It's weird that the Wild West never really 'took off' as an RPG setting. What do we have? Boot Hill, Aces & Eights, Deadlands?...Is it because it's an inherently lethal setting, or just not very fun?
>>98057887Off the top of my head, I can't think of any RPG setting where the guys you can fight are /just/ humans and animals. There's always at least one caveat like mechs or some mystical shit.
>>98057892The deep dive through shit I played returned T2K, I have proven myself wrong.............Though I suppose that has many vehicles to fill the role of that something something extra
>>98057887I think because most adventures have the coolest parts of the wild west (visiting towns, fighting bandits, doing heroic quests) as well as much more. Cyberpunk is technically wild west in the bear future, dnd is wild west in kitchen sink fantasy, etc.Wild west on its own is just people shooting each other, not as interesting. What makes wild west movies so fun is the story lines
There are no dungeons to explore unless you add crazy shit. People like dungeons. It's pretty simple
98057887In Sweden, we have a Wild West RPG called Western. An English version has been released on DriveThruRPG.In our current group, I played a boxer who was not very intelligent. I killed a thug by crushing his face with my fist (I rolled a high damage score). Later, I caught up with the leader of the bandits. I tried to shoot him with a pair of Colt Navy revolvers, but we kept missing each other. I dropped my revolver, got closer, and delivered a light cross followed by a heavy one that cracked the leader's ribs and knocked him out.
>>98057887Deadlands sounded kino on paper but was miserable to play. Admittedly, it was the older version. Is the new one any better? Can anyone recommend alternatives?
>>98057887I think it is more the zeitgeist. Westerns were quickly falling out of popularity by the 80s.
>>98057887Historical adventure fiction isn't popular in general these days. And it's a worse fit for RPGs for much the same reason that Howard wrote Hyperboria: no pressure to get facts right.
>>98057887It doesn't work super well in America because we're more familiar with it, it's not exotic to us. Euro-inspired fantasy is.>>98057957See? A European who doesn't have the American West as part of their cultural heritage, and they have their own game for it. Escapist fantasy works better when it's more different from your life, not less.
>>98057887
>>98057956If Howard and Lovecraft could add dungeons to the western, so can you.>>98057887There are quite a number of western systems and settings, the popularity of the genre in general is just not very high in modern times. As a GM, if you care about historical verisimilitude, you have to be pretty careful picking the time, too. Gun ecosystems vary immensely. Not just the weapons, but their cartridge types and powder loads. The frontier's shape changes, too. The Comanche might either be a very serious, genuinely military threat, or spent and broken. I do think firearm lethality and the emergence of reliable repeaters impacts the popularity of the genre in gaming. You have to balance threat/effectiveness carefully or you either end up with rocket tag or nerf.
>>98058035Ironically the advent of AI makes it easier to inject historical details into your game because you can talk to Google like a person now and it'll respond. Sometimes it hallucinates, but it's easier than going to primary or encyclopedia sources. And there's always a GURPS splat to spackle the gaps.
>>98057887>Boot Hill, Aces & Eights, DeadlandsAnd Dogs In The Vineyard!
>>98057976I know Deadlands on Savage Worlds. Heard it's fine.
>>98057976I ran a short campaign using the latest Deadlands recently and really enjoyed it. I like Swade as a medium crunch system, I find it really easy to run even big combats with many combatants. It's definitely only capable of running a particular type of game (door kicker adventure) but it works well for that and it fits the western genre very well.Now that I've said something nice about savage worlds, there is a chance I will have summoned the local SW troll, who, despite claiming to have run 300+ games in the system, does not understand how basic mechanics work.
>>98058060>modern conveniences let you be wrong faster
>>98057887What the fuck is there to even do in a western?>fight>rob>survive shitty weather>...?You can do the first two in practically if not literally any RPG, and surviving shitty weather is boring.
>>98057976I've played tons of classic Deadlands, it's fun. What's your issue with it?2nd ed is better than 1st, but they are close enough to be compatible. The anniversary edition is pretty much the same as 2nd ed I think, they coloured the illustrations (poorly) and maybe fixed typos.
>>98058463Nah, it often sources its claims. What it doesn't can be quickly checked. Very funny to see it not understand which numbers are bigger, though.
>>98058508Recover Spanish gold.
By the time TT RPGs really took off, the Western as a genre was in decline, if we'd got started in the 50's or 60's RPG would probably default to Western as much as Fantasy.Now we've got RDR, which has really put the setting back into the conversation.
>>98057887Wild West is dead because the low-budget moviemakers went for post-apoc. RPG preferences are a symptom of that.https://youtu.be/B1MWl8R7zFE?si=IvmN6EmaDST1VT-G>>98057956A gang hideout can be a dungeon. A sawmill can be a dungeon. A canyon can be a dungeon. Cliif-dwellings can be a dungeon. Cenotes can be a dungeon.
>>98057887Dogs in the Vineyard too (amusingly enough, the setting is totally western, the system even has sergio-leone style duels and all, but it turns the usual premise on the top of its head, and that's why it works)That being said, yes, it's pretty circumscribed. Methinks it's two things really:1) RPGs were born when westerns weren't really a thing anymore, and there wasn't a period of real western renaissance after that (yes, there are many examples of successful westerns after that, but not what I would call a wave). A little like spy stories, it was something that your dad enjoyed, not your circle of nerd friends.2) A shitton of nerd big name games are pretty similar to westerns. Not just post-apo shit, but dnd itself gravitates towards it. As weird westerns are few and pretty goofy, you'd more or less uncosciounsly tell yourself that you could have the blacksmith be just a dwarf, the robber baron a literal baron, the savage indian tribe looting the village a savage orc tribe and so on.Probably doesn't help nowdays that it's all about literal colonialism either.
>>98057887Westerns are inherently a more limited genre than fantasy or sci-fi.
>Play a game about being bounty hunters in the wild west that encounter the supernatural>Having a good time moseying, reckonin', and telling people their bellies are yella'h>Meet a shoggoth and shoot it with our six-shooters>Cthulhu might have brought humans to Earth, but Samuel Colt made us equals>Afterwards my fellow player is kinda sulking>What's the matter, pardner?>"I wish there wasn't any supernatural stuff and we were just cowboys."luv 2 be a cowboy
>>98057887Superheroes and Science-fiction settings eg (Star Wars and Warhammer) have generally taken the place of the Cowboy as 'modern mythology'.
>>98058060If I'm running some kind of historical game, it's because I'm interested in the period or the circumstance, and enjoy reading and researching about it, or at the very least enjoy watching/reading media based on the period or circumstance. If you don't give a shit about the thing and don't want to actually do any research into the thing, why the fuck would you run games in that time and use AI to do """"research?"""" What the fuck does that accomplish?
>>98058946I run games to run games, not pore through an entire library of sources hoping it touches on one issue I need resolved. I can talk to AI like a human, it responds with sources like a human, and then I can go directly to those sources and determine if it is actually germane to my question or another hallucination. It saves me time to build and play my game.When I just want to read about history generally, I can do that without AI serving and helpful purpose. Pick a topic and go.
>>98057887In my particular case, it's because I live in Oklahoma and the Wild West isn't exotic at all. I have been late to work because of a cattle run. It really does depend on the kind of story you want to tell and who your players are. Are you lawmen, cowboys, bounty hunters, generally good folk? Or are you no good outlaws, cattle rustlers, thieves, scalp hunters, bandits, robbers? How long ago was the civil war? How far is the frontier from the rail lines? Rails bring the east closer, the army closer. Places with the trains and the army aren't so wild anymore.>>98057956>There's no dungeonsLack of thought put into a change of setting. Every train robbery was a dungeon delve, it just moves. There's even lots of rooms full of random encounters or nothing. Box canyons can be dungeons, as can hideouts, critter dens, abandoned properties or mines, old places the tribes steer clear of, and the eternal classic "big cave".
>>98058966Imagine, not only are you an unimaginative boor, but you act like it's a good thing you're an unimaginative boor. I'm glad you're just another /tg/ larper and no one would ever actually have to be subjected to any kind of """game""" you would run.
>>98058966>When I just want to read about history generally, I can do that without AI serving and helpful purpose.>without AI serving and helpful purpose.Not reading history in English apparently.
>>98059276Okay, if you say so.>>98059294Got pantsed by the autocorrect, it happens.
>>98057887The Wild West is, relatively speaking, a somewhat narrow slice of culture to be building an entire subgenre of games around. Still, that doesn't mean there isn't interest or things that can't be done with it. After all, the central conceit of why the Wild West was even a thing was that the authority of the land (the American federal government) was stuck out east and slow to roll out to the new frontier, and any authority figures in the area were such in name only, so it falls to the people and those would-be authorities to stand for themselves and defend themselves. It's compelling because of the ideas of freedom and self-actualization (similar to pirates, really).As said, there's still a fair bit you can do with it. The era has overlap with the era that defines steampunk, to the point there's even a name for the specific genre of Wild West steampunk - cattlepunk. You can also look abroad to see how other people put their spin on it. Terra the Gunslinger here is a much more fantastical Wild West from Japan.
>>98057887What makes it especially odd is the increase interest in the "Werid Western" genre over the last few years, whether it's games like Hunt Showdown or nostalgic properties like Trigun or Wild Arms. You'd think that would translate to people wanting to role play in that environment.
>>98062133Weird West seems to trend darker more often than not - cryptids and curses and things like that instead of, y'know, elves and dwarves living with humans in a frontier town.
>>98062097>The era has overlap with the era that defines steampunkTo further expand on the point of Wild West overlap, if you need some outside spice to zest things up:
>>98057887Because Spaghetti Westerns came out before roleplaying was a thing and only boomers care about revolvers and lever actions
>>98062158Neo-westerns are a thing, but they're characterized by being grittier and more nuanced compared to their older kin. Fuck Yellowstone and its extended universe, as an aside.
>>98062097Disagree on the culture aspect. Even though the old west wasn't a very long period of time, when compared to the middle ages, so much happened during that time frame. It's a period in American history that starts around the Civil War and ends around WW1 or the beginning on the Golden Age of Hollywood. That is a massive cultural and technological shift for such a short span of time. To add to that the old west encompass so many different cultures like different European groups, various Native Tribes, Mexicans, Canadians, Chinese, Australians, Japanese, and Black Americans. Also, you have the politics of various territories and their relationship with each other and the Federal Government. The point is there is a lot of content there to run a interesting campaign.>>98062139Fair enough but the point still stands that the're well regarded franchise that people enjoy which play with what you can do with a western setting. You'd think it would inspire people to get into westerns as well as think outside of the box with what you can do with creating a game using western elements.
Westerns were dying out by the time RPG's started being a thing, but the genre has it mark on a lot of pies. Basically all of pulp fiction and the things those would influence like both fantasy and superheroes. You wouldn't have stuff like Batman without the Shadow, and you'd probably have neither without El Zorro, all about guys trying to maintain order. Star Wars goes without saying. One of Robert E Howard's last unfinished stories was about a Comanche saving some Spanish woman and fighting an Aztec wizard. Arguably early 70's D&D is more of a western with a medieval european pastiche
>>98057887her smelly uncovered butt gives her -1 dice roll to her sneak actions.
>>98062240It's not for nothing that there's a subset of space opera/science fiction specifically called the SPACE WESTERN.
>>98062169Yes and they're kind of super niche>>98058044In case you didn't know already, Westerns were super popular in Europe once upon a time. Sadly that time's mostly pre-1980 and there never was a big Western RPG in the 70's or 80's that was translated to other languages, unlike D&D, RQ, Shadowrun, CP2020 and so on. But I have definitely met westernaboos in RPG circles later too, too bad the crowd is still mostly 60+
>>98062133>What makes it especially odd is the increase interest in the "Werid Western" genre over the last few yearsI think you must have just stumbled out of a time machine because Westerns of any stripe were only really popular again in the 2000s and again briefly at the start of the 2010s thanks to a certain videogame. Pseudo-Westerns like the Walking Dead have also had their time, and even Hunt Showdown is seven years old at this point. I don't think that anyone talking about Westerns going out of fashion in the 70s is any closer to it either.Nobody seems to recognise or admit it but people in nerd spaces now just don't like America. Being a chaotic small bean goblin is fine, but pretending to be a lawman or outlaw isn't. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they hate America, but liking America is very uncool, even among Americans.tldr for adhd basedteens: rpg players are libtards and libtards hate America
>>98062639It would indeed be irresponsible at this point to talk about westerns and not mention the Red Dead series.Although saying westerns aren't currently deeper in the current cultural zeitgeist because of the "libruls" is a bit of a stretch, I think.
>>98057956Part of the appeal of the wild west is that there are dungeons>bandit hideout>old mine>mansion/plantation>bank heistOn top of this, dungeons can be anything really
>>98062157Im woke so I can accept a the premise of a black woman pirate and a female (wasian?) Old west gunslinger, but ill be damned if it doesnt bother me a little
I think the racial stuff has made people avoidant because theyre cowards
>>98062696>Although saying westerns aren't currently deeper in the current cultural zeitgeist because of the "libruls" is a bit of a stretch, I think.What else is stopping a genre that has had massive successes in recent decades from breaking into the mainstream other than politics?
>>98057887Because most ttrpgs fans are nerds, and nerds hate anything that resembles the real world. Real world and school bullies.
>>98062738I mean, Far Far West is currently killing it right now.
>>98062746That's basically Deep Rock Galactic in a mechanized Weird West that absolutely doesn't take itself seriously. This is what it looks like when you have fun with the setting and mess around a bit.
>>98062746>we have a culture where nothing is permanent, everyone is looking for the latest novelty and nothing can really gain a foothold long enough to generate any kind of tertiary spin-off media like a TTRPG which requires the genre to stick around for long enough for people to internalise its tropes well enough to play with themI see what you're getting at by posting inane friendslop.
>>98057887First of all, those are flintlocks. Your thirst trap pic isn't even Wild West-themed.Secondly, it's because a game where all female PCs have one class option and it's Whore just won't work in today's RPG scene.
>>98062240Howard wrote a few western short stories, too. There's a vampire Spaniard one that is damn good.
>>98057887Westerns are a fundamentally 1.) American and 2.) historical genre. This limits your player pool.The story of the west is over and we know how it ends: fences win, California is a fent zombie paradise, Colorado is where Californians flee once they've sucked enough blood. In my opinion, the "we know the ending, and it's fucking gay/lame" factor is why weird westerns endured and also why space westerns (which is all most Star Wars games are) endure.
They promote colonialism.
>>98064155Good.
Honestly if a self-professed "gm" would insist that dungeons are necessary to run anything, I'd be pretty sure he's the type that should not play at all.
>>98064417Westerns have dungeons, anyway.Isolated desert villages filled with bandits.Haunted mines filled with terrors that gold or silver crazed migrants dug up.Native tomb complexes from cultures the other tribes say were giga evil.
>>98064499I'd say you shouldn't think in dungeon-realted terms. Westerns don't really work in "chain of rooms in which there is particular enemy in each one" way.There are dangerous place, of course.
>>98057892Dogs in the Vineyard.
>>98063889>all female PCs have one class option and it's WhoreExcuse you, there's also Nun.
>>98063889Flintlocks were in use throughout a good chunk of the era, even if only by poorfags and Indians by the end.
>>98062725The cowgirl is clearly Mexican, and charras/vaqueras are a thing.
>>98058804I feel it. I played Deadlands Savage World and I was so excited to be some cowboy and cowboy adjacent fellas working our was west. Maybe a sprinkle of shamanistic magic, some wendigos, but for once, us just being regular folk. Then one player picked a huckster, magic gamblers that lorewise make deals with the devil for their magic, but in play are just slinging damaging spells left and right. Another player made a priest that is constantly performing miracles left and right. So magic IMMEDIATLY felt mundane. Woulda been so much cooler if we were all nomral folks who may or may not even beleive in magic, never directly witnessing it and only seeing maybe some suntle signs by it or dealing with weird "monsters" very rarely. Sadly though, I was the o ly one wanting that style of game. C'est la vie
>>98063889There are more to the world than just your mom, dumbass.
>>98062725Is the gunslinger female? Maybe it's just the bad resolution, but I thought he was a dude who was just short because he's a wetback.
>>98057887You can't make a lot of classes for cowboys
>>98064155Not inherently
>>98066417There's plenty of archetypes, like gamblers, bounty hunters, detectives, and so on.
>>98062725I'm woke but I'm more bothered by the fact there isn't a Chinese guy, because they were in the west too. This is also the same time period a lot of martial arts folk heroes were running around in China, ones who would inspire a lot of wuxia tropes, so he could be a monk. It's a very open opportunity. >and a female (wasian?)I assumed they were male, young, and Mexican. Like Joaquin Murrieta
>>98058811Star Wars, yes. I don't know what Warhammer has to do with anything western>'modern mythology'This is true, and where superheroes come in and they share the same roots, but later supplanted westerns.People keep saying westerns are "too close to home" or view them as historical fiction, but that's not how they were perceived at all. The wild west was still happening when the stories were being written, even when the first western movies were being made. It was still considered contemporary and in the current moment, even if sensationalized. Being too close to home was the appeal. Then the period ended, then we got superheroes doing basically the same thing, but in large cities and fighting mobsters instead. They were more exaggerated but remember one of the most common superhero costumes is a long coat, a fedora, and maybe a mask.
>>98064417This but for people itt thinking classes are necessary because those are the only games they know>>98064499In Robert E Howard's story, Mesoamerica civilization extended up to Texas before that part of the state sinking into the ocean, so you could just have ancient tombs and pyramid ruins to explore too
>>98066417Class-based systems are fuckin retarded, yo.
