I don't want to add the WESTERN HACK rules into DARK•HERITAGE 2.0 (which is really 2.1.1) but I might add the mythical horses as a monster entry and make it 2.1.2. I do have to admit that I'm a little surprised myself that such stand-bys of mythology as the unicorn and Pegasus haven't made it into the rules yet anyway.
But no; rather, what I want to talk about briefly is—now that I've got a small little rules module that allows FANTASY HACK to be used as WESTERN HACK, what else would you need to run WESTERN HACK the way I envision it? (I can't answer what you'd need to run it the way you envision it, naturally.) The answer, obviously, is a setting. And let's talk for a moment at a high level about what I think the setting should be like.
First and foremost, unlike most Western fantasies or even stuff like Red Dead Redemption, WESTERN HACK won't take place in the actual American West, even in Ruritanian "fake states" like RDR does. It has to take place in it's own secondary fantasy world. Just like Middle-earth or the Hyborian Age resembles Medieval Europe in most respects, but isn't, WESTERN HACK's setting would resemble the American Old West in most respects, but still be it's own thing. There should be a probably three basic nations of humanity; one that resembles the US of the mid- to late 1800s in many respects, with English and Scottish names (this is before the "melting pot" mythology was brought to America. Americans in the 1800s were almost exclusively of English and Scottish ancestry with some admixture of a few other northern European nations like the Germans and the Irish, which would have been the most common up to this point.) Technically, the region in which WESTERN HACK takes place belongs to this nation, but in reality, the center of it's power and population is off-stage, and this is a large, newly opened frontier region. But the place would be lightly populated, and this nationality would be the most commonly encountered, with settlements, towns, homesteads and pioneers seen frequently. They'd also be the protagonists—I see WESTERN HACK as a more traditional rather than Revisionist Western, even though it isn't actually America. I'm not interested in exploring the Marxist themes of painting Americans as rail barons or other corporate tyrants; I want to paint them as freedom-loving communities and individualists looking for a new life away from the hustle and bustle of the main territory, which will probably be to the East, because of course, why not?
I also need a fake Mexico of some kind or other (maybe Fake New Spain, to be more precise); people with Spanish-ish names, although I'll probably turn to my old Dark•Heritage Mk. IV stuff where I had Terassan names that were kinda Spanish but not exactly (I used a lot of Asturian, Catalan, etc. type names instead.) This nation will obviously be located to the south of this area, but in many ways is in decline—they have a history of having explored this territory a couple of centuries or so ago during their ascendant Golden Age, so names from their nationality might be common, but communities of these people are less so.
And I need some Indian nations, although rather than make nuanced distinctions, I'll just have them probably be culturally homogeneous tribal groups. These are also a people on the decline, but they have something like the Comancheria and maybe a rival Apacheria still which is a significant player in the area causing trouble for both Fake Mexico and Fake America both. I see them as a more mobile group that overlaps the settlement of the first two nations rather than holding vast swathes of territory that is only theirs. Notably, I'm also not at all interested in any stories where the "white devils" are oppressing the gentle and noble red man; rather, "red devils" may yet be a significant threat to everyone else, although protagonists from this nation can and should be possible, if not necessarily common or likely. That story is way played out and tired, and it's a self-hating SJW lecture anyway. Similarly, I'm not interested in any kind of "poor black people oppression" story in WESTERN HACK, so I doubt I'll even have any Africans at all in the setting. In fact, to mix things up, maybe I can assume that until recently, the fake Irish were enslaved, and they're the ones with a legacy of slavery to deal with. I kinda like that idea more than I probably should. I think I'll go with it.
Finally, there need to be some non-humans, with territories of their own too. I don't know that I'll go with elves and orcs and whatnot, because why would I use those (orcs have in large part become the Indians, Huns, Mongols and other savage people that self-hating Western people have now used in place of those actual people, because of political correctness anyway.) However, I can see Gunaakt (my orc nation from DH5) as maybe a backwards swamp and woodlands dwelling people in the southern territory. In fact, many of the DARK•HERITAGE nations started out as modular setting elements that can be used in any setting; although I might distinguish them later, for now, why not just use some DARK•HERITAGE nations as placeholders? Lomar as the homeland of the Cursed would be to the north, Baal Hamazi as the homeland of the kemlings would be somewhere out here in the frontier region as well, and Gunaakt is in the south. Maybe the Jann of al-Qazmir would be an island nation in the general direction of what would be the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico if we're still using a vaguely North American geography. Maybe (I'm not actually sure I want to use them at all.) For a more traditional view, there could of course be forests full of elves and dwarves in the mountains, but I'm not overly interested in doing either. Much of the point of having this is to have ruins and remnants of their own past empires still available to be discovered, explored, or to be used as plot devices throughout the region. Unspoiled wilderness may be more the traditional Old West thing, but rather abandoned wilderness gives you more to work with as a gamer or writer.
For even more savagery than the Indians offer, you can have thurses or woses; the former might be called sasquatches by most in this setting. And of course, the "here there be monsters" vibe to the frontier is important too—there really are weird and dangerous things lurking out here that make grizzly bears and Indians seem tame in comparison.
Compared to Medievalesque fantasy, which posits small nations that have existed for a long time, this is the story of settlement and expansion by one nation over the remnants of others in a territory that is still mostly wilderness. This obviously creates some obvious significant differences in the way the setting has to operate, but WESTERN HACK would be considerably less like a Western without the frontier aspect to it.
This doesn't mean that the entire setting needs to be frontier-like. I really enjoyed the south and Appalachia areas of RDR2, for example, which while not frontier, were still very rural for the most part. I could see the entirety of the RDR2 map being used as is, just without the assumption that people were from New York somewhere out to the east of the map, rather, they'd be from "New York" and maybe the distinction is subtle, but it's important. Some of the gang territories would actually be Injuns, or other demihuman races.
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