# Six Gun Sound tags: #game/wargame/six-gun-sound ![[Six Gun Sound (cover).jpg|600]] **Six Gun Sound** is [[Two-Hour Wargames|Two-Hour Wargames']] cowboy game — the Chain Reaction engine in a duster, with a low, deliberate drawl. It stakes out the ten-year stretch of the Old West everyone actually remembers and spends most of its energy on the gunfight and the profession that gets you into one. It may be the most romantic thing the two-hour engine has ever put out, and it knows it. ## Setting "Six men slowly ride into town... This is the world of Six Gun Sound." The prologue is a bank robbery and a sheriff's oath, and it sets the tone: the Wild West of **1875 to 1885**, the decade that made the West wild and has been selling it back to every kid since. The book cheerfully lists its bona fides — the Lincoln County War, the unpleasantness at Tombstone, the demise of the James/Younger Gang, the Black Hills gold fever and the Great Sioux War of 1876, the founding of Deadwood, "lots of Apache trouble," the Nez Perce, the flight of the Cheyenne from Indian Territory — and name-drops Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Custer's Last Stand, Geronimo, and Wild Bill Hickok like a greatest-hits record. You don't just show up and shoot. You pick a **profession** — Marshal, Outlaw, Ranger, and over a dozen more, from Bounty Hunter and Buffalo Hunter down to Preacher, Prospector, and Saloon Staff — and each profession carries its own unique **Encounter** system, so the trouble you land in is the trouble your job would actually land in. Your player character is a **Star**; everyone else on the table is a **Grunt**, an NPC steered by the reaction rules, turning up and bowing out as the game sees fit. ## Mechanics The same bones as the rest of the [[Two-Hour Wargames|THW]] line: a fistful of d6, a Reputation score, and a web of reaction tests doing the heavy lifting while you make the interesting choices. ### Characters — Stars, Grunts, and Rep A Star is the player's own figure, typically starting at **Reputation 5**; Grunts are the non-player cast, governed entirely by reaction tests. Every figure gets a **class** (Cowboy, Gunman, or Townsfolk), a **profession**, and often a **random attribute** rolled off a table — the usual western resume of Agile, Brawler, Crack Shot, Marksman, Nerves of Steel, and Lucky, seated next to the less flattering Coward, Daisy, Dumbass, Near Sighted, and Weakling. **Reputation** is the yardstick everything measures against, and it drifts: each Encounter hands out **Rep d6** for specific actions, you net your increases against your decreases, roll them after the action, and can move at most one point of Rep per Encounter. ### Resolution The dice get read two ways. **Passing dice**: roll one or more d6 and compare each to a Target Number — almost always Reputation — where any die equal to or under the number passes; you can only pass 2, 1, or 0 dice however many you roll, and the outcome is read off the test's table. **Counting successes**: a die of 1–3 is a success and 4–6 a failure, for the checks that want raw output rather than a graded result. ### The reaction system The meat of the game. An **In Sight test** settles who acts first when figures come face to face; reaction tests like the **Shot At** and **Man Down** decide how Grunts — and Stars — respond under fire. Results run the THW gamut: Carry On (or knocked to the ground), a **−1 to Rep**, Duck Back, Leave the Table, Obviously Dead, and Out of the Fight. Stars get four ways to cheat the worst of it — **Star Power** (rolling a d6 per Rep to shrug off damage), **Larger Than Life**, **Cheating Death**, and **Free Will**. ### Draw! The showpiece. When it's holstered pistols and a staredown — the Gunfight at the OK Corral, as the book frames it — you run a **Draw!** Each character rolls a d6 per point of Rep (plus circumstances) counting successes; the most successes fire first, ties resolve simultaneously, and it tumbles into a proper firefight among the cover if anyone survives the opening. It's the fastest, most flavorful sale the system has ever made for itself. ## Editions - **Six Gun Sound (2007)** — the original cowboy rules, first listed by BoardGameGeek as *Six Gun Sound: Blaze of Glory!*, by Bob Minadeo & Ed Teixeira. - **Six Gun Sound (2016)** — the edition in the library, © 2016 Minadeo & Teixeira / Two Hour Wargames. *In the library.* - **Six Gun Sound: Devil's Elbow** — a scenario supplement set in the same period. ## References - **Six Gun Sound - DriveThruRPG**: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/204994/six-gun-sound - **Two Hour Wargames - official site**: https://twohourwargames.com/