Pistoleer Cards

If you have perused the Greenhorn Download, you will have a good idea how the basics of Gunfighter's Ball work. To make the game more interesting, we incorporate special abilities using Pistoleer Cards.

This was something Desperado never had, and it was entirely up to players to role-play any quirks they had, or entirely up to Game Masters to design them into characters. This deck provides an easy and systematic way to spice up characters to take the game beyond a simple "move and shoot" to something with more depth.

There are 52 cards, comprising 52 skills, quirks, advantages, disadvantages, and special abilities. Each card has a detailed description of the characteristic with effects on play described in enough detail that a rulebook is not necessary.

Examples include:

River Rat . . . handy with a throwing knife.
Lunger . . . sickly, starting the game with fewer wound chips.
Nervy . . . cowardly and ap to run when the shots start flying.
Ambidextrous . . . no penalty for using non-dominant hand.
Sidekick . . . gives hero an advantage when nearby.
Rube . . . ill-equipped for combat.

The entire list:

Greased Lightning

Hesitant

Deliberate Shooter

Wild

Drunk

Marksman

Pistoleer

Cavalryman

Horseman

Guerilla Horseman

Nervy

City Slicker

Sneaky

Oafish

Bruiser

Featherweight

Fleet Of Foot

Pegleg

Trick Rider

Clumsy Shooter

Climber

Four-Eyes

Tough

Lunger

Ambidextrous

Thumb Buster

River Rat

Old Wound Acting Up

Mute

Miner

Lady

Hero

Sidekick

Spooks Horses

Old Nag

Mule

Cowboy

Hired Gun

Rube

Eagle Eye

Glutton For Punishment

Sissy

Left-Handed

Lucky Son Of A Gun

Cursed

Proud

Gentleman

Mysogynist

Raging Drunk

Code Against Killing

Hubris

Methodical

The number in the red circle is a relative weight so that a point system can be use to build characters. For instance, if a game allows for characters to come out at a net level of 1, then this ability would need to be balanced out by a disadvantage with a weight of -1.

We cut some of them and start another deck which will be called the "Dirty Tricks" deck. This will essentially be a weapons and special equipment deck with some special skills such as "menacing glare."

The mockups above are something I put together to illustrate how they might look. I incorporated images from a real antique card deck in order to give it a little period flavor. I'm still on the fence about some of the graphic design, but the content is finished.

Visit the Kickstarter and see how it's going!

Adios!
Forrest