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ACES is a pulp wild west hack for FIST.

The PDF is 8 pages, with clean, readable layout, lots of white space, and some public domain illustrations.

Lore-wise, ACES takes place in the same general timeline as FIST, just much earlier. Mechanics-wise, ACES digs deeper into the minutia of combat and tracks things like ammunition and reloading.

ACES includes a variety of new Traits, with an expected western flavor. Some of them (such as Deadeye) really expect to be interacting with a revolver, and may go rogue if exposed to more modern firearms.

ACES also includes a sample mission, which is eerily similar to the first mission of Hard West II? It also doesn't have an explicit end-point, and feels a little like it needs something to tie it together.

The supplement finishes with a mission generator, which is fun and thematic, and includes a card-drawing system for adding random encounters and complications.

Overall, if you want to play some western style FIST, this is a great place to start. It also feels like a very solid foundation to expand on. Bullet tracking opens up new possibilities for Traits and encounters. Reloading incentivizes melee combat. I think there's room for ACES to spin off into its own core system, and I'd love to see it develop further.

(+1)

Thank you for the review! I have never played Hard West 2, but I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of a super wierd train heist. And I do agree with you about the mission not being too tied together. Unfortunately that is the product of running out of space and time to submit for the jam.

All good! Time limitations affected my own submission, and I definitely don't want to urge anyone to overscope. I would absolutely like to see more ACES content, though. It's a cool spin on FIST, and I'd love to see it develop further.

As for the mission in Hard West II, it's beat-for-beat identical, right down to when enemies spawn and when the train wormholes to another realm, which made me wonder if it was the inspiration. What happens after the wormhole is different between the two games, and honestly I like ACES better.