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[vulpinoid]

Hey...welcome to the forums.

There's an untapped goldmine of story potential in the wild west.

I created a wild west supplement for my free game a few months back, I called it "" but I'm thinking of revisiting the setting with "The Good, the Bad and the FUBAR'd".

Let us know how your progress is going, I'm sure there are a few people around who'd love to share some pointers.

[Lejonel]

Hi and apologies for the lack of replies, I ran out of internet.

Rubbermancer, Groffa: Good to see some other Nordic people here as well! I thought I might be the only one from this side of the brittish islands.

CA, Vulpinoid: Thanks for the tips! I have already had a look-through of some of the titles you suggest, CA, but I will promptly have a look at the others as well, including Vulpinoids FUBAR which is also new to me.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

OK, I'm back, and have had some coffee.


So the big question is - are you planning on actually writing something set in the nineteenth century, or are you aiming for something that has similar themes to old Western Movies? If you don't specially want a historical setting, you could look up things like the animes , Kino's Journey, and Cowboy Bebop or movies like and Serenity. And of course, the site TV tropes is pretty good for an overview of the genre.

Anyway, I should probably get on with some actual suggestions rather then sending you to other sources -as Oscar Wilde said "I hate quotes, tell me what you know". (With a BA in literature, I am licensed to be Ironic!)


As I alluded to before, the west had basically four big developments. First it was just wilderness foll of odd people, strange animals, harsh weather - and really only attracted the fringes of society - trappers or prospectors. (1849s and the gold rush for example) Then it becomes more settled (homestead act of 1862 etc) but this begins to lead to conflicts over this new terrain - both in the Indian wars and between various desires to exploit the territory - Ranchers and shepherds don't get along (). Still, the west remained as a place to get away from society, hold old grudges (Many members of the infamous James Gang were former confederates still waging the civil war) and try to hit it big. However, new information technology and transportation closed up the west. Things like the telegraph meant you couldn't rob a local bank, than outrun the news and rob another one - they would call ahead and have a posse waiting. Similarly, photographs rendered outlaws far less anonymous - though real wanted posters were usually only for police, not publicly shown.

Speaking of cameras, the rise of Hollywood coincides with the end of the West, so many early westerns of the silent era could have been influenced by actual cowboys and famous figures telling their own story - with embellishment.


Its quite easy to rescale many of these things to other settings. For example, a whole stellar empire could follow a similar pattern. Its easy to have space pirates when the FTL gates aren't up yet and communication is slow, but when the beacons are set up - Starforce reacts a lot quicker, and so the frontier dries up.

On a smaller scale, you might have old soldiers moving into a certain section of the city, and trying to reform the area to their liking, while the youth resist. Or arguments over resources and the proper exploitation of old dungeons - should delving for artifacts be legal, or is it desecration?


Gun fights in real life, and those in the movies are vastly different, even before we not to mention were nowhere near as prevalent. Usually it was a surprise, and engagement ranges were less than ten feet/three meters, and black powder pistols had numerous operating limitations. Which leads to the question, how realistic do you want the combat to be? Should it be very dangerous, with ambush and trickery being the preferred option (like Cyberpunk-2020 if that rings a bell for yo) or a more cinematic experience?

An Idea I'll throw out for movie style is to give everyone a pool of action points, which may be spent as either a bonus to initiative, or to pay for actions - essentially a choice between being quick on the draw or being able to shoot more often. Different weapon types might cost more or less AP per shot, or impose initiative penalties (its hard to quick draw a rifle after all). So step one is to decide how many points you want to use for initiative, the next step is to reveal it, part three is to go from lowest to highest declaring what your actions with the remaining points will be, and finally, everything gets resolved fastest to slowest.

[Rob Lang]

[Lejonel]

I guess this topic is more and more leaning towards a "help with my rpg" rather than a hello-thread. You mods may want to move maybe?

Reading all the notes from CA I think I better had a go at describing where I am comming from and what I want to accomplish.

Background
I am quite fond of pulp style RPGs with quick action, low detailing and a sort of cinematic feel to it. I also try to encourage my players to be part of as much traditional GM work as possible, helping with area descriptions and fleshing out their actions properly (whether they fail or succeed). I am also somewhat against bulky initiative systems, as I regard them as slowing things down rather than speeding things up (again, contests should be quickly resolved). I find that much of my needs are filled by the classic West End Games' Star Wars D6 (late 80's) and because of this I have been experimenting with readjusting that dice pool mechanism. I guess this answers your questing, Rob, but thank you for writhing that guide! It was interesting reading.

The Setting
Getting back to the sources Star Wars (not only WEG's stuff, but also the movies) and the Wild West/the American Frontier. GM-ing for Star Wars gave me the inspiration to set up a game in some sort of WW/Am.Front. setting, since I (probably justly) find SW to be very similar in style to some WW movies I remember from the days when I had the time to watch movies. This said, however, I did not want to strictly converting SW D6 to a WW setting because I sometimes find SW to be somewhat flat when it comes to conflicts not relating to the black and white struggle of the Empire and the Rebels.

What I instead want to create is an environment where you have three distinctiv parts of the world to visit and play in; the civilisation, the frontier, and the wild and uncontrollable grounds not yet reached by civilisation. I also want these three natures to spawn three distinctivly different character types which conflict culturally with each other. And when I say conflict I do not really mean all-out war but more the kind of conflicts that erupted when the Europeans first reached America (some war-like conflicts maybe, but also some whole hearted attempts at cooexistance and trading).

I also want to avoid any direct links to the real world to be able to add some mythic feel or twist some elements of "my world" (as for example using some Mongol style culture in combination with native american culture). However, I want the technology level to be that of the Wild West with steam powered trains, telegraphs and sixshooters (and here is where I want the quick action to come into play).

The Problem
What I have a problem with at the moment is to find game mechanics that both support quick pulp action and storytelling at the same time. I keep returning to the notion of only focusing on the action in the game mechanics rules and try to encourage storytelling with other methods. I feel I better watch out so that I do not create "two games in one"...

I feel that I have a hard time making sense of my text. Hope it is somewhat understandable... Maybe I should write something up as an introductory text and see if I can show you that way.

[Onix]

[koipond]

Ack, late to the welcome thread but then again I'm just a boorish Canadian.

Wait a minute.

As to your question about story and mechanics, there's nothing wrong with a mechanic that gives you quick pulp action. That will kind of define what kind of storytelling you're doing. If you want a different type of storytelling between the quick pulp action then you will kinda need to different systems at the same time.

Or you can trust your players to take their queues from the game and run with it. That's what I've found works best for me (again your kms may vary).