GUN COWBOY

You are doing coin tricks in the rain.

GUN COWBOY is a journaling game for one player about a dead outlaw at the end of a long career. They may not know they are dead, but they are. Once, they had a gang, a posse, a crew — that's gone now, and only they (and their gun) remain. They will burn themselves up until they are nothing but bones and dust.

GUN COWBOY uses a tarot-inspired oracle deck and a coin-toss resolution mechanic to drag you slowly down into the dust, and leave you there. In order to play, you'll need this rulebook, a deck of cards, a journal, and at least one coin large enough to flip. I'm a fan of silver dollars, but quarters will do just fine.

GUN COWBOY was written by Che. It was inspired by too many things to count, but I have a great fondness for the book Blood Meridian, the Red Dead Redemption video game series, and the movie The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford.

GUN COWBOY is a tragedy, and will end in your unhappy fate. It is a game about the inevitable result of a life of violence, the return-on-investment of the violence which continues to define the united states. Content warnings for some talk of death and violence, genocide and settler colonialism, and one description of a decaying skeleton.

-Che, March 11, 2022