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The Setting
North America, the 1850’s. The Shattered Frontier is filled with all kinds of colorful and less colorful people. Take Julia Grancine Abernathy, for example, a 27-year old former bank employee who fled the South to get away from an arranged marriage to an elderly plantation owner. Or Daisy Lee Atkins, who ran away from home after being raped by a family friend and having to hear her father blame her for the incident. Daisy Lee became a whore in order to survive, but she wants to get out of that line of work as soon as possible. Diego ‘Little Snake’ Calderon, on the other hand, doesn’t mind operating outside of the law. The youngest of the Calderon Brothers’ gang, Calderon is a gullible young man who completely trusts his siblings and would do anything for them. His kind often gets into trouble with the likes of Trent ‘Boots’ Starbuckle, a lawman with a chip on his shoulder and a grudge against just about everybody alive. He earned his nickname after starting a bar fight because someone made a remark about his boots. Upon getting out of jail 3 days later, he broke the deputy’s jaw with a broom handle, earning himself another 60 days of jail time and a hefty 50 dollar fine.
Most fascinating people in the West earn a living without positioning themselves on either side of the law, though: school teachers, judges, entertainers, saddlers, seamstresses, bookmakers, blacksmiths, naturalists and many others have found their way into Aces & Eights: Rustlers & Townsfolk.
The Low Down
Rustlers & Townsfolk is an NPC supplement for Aces & Eights, the Wild West RPG we reviewed earlier. It presents more than 100 NPC’s on 104 loose, 3-hole-punched sheets of paper, each of them presenting a single NPC. The paper is heavier than average and feels like ‘old’, sturdy, sepia paper. The inside cover includes a hex map of the area where most of these NPC’s might hang out, but the map obviously is only an afterthought and is not on par with the maps Kenzer & Company usually churns out.
Review
Each of the (if our count is correct) 103 NPC’s occupies both sides of one sepia sheet of paper. The paper has been punched with 3 holes, which might make it a little difficult (but not too hard) to find storage in countries like Belgium, but easy to store if you live in, for example, the United States. The loose sheets remind of us how DC once presented their heroes and villains in a series of interesting supplements and are organised alphabetically according to last name. Because of the use of heavy sepia paper, the character sheets fit the genre perfectly.
All NPC's get the ‘full stat block’ treatment, but the personality descriptions don't get a lot of space.
In the upper right corner, there’s room for a scrape code, while the logo and a black and white photograph (with a quote underneath it) occupy the upper left corner.
All of the standard information one has come to expect from a character sheet can be found here: sex, age, height, weight, eyes, hair, handedness, race, religion, occupation, place of origin and full stat blocks, including modifiers. There’s room for the point values as well as the descriptions of Fame and Reputation (for example: Fame: 7, Little Known, or Reputation: 42, Average Reputation). The number of gunfights, Speed and Accuracy is here as well.
The Hit Points stat block looks great, with 6 rows and 3 columns (Points, Location and Days to Heal) to allow for easy reference. This is very helpful, as it avoids confusion on what wounds inflicted what. Next to the number of Hit Points, there’s a box with a number of small check boxes equal to the number of Hit Points, which also comes in handy.
Apart from the obvious (Cash on
Hand/Valuables and an empty box marked ‘Notes’) there’s
the less obvious, as well: a short row labelled ‘Juror
Personality’. The basic rulebook includes a mini-game with
trial rules and the Juror Personality describes the NPC’s
classification as a potential juror. Females get this write-up too,
even though they are not allowed to act as jurors. However, some GM’s
might want to change the setting so as to fit more modern, feminist
ideas, and the Juror Personality also gives GM’s a little more
detail on what kind of person a certain NPC is.
A neat idea we probably will never make use of are the vertical tabs on the right side of each facing page. These are all labelled GROUPING: Rustlers & Townfolk, GROUPING II (with empty space), FACTION (with empty space) and PROFESSION (followed by the actual profession of the NPC). This is fun for GM’s who like to make up their own groups, factions or references.
In the bottom left corner, there’s room for Notable Skills. The most important skills for a certain NPC are listed here, together with their Skill Mastery Level, but several rows are left blank because not all the skills each NPC probably has are listed here. Listening and Riding, skills that are considered to come up often, are listed separately at the bottom. Judges also get their Judge Severity listed.
Even though the character sheets are very complete stat-wise, there’s also a major letdown here: the large box labelled ‘Thumbnail Description’ really is just that, a thumbnail description! All of the personality write-ups number only a disappointingly short 4 to – in rare cases – up to 11 or 12 rows of text. This reviewer is used to the Hero Games NPC books, which usually include very detailed information on a character’s history, personality, quotes, quirks and more. To us, these descriptions form the meat and bones of NPC write-up, so it is a little sad that author Jolly R. Blackburn didn’t put more effort in coming up with evoking, fun-to-read texts. Luckily, the talents, quirks and flaws listed in the appropriate boxes at the bottom also often say a lot about an NPC’s character.
A nice touch is the inclusion of a
box for Building Points, so that GM’s can let their recurring
NPC’s progress and track their evolution. Other boxes allow the
GM to detail if an NPC is wanted and how big the reward is.
The flip side of each character sheet reprints most combat information (# of Gunfights, Speed, Speed Modifiers, Accuracy, Accuracy Modifiers, STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, LKS and CHA, plus Damage and ‘To Hit’ Modifiers, Hit Points (with Points, Location and Days to Heal), Hit Point check boxes and Notes. However, a grey-golored box also includes the information the GM needs if (s)he uses the brawling mini-game described in the rulebook: the number of red (Damage), blue (Agility), White (Endurance) poker chips the character may use, possible modifiers and the number of maximum bets per round for each color.
This side of the sheet also lists complete stats for two guns, including Type, Ammo Type, Damage, Draw Speed Modifier, Reload Speed, # of Shots, # of Shots Second Barrel, Shots Fired and range bracket information. This is great, as most RPG’s don’t allow for this much information and a lot of players (and GM’s) forget to track the shots they fired.
Conclusion
Rustlers & Townsfolk is an extremely useful supplement and a great source of ready-to-use (or should we say ‘ready-to-shoot’) NPC’s. However, the product is marred by its complete lack of an index and the short and often not very evocative personality descriptions. More in-depth information on personal history and psychological factors would have been much appreciated. Next time, guys?
More info: www.kenzerco.com