Western Card Game

This is my idea for a Western Card Game, in response to Slugfest Games' Kung Fu Fighting . I love the game, but it runs to slow for a 2 player game, between 2 experienced players (the main way I've been playing it recently).

These are just thoughts, nothing concrete yet, but hopefully I can flesh these out, and form something concrete from it.

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"A simple card game, based on gunfights in the Wild West. Two decks, characters and event/item cards.


Character cards tell you a bit about the character, what speed they have (initiative), how much damage they do, etc. Event cards change the attack process, adding/removing damage, changing initiative, providing cover, etc. Item cards affect everything else: weapon change, calling for backup, effects attached to the enemy, etc.

Simple, quick battles, made for a quick 2 player game. Posse vs posse.

Four stats per character card: speed (how quick on the draw they are) (used for determining initiative/play order), damage (how badly they can hurt someone), health (how much damage they can take before dropping), and bounty (how much they're worth) (not used until end game).
Just like a bell curve, the higher/est and lower/est values for any of the 3 main stats (speed, damage and health) are rarer than the middle values. A character's bounty goes up with their stats, making the rarer characters more valuable.

Possible "still alive" mechanic: any character with more than 2 health at the end of a round regains all health before the next round, because he "survived" the last shoot out. Any character with 1 or 2 health is out of play, but your opponent can't collect a bounty on them (they survived so there's no bounty, they can't fight again because they're recuperating). (How do we balance out the higher health characters? No "still alive" if you have more than 7 health?)

Possible "double team" mechanic: a scrub can take on a pro and win, with luck (item/event cards), but a second shooter is a better advantage. More than one of your outlaws can face one of your opponent's outlaws, as long as the first one has lower stats. (Even if your second outlaw is better than the opponent's outlaw. Bait and switch/to the rescue tactics.)

Three rounds of battle, between at most 5 outlaws a round. With 30 characters (in a 2 player game), you have 3 rounds of 5 by 5 battle. Any of your opponent's outlaws you kill in battle count towards your bounty total. Players set out their outlaws and assign duels (outlaw vs outlaw), determine firing order, assign damage (playing event/item cards), then pickup live outlaws and collect bounties. Then refill both outlaw and event/item hands for next shootout.

Every character is an outlaw, with a bounty on their head. The law pays out bounties to criminals because it eliminates their workload."
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Google Books Coming Through!

It might not be the actual PHB, DMG, MM, etc, etc, but these should help provide some insight into Tabletop Role Playing Games in general: http://www.google.com/search?q=role+playing+games&tbm=bks&tbo=1&oq=role+playing .

And they're all free!!! :D