"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”
- Confucius

A couple of weeks backs I ran a playtest of 6 Bullets for Matt and Gregor. I already gave Andy some detailed feedback on the session. In summary we stumbled through one scene – it didn't play well at all. After the game Matt left and Gregor ran a quick game of S/Lay with Me for the two of us. SLwM proved a great little game. Afterward I brutally hacked 6 Bullets, inspired by S/Lay with Me. Yes I did say hacked and in this case the term is appropriate! I have attached my modification for reference.

So last Monday, with Russ rejoining our group, we opted to give my hack a go. In short, we got through the whole story, there were some great moments and characters. It worked a lot better than last time but there seem to be fundamental flaws in the game's structure and treatment of the central premise.

By far and away the best change I made was providing a list of Wild West nicknames from which the protagonist and antagonists were chosen. This really helped get past that mental block of coming up with a character from nothing.

We began with chapter 6, a railway station confrontation between The Kid (Russ) and Old Man Crow (Matt). After some verbal sparring, Russ won the dice roll (I think) and opted to become the antagonist. This also gave him a Revelation - 'Betsy (Kid's sister, Crow's wife) is dead, with a bullet in her brain – looks like suicide.'

From there we cut back to Chapter 5, leaving the battle between Kid and Crow as a cliff-hanger. Gregor became The Governor, moustachioed marshal murderer, the first in a stream of antagonists to be slain by the watchmaker Old Man Crow. Razorback, Snake, Red Jenny and Doc followed the Governor to Hell (well arrived before him I suppose). Most of the revelations focused on Kid and Crow's relationship to Betsy. Quite often the revelations felt a bit flat – again it was difficult to see the point of them after the first and before the prologue. A lot of the revelations just emphasised something that had already been established in the fiction of the chapter.

Then we got to the prologue – a rigged court case 'proving' Betsy and Boyd (The Kid) were not siblings and so could get married.

Finally we flashed forward to the climactic battle between Boyd and Crow. This was pretty cool, lots of nice set pieces until Crow mowed The Kid down with a Gatling gun. A decisive finale but ultimately unsatisfying play experience.

The problem we found with chapters 5 – 1, is that they are all essentially the same. Every one had Crow meeting the antagonist for the first time and then getting into some sort of confrontation with them and eventually the antagonist dies. These scenes are a mish mash and don't really do anything in terms of adding to the story or the tension. There is no need for more than 3 antagonists. Some way of building and making it a rising tale of vengeance would be preferable rather than the flat scene to scene killing.

A story playing out backwards and a tale about revenge are both interesting conceits but they do not play well together. The essence of a revenge story is that you need to know what the protagonist is seeking revenge for in order to explore what vengeance can do to a person. In both Memento and Kill Bill, you get the reason for vengeance long before the climax of the tale. Hamlet's agonizing is so powerful because we see he understands both the reasons for revenge and the darkness that it will usher in.

Authority to narrate/reveal was a big problem too, it hampered role-playing in the scenes.

We told a story, despite the system and chapter structure not because of it, in all honesty we would have been better free forming it.

What's the game about?
In 6 Bullets it says: " Six Bullets for Vengeance is about revenge. It is about a single-minded quest for vengeance, and what such an all-consuming quest can do to a person."

How is it about that? / How do the mechanics support what the game is about?
There is no way to address what an all consuming quest can do to a person – there's nothing for the protagonist to lose and nothing for the antagonists to play for. The determinism bleeds out any tension.

What it's about currently is six folks getting killed by some dude and a whole lot of ret-conning.

Perhaps a more tactical exchange between protagonist and antagonist would help make the confrontations more exciting?