Just for ourselves me and some friends decided to make an RPG together (Just primarily as a project to work on as friends). We threw around ideas and settled on some kind of fantastical wild west setting. Different factions competing for largely untamed territories with conflicts with each other and the natives.
The idea would be to focus on being lawmen and investigators for these groups. So you got your traditional adventuring, but also mystery and intrigue.
Trying to think up ways to make the setting genuine to the feel, so we are trying to play off things in reality (such as invasive species).

What sort of ideas and suggestions could you give?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1132786Just for ourselves me and some friends decided to make an RPG together (Just primarily as a project to work on as friends). We threw around ideas and settled on some kind of fantastical wild west setting. Different factions competing for largely untamed territories with conflicts with each other and the natives.
The idea would be to focus on being lawmen and investigators for these groups. So you got your traditional adventuring, but also mystery and intrigue.
Trying to think up ways to make the setting genuine to the feel, so we are trying to play off things in reality (such as invasive species).

What sort of ideas and suggestions could you give?

Wild West or Weird West?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132790Wild West or Weird West?

I have not heard the term before. Well it would be in its own world. Not our world with magic but its own thing.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1132793I have not heard the term before. Well it would be in its own world. Not our world with magic but its own thing.

Weird West is what they call it when you mix in fantasy "races" and magic.

So it has magic and it's not our world, it really depends on how you want to handle the "discovery and settling" of the Wild West, brutal conquerors or not?

For a sorta novel take I would go with not, make the settlers refugees escaping from an evil empire that has conquered most of their continent. They come into a yet unknown land and encounter there other "races", then, if you want, the evil empire could follow the refugees and bum, you got conflict.

For a bit of flavor and inspiration you could grab any Wild West RPG you already own, or get an inexpensive one just for the flavor Blood & Bullets for instance

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132796So it has magic and it's not our world, it really depends on how you want to handle the "discovery and settling" of the Wild West, brutal conquerors or not?

Kinda going with a mix. The idea would be even kinda 'Pre-Wild West' as we know the general period. This is when multiple colonies existed at once before it even became a United Government. So you got fantasy france, fantasy britain, and fantasy china (for example) competing to claim this territory. With massive Battle-Trains and other anachronistic amped up elements. However these colonies do not have direct connections to their former states so more intrigue.

An idea would be instead of steampunk, drawing off 1920s futurism for the aesthetic type deal.


Some of the stuff this is drawing off, is the idea that Native Americans potentially had a more organized hierarchical civilization that just collapsed before the colonists arrived. So these natives maybe had their own maybe biotech, and then a plague had rendered most of it destroyed. However they might still have a few functional city-states.

I will admit I'm not super familiar with a ton of Western-inspired RPGs and in part I'm a bit concerned drawing too much inspiration from one thing and killing our groove as a result. At least this early. But what good ones would you suggest?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1132801Kinda going with a mix. The idea would be even kinda 'Pre-Wild West' as we know the general period. This is when multiple colonies existed at once before it even became a United Government. So you got fantasy france, fantasy britain, and fantasy china (for example) competing to claim this territory. With massive Battle-Trains and other anachronistic amped up elements. However these colonies do not have direct connections to their former states so more intrigue.

An idea would be instead of steampunk, drawing off 1920s futurism for the aesthetic type deal.


Some of the stuff this is drawing off, is the idea that Native Americans potentially had a more organized hierarchical civilization that just collapsed before the colonists arrived. So these natives maybe had their own maybe biotech, and then a plague had rendered most of it destroyed. However they might still have a few functional city-states.

I will admit I'm not super familiar with a ton of Western-inspired RPGs and in part I'm a bit concerned drawing too much inspiration from one thing and killing our groove as a result. At least this early. But what good ones would you suggest?

Already gave you one up of your comment.

Porting Steampunk into dieselpunk shouldn't be too difficult.

Westward is another option

Not free but a good source for inspiration and it has a steampunk weird annex Cowboy World Disclaimer: it's PbtA and I'm friends with the author and even got a little input on the Bandito and did some proof reading too.

Edited to add:

For inspiration about westerns and getting the feel of the setting I would recommend the for a few dollars trilogy, the unforgiven, and yes, the Wild Wild West.