Lots of love for hidden Community references!
This hack seems up to the task of hacking FIST to work in the "unsettled" American West. Fun new traits, a quality grounded-to-ungrounded (in a good way) adventure involving a train heist, and some new mechanics.
The Reload mechanic added for firearms seems a bit strange to me, but it's possible I'm just not understanding it - if a character's gun runs dry, they reload a die-amount of cartridges (weapon dependent) before the situation changes and they're forced to do something besides finishing the reload. But now they (immediately) have a live gun again, and (in my experience) they weren't going to repeatedly roll +FRC while the baddies stand around gawking even if they had infinite rounds in the chamber. "You made a roll, now the situation is going to change" plays out whether the reload die is used or not, and from the example text it seems like (partial) reloads happen as a matter of course, so I don't see how it changes the flow of play. Maybe if they roll a one it shifts their narrative options in a massive, town wide free for all?
Again, I think I'm probably just missing something here. I do dig the scenario, new traits, and mission, so even if I'm not off-base with my hesitation to use the reload mechanic I see some real value for Wild Wild West / Kung Fu / Aliens and Cowboys mashups.
Viewing post in ACES, for FIST jam comments
Thanks for the review! And I'm glad someone got my community reference :). The idea of the reload mechanic is that it attempts to keep the action coming nonstop, so much so that the PCs barely even have time to reload before the next crazy thing happens. It also kind of incentivizes a risk reward system where maybe a PC decides to keep on moving with fewer guns and go into the next scenario with the upper hand, rather than reloading and immediately being in a bad situation. I do admit though it's a little clunky and unfortunately i didn't get the time to properly playtest this zine, so I don't know if my ideas translate well to the table. Thanks again for the comment!