From Hellboy Homage to Six-Shooter Epic
Steven Alexander’s noir FBI concept mutates into a blazing Wyrd West odyssey
Huckleberry links:
Huckleberry Early Access in PDF (DrivethruRPG)
Huckleberry Free Quickstart in PDF (DrivethruRPG)
1. Hi Steven, can you introduce yourself and tell us about your connection to tabletop roleplaying games?
Hey Dave, I’m Steven Alexander, designer and lead writer of Huckleberry: A Wyrd West RPG. I’ve been playing roleplaying games since I was ten years old when a friend on the bus showed me his copy of 3rd Edition D&D. A whole new world literally and figuratively unfolded before me. Not much later, WotC’s search for a new official setting spurred me to create my first homebrew world.
After 5E released, I started taking design a bit more seriously, but things didn’t really take off until I started playing tons of indie games with folks on a Twitch channel called Adventures in Lollygagging. We’ve played dozens of systems together with all sorts of design philosophies–GM-less, heavy crunch, OSR, you name it and one of us has probably played it. An even larger world opened up and there’s no going back.
Being introduced to so many new systems and mechanics gave me the knowledge base and deeper understanding that I needed to make my own system. In the same way that reading a variety of authors and genres will make you a better writer, playing a variety of games will make you a better designer. I encourage everyone to take the occasional break from their favorite system and try out that one game that looks cool, but wouldn’t normally get to the table.
2. There are a great number of weird west genre RPGs at this point. What inspired you to make Huckleberry and what did you want to do differently?
Huckleberry originally started as a noir/horror FBI game set in the 1930s. It was heavily influenced by Hellboy, crime fiction, and gangster films. That version of the game didn’t click at the time and was set aside for a long while. I later realized that while I love the theme, overall the genre wasn’t working for me. After a “cowboys and six-shooters” redesign, Huckleberry was born. The game hasn’t shaken its detective roots, but now it is framed through the perspective of bounty hunting.
Huckleberry has several design goals, but our two primary goals are A) create a game that plays fast and B) give players more agency. This is where Huckleberry’s mechanics really stand out compared to the rest. Rolls are entirely player facing. Players make the roll and instantly know if they succeed or fail, with tools to affect the math both before and after the roll. Players can take actions to roll bigger dice and can then spend Aces to turn failed rolls into a success, entirely without input or negotiation from the GM. When a table gets to know the system, rolls resolve rapidly and combat has a breakneck pace.
Like most designers, my design philosophy is driven by what I want to play at the table, from the perspective of both a player and a gamemaster. Huckleberry’s mechanics are asymmetrical because I have different desires based on which side of the GM screen I’m on. As a player, I don’t like being shut down by the game’s mechanics. That’s why you’ll never see enemies with a “stun” ability in the game. As a GM, I don’t like losing a player’s attention because I’m resolving several enemy turns in a row. That’s why the amount of enemy turns in Huckleberry are tied to the amount of Mavericks in the game. It’s also why Mavericks roll both to attack and defend. As a GM, I’m involved in every step of the game. I want the players to feel the same way, as much as possible.
3. At the beginning of the book, you have some setting lore that mentions a “Spider Woman” and us being in the “Fifth World” but there isn’t much discussion of the apocalyptic event after that. Did you intend to expand on the lore at some point, or leave it to GMs to flesh out their own details for the world?
A bit of both. We will expand on the lore and setting, but keep the scope high-level. The goal is to give GMs plenty of hooks to follow and create a foundation for campaigns to be built upon. The map itself will never be fully defined, so that GMs have the freedom to place locations and events wherever they wish. Huckleberry campaigns are somewhat episodic and influenced by media like Deadwood and Gunsmoke, where the party has a “hub” they call home and every bounty is within a few day’s ride.
It’s not fully a “Monster of the Week” format, but it’s close and I’ve found that style of campaign struggles when an official map is drawn. If you want a bounty set down in the bayou, what do you do when the map says the nearest wetland is several hundred miles away? Each GM needs space to develop the world on their own and place things where they are needed. Our aim is to create a modular setting by developing a handful of peoples, places, and factions that provide your table with the tools to tell their own stories. As someone who grew up staring at the maps in fantasy book appendices, this was a tough call to make.
Our worldbuilding will focus on the people that make up the Wyrd Frontier. Indigenous bands, robber barons, religious sects, industrialists, homesteaders, and everyone in between. People are itinerant and can be woven into any location the GM needs. Huckleberry’s core genres are western and folk horror, both of which revolve around strong characters. It is the Wyrd Frontier’s inhabitants that drive the stories of Huckleberry and that’s what we will supply to GMs.
4. The game contains a lot of Old West and poker-related terms for various game mechanics. It doesn’t seem overwhelming, but occasionally it feels like it’s brimming with these terms. (Raises, Busts, Sleeved Aces, Sweeten the Pot, Stretches, Kits and Caboodles, Scrapes, etc.) How long does it take players to get accustomed to all these terms in your experience?
Feedback from blind playtesting has shown onboarding to be a quick process. I’ve never had feedback mentioning trouble learning the lingo. There will always be clarifying questions asked here and there, but the majority of players pick things up quickly, especially after they understand the core rolling mechanic. It helps that Huckleberry doesn’t have many subsystems and the terms are repeatedly reinforced while playing.
It’s a fine balance between reinforcing the theme and overloading the player. Our playtesters have come from a wide variety of RPGs backgrounds. Some had never played a TTRPG, others had exclusively played D&D 5E, and others had played dozens of systems. Regardless of the player’s experience level, we’ve found the terms end up feeling intuitive in context.
For example, a Kit is a piece of gear that gives you a mechanical ability, a Sleeved Ace lets you “cheat” on a roll, Sweetening the Pot gives you additional successes after a successful roll, etc. Like any new system, you’ll need to learn the terminology, but usually tables go from knowing nothing about Huckleberry to playing in around 15 minutes.
It could also help that I’ve been responsive to feedback throughout Huckleberry’s release. The great thing about offering regular updates to the game is that I can quickly pivot if something proves to be a stumbling block to a lot of people. Consequently, anyone who spends a minute to offer their opinion is a saint in my eyes. There’s never enough data and I appreciate everyone who’s willing to weigh in with their thoughts.
Mechanics
The game uses step dice for everything: core stats, skill ratings, ailment severity, etc. What was the thought process behind this approach?
That particular choice was first made by the dice goblin whispering in my ear. I have all the dice and I want to use them all, darn it! That was the initial impulse, at least. As the game’s design progressed, I found myself loving the variety. Every roll feels a little different than the last and no die is left behind. Step dice feel more interesting and engaging than a static modifier, as well. The statistical curve becomes a bit more unpredictable and reinforces the themes of the “Wyrd”--the force of chaos that permeates the game’s setting.
I suppose I was lucky because all of the other mechanics seemed to naturally build upon the step dice. It provided the solid foundation I needed for the rest of the game and I never had to make major revisions to that particular part of the game. Instead, that time went to finalizing the probabilities for generating Aces.
Using step dice for Ailments came well after developing the core resolution. At that point I’d been using step dice so much that it felt strange to not use them. Mavericks often find themselves with multiple Ailments at a time, so they need to be quick to resolve each turn. Where other rolls require two dice added together, Ailments were streamlined to a single die with no math. Something about Ailments felt symmetrical to the rest of the game. In Huckleberry, you use all the dice, all of the time!
Aces are important in modifying rolls and triggering special effects. How did you balance their acquisition to prevent either min-maxing with certain character builds or a sense of scarcity that would make players hoard them?
Like spice, the Aces must flow. There’s a hard cap of 4 Sleeved Aces, with a chance of earning another 4 Aces on a good roll. You’ll never be able to save more than 4 or spend more than 8. That tight limit encourages players to spend Aces frequently. From a design perspective, Aces should be spent about every third roll. Not only for balance, but because they’re just plain fun, even for people that are generally turned off by metacurrencies.
The balance is achieved by all players having equal access to Ace generators. No one can build a character that locks them out of earning additional Aces. Characters with traits fueled by Ace discards may find themselves “Ace hungry” at times, waiting for lady luck to deliver a new fistful. Fortunately, a dry spell is easily offset through good teamwork.
In all of my playtest campaigns, players have quickly learned to work together and build synergy with their character abilities. As a general rule, a trait that can create new Aces will boost all players, not just the person with the trait. For example, the “Sermonizer” trait allows a Maverick to give an impassioned speech and then roll their Spirit and Expression dice. A success gives all nearby Mavericks (including themself) a free Ace. They’re essentially trading their attack for the turn to boost the entire party. I try to empower support traits as much as I can. Passing on an attack is always a difficult decision and the payoff needs to be worth it.
As an individual Maverick advances, they unlock more tools for generating Aces in the form of new Kits and Calling Cards, allowing them to fuel those traits more effectively. I wish I could say that the process was quick and easy, but the honest truth is that our final balance was achieved through many, many playtest hours. It was a process that took quite some time, but was well worth it. Aces are foundational to the game, capable of creating some seriously clutch moments. No matter how dire the odds, if a Maverick has a couple Sleeved Aces, they’re still in the fight.
The game emphasizes narrative over granular detail, yet includes a specific system for tracking Ailments and Injuries. How did you decide which aspects warranted a mechanical representation?
When designing Huckleberry, my first instinct was always to create tables and charts, with all sorts of fiddly options and dials to tweak. Yet, every time I would go back to kill my darlings, those charts and crunchy bits were the first rules in the bin. I wrote a whole chapter on travel and exploration mechanics that I dearly loved, but it didn’t make the cut. Maybe someday!
When it came time to design Ailments and Injuries, I had already known that Huckleberry was a game about wear and tear. It’s not possible for a healthy Maverick to be killed in a single attack–players always have a chance to respond. (To be clear, instant death is possible, but not in regular combat.) Instead, Huckleberry is more about pushing your luck. How many bounties can you take on before needing an extended period of rest and recovery? Injuries take a while to fall off your character and rapid healing is limited to the equivalent of bandaging cuts and scrapes.
Injuries also have a narrative component to them. The game dictates the severity of the Injury with three tiers: Minor, Moderate, and Major. But it is the player that decides how the Injury manifests. Let’s say a Maverick gets shot–a very common Injury in the Wyrd Frontier, as you might expect. The player creates the narrative around the Injury. Were they shot in the arm or the leg? Maybe the bullet grazed their face? And after describing the Injury, they also decide how they want to roleplay it. I’ve noticed an interesting “ownership” that happens during this process. Players that narratively choose their injuries love to roleplay it out. It can influence their choices for the rest of the adventure.
Ailments are short-lived conditions that can increase or decrease in severity and are designed to inject additional tension and variety in a fight. They represent circumstances that could be quite dangerous or lethal, but aren’t full-on injuries. For instance, the most lethal Ailment is called “Nicked” and it means you’re bleeding out. You might receive Nicked with a minor injury but, if not dealt with quickly, that injury could increase to a higher severity or even put you on death’s door.
This leads to tough choices on the player’s part. Do I risk bleeding out and hope to take down that mutated grizzly bear? Or should I put down the gun for a moment and bandage that cut? Either choice could be your last and it leads me to the real answer to your question. Huckleberry is a narrative first game and its mechanics need to support that goal. If a mechanic doesn’t create interesting roleplay choices, then it doesn’t need to be a mechanic.
With the Wyrd being such a central and chaotic element of the setting, why did you choose a dice mechanic (d6-d12) for it, instead of a more abstract mechanic? How does this mechanical choice reflect the thematic unpredictability of the Wyrd itself?
The Wyrd is corruption, luck, and destiny intertwined into one. It cannot be cured, it cannot be tamed, and it cannot be escaped. Anything that lives long enough in the Wyrd Frontier will be killed by it. Its effects can vary from mild symptoms like your skin turning blue to grotesque body transforming mutations. Some people, animals, and things are more susceptible to the Wyrd than others.
The Wyrd is a central element of the setting but, more importantly, it is a central element of the characters. Every Maverick has been touched by the Wyrd and can draw on that power, ever so slightly. Appearance is entirely a player’s choice in Huckleberry. Some people choose to be robot-like, others choose to look animal-like, and others want to look like regular folk. Regardless of that choice, the Maverick is imbued with the Wyrd and uses that power to forge their own destiny.
The sliding Wyrd die is a sort of fuel gauge for Mavericks. The bigger the die, the more risks a character can take. It can be burned through quite quickly as it decreases both voluntarily and forcibly. But Mavericks find ways to make their own luck and can always discard sleeved Aces to raise the die back up.
Outside of its thematic purpose, the Wyrd die is actually quite important to the game’s mechanical design. In the early stages of Huckleberry, I went through a half dozen different options for saves and defense, from armor class, to a specialized “defense” skill, to doubling the attribute die. Nothing quite worked the way I wanted it to. I eventually settled on a mechanical representation of the character’s luck, allowing the player some choice in how quickly they burn through it. When the Wyrd became formalized as part of the setting, it became a clear choice to label the die as the Maverick’s Wyrd.
The Ante Up mechanic introduces unpredictability to Hostile actions by relegating enemy behavior to a card draw, but that draw is also actually a source of potential player benefits via Ace and Joker cards. How did you design the suit-based challenges to provide a balance of risk and reward?
All rolls are player facing, but we still wanted a system to represent especially dangerous attacks, both for narrative and mechanical variety. In the parlance of other games, drawing a face card is similar to an enemy rolling a critical hit. On the flip side, there’s a chance of enemies rolling a fumble as well. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it gets the point across. After the face card is revealed, players still need to roll to make their save. It is a telegraphed attack, where players know the stakes are raised and spending Aces to even the playing field may be a wise choice.
Ultimately, Antes are always more dangerous than advantageous. There are twelve face cards that increase the danger and severity of attacks. Aces and jokers grant the players a benefit, but don’t circumvent or prevent the Ante. The most they can offer is to soften the blow. You might feel fortunate when a joker is revealed, but the rug will be pulled out from under your feet when the next card is a king.
My favorite part of Ante design is that it acts as a great equalizer. No attribute in Huckleberry is a dump stat, because they are all targeted equally. Many games are strongly weighted towards dexterity and strength attributes because they contribute to higher defense and hit points. Huckleberry requires a character to successfully use all of their faculties to survive. Mavericks will regularly have their courage and intelligence tested along with their toughness and agility. You can be incredibly strong and nimble, but that only gets you so far if you’re susceptible to supernatural effects or lack situational awareness.
You've included Traits that come with both benefits and drawbacks (Aversions). Can you discuss the design process behind creating these trade-offs, and how they push players to think creatively about challenges?
Fun fact: early in Huckleberry’s design, I had a hard rule that traits could not have any drawbacks. A design goal has always been to empower players and I don’t want players to feel limited or frustrated by their choices made at character creation. As you have noticed, that eventually evolved to our current iteration where the rule is that traits can only have drawbacks when they create fun roleplay opportunities. In a strange way, calling Aversions a drawback now feels like a misnomer. I’ve started to view them as roleplaying fodder.
Most Aversions are added as quirks rather than mechanical punishments. Common Aversions include cold iron, holy ground, holy symbols, and salt. While these are common items and found almost everywhere, how often are they weaponized against players in a game? It’s interesting that Aversion mechanics are only applicable when taking injuries, but they’re more commonly referenced in the roleplay. Players special order their food without seasoning, feel fidgety around preachers, or avoid the chuckwagon with all of the cast iron pots and pans.
The harshest Aversion is likely the Ironclad’s. The Ironclad is a steampunk cyborg-like character and doesn’t need to eat or sleep, but is fueled daily by crude oil. As such, they are weak to fire, which appears often in Huckleberry’s combats. Two of my most popular playtesting scenarios feature fiery showdowns. Despite this, the Aversion has still created more roleplay opportunities than mechanical drawbacks.
It’s become a point of pride for me to see how often people incorporate these little hooks into their descriptions and actions. I believe the only reason it has been so successful is due to the mechanic not actually limiting a player’s actions. The Damned are still capable of meting out death in a church and Ironclads are no less formidable in a burning hayloft. Instead, Aversions become an interesting decision point. “Do I want to push my luck when my Aversion is nearby?” Usually the answer is “yes” and players enjoy having the stakes raised.
The game uses a system of Injury tiers (Minor, Moderate, Major) which can lead to a Dying state. What inspired the design decision to make death a delayed process, and how have you seen the Deal with the Devil mechanic function as a narrative tool to create more interesting stakes?
I describe Huckleberry’s combat as cinematic for two reasons. The first is that players are capable of performing feats you would normally only see in a movie. The second is that players are the protagonists of the “film”. Main characters die more frequently in westerns than other film genres, but they rarely die instantly. A gun in the hands of a mortally wounded hero is still deadly.
Dying is another one of Huckleberry’s “push your luck” mechanics. When you’re first laid low, the game master randomly determines how long you’ve got to live. You can continue to perform actions for as long as you want, at the cost of speeding up that ticking clock. Do you risk going all out in a fight and hope to see the boss taken down? Do you ease off the gas and hope to fight another day? Only when the fight is finished is the time remaining revealed. If your time hit zero, you say your last words and die out, surrounded by your friends and hopefully on a field of victory. If you’ve got still some time, you high tail it back to town and hope the doc has steady hands.
When making a design choice, I often favor the option that gives players the most agency. In this case, I want players to be able to have some control over how and when they die. Of course, near death experiences still take a toll on characters. Mavericks gain a “scar” whenever they recover from being on death’s door. Too many scars and the character rides off into the sunset, hanging up their six shooters for good. Perhaps they take over the local saloon to regale new Mavericks with their tales from the old days. If a player knows that one more scar will cause their character to retire, they find themselves with a hard choice the next time they are laid low. How do they want their story to end?
Big Irons are heavily customizable weapons of any ilk wielded by the PCs. How did you ensure that the modification system remained flexible and intuitive without becoming too complex or overwhelming, given the number of available options?
Choosing Big Irons is probably the most daunting part of character creation. There’s over a dozen different types of weapons, most of which have three or more “mods” that players can customize them with. The revolver alone has 10 mods to choose from! An improved “onboarding” process during character creation might happen in the future- likely with starter packs of pre-picked gear.
Big irons were designed with character advancement in mind. The choices are better made when players understand the system and what style of character they want to play. For that reason, players can’t afford most of the bells and whistles when making characters. You’ll likely buy a two base Big Irons or a Big Iron with one mod. The options really begin to open up as you complete more bounties and earn more chips. One of Huckleberry's strengths is that character progression focuses on giving you new tools and specializations rather than massive power increases. Mavericks can push themselves to take down tougher foes in the late game, but enemies from the early game will always pose a threat.
Given that Pastimes offer a way to develop characters and the Hole-in-the-Wall (PCs sort of home base or hometown), how do these activities help connect the game to the narrative?
Pastimes ground players to the world. In a game where you fight hordes of zombies afflicted with tuberculosis or book passage on steamboats down hellish rivers, there needs to be a change of pace that reminds players of the regular folk they’re fighting to protect. At the core of the game, the attachment to their home pushes the Mavericks forward.
Pastimes also give a bit of breathing room to the main story. How many campaigns have you played where characters go from amateur adventurers to god-like heroes over the course of a year or two of play, but in-game it has only been a couple of weeks? Western stories often follow the pattern of a day or two of intense conflict followed by long stretches where life continues as normal. That’s the style of campaign Huckleberry seeks to emulate. Bounties are not the regular day-to-day life of a Maverick–that’s covered by Pastimes.
Pastimes are the scenes where characters get to show off another side of themselves. Who are you when you’re not carrying your six-shooter? What does your character do for fun? How do they treat people on a daily basis? These may not seem like the most action-packed moments, but they’re the ones that stick with you long after a campaign finishes.
Wealth has a direct impact on how often Mavericks can use Kits. How does this mechanic make Wealth meaningful, and what type of narrative and gameplay choices are you encouraging through the way it is designed?
I mentioned previously how progression in Huckleberry focuses on gaining new specializations and acquiring new tools for your toolbag. Wealth determines how big that bag can be and consequently how many problems you can help solve on a bounty. Wealth also determines how many “calling cards” a character has, which is a mechanic that encourages roleplay through the use of sentimental items. In a mechanical sense, Wealth is designed to unlock more creative problem solving in-game.
From a roleplay perspective, Wealth gives players a clear understanding of how they financially interact with the world. The idea is to skip the chores and get to the action. A Maverick can order a shot of whiskey without needing to tally their cash or track fiddly exchange rates. Wealth informs players on a number of things, from how they dress to what they eat and drink to how the world views them, ultimately removing an administrative barrier from roleplay.
A downtime activity that players can choose to pursue is “Investin’”, which allows Mavericks to invest in their hometown to increase their wealth tier. This creates infinite opportunities to explore the world and its inhabitants. In one of my campaigns, a player decided she wanted to open a hat shop with her investment. We created an NPC employee, described the location and building, and that player became firmly hooked in seeing the world become a safer and better place. Of course I then immediately posted a bounty where decapitated bodies began showing up in the wilderness with clues pointing to a monster that developed a taste for brains. With the town’s hat industry at stake, my group of Mavericks had never been more motivated!
How does the Legend Trait system promote character progression and specialization and how does it incentivize players to really engage with their Big Irons?
Legend traits are your capstone abilities. It is the trait that takes the longest to acquire, so by the time it's unlocked, you have developed a playstyle. Then you take the trait that best allows you to capitalize on that playstyle and amplify your strengths. Legends are easily the biggest power jump your character can gain after creation and introduce a whole new dynamic when the whole party finally gains them.
Most Legend traits are tied to a specific Big Iron or category of Big Irons. For example, “Do It Again” gives raises to characters for repeatedly targeting a hostile with a repeater rifle. That gun that you’ve grown so fond of and modified exactly to your liking? Well now you’ve got the skill to use it to its fullest potential. Legends are the culmination of every choice you make when building your character. It truly elevates you to “legendary” status in the Wyrd Frontier. Mavericks are capable of doing things most folk would find impossible. Legends are capable of doing things most Mavericks would find impossible.
Not only do Legend traits allow you to maximize the effects of your Big Iron, but they also promote coordination and teamwork within your group. Huckleberry really sings when players work together and many Legend traits are designed to facilitate that. The Tactician, for instance, allows you to spend an Ace to mark a target. Everyone else receives an additional Ace when they hit the marked target, encouraging focused fire and building momentum.
The game encourages players to use their Calling Cards for one Sleeved Ace per session. How does the addition of these possessions enrich the roleplaying and personalize the Mavericks?
I’m quite proud of Calling Cards. I think they’re a simple, yet elegant mechanic and they’ve led to some of my favorite roleplay moments in Huckleberry. Outside of lucky rolls, players have only 2 reliable sources of creating Aces: Calling Cards and personality traits. Calling Cards are the sentimental or personal items iconic to your character, which is why they have the opportunity to show up every session. Examples in media would be The Man with No Name’s poncho, Zorro’s mask, or Sherlock Holmes’ pipe.
It was an intentional choice to tie both methods of Ace creation to roleplaying. Aces are a powerful mechanical reward offered at the low price of buying into the narrative. It is a self-moderating system where players can claim the Aces on their own without prompting or approval from the GM. Huckleberry is designed with the assumption that Mavericks receive these Aces as often as possible, allowing for players to redeem their Aces freely. It’s another place where I’ve tried to offload some work from the GM to the player.
Calling Cards can be used at any time, even mid-roll if the player can justify it, delivering a clutch Ace the moment you need it. You’ll notice a recurring theme that Huckleberry wants to give players more agency in their dice rolls. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that you can’t fail a roll in Huckleberry, because you can and you will. But where the game undoubtedly shines is by allowing players to decide “this is my moment,” and then by giving them the tools to make it a BIG moment.
Combat uses an abstract, cinematic system with Simple and Complex Actions rather than a more tactical, grid-based approach. Have you seen any trade-offs when choosing this level of abstraction?
Huckleberry’s combat started with a bit more crunch, but as development progressed, many of those rules were stripped. I continually asked myself “Does this make the game more fun?” Ultimately I decided that less was more. Rules can be a barrier at times. The more rules you have, the harder it is to achieve fast and cinematic combat, which has always been Huckleberry’s goal. I want to encourage both players and GMs to get creative during a fight and you can’t do that when a game’s mechanics, not roleplay, are at the forefront of your mind.
Our Raise and Bust system allows for easy adjudication during a fight and encourages players to jockey for an advantage by utilizing the terrain around them. Combat becomes a discussion and shared narration rather than a series of stating spell and ability names. I’ve also found that players are more willing to interact with the world when it’s not aligned to a grid. I love when a player asks me if there is a kerosene lamp nearby–I’ll always say yes. If nothing is burning at the end of a session, what are we even doing here??
The biggest trade-off is that there’s always an element of confusion when a game plays with theater of the mind. Players can forget their positioning and GMs have more to keep track of. It’s too easy for fights in any system, tactical or abstract, to end up feeling like they’re taking place in the white room of the Matrix. That’s part of the reason I created the Ante system. If I can take some of the strategic workload off of the GM, it will provide more bandwidth to bring the scene to life.
The other concern with abstract combat is what you lose in mechanical choice you need to replace with narrative choice. If every fight becomes a mindless trading of blows, players will get bored in a few sessions. I looked to NuSR as an example of how lightweight games can still be infinitely replayable. Many NuSR games don’t offer many player options in a fight. Usually you have your primary weapon and maybe one more ability. What keeps the game fun and interesting is the adventure design. Dangerous locations, engaging combat objectives, criteria for success other than “kill them all”... these solutions offer the best variety to your game. Of course, there’s so much to get into here. Adventure design is a topic that could fill a post all on its own.
The Hostiles section includes a variety of creatures with different Aversions, Indemnities, and unique Traits. How did you design these enemies to encourage players to adapt their tactics instead of just relying on the same approach each time?
It’s a tough balance, to be honest. Huckleberry encourages players to become attached to their Big Irons and it can be frustrating when your favorite gun is made less effective. The process is made even more difficult when GMs can have wildly different playstyles as well. There’s a lot of variables to consider.
The choice I settled on was to give players easy access to a variety of gear. A Maverick can carry 2-3 weapons that all deal different types of damage. They can also acquire gear that temporarily or permanently changes their weapons damage. For example, a knife can be modded with a silvered edge and a gun can benefit from kits like express, explosive, or salt rounds that all change how it works for a single scene.
Characters usually end up specializing in a certain damage type with another couple options to fall back on. With a group of 3-4 players, you’ll always have someone ready to target an enemy’s weakness. In this way, combat becomes not a question of “how do we kill it?” but more “who’s turn is it to shine?”. Some players will naturally be equipped for the fight, others will mark off a Kit to say “Good thing I brought my silver bullets”, and the rest will need to improvise.
I’ve done my best to create a game that encourages teamwork and synergy in the party. Characters are meant to support each other, with default actions allowing them to do so. If you come up against a creature that is resistant to your attacks, you can switch to a support role, offering advantages to your allies. In the next fight, the roles will shift again and you might be the one dealing all the damage. The Wyrd is fickle, after all.
Huckleberry is an early access game, and feedback from playtesters is important. What specific feedback are you most interested in receiving from players? What was one of the biggest changes you’ve made to the game due to player feedback?
Any and all feedback is appreciated. Tell me what you like and tell me where you felt friction; it’s all useful and helps shape the future of the game. Tell me what you think is missing and could be added to the final book. Tell me which monsters were the most fun to fight. I especially love hearing stories about how it played at the table. What type of story was Huckleberry able to help you tell?
The biggest change I’ve made so far was to increase the difficulty of the game. Wyrd dice didn’t decrease nearly as often as they do now, meaning you now take more injuries as the bounty progresses. This has the added benefit of building in a natural pace for scenarios, reinforcing the “push your luck” playstyle I was discussing before.
What are your future plans for Huckleberry?
We have so much in store for this year and beyond. Huckleberry is a game I will support for as long as people keep showing up. We’re already releasing monthly scenarios so that every game can start with a fully packed bounty board. We just dropped a free quickstart, bundled with pre-generated characters. In addition, a full bounty will be bundled with the quickstart (also for free) in the next week or so. It'll be everything you need for an evening of Huckleberry! We’ve also just added two new chapters to our corebook in a major update.
In about six months or so, after a few more updates like this week’s, Huckleberry will be out of Early Access and become a full release. After the digital version is finalized, we’ll launch a crowdfunding campaign to print the book. We’ve already had a lot of requests for print copies, which is currently available as PDF only. But I would hate for a supporter to feel burned by buying a physical book only to have another update drop shortly after. Simply put, we’re updating the game too often to ethically offer a print edition right now, but it’s coming very soon! And if the print run goes well… Then the sky’s the limit!
Huckleberry links:
Huckleberry Early Access in PDF (DrivethruRPG)
Huckleberry Free Quickstart in PDF (DrivethruRPG)