The western is one genre that I’ve always been interested in. So for this entry into the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I’m going to be using a game I found on DriveThruRPG called OGL Wild West. In past challenges I had used Tall Tales B/X, US Marshals and Boot Hill.
The OGL Wild West PDF file is 241 pages long and was released by Mongoose Publishing in 2004. This is the same publisher that released the Traveller 2nd Edition RPG that I used earlier in this challenge. It was written by Richard Neale. The character sheet is three pages long. The character creation starts on page nine.
The first step listed is the character concept. I’m going to to go with a Pony Express rider who was accused of being inappropriate with a saloon girl and fired. He’s trying to find his new way in this world.
The second step is to generate the ability scores which are standard in an OGL roleplaying game. The book give gives three options, a pre-set of stats, a planned generation with 25 points to spend between each stat that already starts at 8 or… and you know where I’m going… roll 4d6 and drop the lowest die and allocate to the stat.
Choosing the class is step three. The classes are directly from the D20 Modern RPG that had come out at the time. These are the Strong Hero, Fast Hero, Tough Hero, Smart Hero, Dedicated Hero and Charismatic Hero. Well he rode for the Pony Express so I’m thinking Fast Hero. I wrote down the benefits, selected the skills, talents and feats. There really wasn’t a Pony Express Rider vocation for step four, so I picked Tenderfoot since he had come from ‘back east’ to find his fortunes in the wild west. The skills and feats were step five.
Steps six was the finishing touches. This would include age (he is 19), Height and Weight (randomly rolled as 5’5″ and 175 lbs. Reputation of nothing and luck. Aaaannnddd nothing on equipment for the character. I scrolled down to the Outfitting chapter (I really wish they had put bookmarks in this PDF) and there was nothing about starting gear. So screw it, I just wrote down some things that I thought the character would have. Oh and while reading about Pony Express riders I took a first name from one and a last name from another and settled on the name William Keetley. I then transferred my notes over to the character sheet and scanned it.
Afterthoughts:
I found some (See Combat, page XX) in a few places. So the book could have used another round of editing. There were some confusing steps in the process (lack of getting gear listed in the process for one). If I were to run this game, I’d probably end up re-writing half the book. So I don’t know if it would be high on my priority to homebrew for it. To my knowledge no one is playing this game. So I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to play.
Yes, you’ll notice that the name of the character isn’t listed on the character sheet until page three.
I did like how they had a Rogues’ Gallery in the back of the book that had stats for historical figures of the western era.
Additional Notes:
I was able to go back and look at the traffic coming to this site. From that I was able to find several new websites and message boards that were participating in the Character Creation Challenge. I’ve added them to the links page for the challenge.
Coming Up Next:
Cyberpunk 2020
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