# Character Creation Challenge 2025: Day 05 - Bullets, Horses, and 2d6 - Robert Hazen, Demon-Killing Banker With a Gun tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2025 #game/rpg/bullets-horses-and-2d6 > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2025]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice I was up way too late last night, so it is with some gentle happiness that I look at the list of games for today and can pick one with an extremely lightweight (read: underdeveloped) mechanical system which nevertheless has character generation. Today we're going with **[[Bullets, Horses and 2d6|Bullets, Horses & 2d6]]**, an extremely minimalist [[Powered by the Apocalypse|PbtA]]-inspired RPG which is *clearly* not finished yet, but is of the same series as **Zombies, Brains & 2D6**, as well as **Sword, Sorcery & 2D6**, the latter of which is the author's most developed version of the platform and a game that I'm sure I will get back to eventually when I am willing to put an eyeball on fantasy again. ![[Bullets, Horses and 2d6 (cover).jpg|400]] > [!note] Editor's Note > > Honestly, let me give you some basic advice. Do *not* do [a 6.5 hour game stream of **Satisfactory** with your buddy](https://www.twitch.tv/ochadoji) the night before you have a fairly significant article to write. > > You might *think* that you still are as resilient as you used to be in your 30s — but you're not. I guarantee it. My Mexican hot chocolate coffee sitting here is giving me just enough energy to write this note. > > If you have come over to check out **[[index|Grim Tokens]]** because of last night's stream, thank you, I appreciate it. I hope you find things here that you enjoy a lot. > > Now back to our regularly scheduled article. Mechanically, this thing can fit on a single page, and if it was better laid out, it could probably fit on even less. It's a straightforward 2d6 plus attribute modifier minus negative conditions, with the very PbtA range mods of anything 6 or less is a failure, 7-9 is a partial success, and 10+ is a complete success. You get a point of XP for failing outright and you get a point of XP for critical successes. Honestly, just from these two paragraphs of description, you could probably run this game. Everything else is gravy. ## Acts of Creation I don't even think I need to break this one down into separate subsections. It's going to go pretty easy, which, again, I am really appreciative of today. ### Basics - **Name:** Robert Hazen - **Personal Objective (up to three):** - Find a Good Wife - Punish the killer of his pa - Kill demons wherever he finds them - **Specialty:** Banker > That one's kind of fun. I rolled it randomly on the Random Background Table and "Banker" fell out. You don't get too many stories about demon-killing bankers in the West. I'm here for it. - **Weakness:** likes his drink - **Relationship:** Derek Brody, secret Pinkerton, fellow inhabitant of the boarding house > Technically this one should be with another player at the table, but since the text merely says “with another character” it occurred that this would be a good hook in general. > > You have a banker with a dark past who is in town living in a local boarding house, and one of his buddies is secretly a Pinkerton living in the same boarding house. If that's not a recipe for shenanigans, I don't know what is. - **Appearance:** An indistinct early 20s with hair already beginning to thin and a body trending up beyond "husky". He has the pale look of a man who spends a lot of time indoors. - **Background:** A banker for Wells Fargo from "back east," where he had an unpleasant encounter with a demonic entity in the process of doing some forensic accounting for the bank. It reminded him of his own mortality but also left him with a grudge. ### Modifiers Maybe there is *one* section that will need a little bit more of the way of discussion; you have five modifiers running +2 to -1 (the last is doubled) assigned across **Body**, **Reflexes**, **Aiming**, **Composure**, and **Cunning**. This kind of stat layout should be very familiar to anyone who has been following the garden for a while. Just dealing with modifiers which run between -5 and +5 is one of my favorite things in modern game design. Let's put these in some sort of order: | Attribute | Modifier | | --------- | -------: | | Body | -1 | | Reflexes | -1 | | Aiming | +2 | | Composure | 0 | | Cunning | +1 | This leads to an interesting setup for a character. He's a little bit heavy, so not particularly good with strength and endurance or melee combat, and he's just not that quick on his feet. The boy is not going to be dodging things. He's also not going to be sneaking around, but by God you put a gun in his hand and he is a holy terror. Plus, he knows enough about ferreting out the truth to be a real danger to people. He's not entirely unflappable, but he can keep his head when those around him are losing theirs. If his buddy the Pinkerton back at the boarding house is good at sneaking and stabbing people in the back but needs some help following up on clues — damn, this is a story that could write itself. ### Finish It A starting character gets three strikes/health points, which fits with the general pattern of making health a thing in short supply. Then we just roll to see how many and what what items and equipment we have, plus how many dollars are jingling around in our pocket. 1d6 starting items and 1d6 dollars; let's go. > [5, 6] Nice. Now to the equipment table. A 2, Equipment/Utility. Now to *that* table. > [6, 3] A small mirror. Okay, I'll just generate the whole list: - A small mirror - Decoration/art (a silver pocket watch) - Gold/oil (a small cache of gold coins he's tucked back since working at the bank) - Explosives (dynamite for - blowing up demon nests?) - Single action revolver (Colt single-action Army) And $6! ![[Bullets, Horses and 2d6 - Robert Hazen, Demon-Hunting Banker.webp]] ## Exunt It's a short one today, but sometimes we deserve the opportunity to have a short one, right? For those playing along at home, I would say that this *is* a fully playable RPG. It has all the bits and pieces that you need to run a Western game but absolutely nothing else beyond the barest of the bare-bones, and the mechanics themselves are not necessarily tuned and tweaked the way they should be. Mechanisms like *Lethality* are not explained in terms of what they do, though one can assume that the higher the Lethality ratio the more likely it is to kill you outright rather than simply apply a Strike. I *absolutely* believe in supporting independent creators whenever possible. People that put [short little games up on itch.io](https://incerto.itch.io/bullets-horses-2d6) are the real heroes of the hobby and of the industry. If they include cute little things like your HP literally being defined as your hats followed by a cross on Boot Hill, they get extra points in my book. It's not like this guy is trying to rip you off because he's providing it absolutely for free and I am certain that he would *love* to get your feedback on the game if you read it and have some thoughts or, even better, if you play it and enjoy it. That's going to be it for us for today. **Character Creation Challenge 2025** continues tomorrow with something a little bigger, a little bit earlier, and with a lot more shooting. But it still may involve orcs. Be ready.