I'm planning to set my Coyote Trail campaign in the second half of the 1860s rather  than the 1870s and using the Straddle Country supplement. I was thinking  1867 or '68.
The Black Hills gold rush hadn't started yet, but from  what I read there was plenty of mining going on in Montana at the time,  both for gold and silver. The colt peacemaker had not been developed  yet, most if not all revolvers were still cap and ball.

What other  things can you think of that I should take into account? Would it make  sense to move Shady Gulch to Montana for this?

Also, is there a historical atlas available that covers only the Old West era? I have a couple of text books that are helpful but I could definitely use some nice maps! Any recommendations?

Remember, gold mining and the "rush" has been in full swing since the late 1840's - not just in California.  Montana is just fine, though there might be a strong sense of isolation.

It's hard to find maps of exactly what you need.  It took me a long time to find a map of Indian Territory in precisely 1875.  I ended up using one from '65 and Photoshopping a "7" in place of the "6".  It's not exact, as by '75 the Indian Territory was more compacted and had more tribe in it than this map suggests - but is certainly serviceable and to be honest, our other "history" buff in the group doesn't realize it's anachronistic.

In practice, there are very few players who are history buffs.  Any perceived anachronism that arises you can chalk up to "the vagaries of history".  In a pinch, draw up your own map like you would in any other game...I ended up doing this on a smaller scale than the general state map - "this here's Texas, and all up this border is the Indian Territory.  Now take a look at this closer map..."

I did find some nice maps on this site:

http://www.davidrumsey.com/

It has several maps from 1866, '67 and '69 that show Montana and you can zoom to get quite a bit of detail.

I am aware that you can only go so far when it comes to adding historical detail to your game and your gamers usually won't notice anachronisms. I am however looking to add a certain feel to my western setting that historically seems to fit around that time: the civil war is over and sort of out of the way, there's still plenty of opportunity for encounters with free-roaming Plains Indians, cap and ball revolvers and the northern setting will make sure players don't assume they're walking into a spaghetti western.

By the way, here's what the same site turns up when searching for 1875 Oklahoma/Indian Territory, not sure if it's of any use:
Oklahoma 1875

I'm curious why Montana?

In the late 1860's, you had dirt farmers, gamblers, buffalo hunters spreading out north & south of the transcontinental railroad. The wagon trains to Colorado, Oregon, Santa Fe were in full swing. Cattle drives from south Texas to the Kansas rail heads were moving. Dispossed southerners were fleeing the yankee carpet baggers who took over the south with the Army's help.

On precious metals, the Central City/Blackhawk area west of Denver was getting into full swing. Likewise, Cripple Creek west of Colorado Springs.  Farther south, Trinidad/Raton was still going strong after a hundred years of mining, and it was spreading southwest to Red River, NM. Gold hunting was going on all over the west. But money was being made in ranching and railroading.

The Rumsey collection is a godsend! I use it all the time! I set a Western game in Montana once, ran for about six sessions. One of the few times I didn't have to run some cockamamie alpha test of some stupid game I wrote! It was in the 1880s, though, and not a mining town. One of my players put his finger blind on a map, and that's where we set the game. Was a lot of fun, too!

-clash

Quote from: BillDowns;485074I'm curious why Montana?

(...)

For those unfamiliar with Coyote Trail, the Straddle County supplement deals with a set of twin towns just south of the Montana-Canadian border. I'd like to use that setting as a starting point. Also, the sense of isolation mentioned by Blackhand appeals to me; the absence of any railroads at the time (IIRC) would add to that.

I'd also like to use the Shady Gulch setting but since the Black Hills gold rush hadn't started yet, was wondering if that town could be moved into 1860s Montana without changing anything. I'd probably have to change the fact that it's an illegal settlement?

The whole conflict with different Indian groups concerning the Bozeman Trail seems like an exciting backdrop. There's cattle runs into Montana and cattle being distributed to the mining settlements.

I'm not from the US nor have I ever visited, and Old West history is not exactly part of the general curriculum taught in school here, so all I have to go by is info from books, internet and western films. I am using:

RPG:
Coyote Trail Expanded
Coyote Trail: Straddle County
GURPS Old West
Knuckleduster Cowtown Creator
Knuckleduster Firearms Shop (this seems to be getting rare)

non-RPG:
The Illustrated Directory of the Old West
The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the Wild West from 1840-1900
Historical Atlas of the American West

I don't really want a whole shelf filled with Old West reference materials so I had hoped this would be enough. This looks like it might be interesting, though.

Quote from: HombreLoboDomesticado;485070I did find some nice maps on this site:

http://www.davidrumsey.com/

It has several maps from 1866, '67 and '69 that show Montana and you can zoom to get quite a bit of detail.

I am aware that you can only go so far when it comes to adding historical detail to your game and your gamers usually won't notice anachronisms. I am however looking to add a certain feel to my western setting that historically seems to fit around that time: the civil war is over and sort of out of the way, there's still plenty of opportunity for encounters with free-roaming Plains Indians, cap and ball revolvers and the northern setting will make sure players don't assume they're walking into a spaghetti western.

By the way, here's what the same site turns up when searching for 1875 Oklahoma/Indian Territory, not sure if it's of any use:
Oklahoma 1875

Nice maps of Oklahoma!  Thanks!

One more thing - remember your firearms history.  By this point in history, ball & caps are pretty much a thing of the past.  At the end of the Civil War, almost all weapons are cartridge revolver...but you might have ball & cap for a hand-me-down hunting rifle or revolver.

It's just a question of how complex the cartridge weapon is.

Using the Knuckleduster Firearms Shop and this list on Wikipedia I'd estimated that by 1867 cartridge revolvers hadn't become standard yet. I imagined the S&W Model 1, apparently the very first cartridge revolver, developed in 1857, becoming very popular, but it seems there was still plenty of reason to stick to caplock revolvers. 1869 saw the introduction of S&W Model 3 and by 1870 cartridges had become the norm.

Though I like old firearms I'm not very knowledgable about them. Anyone have an idea why you'd want to stick to cap and ball revolvers with a .22 (rimfire) cartridge revolver available? Reliability? Stopping power? Old habits? Cost?

That list is for cartridges themselves, not the actual weapons.

Cartridge weapons are pretty standard at the end of the Civil War, having been manufactured in their THOUSANDS.

What we think of as the modern cartridge was invented in France in 1836.  It was brass and paper, but still looked like what we think of as a "bullet".  All metal cartridges rose by the .22 short at the top of the list you gave, in 1857.  Meaning, those on that list are metal only cartridges and it's not entirely accurate.

From the wikipedia entry on "cartridge":

In the American Civil War (1861–65) a breechloading rifle, the Sharps, was introduced and produced in large numbers. It could be loaded with either a ball or a paper cartridge. After that war many were converted to the use of metal cartridges. The development by Smith & Wesson (amongst many others) of revolver handguns that used metal cartridges helped to establish cartridge firearms as the standard in the USA by the 1870s although many continued to use percussion revolvers well after that.

Revolvers would be more common as percussion cap (ball & cap), but remember it was Sharps and Henry rifles that pretty much won the war.

The closer you get to 1870, the more prevalent cartridges are, though they may not be metal jackets.  However, if they aren't metal jackets, you're slightly behind on tech.

That is, if your campaign is set anywhere in the United States.  Elsewhere in the world, maybe not so much.

Also, there are much larger caliber rimfires and percussion caps available.  We're talking .45 and .50 caliber handguns.

For our club's World of Darkness western setting, I had to put together a list of weapons, their stats and introduced a "tech" level to show where the weapons were inside my campaign, which is set a few years ahead of yours in 1875.  You can still see how the weapons compared using the tech levels, here.  It's close enough to use for your campaign, though some of the special repeating rifles might not be widespread yet.

Thanks for clearing it up a bit more. I did check what weapon the  cartridges in the list were for. I had read that (paper) cartridge rifles were already pretty common, but I was referring to cartridge revolvers specifically.

If I want to be out of the civil war yet not fully into the metal  cartridge revolver era, I guess I'll have to go for 1866 or '67, rather  than '68 or '69.

It still seems strange that the S&W Model 1 wasn't more common by then. Perhaps indeed the small calibre wasn't to everybody's liking.

That's a nice weapons list you came up with there. The Firearms Shop  has a nice selection of firearms, both common and  exotic/unusual/ridiculous, organized by production date. I'll just stick  to that since Coyote Trail is directly compatible with it and it  looks pretty accurate. A date of production doesn't always give you an  idea of how available or common a gun or cartridge was at any point in  time but most guns have a bit of information with them.

Living in Montana as we speak.  

I hear this thing every morning on the radio called "History on the go".  Pretty informative of things that went on in the past.  Also took a trip to a ghost town back on Labor Day.  

The thing with Montana that works well for your game is that you can get away with just about anything.  You want cap and ball...no problem!  There's going to be people here that used them.  There's going to be black powder, muzzle loading rifles.  There's going to be more modern rifles from some of them city-slickers from back east coming over.  There's going to be Indians and cattle drivers and cattle rustlers.  There WAS, and certainly could be more, a lot of vigilante justice in Montana.  There were hangings galore, both by the law and by gangs of vigalantes that got together when they thought the law had failed them.  There were corrupt lawmen and just ranchmen.

You've got the U.S. Cavalry just getting into the area fighting against the indians, so you've got your nice, "stable" areas around the forts and the more lawless areas in between gold rush towns.  You've got relative stability in the gold rush towns, but swindlers and shiners would drift into those towns to try to get a piece of the wealth.

So moving it to Montana isn't a bad thing at all, and allows for you to have quite a range of weaponry.  If you were back east, then a lot more of the weapons would be cartridge weapons (still black powder, but in cartridges).  Whereas in the "wild west" it can be anything.

I plan on taking the players to the south later on, probably even into Mexico, to give them some of the more familiar western tropes as well.

By the way, does anyone have any suggestions for (RPG) sources on Canada around 1866-67?

Quote from: HombreLoboDomesticado;485321By the way, does anyone have any suggestions for (RPG) sources on Canada around 1866-67?

Are you talking around the Montan region?  You're not going to find much.  Canada was in a bit of flux around the 1860s-1870s.  Most of the people were either over in the east (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the province of Canada -which eventually became Ontario and Quebec) or they were way over on the west coast in British Columbia and Vancouver Island.  You had the Hudson Bay Company with a lot of power, but in the central area there wasn't a lot of people or much in the way of power.  No railroad connecting the two sides, so they were pretty much divided between French and British sides.  Basically, they were struggling with becoming one entire nation of Canada instead of a bunch of different provinces in the Canadian area.

You also didn't have much in the way of established law.  The RCMP (the Mounties) didn't come into existance as a nationwide law enforcement agency until 1920.  Before that, one of the root groups the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (RNWMP) didn't exist until 1873 when things got really hard for people.  In the east, the other group that eventually became part of the RCMP was the Dominion Police, but they didn't come about until 1868 and we focused in Ottowa.  

So really, what was "Canada" was pretty open to interpretation until they really became Canada that we know in the 1870s.

I was indeed wondering about the part of Canada directly bordering on Montana and the border itself. Was there a more or less established northern border to the Montana territory at the time?

Quote from: HombreLoboDomesticado;485321I plan on taking the players to the south later on, probably even into Mexico, to give them some of the more familiar western tropes as well.

By the way, does anyone have any suggestions for (RPG) sources on Canada around 1866-67?

Nothing but a regular history of the Canadian west, unfortunately.

1867 is the year of Canada's confederation (when it became a country).

The territory to the north of Montana is British Columba, Alberta and Saskatchewan these days (mostly Alberta, IIRC). At the time, it is all Rupert's Land, the private domain of the Hudson's Bay Company. The HBC is one of those giant British megacorporations that ran pocket-states (actually the last surviving one in the modern day, IIRC). It issues its own money (in pounds sterling) and makes it own law. It's busy founding trading forts all over the place and protecting them with a private army composed of aboriginals, American ex-patriates, metis, Quebequois and anglos from Ontario. The trading forts are pretty lawless places at the best of times.

The Company is tolerant of the First Nations, so there's depressingly small waves of aboriginals fleeing the genocidaires back in America and settling in Canada under their protection. As they integrate into the Canadian tribes, things are becoming less stable, which will culminate in an outright civil war between Blackfoot and Cree in 1869. There are appeals to the Queen by the FNs to protect them from the Americans, though these are only somewhat successful (and then only insofar as they align with overall British policy towards America). The HBC does make a killing selling whiskey to them, which doesn't help anyone's temper. They also sell point blankets, which forms a distinct visual style of clothing and fabric in the West.

The metis are primarily based in Manitoba, but can be found across the plains. They are becoming more and more militant and self-aware of themselves as a distinct group within Canadian society. In 1869, they begin demanding recognition from the HBC and from Canada as a sovereign group deserving of representation.

Rupert's Land is split between pro-Canada and anti-Canada factions, with the Ontarian anglos forming the biggest bloc of pro-Canadians, and the metis forming the militant edge of the anti-Canada factions. The HBC governs Rupert's Land through the Council of Assiniboia (in Manitoba), which is only composed of white males and a handful of metis. They do allow Catholics, including the French, to serve, but the Council is appointed by the HBC, not elected.

Anti-French and anti-American sentiment is pretty strong. The previous year, several small armies of Irish-Catholic Americans invaded Canada and were repulsed in the Fenian invasions / raids of 1866. They will attempt again three years later, in 1870. The American government is also threatening Britain that it will invade Canada unless they are paid $2 billion pounds for supporting the Confederacy in the Civil War. One the founding purposes of Canada is to secure the provinces and territories against American & Fenian invasion. The Dominion is already discussing purchasing some or all of Rupert's Land from the HBC to assist in this process, which will begin in 1868.

To the west of Alberta, the southern end of British Columbia is "Columbia Territory", which is split along the 49th parallel into Oregon territory and Columbia properly. Columbia is a de facto protectorate of the HBC, though Vancouver hosts a very strong pro-Canada faction will will bring British Columbia into confederation in 1871.

That's the basics.