Used the 4s to move.

February 4, 1873: Day 33 of our journey. We arrived in Reno around midday. I delivered Griggs – who remained stoic as ever – to the authorities. The sheriff was surprised to see us a week early, especially as they have heard tell of some of the disasters I faced. However there is little point dwelling on that.

Posse: 3
Food: 7
Ammo: 6
Gold: 0
Items:
Compass (red 1s count as 2 moves).
Medicine/bandages (prevent all Posse loss from a single source, then discard).

Final score:
Arriving in Reno: 10 points.
Posse members: 3 @ 3 points each = 9.
Food: 7 points.
Arriving early: 7 points.
Gold: 0 points.
Ammo: 6 @ 1/2 a point each = 3.
TOTAL: 36 points.

Conclusion:
D6 Shooters is a pretty good game, with a couple of areas that could be improved.
Firstly, having a lot of people in your posse has a disadvantage, in that you use up more food. This is fine, but it seems like it should also make you better at fighting, and you’re not, since your score in shootouts is modified by your ammo score.

Secondly, the shootouts are a bit feeble. At worst it seems like you’ll lose three or four men. The situations where the Griggs gang attacks and you don’t oppose them (ie you end up with 6s but no unused 4s) even more so.

Therefore it seems like a good idea to make the following changes:

1. You add half your Posse (rounded up) instead of Ammo to your Shootout total.
2. There’s only one roll in a Shootout.
3. If you lose you take casualties equal to the difference in totals.
4. If the Griggs Gang attacks and you don’t fight, they roll their dice and you take casualties equal to the total.
5. If you have no ammo you can’t use 4s to fight the Griggs Gang.

A minor point was that it didn’t seem very realistic that the characters would take time out to pan for gold. For now I’m going to make a purely flavour change, from ‘gold’ to ‘furs’. Can anyone who knows more about the Old West than me tell me if this makes more sense? What animals were hunted particularly for their fur?

Future changes:

There are some other changes I’d like to put on hold until I’ve played at least a couple more games.

Having said that adding ammo to your Shootout score is unrealistic and too easy, I liked the situation where there was only me left, and I drove off the entire Griggs Gang. It was in keeping with Westerns. So I might make a rule in future that allows you to have a ‘moment of glory’ where you fight hard despite being outnumbered. However this would be once per game.

I’d like 2s and 3s (which now both represent hunting) to have a chance of reducing your ammo. This would mean that they’re not always an unmixed blessing.

The end of the game seemed quite anti-climactic. I’d like it if the game got harder as it went on, and even if there was a ‘final fight’ at the end. It makes sense that the Griggs Gang would make one last attempt to rescue their leader before Reno.