Soon after TSR was formed by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye in late 1973, they and new business partner Brian Blume started development of the rules for a Western genre miniatures combat system and role-playing game called Boot Hill.

[1] Kaye in particular was an avid supporter of Boot Hill[2]—he was a fan of the Western genre, and even his fantasy D&D character, Murlynd, was dressed and armed as a cowboy after being magically transported from Gygax's Greyhawk campaign to an alternate universe set in the Wild West.

He found few substantive rule changes from the first edition, other than the addition of several appendices to the rulebook that included biographies of notable American gunfighters, suggested scenarios, and a method for transferring characters to and from other TSR roleplaying systems such as Dungeons & Dragons and Metamorphosis Alpha.

However, Freeman found that the game was ill-suited to larger battles, noting that "the playing time increases exponentially with the number of individual figures involved."

He concluded by giving the game an Overall Evaluation of "Good", saying, "A real campaign would severely test the judgement and resources of the referee and spirit of the players, but because the milieu is so familiar, 'dropping in for an occasional battle/scenario is a possibility.

"[10] In a retrospective review of Boot Hill in Black Gate, James Maliszewski said "Far from being disappointed, I was frankly amazed at how enjoyable the game was and found myself itching to continue playing, even after we'd set things aright in Brimstone.

"[11] A copy of the Boot Hill module Mad Mesa is held in the collection of the Strong National Museum of Play (object 110.1979).