Weird West: Characters and magic in Outgunned Adventures

 Following up on my article about using Broken Compass for the Weird West setting, here’s one on using its sibling game engine, Outgunned Adventures for the same thing. I only currently have the core OA book, and its supplements so far focus on modern action genres, so we have less to adapt than with BC. Out of the core book, all of the Roles and Tropes are appropriate and only need some thematic tweaking to make work in an alternative wild west world; The ‘Ace’ being more about horses, carriages, and trains than automobiles and airplanes. This may impact some Talents and they should be adjusted accordingly.

Gifted characters

While baseline characters in Outgunned Adventures are a combination of a Role and a Trope,  heroes in the Weird West get a third choice for their Gift. This identifies the nature of their magical power plus Feats, Attributes and Skills to support the choice. Every type of magic is empowered by an Feat relevant to that type of magic: “Elementalism” for an Elementalist, “Enchantment” for an Enchanter, “Shifter” for a polymorph, etc. With this initial acquisition, the character gains 3 Mana points, which are used and regained as outlined in the “What If” supplement for Broken Compass. 

If you don’t have “What If” here’s the skinny on Mana: Treat your Mana pool as a Magazine with 3 starting uses. An additional Feat called “Mana” can be acquired multiple times, each of which adds one more Mana point to the character’s pool. Adrenaline and Grit can be spent instead of Mana on a 1:1 cost. 

Small common uses of magic don’t cost Mana but big impressive and flashy uses should. To borrow a term from Burning Wheel: "Color" scenes uses of magic that don't invoke dice rolls don't cost Mana. If you're using magic to get a mechanics benefit, you're spending Mana. Some uses of magic should last an entire scene: a shifter who turns into a bear for an entire fight should only spend one Mana for that entire fight. If they shift into a different form for a different benefit during the scene, that requires another Mana expenditure. 

You recover all your spent Mana when you get a Time-Out (pg 184 of OA); this takes one of your Time-Out actions. Items like “Mana Potions” restore 1 Mana each immediately and can be consumed/used during an action scene with a Basic action.

Your choice of magical Gift also grants +1 FOCUS Attribute point and one Skill point based on the type of GIFT you have.

Magical GIFT: Talent:        +1 Skill:

ELEMENTALIST Elementalism    Force

SHAMAN Shamanism       Leadership

SHIFTER Shifting        Survival

STORMTECH Electrotech Fix

DIVINE FAITH Faith Heal

PLANESWITCH Witchcraft      Survival

ALCHEMIST Alchemy         Know

ENCHANTER Enchantment Stunt

HEXORCIST Exorcist Awareness

ARCANIST Arcane Know

“I want to cast Fireball!”

So how do heroes use their magic? Characters use their magic to give them an opportunity for action that they wouldn’t otherwise have without their magic; the difficulty of the challenge depends on how applicable their approach is to the situation. Skill rolls are still made with a dice pool of their relevant Attribute and Skill. Throwing a fireball? Roll NERVES + Shoot. Turning into a Bear will give you a bonus to your BRAWN + Fight dice pools.