'Ruthless' Western Rules Get Cold Reception

 

Western gunfight game set up and ran by Keith using the 'Ruthless' rules from Marks Game Room

One thing about our Sunday Night Gaming group -- we are NOT afraid to try out new rules sets. We'll try something different even if we have a perfectly acceptable rules for that period that we enjoy. For example, my friend Keith wanted to try out the Ruthless set of Western rules from Marks Game Room. They were written by Mark Fastoso and Brian DeWitt, and are a fast-moving, easy-to-play set of miniatures rules. Once we sat down to play, though, we found that we had different versions of the rules in hand -- and no character cards!

    My gang of four gunfighters - the Bone Thieves - led by the old boss at right

We made things work out, though, with Keith making an adjustment to the rules on the fly with our input. He'd created gangs for the six players while he would GM. Each gang consisted of four characters, with Tom's Cattle Ranchers having six, because he thought we would all gang up on them. As it turned out, he did a better job of balancing things than he'd feared. The biggest problem was that three of the gangs just wanted to get off the table. Allen's gold miners wanted to exit off with their mule loads of gold ore intact. Mike S had a group of claim jumpers who wanted to relieve them of their season's worth of hard work. Mike W controlled a group of Bone Collectors, early paleontologists, wanting to escort their wagon to safety. My gang of Bone Thieves wanted to similarly relieve them of their discoveries. Joel's sheep herders also just wanted to get off the table. Even Tom's ranchers, once they roped their missing prize stud bull in the center of the table, were willing to make an exit.

    Our target for the scenario, the Bone Collectors and their wagon load of dinosaur bones

Keith had carefully arranged us around the table with those wanting to exit having to do it through the ranchers, Bone Thieves, and Claim Jumpers. However, the table was large enough that both Joel and Mike W were able to take a wide, loop path along the long edge and essentially escape unmolested. The Sheep Herders never fired a shot, and the Bone Collectors did only when taking a snap shot at someone targeting them. That said, the Claim Jumpers and Bone Thieves did our best to initiate the action, and we engaged in a lively gun battle with the ranchers and gold miners. So, there was shooting going on, and blood was blood spilled on the barren plains of the Old West. 

    The most fired-upon gang that evening was Allen's gold miners, trying to get to market with their ore

So, how did the system work? Each player had a hand of five cards from which they chose one for their Initiative Order. Players took their turns from highest to lowest. All of a player's characters acted on the card he chose secretly, with ties decided by suit. Some cards had special abilities, such as a "7" allowing one character to take 3 actions instead of 2. An Ace was required for waking up from being unconscious, and a 3 allowed you to discard additional cards form your hand if you didn't like what you'd been dealt. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. I felt Ruthless was a bit too close for comfort to the Wiley Games rules Fistful of Lead. It also uses cards for Initiative Order with certain cards granting special abilities. It also uses a d10 roll to hit, and the numbers needed are very similar (both need an 8 to hit at Long range, for example).

    Largest gang of gunfighters in the scenario were the Cattle Ranchers, looking for their stud bull

To be clear, I'm not accusing Mark's Game Room of plagiarism. I know Mark in passing from Historicon and Cold Wars. I've played in his games and he seems like a nice, low key guy. Ruthless is free to download -- he and his friends are not selling them to make money. However, the rules seemed too derivative to me. It seems obvious where their inspiration came from. Perhaps Mark and his buddies played FFOL, but they didn't like certain things about the rules? So, they made their over variant -- that's fine. Everyone is free to take someone else's rules and change them for their own games. They can even take them to conventions and say they're using a modified version of the rules. You see that all the time! However, to create a set of rules that are similar and covering the same period, then give them a new name and publish them (even as a free download), seems to be on shakier ground to me. 

    The Sheep Herders (using my goats as stand ins) just wanted to get off the table safely

There IS a chance they never played FFOL. Maybe they just heard or read about the card initiative mechanic and special values for certain cards and independently came up with their own rules. I've heard that you can't copyright rules mechanics. I'm willing to give Mark the benefit of the doubt because he seems like a great guy. However, playing Ruthless felt like trying someone's slightly tweaked version of FFOL. Probably the most interesting change to the Wiley Games system was you could take a snap shot at someone firing at you if you could play a card from your hand higher than the one they used for Initiative Order. That led to hard decisions -- do you save the high value ones so you can snapshot anyone trying to gun you down? Or do you play them, going first and hoping the others don't have a higher card to snapshot you?

    The shooting starts with the Claim Jumpers blazing away at the Gold Miners & Cattle Ranchers

I liked that aspect of the rules. I also felt that all of a player's figures acting on the Initiative Order card  rather than each character getting their own card (like in FFOL) made a game with six players move faster. Still, given a choice, I would play Wiley Games rules in the future rather than Ruthless. Keith felt the same way, and said he was shelving Ruthless. I like the greater customization of characters that the Wiley Games system offers compared to Ruthless. It feels tighter and more internally consistent. The wounding system makes a lot more sense to me. In our game, every single time a character was shot and knocked unconscious the player was able to bring them back immediately the next turn with an Ace or 4. I like the way FFOL handles wounding better.

    'The Kid' (bottom right) made the bad decision to take on a handful of Cattle Rancers & paid for it

Still, we hadn't played a Western game in awhile and it was good to try out the rules. The scenario did end with a whimper, though, as the various factions exited the table. It seemed that of the six of us, only the Claim Jumpers and Bone Thieves really wanted to fight. And there was no way our two gangs could prevent the other four escaping off-table. So, the other players "won" the scenario easily. Even though my four gunfighters shot down three of Allen's miners (repeatedly wounding them till they were truly out of action) for the loss of only one of ours, we "lost." Same with Mike's Claim Jumpers. They inflicted more damage than they suffered, but he and I were the only "losers" of the four on the table.

    'Shoot - they're getting away!' Yeah, like 4 of the 6 gangs just wanted to get away...ha, ha!

Thanks to Keith for setting up the game and to all the players who read the rules I'd forwarded them ahead of time. It always makes a new set of rules go smoother when more than the GM has read them. There's bound to be something the GM or any one player forgets that the others may remember. So, if you like the core idea of the Wiley Games system and want to try a game that tweaks its ideas, maybe read through Ruthless? Note that the well-designed Quick Reference Sheet does NOT contain all the rules, despite what they may imply. You need the character cards to understand the wound system and see the stats for the gunfighters. I discovered those in the free scenario downloads.

Anyway, I've been slow writing up this game report because I've been working on the first play-through video for my Surviving 'Nam rules. It is taking a LOT more time than I thought it would. This is the first time I've ever tried to film myself playing a game. I just spent three hours tonight doing my first try at it and I'm not satisfied with the result. I'll give it another go tomorrow, though. Hopefully, I'll get it right soon!

MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026

• Miniatures acquired in 2026: 217
• Miniatures painted in 2026: 198

TERRAIN Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026

• Terrain acquired in 2026: 14
• Terrain painted in 2026: 36

SCATTER Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2026

• Scatter acquired in 2026: 34
• Scatter painted in 2026: 75