System
Boot Hill used game mechanics that were advanced for the time. While most games still used traditional six-sided die, Boot Hill was one of the first games to use two ten-sided dice as percentile dice for character abilities and skill resolution. However, several factors limited its appeal.
Although the western was a popular American motif, it did not have the same mass appeal as a D&D's Tolkienesque fantasy setting.
Boot Hill focused on gunfighting rather than role-playing. The first edition and second editions were specifically marketed as a miniatures combat game, but even in the third edition, most of the rules concerned combat resolution, with relatively few social interaction rules or information about settings.
In addition, combat could be short and deadly, with death often coming from the first gunshot. This lethality did not change over time, since unlike D&D, Boot Hill characters did not advance in levels and therefore developed no better defenses or any true advantage over non-player characters; they remained just as likely to die in their hundredth combat as they had been in their first. As a result, most characters had a very short life span; this meant that players usually never got a chance to identify with their player character over the long term as they could with a player character in D&D.
Unlike D&D, there were no non-human monsters, only human opponents. In addition, there were no alignment rules, making the difference between the "good guys" and "bad guys" a matter of moral interpretation or choice.
For these reasons, although Boot Hill was published in three editions, none captured the public imagination, and it remained a very small and limited member of TSR's stable of games.
Read more about this topic: Boot Hill (role-playing Game)
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