Quote from: Doc Sammy;1038838I've considered doing a crossover of Boot Hill and AD&D in a nostalgic Western with fantasy elements, firmly rooted in old-school fantasy and Wild West Americana tropes.

If you are interested in the setting developments I have made so far, send me a PM. You might actually like it.

I'm trying to figure out how to find Sent Private Messages. I sent one to Pundit the other day outlining something I have been working on, and if I can retrieve the post I sent, I'll resend it to you. I'm slowly working on something that is starting as a map of Fantasy Southern Alberta circa 1900ish called Sunalta, which is an alternate history of sorts. I say of sorts because the inspiration came a while back when I was reading about the Mongol Expansion period, because the Mongol Invasion of Kievan Rus is kind of part of my family history, which goes back even further to the Varangians settling the area in the 9th century. Anyway, I got diverted to the Gobi desert, which is a True Rain Shadow. Here in Southern Alberta we get a type of foehn wind which we call a Chinook that comes from the Rockies. So the setting inspiration is a "What if the Chinook Wind created a true Rain Shadow like the one that creates the Gobi Desert". Of course there would be actual Dinosaurs in Drumheller, because I really have to do that. There would also be Pleistocene Megafauna. One of my reasons for their inclusion is that many of them are already in various Monster Manuals. I might adapt some other creatures to fit with the wildlife. Like Dire Creatures. This is funny because the real Dire Wolf was just a bigger wolf, probably averaging 130-150lbs. So having other Dire creatures is kind of funny, because the name of a species somehow became a descriptor. All the same, I have seen skunks the size of dogs, and a porcupine that was probably over 100 lbs. So bigger versions of things that exist are fairly plausible. You could even call Dire Wolves Waheela, which would be encountered in the North.

Other monster from local myth could be brought in, because placement is easy when the legends tell you where they hang out. Like Wendigo and Adlets. Real creatures that exist in our world can mess you up without resorting to the supernatural. A block away from area is a sign on the edge of Fish Creek Provincial Park saying Warning Cougar in Area, and not the kind you run into at a bar, because a cougar was spotted one block from my house. I've walked past coyotes before. A hare gave birth to leverets in my yard last year and and we had to catch them because a rather large dog sized skunk was trying to get them. It might have got one of them. Deer walk into our yard at night, and do their business there and the raccoons prefer to do their business on the shed, which is thankfully aluminum. Anyhow, lots of wildlife within a mile of my house. Bobcats, Lynxes (yes, there is a difference), thankfully no bears yet. At least not this decade. So really, making the setting fantasy is more or less just using things that are, and adding in some things that used to be and maybe a few things that might be.

I haven't thought much about populating the place, but in this world there is no Canada. Sunalta is it's own Dominion, and cities are more like City States. I think my mantra here is that I don't want to make another Deadlands. If anything I'm more inspired by Gothic Earth from the Ravenloft setting Masque of the Red Death. I even made my own gonzo version of Gothic Eastern Europe for a game called Maidenloft, which as you might was a MAID inspired game set in Caste Ravenloft with Strahd as the Master. Though unlike MAID, I used M+M 3e to run it and the game ended up being Castle Defense against a horde of angry Clerics, Paladins and Nuns with nunchaku but I digress. Sunalta wouldn't be anything like that, I just liked the way the map I linked turned out.

But from the gist of what Pundit is saying, a Western D&D setting should still be D&D, and not Boot Hill, or Wild West Masque of the Red Death, or Wild West d20 Past, though the latter could easily be done that way by giving the setting the Urban Arcana treatment. So right now, I'm just more concerned with making a decent map with roads and water and rails and everything. And make the Chinook Desert look more like a desert. So the setting isn't set in stone, because making it D&D with casters and stuff is still an option. Mind you, it is probably better to go with a realistic design approach, and then layer on the D&D stuff afterwards.

Quote from: wombat1;1039746I am drawn to it because I find the idea of several powers able to intervene on the western frontier to be highly intriguing; players can wheel and deal even more than usual.  I accept that in some ways it is rather implausible alt-history.

And I find that silly. The reason the wild west looked like it did was because it was a frontier FREE of law & order, free of great nations fighting. The wild west as we most remember it really started AFTER the civil war.

And there's way more interesting political stuff happening there in that real timeline than could happen in a timeline where you have a bunch of little countries vying for power. There's the conflict between the ranchers and the farmers, the ever-approaching 'civilized world', the republicans and the democrats. The northerners and southerners making a new life. The petty kingdoms of corrupt officials and rich ranchers.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1040018And there's way more interesting political stuff happening there in that real timeline than could happen in a timeline where you have a bunch of little countries vying for power. There's the conflict between the ranchers and the farmers, the ever-approaching 'civilized world', the republicans and the democrats. The northerners and southerners making a new life. The petty kingdoms of corrupt officials and rich ranchers.

Made me think of a combination of Elizabeth Gaskell (Cranford) and Firefly.

Well, Firefly was in part inspired (if I recall) from the wild west after the civil war.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1040018And I find that silly. The reason the wild west looked like it did was because it was a frontier FREE of law & order, free of great nations fighting. The wild west as we most remember it really started AFTER the civil war.

And there's way more interesting political stuff happening there in that real timeline than could happen in a timeline where you have a bunch of little countries vying for power. There's the conflict between the ranchers and the farmers, the ever-approaching 'civilized world', the republicans and the democrats. The northerners and southerners making a new life. The petty kingdoms of corrupt officials and rich ranchers.

Fair enough but I work under two limitations.  

1.  Before I did any significant running of a historical game, I would wish to immerse myself thoroughly in the history of it, and while there is nothing wrong with my mid-19th century American history, or my grasp of the relevant fiction, I still don't know nearly enough to run with any great comfort.  In my group of historians and wanna-be historians that is going to pose a problem sooner rather than later.

2. History is a politically charged issue, and my political views are significantly at variance with those of almost all my players, and I have this fear that is very quickly going to lead to strife because my Republicans in that game are going to be very different from those in their minds, and my Democrats are going to make them pretty uniformly curl up in a corner and twitch.  Or possibly a harrumph.

Quote from: wombat1;1040383Fair enough but I work under two limitations.  

1.  Before I did any significant running of a historical game, I would wish to immerse myself thoroughly in the history of it, and while there is nothing wrong with my mid-19th century American history, or my grasp of the relevant fiction, I still don't know nearly enough to run with any great comfort.  In my group of historians and wanna-be historians that is going to pose a problem sooner rather than later.

2. History is a politically charged issue, and my political views are significantly at variance with those of almost all my players, and I have this fear that is very quickly going to lead to strife because my Republicans in that game are going to be very different from those in their minds, and my Democrats are going to make them pretty uniformly curl up in a corner and twitch.  Or possibly a harrumph.

Those certainly aren't invalid points, but both can be mitigated.

You don't need to know EVERYTHING about 19th century American history to run a decent Wild West campaign. You might have to do a bit of research about the specific place in the wild west you'd want to set your game (good suggestions would be Deadwood, Dodge City, East Las Vegas, or Tombstone). You'd want to read the biographies (even if it was just the Wikipedia biographies) of some of the most famous people of the west, especially those who were in the place you wanted to run it in. None of this would take that long, and it's fascinating reading.

There's good sourcebooks in game terms to help you, a lot of Aces & Eights itself (aside from the fake alternate history) gives you an idea of the way things were, as does the GURPS Old West sourcebook, which is quite good.

There's also series or movies you can refer to. Lots of great documentaries on the wild west, and if you want to add a bit of cinematic style, there's stuff like the HBO Deadwood series, or the movie Tombstone (or even the much less entertaining Wyatt Earp with Kevin Costner).

You just have to get enough to get the basics of the setting and what it was like, including the conflicts between oncoming civilization and the wildness of the place, between the remnants of the south and the north (in the form of Democrats and Republicans), of ranchers vs farmers, and the rises and falls of certain locations as boom towns with very little law and gradual 'gentrification'.

As for point #2, I think you'd just have to explain the context to your players: point out that while there was a lot of racism in the old west, it was in many ways less racist than back east. That Republicans were the party that ended slavery and that were the champions of reconstruction and the party of progress (by the 1870s, though, they were also full of government bloat and corruption), while democrats were the anti-reconstruction party and in some ways the more conservative populists who tended to be less favorable to law & order or to progress & industry.

I think the setting (Wild West) is amazing on its own. Most of us are aware that there is (much, much!) more to it, but Hollywood really is our educator here.

What I loved about The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, was that it was both a treasure hunt and a tripartite death struggle all set within a Civil War environment.

So for me I would find a period or incident or wider setting (e.g. the Civil War) to base my mini-campaign around.

Something set in the aftermath of Little Bighorn, or in the fallout of the OK Corrall would suit.

Mission-wise, I would start with the assumption that the PCs are a D&D adventuring party, and retrofit into Western cloth from there.

Quote from: Motorskills;1041039Mission-wise, I would start with the assumption that the PCs are a D&D adventuring party, and retrofit into Western cloth from there.

I still think the class system from Masque of the Red Death had some good ideas, but I think that adapting classes from d20 iterations of Star Wars would work better, minus the tech stuff if you wanted to be historical, or with it if you wanted to go a steampunk route. In my old 1e campaign, we used a Scout class from one of the Dragon Magazines for characters that did Ranger stuff (Tracking, Scouting, living off the land...) without the magic. If you had spellcasting at all, wizardry would really be unheard of, but Clerical/Divine magic performed by missionaries, priests, pastors, shaman, and medicine men would be more likely. Though just doing it historically without magic would be fine as well, even though the mortality rate would increase. Western does map on to other forms of fantasy just fine.

Quote from: Krimson;1041045I still think the class system from Masque of the Red Death had some good ideas, but I think that adapting classes from d20 iterations of Star Wars would work better, minus the tech stuff if you wanted to be historical, or with it if you wanted to go a steampunk route. In my old 1e campaign, we used a Scout class from one of the Dragon Magazines for characters that did Ranger stuff (Tracking, Scouting, living off the land...) without the magic. If you had spellcasting at all, wizardry would really be unheard of, but Clerical/Divine magic performed by missionaries, priests, pastors, shaman, and medicine men would be more likely. Though just doing it historically without magic would be fine as well, even though the mortality rate would increase. Western does map on to other forms of fantasy just fine.

Yep. I was more thinking that I want each PC to be able to contribute a speciality. It's not an absolute must-have, but I don't think it's a bad default.

I might turn things up to eleven in my campaign, but I wouldn't introduce overtly fantasy elements, the setting is amazing enough without it.

Is it weird that I think a Wild West AU for Naruto would be cool?

No jutsus or any other special ninja powers, just Naruto and his fellow inhabitants of the Hidden Leaf Village as Western archetype characters, possibly PC's in a Boot Hill campaign.

Hell, you could set the whole story in a frontier town in the fictional Hidden Leaf County with the characters hanging out at the Nine Tails Saloon, drinking whiskey, eating ramen, and playing Faro and other games of chance.

Naruto and his buddies could form a posse and fight off outlaw gangs, Indian raiding parties, and the likes of Caesar's Legion (hey, who said we had to be historically accurate?)

That is a fanfic or a campaign waiting to happen!

Not sure if I could run a straight historical Western and I know my current group would have zero interest in that.  I'd probably end up doing something closer to The Warriors Way.  It would be full of over exaggerated clichés and stylized action. I'd steal some inspiration from Into the Badlands and The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger to mix it up a little.

Let's see, you have a land that has moved on from what it used to be.  Old relics remain but most are useless, rusting away and most people don't even remember what they were or how to use them anyway.  Your average Jo is just trying to survive in a harsh land that has strange dangers lurking out in the wild.  It wouldn't be as supernatural heavy as Deadlands, but there would be things like angry spirits, wild flora and fauna, and weird "natural" phenomena.  

Now, there are places that have sprung up that provide safety and order.  These would be similar to boom towns in a normal western, but here they are feudal lands run by Barons.  You want to live with order and safety instead of homesteading out in the wild, you pledge your life to a Baron.  Some people make a good life for themselves while in service, some not so much.  This is where you can have your ranch wars and other rivalries.

Then I'd throw in an order of protectors, like the Gunslingers, who's reverence for the gun is at near religious levels of fanaticism but who also possess what seem like near mythical shooting abilities.  Besides them you can have some other mystical elements added in.  Low key stuff, no fireballs.  I'd look toward shamanism or even Eastern mysticism to mix it up.

Quote from: rgalex;1041549Old relics remain but most are useless, rusting away and most people don't even remember what they were or how to use them anyway.

Or they don't work the way they should. Blain the Train is a pain.

I am drafting notes for a Boot Hill campaign, using the module Burned Bush Wells. I've decided  to use fictional  El Dorado  County  and to place  my customized version of the county  in the southern part  of Colorado Territory .  Game year 1875.

I'm not worried about making it all historically and geographically accurate, but I would like the terrain , wildlife , people and so on to feel plausible for the time and place.


Primary characters thus far include an ex-farmer, a pretty tough rural midwife, and a lady exhibition shooter who grew up hunting game.


 (Yes that last one has more than a bit of Annie Oakley as inspiration. This being before the era of the big wild west shows the character had traveled with a smaller outfit:a couple of actors, a guy doing prestidigitation ,  that sort of thing.)

If anybody wants to make one or two saddle buddies, trail partners, relatives, hangers-on, etc. he can do so. Boot Hill 2nd edition explicitly mentions players controlling multiple characters as an option. Indeed, this is a nice way to introduce a replacement player character when the inevitable deaths occur.
  I suppose the pre-generated characters in the module provide another good source of backup player characters.

Awwwwww yeah! Lonesome Dove.

Quote from: Omega;1038299Boot Hill's Burnt Bush Wells was for a long time my go to for a starter setting.

Ah! I'd love to read more about how you developed/ ran it.