The Gaming Outpost

Strap on your six-guns, pardner, ’cause Knuckleduster’s got a book to tell you how to adapt ‘em to any Western roleplaying game. The Knuckleduster Firearms Shop is guaranteed to give you more bang for your buckshot as it details historical firearms from 1849 to 1900, with every single piece being something that was actually produced and marketed.

TKFS begins with an explanation of the terminology used in the book, including how to adapt it to systems like FUDGE. The conversion for Deadlands is actually a page of its own in the back. There’s an explanation of all the possible common mechanical failures of the weapons. This is interesting from a technical standpoint. After all, Deadlands never so much as mentions a chain fire, much less tells you what it is and why it’s a Bad Thing™. The book suggests that Reliability, a statistic for either exotic (read: product of Mad Science) or “el cheapo” gear in Deadlands, be applied to all equipment rather than just unusual or poorly-made smokewagons.

After the general introduction is a section on gunfights in general. There’s a very interesting interview with an police officer named Phil Bock who was once in a gunfight. This was included to give people some information on how it feels to be in a battle situation, which would be good for those interested in more accurate roleplaying of a gunslinger. Officer Bock relates what it felt like to be in a situation in which you’re being shot at, and it’s indeed a bit sobering. Among these are a full-page sidebar (for lack of a better term) with some general tips for Western battle. The section then closes with a small explanation of slip-hammering and fanning, common gun modifications, and a gunfighting maneuver known as the border shift, which was allegedly once used by legendary outlaw John Wesley Hardin to get the drop on equally legendary lawman Wild Bill Hickock (though this was alleged in Hardin’s autobiography, so the source is a bit less than credible).

Following the informational bits we get to the real meat of the book— the guns. These hoglegs are divided into the eras in which they were first released. There are 5 different eras, separated seemingly by important advances in firearm technology, though this isn’t really made clear. The years begin with 1849, which is the year of the California Gold Rush. The gun listings are further divided into categories, beginning with pistols and followed by holdouts (the sort of small guns you’d hide in your sleeve or pocket), then unusual weapons (such ss the umbrella gun), rifles, and closing with the section with shotguns. There’s an illustration of each gun so that you can see what it looks like, though the ilusrations of the guns (and in some cases ammo is also shown) seem to all be either taken out of catalogs or drawn as stand-alone illustrations rather than showing photos of antique guns. This is understandable, as this probably would have required licensing fees from museums, and a good drawing is still probably a Hell of a lot cheaper.

The book’s real strength is its attention to accessible detail. The author avoided using acronyms that might not be familiar to the average reader. The book was intended for the curious semi-enthusiast and the roleplayer rather than the firearms collector, which makes sense as this is a book for roleplaying games. Firearm collectors have enough books of their own, so Forrest Harris wrote it for us rather than them. For damage, they used a seven-point scale the terminology of which, according to Harris, would be familiar to FUDGE players. At the end of the section on the guns there’s a short section on Western gear, such as holsters, sights, and ammunition.

The Deadlands conversion guide is quite welcome, as Deadlands is the foremost Western RPG in the industry. However, using the Colt Peacemaker as a benchmark, the damage conversion may not be terribly accurate. The Colt is listed as doing Severe damage, which would translate to a suggested 4d8 damage. However, in Deadlands the Peacemaker is listed as doing 3d6 damage. Anyone doing conversions should look over the weapons that are listed in both the Weird West Player’s Guide or Law Dogs and The Knuckleduster Firearms Shop. Check the weapons and see if the table needs to be adjusted in a lot of cases. If it does, adjust the damage chart to something that fits your game. I know some people on the Deadlands listserv adjust Peacemakers to do d8 damage instead of d6 sdimply because they feel, as Forrest Harris seems to, that the Peacemaker is simply a bit deadlier than that. Think of the conversion chart as more of a guideline than a hard rule set. After all, this book was designed to be a generic supplement rather than a Deadlands-specific book, so we can’t expect it to be written to convert with absolute smoothness.

In all, The Knuckleduster Firearms Shop is an excellent supplement for a player of Western RPGs even if you never end up using it for your game. It’s such an informative read that you end up learning a lot about equipment and the way things really were (and in the case of gunfights, still are). If you want to learn more about guns from the second half of the 1800s and how they work, or if you feel that your game just doesn’t have enough boom sticks in it, go out and pick up The Knuckleduster Firearms Shop. I eagerly look forward to seeing a similar book from Knuckleduster on other kinds of equipment. Don’t steal it, though— the shopkeep who sells this sort of thing just might get a bit miffed and decide to clear leather, and if that happens then A) Knuckleduster won’t make any money off it and B) you’re gonna have some unwanted holes! Now, saddle up and find a friendly local game shop that carries it! If you can’t, just smoke signal Knuckleduster’s mail order department at http://www.knuckleduster.com/Mail_Order.html and have that fancy plastic o’ yours ready, because this book really hits the bullseye!