentioned a time or two that I have an interest in Western RPGs. My news feed today featured Huckleberry: A Wyrd West RPG campaign.

Huckleberry is a game about tragic cowboys in a world doomed to calamity… unless you save it. Take on the profession of a Maverick: a grizzled bounty hunter who rides out beyond the bounds of civilization with nothin’ but a big iron on their hip.

Your job: hunt down and slay monsters spawned by the mysterious, ever-present force, known simply as “The Wyrd”. Its chaotic energies twist and corrupt everything in its wake, making a rough life all the more uncertain. But the form you take, the weapons you wield, and the monsters you slay are up to you.

Huckleberry is an accessible TTRPG that can be learned in 20 minutes and easily converts any system’s scenarios. It's always fast, always cinematic, and always a wild ride!

That sounds a lot like Deadlands: The Weird West, but it says it's A WEIRD, WILD WEST TTRPG UNLIKE ANY OTHER.

I took a look at the campaign pledge levels, and the first thing that struck me is that I can pay to do the work for the designers. That immediately struck me as the type of business model that would appeal to WotC. Like a blue-check-mark on X-formerly-known-as-Twitter, you can pay money to be a 'real designer'.

Do you have a favorite monster that's perfect for Huckleberry? Time to throw your chips into the pot and go all-in. At this tier, you can design a hostile for Huckleberry, with Steven's help. Your monster will be fully illustrated by our very own George Sellas and the art will be included in the corebook. Also includes all of the rewards from the Tall Tale tier.

For $600, you could maybe publish a petty attack on an ex-lover or something. The 'Tall Tale' Tier is $220, so it's really only $400 to design monsters for someone else to publish them.

Under other circumstances, that might be all I say here, but it appears that like many other funding campaigns, this is for a product that already exists. And you can get it for free - they direct you to DriveThru RPG to download a Quickdraw Edition for free.

The rules document is an 86 Page PDF and since I'm going to read it, I thought I'd share my thoughts here. So I will!

[deaddmwalking]

One of the first issues any historical game (including Westerns) has to address is how their game world interacts with the real world. After an aside on how media has ignored the historical participation of marginalized groups Huckleberry explains that 'the west' was pulled into another world with dark fantasy elements. The 'wyrd' corrupts everything, especially water. Removing corruption from the water leaves the people at the whims of water barons and corporations.






As far as that goes, it generally works. You can preserve elements of conflict and create new ones that override existing historical bigotry. I still get a pretty strong Deadlands vibe, but setting it in a new world without 'Back East' potentially removes the overwhelming population advantage that led to the frontier era being so short temporally.




After that it starts on mechanics. Dice rolls may include adding different size dice like a d6+d8. Die sizes can be modified up or down, so a d10 could increase to a d12 or decrease to a d8.

Most actions are resolved with 2 dice; an attribute die + a skill die with a 10+ yielding success. For every 2 points above the TN, you get an ace (up to a maximum of 4). Skill checks aren't supposed to be used unless the event is SIGNIFICANT. To me that usually means that using the system consistently results in far too many failures (ie, easy things aren't easy).

Saves are resolved with an Attribute Die and a Wyrd Die, also against TN 10, but no aces are awarded for a good roll.

If you have been awarded aces, you can use them on subsequent rolls to add +2 per ace. Aces can also be traded for more information about the game world.

To represent changes in difficulty the TN doesn't change, but the dice do. You can get up to 2 raises (making a task easier) where your dice become bigger (plus one step per raise) or 2 busts (making a task harder) where your dice become smaller (minus one step per bust). Rolling ones on both dice is very bad (automatic failure, interpreted in the worst possible way).

There are four attributes: Quick, Grit, Reckon, and Spirit. Each is associated with a card suit - the GM uses a deck of cards and depending on the suit it may dictate what attribute is used.

All players start with a d10 for their Wyrd die; it changes depending on what cards are pulled and players can voluntarily reduce it by one step to gain a re-roll.

There are 9 skills and they're not specifically tied to a single attribute. The skills are: Athletics, Brawl, Bush-craft, Education, Expression [social], Hand guns, Long guns, Skullduggery, and Wrangle. You might typically use Quick + Hand Guns for shooting, but if you're in a grapple, you'd use Grit + Hand Guns (success dealing base damage).

Next up is information on guns and ranges.

[deaddmwalking]

Listening to: Big Iron, Johnny Cash

Mavericks (characters) cash in chips to buy 'Big Irons'. Unlike Shadowrun that goes into exhaustive detail on weapons, there are only two handguns - a derringer and a revolver. There are 'long guns' and brawling weapons (that are also Big Irons). You can use a weapon that isn't yours, but if you want to keep it, you have to pay the cost in chips.

A standard revolver does 5 damage if you hit. If you spend two aces on a hit, you can raise the damage to 8. A weapon has a designated range (revolvers are short). If you attack at a closer range than they're designated for (at-hand), the damage values swap; it does only 3 damage but if you spend the aces it does +5 damage for the same total of 8. Shooting someone at point blank range justifies this with 'glancing blows are much more common'.

There are roughly 30 modifications that you can add to your Big Iron. This includes things like 'Reliable' - ignore snake eyes or 'extended barrel' - increase the range by one band.

Following Big Irons we cover Rides - which is not just horses. You can ride a camel or a bison, or a stagecoach. Generally rides roll a handling die and the owner's wyrd die to make saves.

There's a handy guide for randomly determining the color and markings of your horse. There's an equal chance of a bay (brown coat with dark mane) and a black horse, even though black is recessive and therefore fairly uncommon. You add a random face marking and a leg marking and you have a fair bit of variability.

That's followed by kit and caboodle. Kit includes random items like dynamite and coffee. Kabooble includes your 'standard gear' you can be assumed to have. You're also allowed a 'Calling Card' - using that during a session gives you an ace to use later.





A harmonica can be your calling card

Wealth is mostly abstract - there are 5 tiers that represent what you get generally so they're like lifestyle. If you need cash that your lifestyle doesn't grant, you can drop a tier and pick up coins.

If you start at Hard Up, you can raise your wealth to Flush by spending 15 chips. If you need chips you can drop back down and pick up 10. So unlike D20 Modern, you can't play games with the order you buy and sell things to maintain your level.

That covers the things you might buy or have - next chapter covers combat.

[deaddmwalking]

Players get a simple action and a complex action (similar to a move and a standard).

You can trade Aces for more actions; for one extra simple action you must spend 1 ace; to get a second extra simple action you would need to spend two more aces. You could also get a complex action by spending four aces (which I believe is the most you can have).

Complex actions include shooting someone or fully reloading your weapon. Simple actions often raise your die for a check (effectively a +1 to an action). For example, you could draw your weapon (simple action), spend an ace to take another simple action (aim) and then a complex action (shoot). Now that'd probably be silly because you can also use an ace for a +2 on a roll after you've already made it, so in that case aiming is probably not worth the ace.

Play starts with a PC, and after every PC a hostile takes an action. At the start of each round the GM pulls a card, and the suit determines which challenges the hostile can activate.

If you think of something creative (a stunt) you typically get a raise (use a better die to resolve your action).

Players have injury slots; 3 minor, 2 moderate, and one major.

If you have already taken 2 moderate and take another, you have to take a major.

If you have already taken 2 moderate and one major, and you have to take another moderate OR major, you can't mark it down so you're laid low.

During down time all minor injuries are removed; a single moderate OR major is reduced by one step. Doctors can also reduce an injury by one step with a successful skill check. Using Aces can reduce those injuries further.

If you're laid low and you don't have a doctor, the GM pulls a card - that is how many days you'll linger on before you die. Every action you take (simple or complex) reduces that by 1. Each additional injury also removes a remaining day (moderate remove 2 and major remove 3).

If you survive being laid low you gain a scar. After getting 3 scars the character is automatically retired. Each scar also allows a free attribute increase (ie, a d10 to a d12).

Okay, quick break here to talk about whether this is enough to handle genre emulation, and I think it MOSTLY is.


A couple of steps jumping into a dying man (simple) shoot (complex)


Fan your weapon shooting multiple people is more than 2 complex actions*
*technically in this picture it's only 2 people, but there were other scenes where six people got shot in the same action


Nothing I've seen yet explains how 5 damage from a revolver equates to a wound, or what 8 would mean, so there's a lot missing. Maybe with the Hostiles we'll learn more.

Next section is Drives which essentially means 'adventures'.

[deaddmwalking]

There are two types of 'adventures' - bounties and leads.

Bounties guarantee a fixed reward for accomplishing a task (usually killing a villain). A lead usually means going to a dungeon (they call them Kivas, and they're the remnants of a precursor civilization). Leads are more dangerous but also more rewarding.

Players can stop an adventure, but each bounty or lead that isn't completed potentially has negative impacts on the setting.

Bounties have a countdown; after they expire a new bounty replaces them.

This is followed by a reminder of special ailments, falling damage, and tracking time. Time is covered in more detail in the chapter on Putting Down Roots (connecting to a location).

Every year has four seasons; every season has six Stretches. Each stretch you can either go on a drive (adventure) or engage in a pastime. If players miss a session they are assumed to be engaged in a pastime. The last stretch of each season includes a seasonal pastime that the entire group participates in. Most of the exposition time covers drives, but the GM is encouraged to provide description of pastimes in part because they connect the players to the world. Pastimes can also be rewarding - for example you can 'bronc bust' which converts an animal into a 'ride'. Other pastimes include doctorin', gunsmithin', investin', learnin', philosophizin', printin' the legend, shoppin, and wagerin'.

I'm going to take a look at the odds of wagerin' at some point. It costs 5 chips to play, and you need three of a kind to make your money back; with a Straight Flush you can double your money. The thing is you roll a Reckon + Skullduggery check and only if you pass can you play at all. If you succeed, you get 5 cards. You can spend up to 4 aces (those same aces that are worth a +2 on your rolls) to get extra cards up to a maximum of nine. You can discard any number of cards and get that many back.

So if you start with 9 cards and you have 3 aces, you could discard 6 cards and hope to pull the 4th. There'd be about a 14% chance in that case, and aces aren't worth any more than 2s (3 of a kind is 3 of a kind). There are two wilds, though....

There's a sidebar about cheating, but I can't see how that is worth it - you use Quick instead of Reckon, but if you fail you're caught and can't gamble again. It doesn't actually do anything to give you a better hand - just MAYBE give you a better shot of getting to PLAY the hand.

The gamblin rules aren't to my taste, but they can be replaced without major impact to other systems.

That brings us to page 70 of 86. Next chapter is Trailbossin' (GMing).

[WalkTheDin0saur]

The ace mechanic isn't great. Everyone wants to be farming aces by making as many checks as possible, which burdens the DM with gatekeeping when the players are allowed to touch the dice.

I don't know how this system handles perception-type "Do I see anything" / "Is he lying" checks, but having to prevent players from making trivial rolls puts a lot of constraints on it.

I can't help but notice this is a retread of the PF Gunslinger's grit points. Do people just think of this as the TTRPG Cowboy Mechanic now? Farm rolls to collect tokens to spend for +2s later?

[deaddmwalking]

The ace mechanic isn't great. Everyone wants to be farming aces by making as many checks as possible, which burdens the DM with gatekeeping when the players are allowed to touch the dice.

I think that's primarily a result of the success probability. For those of you following along, to succeed at a check you need a 10. For every 2 points you exceed this, you are awarded an ace (12=1, 14=2, 16=3, 18=4 max). The GM is only supposed to call for a roll if there's a risk of failure. Every check is made with two dice.

Below is a table that shows the percentage chance of rolling a 10+ by mix of dice. For example the first column shows you rolling 1d4 and the 2nd row shows rolling a d6. If you look at the first column in the second row your chance of rolling a 10+ with 1d4+1d6 is 4.17%.

Die Pairing Odds of 10+

Die	d4	d6	d8	d10	d12
d4	0.00%	4.17%	18.75%	35.00%	45.83%
d6	4.17%	16.67%	31.25%	45.00%	54.17%
d8	18.75%	31.25%	43.75%	55.00%	62.50%
d10	35.00%	45.00%	55.00%	64.00%	70.00%
d12	45.83%	54.17%	62.50%	70.00%	75.00%

From my perspective a success rate of 50% gives you a game that's Keystone Cops - you're not actually EFFECTIVE at doing the things you're supposed to do. A beginning character really needs to have 75% chance of success to feel like they're COMPETENT.

As expected of an extraordinary character, every Maverick is competent and capable, never to be described as fumbling or inept without the player’s consent. If a Maverick is unsure if they know how to perform a task, it is good practice to ask where they might have learned such a skill. Regardless of the answer, it develops both the Maverick’s backstory and the current narrative. A Maverick is especially capable of performing any stereotypical “Wild West” trope—riding horses, lassoing cattle, shooting guns, driving a stagecoach, and so on. On the other hand, if the Maverick does not know how to perform a more unconventional task, that might mean that the task is riskier and a failure could be disastrous. Or it could mean that the task cannot even be attempted. For example, a Maverick that does not understand how steam engines work could not attempt the process of
repairing one without great risk.

The rules say you should be good at doing 'wild west stuff'. But if you roll, you're probably going to fail (at least unless you have very good dice in both the attribute and skill). So WalkTheDin0saur is absolutely right - you want to farm aces, because you can transform failures into success. If you have four aces (+8) you can turn any non-snake-eyes result into a success. That creates a tension, however - if you are trying to farm aces by making rolls that matter and failure has meaningful results you can get yourself in a lot of trouble before you even get in a scrape.

The quick start rules didn't cover what die characters get to start for attributes or skills, but it does indicate you can raise them, so I'm guessing you're not getting many d12s.

I don't know how this system handles perception-type "Do I see anything" / "Is he lying" checks, but having to prevent players from making trivial rolls puts a lot of constraints on it.

Page 74 of the Quickdraw rules has Searchin' For Clues. There are three types of clues; open clues (automatically found when you are in the same place as the clue); hidden clues (automatically found when you interact with where the clue was hidden) - this is like clicking on an NPC dialog box or clicking on a blue square in a video game - it's automatic if you interact. The third type of clue are hidden clues; these should never be REQUIRED to complete a drive - they should only give an advantage or unlock better results. These require a skill check (determined by the GM).

I can't help but notice this is a retread of the PF Gunslinger's grit points. Do people just think of this as the TTRPG Cowboy Mechanic now? Farm rolls to collect tokens to spend for +2s later?

Hard to say. Expecting constantly spending +2s to succeed is probably easier than getting the underlying math right.

We all know that the average of a single die is the total number of faces divided by 2 (so a d10 averages to 5.5). The average of two dice is going to be the average of each one added together. So a d8 (4.5) and d10 (5.5) averages to 10. A d6 (3.5) and d12 (6.5) also average to 10. And as a result, there's very little difference between them.

You can plug both into AnyDice and look at the graph function for 'at least':

output [highest 2 of d8 and d10]
output [highest 2 of d6 and d12]

You'll see that those graphs virtually align - the chances of any result between 2 and 18 is virtually the same.

If you're interested in all possible dice combinations, use the following:

output [highest 2 of d4 and d6]
output [highest 2 of d6 and d6]
output [highest 2 of d4 and d8]
output [highest 2 of d6 and d8]
output [highest 2 of d4 and d10]
output [highest 2 of d8 and d8]
output [highest 2 of d6 and d10]
output [highest 2 of d4 and d12]
output [highest 2 of d6 and d12]
output [highest 2 of d8 and d10]
output [highest 2 of d8 and d12]
output [highest 2 of d10 and d10]
output [highest 2 of d10 and d12]
output [highest 2 of d12 and d12]

That's more than is probably easy to read at one time, but I think it's fun.

Anyways, my contention is that the results of combining the two dice is too low relative to the type of success expected; and the aces are a kludge to help ensure that PCs achieve success at the level that they should be expected to do so. Getting raises (up to 2) can actually be an important part of the game - without aces that's your best hope for getting a bonus on a roll. If you go from d6+d10 to d8+d10 you bump your odds from 45% to 55%, so seeking advantages matter.

[deaddmwalking]

So the GM chapter didn't have a lot of information that was interesting. It didn't cover anything like starting attributes, and it didn't provide any examples of opposition. The only time there's rolling is when Mavericks are involved in a scene. If the GM is running an ally NPC and an opposition NPC, they don't roll against each other; the GM just determines what's a narratively interesting result.

To find some opposition I took a look at the free module 'Showdown at High Noon'. The opposition Earl Cobb is a Living Dead meaning he's resistant to a number of physical attacks including lead poisonin' which is the damage tag a revolver deals.

Unlike PCs that have Minor/Moderate/Major wounds, he just has Hit Points (28).

A revolve does 5 damage. Since he has a resistance to that type of damage, each shot only does 2 damage (I think, it's half damage but it doesn't say whether you round up or down [pg 50]). So assume you have 4 PCs, and each has ~50% chance of hitting with their attack, they'll make 28 shots, 14 of which will hit, to deal the 28 damage. So we're expecting this to take ~7 rounds.

Each round the GM pulls a card; the suit determines which action the opponent takes. In this case a Spade equates to a shot; a club to a hand-to-hand attack; a diamond is an area attack, and a Heart is a magical ranged attack. If a face card is drawn the effect is slightly more powerful. Many of them include 'branded'. Branded is an affliction; it is listed with a die like d6 or d8. Each round you roll the die associated with the ailment. On a 1-3 you avoid the ailment and the size of the die decreases by one steps; on a 4+ you suffer the ailment (with branded you take a minor wound).

Hostiles don't suffer Ailments. They have Inflictions instead. PCs have to spend an Ace to cause an infliction. Branded (ailment) is kinda like being on fire. But hostiles don't have Minor Injuries to track, so their version is Burnin'. They instead lose 4 Health.

I personally prefer that the way enemies and PCs work are more closely aligned. While PC versus PC combat shouldn't be DESIREABLE, there are totally scenes in westerns where a friend holds a gun to his friend to stop him from doing something stupid. Now maybe you shouldn't shoot your compadre, but maybe you'll come to blows. But your attacks do hit point damage and you don't have hit points...

One of the things that the Den has been good about teaching is that everybody fights. If the Fighter is good at Fighting and nothing else than they're automatically behind everyone that can fight and do anything. Many western RPGs try to make character archetypes like Preacher and Cowpoke, but if everyone is in gun fights, everyone needs to be able to handle a gun. This game basically doesn't worry about distinguishing PCs - they're all gunfighters and they all have the same access to skills; some are just better or worse than others. I prefer more customization, but making sure that customization still produces useful characters creates a new challenge.

Mechanically, I think the game is playable. I haven't invested money in more products, but it seems that monsters are 'bespoke' - they all have four abilities that tie to the card suits so making up a bunch that are thematically appropriate might be a challenge. On the other hand, having a random list of MECHANICAL effects is probably easy. Moderate Injury, Face Card Major Injury, + Ailment and Minor Injury to multiple opponents, Moderate with face card, + Ailment pretty much gives you what you need - just flavor as appropriate. You could make the ailment worse and the injury less, or scale them down for less severe threats (or just reduce the health).

[deaddmwalking]

So among other thoughts I've been kicking around is a general dislike of additional rewards on a success.

Players want to succeed on their tasks. They don't want to fail. But failure can make the narrative more interesting. Giving them a reward for failure takes away some of the sting. If you got an ace for failure rather than extraordinary success, farming aces isn't really as much of an option. As long as failure HURTS, players aren't going to keep trying until they fail. But if they are trying something important and it doesn't work, well, getting an ace to play later is a nice silver lining.

In general, rewarding players for introducing complications for their characters is good. Players WANT to succeed; CHOOSING to make things more difficult makes the game more INTERSTING. Giving them an incentive to choose complications is good. There should be more of that, here.

[WalkTheDin0saur]

I'm surprised they didn't do the thing where every PC has a list of traits - "Hot Temper", "Stubborn", "Religious", "Bath Salts Addiction", that kinda shit - and you get an ace whenever one of your traits comes up.

Would also help with the lack of character differentiation. So far mechanically every PC is just a guy with a gun and 2-3 access skills. They definitely need SOMEthing else.