|Hexslinger at work, just a hexin' and a shootin' the ever-livin' shit outta things.|
In gaming you really have 3 choices: Class-based, Classless, some unholy hybrid of Class-based and Classless. Most Class-based gaming is of the type I like to call "Classed Scaling Leveling" (CSL) gaming. In such gaming the player chooses from a set of classes, which are really packages of skills, traits, abilities, etc. and then as they play the characters "level up" through gameplay getting better at a set rate of improvement. The Original game (OD&D) and the bulk of every game since then, including nearly all MMOs, are CSL games. Classes provide the player with a set framework for advancement and improvement and provide a predictable measure of "success" within the game framework.
Classless games are generally what I call Skill-based Freeform (SbF) games and offer advancement through player choices and increasing difficulty skill improvement. Such games may have something akin to class requirements for magic or technology, but it is not required. Unholy hybrids of CSL and SbF are just that: unholy and hybrids. Essentially Unholy Hybrids allow players to create whatever they want but have structured frameworks for specific concepts.
As humans given unrestricted options are often overwhelmed, it is not uncommon for Classless games to offer some sort of template or archetype upon which the player can base their character. Templates and archetypes are also great for "quick play" options to get a new player right into the game with minimal fuss. Since most templates and archetypes are based on popular tropes they just come naturally to people.
Back in the 90s PEGinc published a book for Deadlands called Law Dogs which had all sorts of information on playing officers of the law, bounty hunters, banditos, and something new called a Hexslinger. Now one of the popular issues in RPG and MMO gaming is something called "balance" which is a strange chimera that I am not going to go into at this juncture (but might one day if the mood takes me) except to say that the general notion of balance is that if one guy (class) has lots of strength and armor and weapons then he isn't allowed to cast spells and if another guy (class) can blow things up with a fireball he isn't allowed to wear armor or swing swords. Deadlands was/is a classless SbF, basically, so the balance is generally maintained by the fact that you can't afford to be good at everything. True min/maxers will never sacrifice points that could go into their main abilities; good role players often will.
Deadlands, like many classless games, used archetypes to aid the players in designing characters. Deadlands also used a pseudo-class system with regard to what it called "Arcane Backgrounds" which was where all these Hucksters and Blessed and Weird Scientists came from. The Hexslinger was a new type of Arcane Background introduced in Law Dogs that worked, essentially, as Hucksters but focused their magic on gunfighting. Hexslingers could use all the normal Huckster hexes and even had a few new ones (which Hucksters could learn too, I should add) that were associated with gunfighting. Hexslinger hexes including hexes for reloading your gun, making magic bullets, not getting hit as much, quick-drawing and the like. The practical upshot of all this was that in a game where you were not likely to find magical guns you could play a gunslinger that could make his own magical bullets. That's pretty neat.
|If you are not a gamer this picture will not make much sense to you.|
|And that's what backlash will do for you.|
|Just a "regular old" Huckster, I'm afraid.|
And why shouldn't they? Guns are cool. Magic is cool. Guns that shoot magical bullets wielded by wizards is not just twice as cool, it is cool squared! (cool X cool = freakin' awesome) I'm thinking about it really hard right now and I am still not able to think of anything cooler th...wait...yes, I've got it...Hexslinger riding a T-Rex! Just shooting and eating everything they see.
I have to say, I sort of miss that guy. The standard Huckster gets shown throwing cards a lot, which is fine if you are a Cajun mutant thief that hangs out with the spandex crowd, but gets a bit blase after a while. Now a wizard with a six-gun, that's worth the price of admission.