I need a bunch of names that I can decide how to assign as needed. Many of them will need to be foreign; French-sounding trappers and settlers will have explored much of the north in past centuries, and a settlement of Cajun-like people need to be in the bayous of the south. Here's a few:
Enguerrand
Etienne
Garnier
Geoffroi
Guiscard
Piers
Roland
Roul
Vauquelin
The addition of some Saint- or Nouvelle or stuff like that as an adjective in front of some of it will make them work even better as place names.
For some fake Spanish names for the deserty Southwestern section, here's a few to use.
Alfonsez
Azevedo
Barroso
Bernardes
Branco
Cabral
Cabretez
Capistrano
Castellet
Chagas
Correa da Serra
Espriu
Felipez
Ferandoz
Fonseca
Fuzeta da Ponte
Gonçalves
Huguez
Marcuçez
Miroz
Osorio
Perestrello
Queiroz
Ramos
Salvatez
Sequeira
Turmeda
Vasconcelos
Vieira
Some San, El or La, or pluralize it and add Las or Los and I'm good to go.
The American place names will be harder, because since I'm an American, making up names that sound authentic without actually copying some real place that's reasonably well known is hard.
I'll make that the subject of a separate post, but I'm going to throw a few of my favorite actual old Texas towns from counties near where I grew up, like: Giddings, Dime Box (or it's neighbor, Old Dime Box), Rockdale, Thorndale, Gause, Briary, Duncan, Clarkson, Caldwell, Clay, Birch, Burleson, Cooks Point, Deanville, Harmony, Hix, Hogg, Tabor, (actually, New Tabor was the little community in the county next door that I remember), Wilcox, Quarrie, Prairie Hill, Greenvine, Kurten, Millican, Benchley, Booville, Iola, Roans Prairie, Richards, Plantersville, Hempstead, Waller, Shiloh, Wallace, Cat Spring, Shelby, La Grange, Roundtop, Black Jack Springs, Bluff, Bridge Valley, Buckner's Creek, Burnham's Crossing, Center Grove, Cockrill's Hill, Elm Grove, Haw Creek, Hostyn Hill, Indian Creek, Live Oak Hill, Manton Spring, Mecklenberg, Mulberry, Oldenburg, Pin Oak, Pine Springs, Rabbs Hill, Rocky Ridge, Rutersville, Warrenton, Whitesides Prairie, Willow Springs.
You can get great names just trawling through the unincorporated communities of Central and East Texas, where they're rather thick and often have colorful names. Throwing a Springs, Hill, Grove, Crossing, Pass, Prairie or some such after just about any name, or plant name, or animal name, is good too.
I think until I think of something otherwise, I'll use a RDR2-like map; with a prairie heartlands secton making up the core of the region that will stretch from what is basically Emerald Ranch to MacFarland's Ranch. A southern region that is like Eastern Texas and the Deep South may be attached, and a Gulf Coast Cajun area, so basically Lemoyne needs to be included too. The Wyoming-like areas on the northern west, and the American Southwestern desert of New Austin in the southern west will finish the basic layout.
I think the southern region will be called Hazzard, Bleumont will be the northern mountainous area (why not; the Tetons have a French name from prior generations of trappers. I like the name of Roans Prairie to make up much of the prairie ecosystem, plus I remember driving through that little community plenty as a kid.
In keeping with the actual geography of North America, there should be another mountain chain west of the basin and range province deserts—which I'll call Tabor Basin, I think—and then coastal regions like Big Sur, the chaparral, and the PNW beyond that, but that's honestly probably farther than I care to develop. I can have some lumber in the mountains I already have without having to have a specifically coastal lumber industry, for instance, Ecological provinces should be the Cypress Bayou, and the Piney Woods (the real name is generic sounding enough that I'll copy it) in Hazzard, a northern and southern Roans Prairie (coinciding in real life with the northern and southern plains; the former being Nebraska, South Dakota, eastern Wyoming, etc. and the latter being Oklahoma, the Llano Estacado, etc. Basically the difference between RDR2s Heartlands vs Great Plains and eastern Hennigan's Stead.)
RDR2 also has a faux Appalachia, but I'm not 100% sure if I want to include that or not. My map, when I draw it, will probably have the fake New Orleans and a fake Blackwater-like town on the eastern edge of the map (so, unlike RDR's geography—but that makes it similar to real life Dodge City) as the final outposts before the real frontier starts further to the west. Towns and settlements beyond that will be more like isolated army forts, small communities, and whatnot. The southern part of the map will also transition into a frontier (there won't be anything like Flat Iron Lake, which kinda separates the western region from the southern region) from its fake New Orleans and plantation culture into small towns like Rhodes or Pleasance that fade fairly seamlessly into places like Emerald Ranch to the north-northwest, or Valentine or Strawberry, but little places like Quaker's Cove, Thieves Landing or MacFarlane Ranch in the south (and Tumbleweed and Armadillo even further west), and places like Fort Wallace and Fort Mercer will be relatively common.
Now, to work in the non-humans; kemlings will come from the southwestern desert, and will play a role not terribly unlike somewhat savage and evil Barsoomian Red Men. Cursed from Lomar are off the map to the north, moving south as their former territory has been over-run by the savage Inutos. Thurses or woses lurk in the swamps of Hazzard as well as the forests of the mountains in the west. Against some of these threats, even the violence of the Comanche or Apache is relatively tame, so I'm thinking that there more of a rivalry rather than deep animosity between the Union and the Wendaks—as I'll call my fake Americans and fake Injuns respectively (why not borrow the names from DH5, since they play a similar role?) In spite of that, I do see Cursed, Woses, and Kemlings as a playable race alongside the various human cultures. I don't need the orcs or goblins at all, or the jann, and nephilim would be at least as unusual as they are in DH5 without really a homeland of their own. If you did want to use orcs and goblins, I haven't yet thought of a place where they'd fit in anyway, so better to leave them off for now.
Showing posts with label Western Hack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Western Hack. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Supernatural and Western Hack
I'd envision WESTERN HACK as an actual fantasy setting, albeit one based on the Old West rather than Medieval Europe. So, obviously there's going to be some supernatural, because that's one of the main elements of the fantasy genre that people expect. That said, I expect a rather low-magic fantasy setting, rather than a high magic fantasy setting. I expect sword & sorcery, just with cowboys instead of sword-wielding barbarians. I expect dark fantasy, where the supernatural takes on the trappings of horror moreso than of high fantasy.
Anyway, here's some videos that show that RDR actually has more supernatural than many people realize. Although, it ideally needs to be brought more to the forefront rather than being merely a background element. If the supernatural doesn't feature significantly in the development of the plot, or the setting, then it's not really fantasy. RDR manages to do it in such a way that you could—maybe—explain all of the supernatural as not supernatural but rather just bizarrely coincidental, or even simply miss it entirely.
There's more, here and there, like the nosferatu, for instance, or the UFOs, but this is the majority of them.
Next time I use the WESTERN HACK tag, I hope to have sketched out a very roughed out schematic of the setting. This won't really be a usable map, more a rough sketch and some description.
Anyway, here's some videos that show that RDR actually has more supernatural than many people realize. Although, it ideally needs to be brought more to the forefront rather than being merely a background element. If the supernatural doesn't feature significantly in the development of the plot, or the setting, then it's not really fantasy. RDR manages to do it in such a way that you could—maybe—explain all of the supernatural as not supernatural but rather just bizarrely coincidental, or even simply miss it entirely.
There's more, here and there, like the nosferatu, for instance, or the UFOs, but this is the majority of them.
Next time I use the WESTERN HACK tag, I hope to have sketched out a very roughed out schematic of the setting. This won't really be a usable map, more a rough sketch and some description.
Monday, June 17, 2019
Western Hack and RDR2
I got to play a bit more this weekend. It was, after all, Father's Day weekend. My wife joked that I'm addicted. I admit that I'm in a bit of a bender on Red Dead Redemption 2 right now, but it'll fade again soon—probably when I go out of town for a week next weekend. So, what exactly am I doing?
Often, I feel like I'm running around trying to do things and not being successful. I still need two perfect armadillo pelts to finish all of the trapper garment sets, as well as a javelina pelt, two muskrat pelts, a bunch of squirrel and rat pelts for hats and other trapper stuff, as well as a bunch of bird feathers and whatnot for the last round of trapper hats.
Speaking of hats, I'm also looking to round out the stolen and found hats collection, as well as a handful of rewarded hats.
There's a lot of potential hats to chase down. I don't know for sure how many I have, but I'm guessing less than half of the stolen hats, but most of the found hats (minus the Chinese hat and I might still need one or two of the scarecrow hats), most of the craftable hats. And I've got challenges to do. I'm trying to finish off the horseman challenge, and I'm on the last now, but it's the longest and most tedious to do. I need to break ten breeds of horses in the wild to do so: the Wild American Paint, American Standardbred, Apaloosa, Hungarian Halfbred, Kentucky Saddler, Morgan, Mustang, Nokota and Tennessee Walker. I plan on actually starting with the Mustang, because I want the Tiger Stripe Bay Mustang. I actually just sold Rachel, because I'm a bit done with Thoroughbreds, she's kinda a boring one anyway, and I can always go get a free Thoroughbred at Valentine, I believe, because we have the Ultimate version of the game. Assuming I would ever want another Thoroughbred again at this point, which I don't think that I would. I have two Dutch Warmbloods—probably too many, but I don't want to get rid of either Buell or the Chocolate Roan, because Buell is super unique and if I get rid of him I'll never have him again. (Maybe I need more than one save-game). I also just went and got the white Arabian up by Lake Isabella again. I had it as Arthur, but it died. I would have lost it anyway changing from Arthur to John. (Aside; if you want Buell, you'll have to save the last Hamish mission for John.) Once I have the two Dutch Warmbloods that I like, the white Arabian and the Tiger Mustang, I won't be able to keep any more horses than that, so my breaking of wild horses will be just for the challenge, then I'll probably go sell them either at the horse fence or at the stable. Of that set, the only one that I could possibly wish I could keep would be maybe the Appaloosa because it's such an iconic character of the American West, as well as a a unique-looking animal.
It's a little weird to be wandering around without any really super concrete goals. This morning I got up a little early and played for almost an hour and a half, for instance. I went and got a few points of interest added to my map after fast-traveling to Pronghorn Ranch up in West Grizzlies. I had to deal with a weird glitch with my horse; finally reloading from the Autosave fixed it. Then I caught the white Arabian, went to the stable to sell Rachel and put my Chocolate Roan in the stable, took some food to Emmitt Miller, and shot up Thieve's Landing, looting all of the bodies. I've figured out that hats I'm looking for often despawn if you're not careful in this kind of scenario; what I need to do is go to one of the three Del Lobo hideouts and just shoot a few guys, steal a stealable hat, and then run away again before the hideout is completely emptied out. I got the Pinned Flop Hat so far, but it's the Bolero hat (the sombrero) that I really want, and I'll take the Straw hat while I'm a it to get the full complement of stolen hats. As the video above shows, there are at least forty stealable hats in the game.
Speaking of which, it's fun to have loads of options to choose from when customizing John's outfits. I've got one that both of my boys just couldn't quit complementing last night; they really wanted to find the elements to make it themselves. Some of it was crafted—I had the Gila monster hat (although I wonder if the Snake bulldogger wouldn't look even better?!) and the Legendary Cougar and Wolf Vest, for instance, but it was just over a black french dress shirt. The other part that really made this outfit was the natural buckskin colored shotgun chaps (available at the Tumbleweed store) and the tan-colored Relentless boots, which have a kind of alligator-like texture to them as well. I had some kind of black pants on underneath; work saddle pants, I think, but it doesn't matter too much as you can't see them very well because of the chaps. This totally natural buckskin-colored and black outfit just looked really cool, and my one son, who had contemptuously eschewed hunting for the trapper spontaneously decided that maybe he'd want to do it now after all (of course, it helps that he finished the second epilogue, so he doesn't have anything other than challenges and collectibles to do anyway.) This one really caught their fancy because it looked so iconically "cowboy"—I had made it specifically to run around in hot weather (in spite of the fact that the vest is moderately warm) and had been in New Austin with it, where it really looks at home. Pair it with an open shirt, rolled up sleeves, and maybe some craftable leathery rifleman's gloves with a little fur lining, and they see me rollin'; they hatin'.
While it's just cosmetic, they did like the idea specifically of wearing the chaps in the desert section, because you're busting your way through prickly-pear cactus stands and whatnot so often. I don't think they actually understood the point of chaps until then. It maybe makes sense that by far more chaps options are available in Tumbleweed than everywhere else combined in the game.
I really wish a lot of the Online clothing options were available offline. I'm just not really a huge fan of the Online game-play, honestly. I'll probably eventually migrate over to it, but I'm disappointed that I can't just use the stuff that they keep adding for it to Offline (or Story, I suppose.) I do notice that some of the online clothing options are buyable trapper crafted items that now come in multiple colors. Some of them seem like stealable hats in the main game too. But, of course, some of the items are truly unique; if they're in the game files, I wish we could get them somehow. The ponchos in particular, are a big miss, and that double-breasted leather coat, the Durham coat, in particular is one that I wish I could get offline. And they finally added a real, genuine sombrero too, which seemed like kinda an obvious thing that they didn't have in the normal story-mode game.
In any case, as fun as RDR2 is, it suffers from the same thing every computer game eventually suffers from; limitation. You finish the story mode. You don't like the online mode. Whatever it is, it's not truly limitless. Even big, open world sandboxes can only offer you so much, and with RDR2, I'm bumping up on the limitations of what single-player offers, and I'm wary of online. As one of my sons says, the online missions aren't really very interesting either, because your characters can't even talk, for instance.
And this is why table-top roleplaying exists. You can do anything in this environment, although granted it's not as passive of an activity. You have to imagine what you can't actually see online (although even the very good graphics of RDR2 are nothing at all like real life), and you have to have a GM who knows what he's doing, but in that paradigm, you can suddenly turn all of your limitations off and do whatever you feel like. As long as the other folks that you're playing with agree, anyway. Of course, if even that last limitation bothers you, just write novels and sell them on Amazon, or something—I find that the collaborative nature of RPGs allows us collectively to come up with stuff that I individually would never have thought of, though.
Anyway, I'm thinking some more about the setting of WESTERN HACK and wondering how much (if any) development I'd really want to do, or if the high level stuff I've already discussed is sufficient to get it rolling.
I'll think about it some more and post later, when I get a chance.
Often, I feel like I'm running around trying to do things and not being successful. I still need two perfect armadillo pelts to finish all of the trapper garment sets, as well as a javelina pelt, two muskrat pelts, a bunch of squirrel and rat pelts for hats and other trapper stuff, as well as a bunch of bird feathers and whatnot for the last round of trapper hats.
Speaking of hats, I'm also looking to round out the stolen and found hats collection, as well as a handful of rewarded hats.
There's a lot of potential hats to chase down. I don't know for sure how many I have, but I'm guessing less than half of the stolen hats, but most of the found hats (minus the Chinese hat and I might still need one or two of the scarecrow hats), most of the craftable hats. And I've got challenges to do. I'm trying to finish off the horseman challenge, and I'm on the last now, but it's the longest and most tedious to do. I need to break ten breeds of horses in the wild to do so: the Wild American Paint, American Standardbred, Apaloosa, Hungarian Halfbred, Kentucky Saddler, Morgan, Mustang, Nokota and Tennessee Walker. I plan on actually starting with the Mustang, because I want the Tiger Stripe Bay Mustang. I actually just sold Rachel, because I'm a bit done with Thoroughbreds, she's kinda a boring one anyway, and I can always go get a free Thoroughbred at Valentine, I believe, because we have the Ultimate version of the game. Assuming I would ever want another Thoroughbred again at this point, which I don't think that I would. I have two Dutch Warmbloods—probably too many, but I don't want to get rid of either Buell or the Chocolate Roan, because Buell is super unique and if I get rid of him I'll never have him again. (Maybe I need more than one save-game). I also just went and got the white Arabian up by Lake Isabella again. I had it as Arthur, but it died. I would have lost it anyway changing from Arthur to John. (Aside; if you want Buell, you'll have to save the last Hamish mission for John.) Once I have the two Dutch Warmbloods that I like, the white Arabian and the Tiger Mustang, I won't be able to keep any more horses than that, so my breaking of wild horses will be just for the challenge, then I'll probably go sell them either at the horse fence or at the stable. Of that set, the only one that I could possibly wish I could keep would be maybe the Appaloosa because it's such an iconic character of the American West, as well as a a unique-looking animal.
It's a little weird to be wandering around without any really super concrete goals. This morning I got up a little early and played for almost an hour and a half, for instance. I went and got a few points of interest added to my map after fast-traveling to Pronghorn Ranch up in West Grizzlies. I had to deal with a weird glitch with my horse; finally reloading from the Autosave fixed it. Then I caught the white Arabian, went to the stable to sell Rachel and put my Chocolate Roan in the stable, took some food to Emmitt Miller, and shot up Thieve's Landing, looting all of the bodies. I've figured out that hats I'm looking for often despawn if you're not careful in this kind of scenario; what I need to do is go to one of the three Del Lobo hideouts and just shoot a few guys, steal a stealable hat, and then run away again before the hideout is completely emptied out. I got the Pinned Flop Hat so far, but it's the Bolero hat (the sombrero) that I really want, and I'll take the Straw hat while I'm a it to get the full complement of stolen hats. As the video above shows, there are at least forty stealable hats in the game.
Speaking of which, it's fun to have loads of options to choose from when customizing John's outfits. I've got one that both of my boys just couldn't quit complementing last night; they really wanted to find the elements to make it themselves. Some of it was crafted—I had the Gila monster hat (although I wonder if the Snake bulldogger wouldn't look even better?!) and the Legendary Cougar and Wolf Vest, for instance, but it was just over a black french dress shirt. The other part that really made this outfit was the natural buckskin colored shotgun chaps (available at the Tumbleweed store) and the tan-colored Relentless boots, which have a kind of alligator-like texture to them as well. I had some kind of black pants on underneath; work saddle pants, I think, but it doesn't matter too much as you can't see them very well because of the chaps. This totally natural buckskin-colored and black outfit just looked really cool, and my one son, who had contemptuously eschewed hunting for the trapper spontaneously decided that maybe he'd want to do it now after all (of course, it helps that he finished the second epilogue, so he doesn't have anything other than challenges and collectibles to do anyway.) This one really caught their fancy because it looked so iconically "cowboy"—I had made it specifically to run around in hot weather (in spite of the fact that the vest is moderately warm) and had been in New Austin with it, where it really looks at home. Pair it with an open shirt, rolled up sleeves, and maybe some craftable leathery rifleman's gloves with a little fur lining, and they see me rollin'; they hatin'.
While it's just cosmetic, they did like the idea specifically of wearing the chaps in the desert section, because you're busting your way through prickly-pear cactus stands and whatnot so often. I don't think they actually understood the point of chaps until then. It maybe makes sense that by far more chaps options are available in Tumbleweed than everywhere else combined in the game.
I really wish a lot of the Online clothing options were available offline. I'm just not really a huge fan of the Online game-play, honestly. I'll probably eventually migrate over to it, but I'm disappointed that I can't just use the stuff that they keep adding for it to Offline (or Story, I suppose.) I do notice that some of the online clothing options are buyable trapper crafted items that now come in multiple colors. Some of them seem like stealable hats in the main game too. But, of course, some of the items are truly unique; if they're in the game files, I wish we could get them somehow. The ponchos in particular, are a big miss, and that double-breasted leather coat, the Durham coat, in particular is one that I wish I could get offline. And they finally added a real, genuine sombrero too, which seemed like kinda an obvious thing that they didn't have in the normal story-mode game.
In any case, as fun as RDR2 is, it suffers from the same thing every computer game eventually suffers from; limitation. You finish the story mode. You don't like the online mode. Whatever it is, it's not truly limitless. Even big, open world sandboxes can only offer you so much, and with RDR2, I'm bumping up on the limitations of what single-player offers, and I'm wary of online. As one of my sons says, the online missions aren't really very interesting either, because your characters can't even talk, for instance.
And this is why table-top roleplaying exists. You can do anything in this environment, although granted it's not as passive of an activity. You have to imagine what you can't actually see online (although even the very good graphics of RDR2 are nothing at all like real life), and you have to have a GM who knows what he's doing, but in that paradigm, you can suddenly turn all of your limitations off and do whatever you feel like. As long as the other folks that you're playing with agree, anyway. Of course, if even that last limitation bothers you, just write novels and sell them on Amazon, or something—I find that the collaborative nature of RPGs allows us collectively to come up with stuff that I individually would never have thought of, though.
Anyway, I'm thinking some more about the setting of WESTERN HACK and wondering how much (if any) development I'd really want to do, or if the high level stuff I've already discussed is sufficient to get it rolling.
I'll think about it some more and post later, when I get a chance.
Friday, June 14, 2019
Western Hack as setting
Well, I've decided that rather than try and go through the rather complicated task that will be updating the monster list from FANTASY HACK to have the speed stats that the monster list for DARK•HERITAGE 2.0 has, I'll just make a comment in the combat rules where it talks about chase scenes and add the WESTERN HACK stuff as a new Appendix IV, and update the rules to be another version. Because it's a more significant change, but not so significant as to be a new edition, that means, I think, that it'll move from version 1.5.4 to 1.6. Maybe later, it'll bump to 1.6.1 or even 1.7 when I do get around to updating the monster list. (I can't just copy and paste the monster lists, because there were some deliberate differences between them; I'll have to figure it out and I don't want to take the time to do so now.) After that, FANTASY HACK will be "done" again until such time as I get around to doing SWASHBUCKLER HACK with sailing ship rules, or something.
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.
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.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
What does Western Hack need compared to Fantasy Hack or Dark•Heritage 2.0?
Let's look at this from a rules perspective first. A western fantasy, compared to a Medieval fantasy, probably needs an alternate rules module that offers the following:
- firearms more typical of the 1850-1900 period, more or less. This can top out with mounted stuff like a cannon or Gatling gun, although these aren't really portable weapons in the individual sense.
- Some more variation and nuance to horse-riding, varieties of horse, etc. so that there's some flavor to the horseplay in the game.
I actually think that that's about it. Other than that, the rules for FANTASY HACK would already work quite well for facilitating WESTERN HACK. I probably should get to that so I can focus more on a WESTERN HACK setting without feeling like the rules adjustments are hanging over my head. But I'm a little bit intimidated by the task; I'm afraid of going too far and breaking the rules-lite paradigm in order to get rules nuance, and being unhappy with the result. Sigh.
Borrowing from the three existing Microlite cowboys & injuns game only goes so far, so I'll probably have to make up the horse rules, at least, since none of them have anything like that. Anyway, here goes:
Firearms (replaces the black powder firearms rules from Appendix II of FANTASY HACK)
Borrowing from the three existing Microlite cowboys & injuns game only goes so far, so I'll probably have to make up the horse rules, at least, since none of them have anything like that. Anyway, here goes:
Firearms (replaces the black powder firearms rules from Appendix II of FANTASY HACK)
- Pistol: Short range, single shot, holds 2 rounds, damage 1d8m reload time 1 round
- Revolver: Medium range, Single shot, holds 6 rounds, damage 2d6 reload time 2 rounds
- Lever-action Rifle: Long range, single shot, holds 15 rounds, damage 2d8 reload time 3 rounds
- Sharpshooter Rifle: Far range, Single shot, holds 1 rounds, damage 2d10 reload time 1 round
- Shotgun: Medium range, single shot, holds 2 rounds, damage 2d12 reload time 2 rounds
- Gatling Gun: Long range, 6 shots per round, holds 100 rounds, damage 2d6 each reload time 4 rounds
- Cannon: Long range, Single shot, holds 1 round, damage 4d8 reload time 2 rounds
Range to be decided by the GM, not specifically "measured". The Gatling Gun and cannons are portable, but takes a crew of two to operate properly. It is mounted on wheels like a cannon, requires a horse, mule or ox or equally strong animal to move, and once set up cannot be moved during a particular combat unless you hitch it to an animal (although with both members of the crew operating it, it can be rotated to fire at a different angle, although doing so takes an entire round to do.) A single person can use this weapon, but cannot do anything with it except load it and fire it and hitch it to a horse; he cannot rotate it. It also takes twice as long for a single person to reload it.
Horses (replaces the entries found in the Monster section of FANTASY HACK)
- HORSE, RIDING: AC: 12 HD 2d6 (8 hp) AT:bite or kick +2 (1d6) STR: +4, DEX: +2, MND: -3, S: Grants a rider a +10 bonus on chase rolls, standard cost: 40
- HORSE, WAR: AC: 12 HD 3d6 (12 hp) AT: bite +3 (1d6) or kick +3 (2d6) STR: +6, DEX: +2, MND: -3, S: Grants a rider a +7 on chase rolls, standard cost: 200
- HORSE, RACE: AC: 12 HD 2d6 (8 hp) AT: bite or kick +2 (1d6) STR: +5, DEX: +2, MND: -3, S: grants a rider a +14 bonus on chase rolls, standard cost: 125
- HORSE, OLD NAG: AC: 10 HD 1d6 (4 hp) AT: bite or kick +1 (1d6) STR: +4, DEX: +0, MIND: -3, S: grants a rider a +7 on chase rolls, standard cost 10
The performance of horses can be improved with proper care and tack. There are three main items of gear used by these rules: a bridle, a saddle, and horseshoes. All are rather specialized equipment that require considerable expertise to craft (and in the case of shoes, to put on the horse as well.) Standard versions of the three cost: 10 for a saddle, 5 for a bit, and 5 for shoes (installed.) Riding a horse without the proper gear results in a -1 penalty (each) for lack of a saddle or bridle, and a horse without shoes will face a -3 result on fatigue rolls during chase scenes.
Horses can also be found in the wild, although race horses and war horses are extremely hard to find. Catching and breaking a wild horse involves sneaking up on it, lassoing it, mounting it, and then doing MND + Athletics checks against the horse's STR + HD. You will need to pass three such checks in a row, while if you fail three in a row, the horse bucks you off, you'll need to do a DEX + Athletics check to avoid taking 1d6 damage from falling, and the horse will then either attack you or (more likely) run away and you will have failed. If you do not get these checks in a row, you can continue trying to break the horse until you either succeed or fail three in a row.
Horses can also be found in the wild, although race horses and war horses are extremely hard to find. Catching and breaking a wild horse involves sneaking up on it, lassoing it, mounting it, and then doing MND + Athletics checks against the horse's STR + HD. You will need to pass three such checks in a row, while if you fail three in a row, the horse bucks you off, you'll need to do a DEX + Athletics check to avoid taking 1d6 damage from falling, and the horse will then either attack you or (more likely) run away and you will have failed. If you do not get these checks in a row, you can continue trying to break the horse until you either succeed or fail three in a row.
Non standard, specialized or even magical versions can improve the performance of horses above that of the standard listed. The following are some improvements that can be made:
- +1 or +2 (cost of +10 and +50) to fatigue checks during a chase scene; can be applied to a saddle or bridle
- +2 to kick damage with improved horseshoes
- +1 or +2 or even +3 (cost of +10, +50 and +150 respectively) to speed bonus on chase checks; can be applied to any of the three parts of equipment, and if applied to more than one, they can be cumulative. A really tricked out race-horse, for instance, could have an additional +9 to it's chase bonus, for a total of +23
- Barding can offer +2 or +4 to AC (cost of 15 and 30 respectively) but reduces the speed bonus by the same amount, and imposes a fatigue penalty during chase scenes by the same amount as well. It isn't much used in the Old West, but it's not entirely unheard of.
This same equipment can be used if riding any other more fantastical creature, by the way, although horseshoes probably won't be relevant to most creatures unless they have similar hooves.
Extra Mythical Horses
Mythical horses can be created by using the following standard mythical template, and then adding a special ability to the horse to customize it.
HORSE, MYTHICAL: AC 15 HD 5d6 (25 hp) AT: bite or kick +5 (3d6) STR: +6, DEX: +3, MND: -1, S: Grants a raider a +12 on chase rolls
Mythical horses cannot be bought. Often there will only be one of each type in the entire setting, although legends and folklore suggests that if one is somehow killed, it will be spat back out of the Spirit World as an archetype, fully grown, again within the next few weeks or months.
How to catch one is different for each; for unicorns, for example, the lure of a virgin by a crystal clear pool in the forest is supposed to be the best method, for the four horses of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, you may have to fight and defeat the Horseman. The following are a sampling of mythical horses:
- Unicorn: gains an additional gore attack at +5 that does 3d8 damage
- Hippocampus: can travel through water as well as on land and allows its rider to breathe water while mounted
- Pegasus: can fly through the air as well as travel by land
- Sleipnir: this eight legged horse gains an additional +7 to chase checks due to its tremendous speed
- Death: the horse of the Horseman of the Apocalypse, this emaciated/skeletal and ghostly pale horse has the immunities of a flesh golem
- Famine: the horse of the Horseman of the Apocalypse, this black horse causes 1d4 STR damage with each bite attack (STR + level DC 18 to resist) and is surrounded by a swarm of insects that attacks anything adjacent to the horse (except its rider) until the swarm is defeated. This swarm will restart with each new combat encounter.
- War: the horse of the Horseman of the Apocalypse, this red horse has a fiery breath weapon, exactly like a hell hound
- Conquest: the horse of the Horseman of the Apocalypse, this snowy white horse will cause anyone adjacent to it (except the rider) to be shocked by the lightning that courses about the horse for 1d6 damage each round (can be avoided or resisted on a DC 14 (DEX or STR + level check.)
Ta-da! The Western Hack supplement (or Attachment IV, I suppose, to FANTASY HACK, which would be the best way to publish it) is done! However, this may mean that I need to update the main body of FANTASY HACK to make sure that it's consistent with DARK•HERITAGE 2.0. Sigh. Still, that's quite an accomplishment; I didn't set out to do this when I started typing this post, and now it's done! I may end up tweaking this a bit before it's published officially. We'll see.
Anyway, here's a nice image of the Four Horsemen, although I'd have the red one a much brighter, unnaturally so red (about the color of the flag, actually) and my death would be even more... dead and ghostly looking, I suppose.
Still, you can do your own image search for the Four Horsemen. There's obviously tons out there. Maybe this one is a bit better on the horses themselves.
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Ruritanian Old West
I have a lot of hobbies that I often bounce back and forth between, but one that I'm spending as much time as I can get with is Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PS4. It's a great game. Not perfect, mind you, (and the writing is to blame here; and curiously political correctness, which RockStar famously isn't supposed to have.) But it's pretty good. Now, the game's been out for more than six months. Most people finished the main game months ago and have been playing, if they're still playing at all, RDR Online rather than the story mode. I'm way behind. I'm still in Epilogue 2. I've moved to Beecher's Hope with Charles and Uncle, but I haven't built the house yet, because I actually kinda enjoy the campsite iteration of it (although I can't find the shaving station, if there is one—so I have to spend money to shave, which is kinda stupid.)
I spent a lot of time as Arthur in chapters 2-4 in particular (I played 5-6 more straight through. Kinda.) doing things like hunting and whatnot. I made all of the camp upgrades, all of the satchels, most of the trapper clothing items, etc. I completed a number of the challenges (although I still have plenty more to do.) Now that I've got the entire map opened to me, I'm not really doing very many missions yet either; I'm just exploring, hunting, doing challenges, and generally enjoying the ambiance and high quality sandbox activities. (Relative to most other video games, that is.) It won't last forever. I've getting pretty close to finishing up the hunting. I'm getting close to finishing a few more challenge series (although I still have plenty more to do.) And I've only got a few more missions to do before I'm all out of those too. Maybe I'll end up checking out Online after that.
But be that as it may, I enjoy the American Old West as a setting nearly as much as I enjoy Medieval Europe, and I've often wondered about how it would be if a fantasy story (or even whole series) were to be based on the Old West in the same way that most fantasy is loosely based on Medieval Europe. RDR kinda sorta does it. There are a lot of fantastic elements in the series (especially given the Undead Nightmare DLC for the older game) including aliens, sasquatches, unicorns, the Four Horses of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a nosferatu, a ghost train, and of course, a plague of zombies.
Another thing that I really like it about is its fictional setting, although sadly, it's not true fantasy Secondary World, but more Ruritanian-like; although locations are fictional, they still are supposed to exist in the real world, and numerous references to actual places occur as well. This is maybe a little odd, because the map is big enough to encompass all of the types of territories that actually exist in the real American West, and even the not-so West (much of the American South, for instance, and the Midwest, too.)
Here's a reasonably hi-def version of the entire map of RDR2, which covers almost the entirety of the entire area of RDR (with the one exception) and then adds another 150% or so new territory while it's at it. Then I'll talk briefly about each territory.
This stuff isn't new or exciting, but I'm noodling around what I would potentially do with a WESTERN HACK setting, and this is a much better starting point than most.
In alphabetical order, the Ruritanian states of the Union in RDR2 are:
Ambarino
A mountainous country without much in the way of major settlements, and lots of wildlife. Clearly based on the mountainous states of the Northern Rockies, there are parts that look like dead ringers for the Tetons or the Wind Rivers, for instance. There are two constituent regions within Ambarino, Grizzles West and Grizzlies East (the Grizzly Mountains clearly being the Ruritanian Rockies.) In the game, most of Grizzles West is always snow-covered, but because time passes in such a way that seasons don't actually happen in the game, that's probably not meant to be taken too literally.
Ambarino has a number of small towns and homesteads, although many are abandoned, such as Colter, an old abandoned mining town where the gang takes shelter during Chapter 1 (the "Tutorial Chapter"), the Adler homestead, Dodd's Bluff, etc. and later in Grizzlies East, we find the Wapiti Indian Reservation, the "Mysterious Hill Home" (or hobbit hole) where Arthur's grave ends up, Hamish's place on O'Creagh's Run, the Witch's house and Cotorra Springs, the fake Yellowstone. It's possible that the section of Ambarino that we see is not meant to be the entirety of Ambarino; given that there aren't any actual settlements, towns, or anything in the territory, that would actually make some sense.
Lemoyne
Next we have Lemoyne, the Ruritanian American South (sadly, complete with an awful lot of hateful lies about Southerners that we've had to live with for over a century and a half that are perpetuated.) Curiously, my daughter finds that part of this territory is her favorite. Even though we're Southerners, my daughter has not really ever lived in the South, so that's a little bit unexpected. There are three constituent parts of Lemoyne, Scarlett Meadows (yes, with two t's), Bayou Nwa (or maybe Bayou N.W.A., actually. Who knows? That would be funny and kinda appropriate.) and Bluewater Marsh. There are also islands off the coast on both ends, which are kinda sorta accessible. Scarlett Meadows is the largest (and most rural) of the regions, with the town of Rhodes as well as number of plantations and other homestead settlements present. It's very much post-bellum Dixie, and reminds me a lot of places I've known in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi or eastern Texas. The Scarlett of Scarlett Meadows is probably a double entendre; it refers to the red dirt underneath the grass, as well as referring to the main character of Gone With the Wind. Bayou Nwa is basically far eastern Texas and Louisiana, famous for its alligators, marshes, crawdads, and it's big Cajun settlement of Saint Denis, the fake New Orleans, and the largest settlement in the entire territory covered by the game. The Bluewater Marsh seems to merely be a less settled and more rural extension of the Bayou Nwa, although the island of Sisika Penitentiary located in the massive Lannahachee River, which makes up much of the southern border of the playable area, is technically part of this territory too.
Other than Saint Denis and Rhodes, and numerous small homesteads, farms, and country estates here and there, the smaller communities of Lagras, Lakay and the abandoned community of Pleasance, which is really disturbing and probably was abandoned due to either plague, a series of murders, or both.
New Austin
The last territory you explore in this game; you can only access it using Online, or in the Epilogue. However, it was a major element of the first game, and in fact, the entire territory was part of that game as well. It is the American Southwest, and it is very frontier-like, with bandits and wild animals making up much of the territory. Unlike in, say, New Hanover or even West Elizabeth, there are few homesteads of farmers, although a few ranchers make their way out here. There are a few towns of note, however. New Austin borders only a portion of West Elizabeth (at least in the area mapped; the large area to the immediate north of this territory which isn't mapped begs the question of what's there, of course.) Ecologically it is quite diverse, and offers much of the American West sandwiched into a relatively small package.
There are four areas, and three of them are overtly desert-like, although different kinds of deserts if you're keen on the subtle differences. Hennigan's Stead, however, which borders the West Elizabeth area of Great Plains is more of the actual southern American Great Plains of Oklahoma or West Texas. Thieves' Landing is the settlement here, although in the slightly earlier phase of RDR2's epilogue, it's just a Mexican gang fortification and is only turned into an American town later in RDR. Other than that, various ranches and homesteads and even an old Indian camp dot this area.
Cholla Springs is the next area you encounter in New Austin, and it resembles the Arizona deserts with scrub bushes and saguaro catcuses. There are a few ranch houses, plenty of outlaws, and the struggling town of Armadillo located here. Curiously, Armadillo struggles a lot more in the prequel than in the original game; in the former, it's been hit by a plague of plagues; scarlet fever, desert plague, typhus, and finally cholera and is more known for it's dead lying the street, it's suspiciously healthy and arrogant store-keep, and its cowardly sheriff who's let gang members do as they please than for anything else, although it does become a bit of a boomtown in the original game, which takes place later. There are wild theories online that the store-keeper is some kind of warlock who's cursed the town, and who is responsible for the zombie outbreak of Undead Nightmare.
Rio Bravo is the most southerly portion of New Austin and borders with the fake Mexican territory of Nuevo Paraiso. The small oil work camp of Plainview is located here, as well as Fort Mercer, which is more often than not in the control of gangs of Mexicans than of the US Army. Ecologically it seems most heavily based on New Mexico and maybe some Trans-Pecos Texas, such as Big Bend National Park.
Gaptooth Ridge is the most westerly part of the territory, and resembles southern California's deserts, with many Joshua Trees and other typically Californian flora and fauna. There's mining here, like settlements at Gaptooth Breach, and other small ranches, like Rathskeller Fork and Solomon's Folly, some of which are over-run by bandits. And, of course, the town of Tumbleweed is located here. Tumbleweed seems like a decent place in RDR2, but in RDR, which takes place a few years later, it's already more or less abandoned. There are odd hints here and there of some kind of demonic activity going on in this town and a grave that is empty, which in a fantasy game would be pretty wild, of course.
New Hanover
One of the largest territories, and ecologically quite diverse as well, New Hanover stretches from the far eastern edge of the map north of Lemoyne to almost the western edge, and some of its communities and areas are certainly very iconically "western" as well. In spite of it's location in the east, it is somewhat lightly settled, and remains frontier-feeling in all respects, and it is crawling with outlaws, including the savage and disturbing Murfree Brood gang.
There are three constituent areas. Roanoke Ridge is the most easterly, and is heavily influenced in character by the Appalachian Mountains; it's heavily forested, rocky, lots of elevation changes, and sports settlements like the bustling coal mining town of Annesburg, the tough old struggling town of Van Horn, and the hillbilly (I prefer the term Appalachian-American) village of Butcher Creek, not to mention the site of old Fort Brennand, which has been abandoned since the War of Northern Aggression and now houses bandits from Lemoyne. In addition to the creepy Deliverance people (which is insulting; when I was a kid, those same people were portrayed heroically as The Dukes of Hazzard. But whatever.) there are strange ghost whispers in some areas, a house that was hit by a meteor killing everyone inside, a Serbian guy who's playing at making a metallic Frankenstein's monster, a house where everyone is mysteriously dead, old Viking ruins, and some other weird stuff. It also has the tragic-heroic persona of Charlotte, the widow that Arthur teaches how to survive, and some absolutely stunningly beautiful scenery, like Brandywine Drop. This part of New Hanover borders on Ambarino, and unlike in real life, the Appalachian-like mountains turn gradually into Wind River or Teton like mountains without a break, which would be cool if it were true.
Speaking of which, Cumberland Forest is the second area, and is quite small, and provides a transition of sorts from the mountains to the plains, and the entire place is quite forested. Other than the wildlife, it's got an Army fort, not far from the Wapiti Indian Reservation just across the border, a major train bridge and a train station, and a few isolated homesteads.
The Heartlands is the major part of New Hanover, though, and one in which you'll spend quite a bit of time. Reminiscent of the western Great Plains in the real United States, there are parts that are almost dead ringers for real places along the Nebraska Wyoming border, such as Scott's Bluff. There are a few communities, like Emerald Ranch and especially Valentine, which is a full-blown town, Carmody Dell, and the burned out ruins of Limpany. Other farmsteads, homesteads, small ranches, and even businesses like Cornwall Kerosene and Tar round out the area, which is still very frontier-like in quality, although more settled than areas even further west.
Nuevo Paraiso
I have to admit to knowing little about this area. It appears prominently in the first game, but is absent from the second (although the general territory seems to have been more or less modeled, if not fully textured, and exploitation of some glitches has allowed people to wander all over it. It was probably there to provide background, though—although I'd love to think that a future expansion would make it explorable. Nuevo Paraiso is part of Mexico, not the US, but of course, during the waning years of the Old West and the time of Pancho Villa, the difference was sometimes more academic than pragmatic. While this is definitely the desert part of Mexico, such as in Sonora and Chihuahua, some of it bears a surely not coincidental resemblance to places like Monument Valley far to the north. Punto Orgullo is the most westerly region, and it features a few ghost towns, mostly abandoned mines, and loads of bandits. The middle section, Perdido (Spanish for Damned) has two small settlements, but is mostly known for having been largely depopulated by the recent Mexican Civil War, and is also crawling with bandits. The more easterly portion, Diez Coronas, has the Monument Valley-like formations. There are a handful of small settlements, but rather than bandits, it seems to be crawling with the Mexican Army.
West Elizabeth
Although the smallest of the territories in the original game, a much expanded northern section that's bigger than the other two components combined makes up the only part of the territory that you're able to explore at all until the epilogues in the second game. Although largely rural and mountainous, it does feature a number of settlements; the somewhat kitschy mountain town of Strawberry, and the fairly large town of Blackwater being the most notable, but a number of other ranches, farms, homesteads and other smaller settlements are all over the region. It is perhaps notable that three of the five trappers available in the game are also located within the boundaries of West Elizabeth; it really is a hunter's paradise, crawling with wildlife.
Blackwater itself is located in Great Plains, one of the counties or regions of West Elizabeth which is indistinguishable in most respects from nearby and ecologically very similar Hennigan's Stead in New Austin. This is also where John sets up his own ranch at Beecher's Hope. It's a fairly settled and tame area, mostly. Tall Trees nearby is not; crawling with the savage Skinner Brothers half-Indian gang. The territory here resembles the mountainous parts of California with trees that might be sequoias or even redwoods and mountains that look like the Sierra Nevada. There's a fair bit of independent settlement here, there's even sasquatches here, apparently, and loads of wildlife. The only official town, if you can call it that, is the small village of Manzanita Post, although by the first game the wild section known as Cochinay has become a gang hideout. While not snow-covered in RDR2, it is in the first game, I suppose indicating that they model a different season (RDR2 seems to be late spring or early summer.)
Big Valley, where Strawberry is located, is the largest area of West Elizabeth, and one that you'll likely explore a lot with Arthur, although John starts the first epilogue all over here too. It's one of the best hunting (and fishing) grounds in the game, and other than Strawberry and few isolated shacks and homes, it features few settlements—Hanging Dog Ranch, which is the hideout first of the O'Driscoll gang and later the Laramie Brothers being a notable exception, although later Pronghorn Ranch where John finds work ends up smack dab in the middle of the big wildflower meadow just north of the forest. You can see Teton-like mountains ringing Big Valley, and a very high mountain, Mt. Shann, is located just north of Strawberry (you can climb it actually, and if you're there at night, you can even see a UFO.) The southern portion of Big Valley is transitional, and more closely resembles the territories that it is adjacent to, including the Heartlands and Great Plains, although with a few more trees, an older Indian Reservation (prior to the tribe being relocated to the Wapiti Reservation further north) and even a lumber camp.
Although I've made a point of highlighting many of the supernatural or weird tales like elements that RockStar included in my descriptions, you'll see that for the most part, they are actually quite realistic rather than fantastic. And with the exception of the Undead Nightmare DLC, the supernatural elements are more like weird Easter eggs rather than integral components of the setting. That, of course, can be changed, but it does bring up an interesting point; I actually think that jumping straight into having cowboy elves and orcs and whatnot is a mistake; starting from a more realistic baseline and more gradually and carefully layering in fantastic elements is probably a much better way to go. There just isn't the established tradition of fantasy Westerns, so people will be confused or simply not like it or get it if you depart too rapidly from their expectations. Most of the enemies you'll face in RDR are wild animals like alligators, cougars, and grizzly bears, or outlaws and bandits from one of various wild gangs—the most savage and notorious of which are almost more like serial killer cults than traditional outlaw gangs as seen in most Western movies or TV shows of the past. I don't want to be quite that mundane, but even in Medievalist fantasy, I prefer to make sure that everyone knows that wild animals and wild people are plenty dangerous without having to have the territory constantly crawling with monsters. Plus, as I've said many times before, monsters have much more of an impact if they are built up and presented rarely rather than routinely.
I even like the idea of the PCs being something akin to supernatural bounty hunters who wander the territory like Clint Eastwood dealing with the occasional supernatural threat that the locals aren't equipped to handle and maybe even aren't entirely sure that they believe in entirely.
Anyway, I teased this months ago, and then did nothing with it, but I think I'd like to not leave it entirely fallow, and see what I can do with it over the summer and early fall, maybe.
I spent a lot of time as Arthur in chapters 2-4 in particular (I played 5-6 more straight through. Kinda.) doing things like hunting and whatnot. I made all of the camp upgrades, all of the satchels, most of the trapper clothing items, etc. I completed a number of the challenges (although I still have plenty more to do.) Now that I've got the entire map opened to me, I'm not really doing very many missions yet either; I'm just exploring, hunting, doing challenges, and generally enjoying the ambiance and high quality sandbox activities. (Relative to most other video games, that is.) It won't last forever. I've getting pretty close to finishing up the hunting. I'm getting close to finishing a few more challenge series (although I still have plenty more to do.) And I've only got a few more missions to do before I'm all out of those too. Maybe I'll end up checking out Online after that.
But be that as it may, I enjoy the American Old West as a setting nearly as much as I enjoy Medieval Europe, and I've often wondered about how it would be if a fantasy story (or even whole series) were to be based on the Old West in the same way that most fantasy is loosely based on Medieval Europe. RDR kinda sorta does it. There are a lot of fantastic elements in the series (especially given the Undead Nightmare DLC for the older game) including aliens, sasquatches, unicorns, the Four Horses of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a nosferatu, a ghost train, and of course, a plague of zombies.
Another thing that I really like it about is its fictional setting, although sadly, it's not true fantasy Secondary World, but more Ruritanian-like; although locations are fictional, they still are supposed to exist in the real world, and numerous references to actual places occur as well. This is maybe a little odd, because the map is big enough to encompass all of the types of territories that actually exist in the real American West, and even the not-so West (much of the American South, for instance, and the Midwest, too.)
Here's a reasonably hi-def version of the entire map of RDR2, which covers almost the entirety of the entire area of RDR (with the one exception) and then adds another 150% or so new territory while it's at it. Then I'll talk briefly about each territory.
This stuff isn't new or exciting, but I'm noodling around what I would potentially do with a WESTERN HACK setting, and this is a much better starting point than most.
In alphabetical order, the Ruritanian states of the Union in RDR2 are:
Ambarino
A mountainous country without much in the way of major settlements, and lots of wildlife. Clearly based on the mountainous states of the Northern Rockies, there are parts that look like dead ringers for the Tetons or the Wind Rivers, for instance. There are two constituent regions within Ambarino, Grizzles West and Grizzlies East (the Grizzly Mountains clearly being the Ruritanian Rockies.) In the game, most of Grizzles West is always snow-covered, but because time passes in such a way that seasons don't actually happen in the game, that's probably not meant to be taken too literally.
Ambarino has a number of small towns and homesteads, although many are abandoned, such as Colter, an old abandoned mining town where the gang takes shelter during Chapter 1 (the "Tutorial Chapter"), the Adler homestead, Dodd's Bluff, etc. and later in Grizzlies East, we find the Wapiti Indian Reservation, the "Mysterious Hill Home" (or hobbit hole) where Arthur's grave ends up, Hamish's place on O'Creagh's Run, the Witch's house and Cotorra Springs, the fake Yellowstone. It's possible that the section of Ambarino that we see is not meant to be the entirety of Ambarino; given that there aren't any actual settlements, towns, or anything in the territory, that would actually make some sense.
Lemoyne
Next we have Lemoyne, the Ruritanian American South (sadly, complete with an awful lot of hateful lies about Southerners that we've had to live with for over a century and a half that are perpetuated.) Curiously, my daughter finds that part of this territory is her favorite. Even though we're Southerners, my daughter has not really ever lived in the South, so that's a little bit unexpected. There are three constituent parts of Lemoyne, Scarlett Meadows (yes, with two t's), Bayou Nwa (or maybe Bayou N.W.A., actually. Who knows? That would be funny and kinda appropriate.) and Bluewater Marsh. There are also islands off the coast on both ends, which are kinda sorta accessible. Scarlett Meadows is the largest (and most rural) of the regions, with the town of Rhodes as well as number of plantations and other homestead settlements present. It's very much post-bellum Dixie, and reminds me a lot of places I've known in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi or eastern Texas. The Scarlett of Scarlett Meadows is probably a double entendre; it refers to the red dirt underneath the grass, as well as referring to the main character of Gone With the Wind. Bayou Nwa is basically far eastern Texas and Louisiana, famous for its alligators, marshes, crawdads, and it's big Cajun settlement of Saint Denis, the fake New Orleans, and the largest settlement in the entire territory covered by the game. The Bluewater Marsh seems to merely be a less settled and more rural extension of the Bayou Nwa, although the island of Sisika Penitentiary located in the massive Lannahachee River, which makes up much of the southern border of the playable area, is technically part of this territory too.
Other than Saint Denis and Rhodes, and numerous small homesteads, farms, and country estates here and there, the smaller communities of Lagras, Lakay and the abandoned community of Pleasance, which is really disturbing and probably was abandoned due to either plague, a series of murders, or both.
New Austin
The last territory you explore in this game; you can only access it using Online, or in the Epilogue. However, it was a major element of the first game, and in fact, the entire territory was part of that game as well. It is the American Southwest, and it is very frontier-like, with bandits and wild animals making up much of the territory. Unlike in, say, New Hanover or even West Elizabeth, there are few homesteads of farmers, although a few ranchers make their way out here. There are a few towns of note, however. New Austin borders only a portion of West Elizabeth (at least in the area mapped; the large area to the immediate north of this territory which isn't mapped begs the question of what's there, of course.) Ecologically it is quite diverse, and offers much of the American West sandwiched into a relatively small package.
There are four areas, and three of them are overtly desert-like, although different kinds of deserts if you're keen on the subtle differences. Hennigan's Stead, however, which borders the West Elizabeth area of Great Plains is more of the actual southern American Great Plains of Oklahoma or West Texas. Thieves' Landing is the settlement here, although in the slightly earlier phase of RDR2's epilogue, it's just a Mexican gang fortification and is only turned into an American town later in RDR. Other than that, various ranches and homesteads and even an old Indian camp dot this area.
Cholla Springs is the next area you encounter in New Austin, and it resembles the Arizona deserts with scrub bushes and saguaro catcuses. There are a few ranch houses, plenty of outlaws, and the struggling town of Armadillo located here. Curiously, Armadillo struggles a lot more in the prequel than in the original game; in the former, it's been hit by a plague of plagues; scarlet fever, desert plague, typhus, and finally cholera and is more known for it's dead lying the street, it's suspiciously healthy and arrogant store-keep, and its cowardly sheriff who's let gang members do as they please than for anything else, although it does become a bit of a boomtown in the original game, which takes place later. There are wild theories online that the store-keeper is some kind of warlock who's cursed the town, and who is responsible for the zombie outbreak of Undead Nightmare.
Rio Bravo is the most southerly portion of New Austin and borders with the fake Mexican territory of Nuevo Paraiso. The small oil work camp of Plainview is located here, as well as Fort Mercer, which is more often than not in the control of gangs of Mexicans than of the US Army. Ecologically it seems most heavily based on New Mexico and maybe some Trans-Pecos Texas, such as Big Bend National Park.
Gaptooth Ridge is the most westerly part of the territory, and resembles southern California's deserts, with many Joshua Trees and other typically Californian flora and fauna. There's mining here, like settlements at Gaptooth Breach, and other small ranches, like Rathskeller Fork and Solomon's Folly, some of which are over-run by bandits. And, of course, the town of Tumbleweed is located here. Tumbleweed seems like a decent place in RDR2, but in RDR, which takes place a few years later, it's already more or less abandoned. There are odd hints here and there of some kind of demonic activity going on in this town and a grave that is empty, which in a fantasy game would be pretty wild, of course.
New Hanover
One of the largest territories, and ecologically quite diverse as well, New Hanover stretches from the far eastern edge of the map north of Lemoyne to almost the western edge, and some of its communities and areas are certainly very iconically "western" as well. In spite of it's location in the east, it is somewhat lightly settled, and remains frontier-feeling in all respects, and it is crawling with outlaws, including the savage and disturbing Murfree Brood gang.
There are three constituent areas. Roanoke Ridge is the most easterly, and is heavily influenced in character by the Appalachian Mountains; it's heavily forested, rocky, lots of elevation changes, and sports settlements like the bustling coal mining town of Annesburg, the tough old struggling town of Van Horn, and the hillbilly (I prefer the term Appalachian-American) village of Butcher Creek, not to mention the site of old Fort Brennand, which has been abandoned since the War of Northern Aggression and now houses bandits from Lemoyne. In addition to the creepy Deliverance people (which is insulting; when I was a kid, those same people were portrayed heroically as The Dukes of Hazzard. But whatever.) there are strange ghost whispers in some areas, a house that was hit by a meteor killing everyone inside, a Serbian guy who's playing at making a metallic Frankenstein's monster, a house where everyone is mysteriously dead, old Viking ruins, and some other weird stuff. It also has the tragic-heroic persona of Charlotte, the widow that Arthur teaches how to survive, and some absolutely stunningly beautiful scenery, like Brandywine Drop. This part of New Hanover borders on Ambarino, and unlike in real life, the Appalachian-like mountains turn gradually into Wind River or Teton like mountains without a break, which would be cool if it were true.
Speaking of which, Cumberland Forest is the second area, and is quite small, and provides a transition of sorts from the mountains to the plains, and the entire place is quite forested. Other than the wildlife, it's got an Army fort, not far from the Wapiti Indian Reservation just across the border, a major train bridge and a train station, and a few isolated homesteads.
The Heartlands is the major part of New Hanover, though, and one in which you'll spend quite a bit of time. Reminiscent of the western Great Plains in the real United States, there are parts that are almost dead ringers for real places along the Nebraska Wyoming border, such as Scott's Bluff. There are a few communities, like Emerald Ranch and especially Valentine, which is a full-blown town, Carmody Dell, and the burned out ruins of Limpany. Other farmsteads, homesteads, small ranches, and even businesses like Cornwall Kerosene and Tar round out the area, which is still very frontier-like in quality, although more settled than areas even further west.
Nuevo Paraiso
I have to admit to knowing little about this area. It appears prominently in the first game, but is absent from the second (although the general territory seems to have been more or less modeled, if not fully textured, and exploitation of some glitches has allowed people to wander all over it. It was probably there to provide background, though—although I'd love to think that a future expansion would make it explorable. Nuevo Paraiso is part of Mexico, not the US, but of course, during the waning years of the Old West and the time of Pancho Villa, the difference was sometimes more academic than pragmatic. While this is definitely the desert part of Mexico, such as in Sonora and Chihuahua, some of it bears a surely not coincidental resemblance to places like Monument Valley far to the north. Punto Orgullo is the most westerly region, and it features a few ghost towns, mostly abandoned mines, and loads of bandits. The middle section, Perdido (Spanish for Damned) has two small settlements, but is mostly known for having been largely depopulated by the recent Mexican Civil War, and is also crawling with bandits. The more easterly portion, Diez Coronas, has the Monument Valley-like formations. There are a handful of small settlements, but rather than bandits, it seems to be crawling with the Mexican Army.
West Elizabeth
Although the smallest of the territories in the original game, a much expanded northern section that's bigger than the other two components combined makes up the only part of the territory that you're able to explore at all until the epilogues in the second game. Although largely rural and mountainous, it does feature a number of settlements; the somewhat kitschy mountain town of Strawberry, and the fairly large town of Blackwater being the most notable, but a number of other ranches, farms, homesteads and other smaller settlements are all over the region. It is perhaps notable that three of the five trappers available in the game are also located within the boundaries of West Elizabeth; it really is a hunter's paradise, crawling with wildlife.
Blackwater itself is located in Great Plains, one of the counties or regions of West Elizabeth which is indistinguishable in most respects from nearby and ecologically very similar Hennigan's Stead in New Austin. This is also where John sets up his own ranch at Beecher's Hope. It's a fairly settled and tame area, mostly. Tall Trees nearby is not; crawling with the savage Skinner Brothers half-Indian gang. The territory here resembles the mountainous parts of California with trees that might be sequoias or even redwoods and mountains that look like the Sierra Nevada. There's a fair bit of independent settlement here, there's even sasquatches here, apparently, and loads of wildlife. The only official town, if you can call it that, is the small village of Manzanita Post, although by the first game the wild section known as Cochinay has become a gang hideout. While not snow-covered in RDR2, it is in the first game, I suppose indicating that they model a different season (RDR2 seems to be late spring or early summer.)
Big Valley, where Strawberry is located, is the largest area of West Elizabeth, and one that you'll likely explore a lot with Arthur, although John starts the first epilogue all over here too. It's one of the best hunting (and fishing) grounds in the game, and other than Strawberry and few isolated shacks and homes, it features few settlements—Hanging Dog Ranch, which is the hideout first of the O'Driscoll gang and later the Laramie Brothers being a notable exception, although later Pronghorn Ranch where John finds work ends up smack dab in the middle of the big wildflower meadow just north of the forest. You can see Teton-like mountains ringing Big Valley, and a very high mountain, Mt. Shann, is located just north of Strawberry (you can climb it actually, and if you're there at night, you can even see a UFO.) The southern portion of Big Valley is transitional, and more closely resembles the territories that it is adjacent to, including the Heartlands and Great Plains, although with a few more trees, an older Indian Reservation (prior to the tribe being relocated to the Wapiti Reservation further north) and even a lumber camp.
Although I've made a point of highlighting many of the supernatural or weird tales like elements that RockStar included in my descriptions, you'll see that for the most part, they are actually quite realistic rather than fantastic. And with the exception of the Undead Nightmare DLC, the supernatural elements are more like weird Easter eggs rather than integral components of the setting. That, of course, can be changed, but it does bring up an interesting point; I actually think that jumping straight into having cowboy elves and orcs and whatnot is a mistake; starting from a more realistic baseline and more gradually and carefully layering in fantastic elements is probably a much better way to go. There just isn't the established tradition of fantasy Westerns, so people will be confused or simply not like it or get it if you depart too rapidly from their expectations. Most of the enemies you'll face in RDR are wild animals like alligators, cougars, and grizzly bears, or outlaws and bandits from one of various wild gangs—the most savage and notorious of which are almost more like serial killer cults than traditional outlaw gangs as seen in most Western movies or TV shows of the past. I don't want to be quite that mundane, but even in Medievalist fantasy, I prefer to make sure that everyone knows that wild animals and wild people are plenty dangerous without having to have the territory constantly crawling with monsters. Plus, as I've said many times before, monsters have much more of an impact if they are built up and presented rarely rather than routinely.
I even like the idea of the PCs being something akin to supernatural bounty hunters who wander the territory like Clint Eastwood dealing with the occasional supernatural threat that the locals aren't equipped to handle and maybe even aren't entirely sure that they believe in entirely.
Anyway, I teased this months ago, and then did nothing with it, but I think I'd like to not leave it entirely fallow, and see what I can do with it over the summer and early fall, maybe.
Wednesday, November 07, 2018
On Fantasy
One could make a case that Fantasy is the original mode of fiction in all of Western civilization and the various relatives, such as they are, of Western civilization. What could be more fantastic that the Twelve Labors of Hercules, the story of the Trojan War as told in the Iliad, or the voyage home of Odysseus? From the Celts, the Norse, the Aryans, and various Mesopotamians we get similar results; heroic men striding exotic and fantastic landscapes to fight supernatural villains and strange monsters; many of which remain with us as part of our cultural touchstones in the fantasy genre and fairy tales today; dragons, trolls, goblins, griffons, etc.
Most of these, while sometimes taking place in exotic and make-believe locales, also take place in the world that the tellers and their audience would have been familiar with; when Jason and the Argonauts head towards Colchis where they find the Golden Fleece and Medea, Colchis was a well-known location not far from the Greek Euxine Sea cities of Phasis and the (probably ethnic Georgian) city known to them as Dioscurias. Prometheus was reputed to be in the mountains nearby as well.
Although this isn't the case now, fantasy for many years did this; it was reluctant to take too firm a leave of the familiar shores, and made numerous references to real world peoples, places and things. One of the earliest to break with this was William Morris, one of the clear founders of the fantasy genre as we know it, who wrote very early fantasy novels like The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World's End. Both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were fans of his work, and it was inspirational to them, at least in the sense that it gave them the idea of the kinds of things that they could write, if nothing else. Robert E. Howard made some ties between his Hyborian Age (and earlier Thurian Age) and the real world, but they are also, effectively, true secondary world fantasies as well. By this I mean, it takes place in a discrete, self-contained fantasy setting that, while it may bear resemblances to the real world, is not meant to be connected to them in any way whatsoever.
And this is the mode in which fantasy has become known to fans of the genre today; it's secondary world unique, discrete setting, and it's pseudo-Medievalism. (The Conan stories are also Medievalist, although this is often forgotten, because Conan tends to spend more time in Mediterranean locations that are a bit more exotic than his Howard's fake Romano-Frankish, or glorified Lombard Aquilonian Empire, Anglo-Saxon Brythunians, pseudo-Gaelic Cimmerians, etc. that are familiar to us from Early Medieval history, although with new names, geographies and histories.) In fact, I'd daresay that most people wouldn't recognize fantasy without a kind of Renaissance Festival look and feel to it, and those works that deliberately change that do so particularly to stand out. And honestly; they don't change it all that much. Changing Medieval Western Europe as your kinda sorta baseline to the Roman Empire or Imperial Japan, or something like that, will only feel like a big change in a genre that's relatively tightly bound to begin with.
There has been a little bit of very specific and unusual deviations from this. There's a big genre of urban fantasy, for instance, which does not utilize secondary world, and takes place in the modern world, just with fantasy elements all over the place. Some of the more experimental stuff comes in different venues. Star Wars (and some of the space opera stuff it was based on, like Dune, or others) has often been called swashbuckling fantasy in space, and why not; it's got monsters, dark lords, sword fights, princesses, wizards, etc. The Dark Tower is the only fantasy work that I know of that utilizes some of the visual and character cues from Westerns in a secondary fantasy world. There's been a bit more success with steampunk and even dieselpunk fantasy, especially in the world of video games. The Tannhauser board game (and a few tie-in novels) provide a pretty sweet fantasy World War 2 setting; although it's alternate (fantasy) history rather than a true secondary world. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies prove that Golden Age of Piracy fantasy would work very well, although they don't create a fictional secondary world setting, sadly.
But why not? I actually think space fantasy is relatively well-served (and my own Ad Astra game does a credible job of showing what I think that should look like anyway) but it's just about the only non-Medieval fantasy that really has any legs, and people usually don't consider it fantasy anyway, but rather some kind of science fiction. The two that I'd really like to see are pirates and cowboys & injuns converted to fantasy with a true, secondary fictional world. This means... what; modifying Ad Astra or Fantasy Hack (or DH5, maybe—which is already almost identical to Fantasy Hack anyway) to have cowboys and cowboy-like technology and cowboy-like setting assumptions baked into the rules.
And, of course, it'd need a setting. Maybe some fiction would be fun.
Although this has been something that's been on my mind for literally years, I haven't done much with it other than some rather hesitant, half-hearted steps in that direction with DH4; although it was only one of many influences that got sucked into DH4, so it was too watered down to really feel like "Western fantasy."
Now; there are three Microlite games already that I'm aware of, because they're included in the big ole Microlite Collecton PDF already; Tumbleweed, Gunsmoke & Goblins and Owl Hoot Trail. Both look pretty nifty, although I think maybe they try too hard to be atmospheric in the way that they're written and how they've renamed stats, skills, classes, etc. that are already familiar to us from other games. I'd probably re-read them again, focus on harmonizing with Fantasy Hack conventions as good as possible, and then borrow whatever good ideas they have into a custom Fantasy Hack designed to be Western Hack. Then I'll do Swashbuckling Hack too, focused on the type of stuff you see in The Three Musketeers and Captain Blood and stuff like that. Neither is particularly difficult to get out of Fantasy Hack as it is, and in fact, with some very minor additions of equipment rules and maybe giving some thought to some kind of vehicle and mounted combat options. Fantasy Hack has a nod to mounted chases, but in a cowboy setting, you've got stagecoaches, wild horse chases, and whatnot, and if you don't account for them at least as well as Ad Astra accounted for spaceship combat, then you're probably missing the boat seriously with your game, which doesn't have one of the key things that it needs in it to be successful. Speaking of missing the boat, Swashcbuckling Hack may well need something with cannons, ships, and whatnot, given that the Golden Age of Piracy is such an important point of influence.
Both Western Hack and Swashbuckling Hack can be done, I'd think, not as stand-alone games, but as Optional and Alternate Appendices that further "hack" the rules of Fantasy Hack, but which require it to run. Heck; maybe I'll add Noir Hack to it while I'm at it. But honestly, what they most need are settings.
I think part of the reason I'm feeling particularly motivated is because of how much fun I'm having with Red Dead Redemption 2. But it doesn't really do everything I want. I find that the game is sometimes too punitive; you can't do anything without having the long arm of the law come down on you. My son who played GTA5 the most thinks it's a bit odd that the law is much more frustrating in RDR2 than in GTA5, because by the terms of the genre itself, you'd expect the other way around.
I also really like the fake Old West of the RDR games. Places like Blackwater, New Hanover, Saint Denis, West Elizabeth, Nuevo Paraiso, the Grizzly Mountains, etc. sound very much like places in the real west... but they're not. Just like the places of Upmeads, Cheaping Knowe, the Long Lake, Mirkwood, Bree, the Burg of the Four Friths or Rivendell sound like places that ring with that Olde World charm, even though they're fictional places too. But RDR doesn't take place in a true secondary world either; although they are fictional territories (or states, or whatever they are) they're fictional territories within the US, and numerous references to real places like New York City and California, and Japan and Spain and Peking, etc. pepper the dialogue of the characters too. So, it's close, but not quite.
And although RDR has a lot of weird easter eggs; Nosferatu stalks the city of Saint Denis, UFOs appear in two places if you're there at the right time of night, and there's even a ghost train that runs along a certain section of track at midnight, and there's the bones of something that is, I presume, supposed to be a sasquatch, it's also not a fantasy game. The weirdest thing you have to actually fight isn't anything like a dragon, or a cyclops; it's a hungry grizzly bear.
Now granted, fantasy can be overwrought with the fantastic, to the point where it has no ability to reach you emotionally anymore, because it's freakin' all over the place. Good fantasy is actually somewhat discrete, and doesn't throw the fantastic at you non-stop, but contrasts it with the familiar and mundane, which is actually what you see most of the time. While hobbits are, of course, a fantasy race, they are a great stand-in for mundane, regular Edwardian England as Tolkien understood it and loved it, so when Bilbo and later Frodo and the others have to travel across the length and breadth of the setting, we as the readers get to experience much of the sense of wonder that they as the characters do. Which isn't all the time; it comes in discrete chunks, like the horror the Old Forest, the strange fairytale Tom Bombadil, the terror of the Ringwraiths and the barrow-wights, the wonder of Rivendell and Lothlorien, etc.
Which are punctuated by lots of travel and challenges across a landscape that you or I might not find unfamiliar.
Anyway, the rules add-ons and modifications aren't going to be too difficult to pull off. It's the settings that is going to be important. I've got some work to do there. But given that it's something that I've had in the back of my mind for a long time now, it's probably time that I start spelling out a few details as they come to me, and for that reason, I've created (of course) two new tags; Western Hack and Swashbuckling Hack. They will be used for rules posts, setting posts, and general discussion about the initiatives.
And, here's a few images to get you ready for what's coming, although don't take these images as indicative of anything specific you'll see in my stuff. These are just some images I found online. But like I said; because both of these ideas are vastly under-served, there aren't a lot of images out there that really work anyway. And some of them are way too steampunky for my taste; steampunk and the Old West in fantasy are not the same thing at all.
Most of these, while sometimes taking place in exotic and make-believe locales, also take place in the world that the tellers and their audience would have been familiar with; when Jason and the Argonauts head towards Colchis where they find the Golden Fleece and Medea, Colchis was a well-known location not far from the Greek Euxine Sea cities of Phasis and the (probably ethnic Georgian) city known to them as Dioscurias. Prometheus was reputed to be in the mountains nearby as well.
Although this isn't the case now, fantasy for many years did this; it was reluctant to take too firm a leave of the familiar shores, and made numerous references to real world peoples, places and things. One of the earliest to break with this was William Morris, one of the clear founders of the fantasy genre as we know it, who wrote very early fantasy novels like The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World's End. Both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were fans of his work, and it was inspirational to them, at least in the sense that it gave them the idea of the kinds of things that they could write, if nothing else. Robert E. Howard made some ties between his Hyborian Age (and earlier Thurian Age) and the real world, but they are also, effectively, true secondary world fantasies as well. By this I mean, it takes place in a discrete, self-contained fantasy setting that, while it may bear resemblances to the real world, is not meant to be connected to them in any way whatsoever.
And this is the mode in which fantasy has become known to fans of the genre today; it's secondary world unique, discrete setting, and it's pseudo-Medievalism. (The Conan stories are also Medievalist, although this is often forgotten, because Conan tends to spend more time in Mediterranean locations that are a bit more exotic than his Howard's fake Romano-Frankish, or glorified Lombard Aquilonian Empire, Anglo-Saxon Brythunians, pseudo-Gaelic Cimmerians, etc. that are familiar to us from Early Medieval history, although with new names, geographies and histories.) In fact, I'd daresay that most people wouldn't recognize fantasy without a kind of Renaissance Festival look and feel to it, and those works that deliberately change that do so particularly to stand out. And honestly; they don't change it all that much. Changing Medieval Western Europe as your kinda sorta baseline to the Roman Empire or Imperial Japan, or something like that, will only feel like a big change in a genre that's relatively tightly bound to begin with.
There has been a little bit of very specific and unusual deviations from this. There's a big genre of urban fantasy, for instance, which does not utilize secondary world, and takes place in the modern world, just with fantasy elements all over the place. Some of the more experimental stuff comes in different venues. Star Wars (and some of the space opera stuff it was based on, like Dune, or others) has often been called swashbuckling fantasy in space, and why not; it's got monsters, dark lords, sword fights, princesses, wizards, etc. The Dark Tower is the only fantasy work that I know of that utilizes some of the visual and character cues from Westerns in a secondary fantasy world. There's been a bit more success with steampunk and even dieselpunk fantasy, especially in the world of video games. The Tannhauser board game (and a few tie-in novels) provide a pretty sweet fantasy World War 2 setting; although it's alternate (fantasy) history rather than a true secondary world. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies prove that Golden Age of Piracy fantasy would work very well, although they don't create a fictional secondary world setting, sadly.
But why not? I actually think space fantasy is relatively well-served (and my own Ad Astra game does a credible job of showing what I think that should look like anyway) but it's just about the only non-Medieval fantasy that really has any legs, and people usually don't consider it fantasy anyway, but rather some kind of science fiction. The two that I'd really like to see are pirates and cowboys & injuns converted to fantasy with a true, secondary fictional world. This means... what; modifying Ad Astra or Fantasy Hack (or DH5, maybe—which is already almost identical to Fantasy Hack anyway) to have cowboys and cowboy-like technology and cowboy-like setting assumptions baked into the rules.
And, of course, it'd need a setting. Maybe some fiction would be fun.
Although this has been something that's been on my mind for literally years, I haven't done much with it other than some rather hesitant, half-hearted steps in that direction with DH4; although it was only one of many influences that got sucked into DH4, so it was too watered down to really feel like "Western fantasy."
Now; there are three Microlite games already that I'm aware of, because they're included in the big ole Microlite Collecton PDF already; Tumbleweed, Gunsmoke & Goblins and Owl Hoot Trail. Both look pretty nifty, although I think maybe they try too hard to be atmospheric in the way that they're written and how they've renamed stats, skills, classes, etc. that are already familiar to us from other games. I'd probably re-read them again, focus on harmonizing with Fantasy Hack conventions as good as possible, and then borrow whatever good ideas they have into a custom Fantasy Hack designed to be Western Hack. Then I'll do Swashbuckling Hack too, focused on the type of stuff you see in The Three Musketeers and Captain Blood and stuff like that. Neither is particularly difficult to get out of Fantasy Hack as it is, and in fact, with some very minor additions of equipment rules and maybe giving some thought to some kind of vehicle and mounted combat options. Fantasy Hack has a nod to mounted chases, but in a cowboy setting, you've got stagecoaches, wild horse chases, and whatnot, and if you don't account for them at least as well as Ad Astra accounted for spaceship combat, then you're probably missing the boat seriously with your game, which doesn't have one of the key things that it needs in it to be successful. Speaking of missing the boat, Swashcbuckling Hack may well need something with cannons, ships, and whatnot, given that the Golden Age of Piracy is such an important point of influence.
Both Western Hack and Swashbuckling Hack can be done, I'd think, not as stand-alone games, but as Optional and Alternate Appendices that further "hack" the rules of Fantasy Hack, but which require it to run. Heck; maybe I'll add Noir Hack to it while I'm at it. But honestly, what they most need are settings.
I think part of the reason I'm feeling particularly motivated is because of how much fun I'm having with Red Dead Redemption 2. But it doesn't really do everything I want. I find that the game is sometimes too punitive; you can't do anything without having the long arm of the law come down on you. My son who played GTA5 the most thinks it's a bit odd that the law is much more frustrating in RDR2 than in GTA5, because by the terms of the genre itself, you'd expect the other way around.
I also really like the fake Old West of the RDR games. Places like Blackwater, New Hanover, Saint Denis, West Elizabeth, Nuevo Paraiso, the Grizzly Mountains, etc. sound very much like places in the real west... but they're not. Just like the places of Upmeads, Cheaping Knowe, the Long Lake, Mirkwood, Bree, the Burg of the Four Friths or Rivendell sound like places that ring with that Olde World charm, even though they're fictional places too. But RDR doesn't take place in a true secondary world either; although they are fictional territories (or states, or whatever they are) they're fictional territories within the US, and numerous references to real places like New York City and California, and Japan and Spain and Peking, etc. pepper the dialogue of the characters too. So, it's close, but not quite.
And although RDR has a lot of weird easter eggs; Nosferatu stalks the city of Saint Denis, UFOs appear in two places if you're there at the right time of night, and there's even a ghost train that runs along a certain section of track at midnight, and there's the bones of something that is, I presume, supposed to be a sasquatch, it's also not a fantasy game. The weirdest thing you have to actually fight isn't anything like a dragon, or a cyclops; it's a hungry grizzly bear.
Now granted, fantasy can be overwrought with the fantastic, to the point where it has no ability to reach you emotionally anymore, because it's freakin' all over the place. Good fantasy is actually somewhat discrete, and doesn't throw the fantastic at you non-stop, but contrasts it with the familiar and mundane, which is actually what you see most of the time. While hobbits are, of course, a fantasy race, they are a great stand-in for mundane, regular Edwardian England as Tolkien understood it and loved it, so when Bilbo and later Frodo and the others have to travel across the length and breadth of the setting, we as the readers get to experience much of the sense of wonder that they as the characters do. Which isn't all the time; it comes in discrete chunks, like the horror the Old Forest, the strange fairytale Tom Bombadil, the terror of the Ringwraiths and the barrow-wights, the wonder of Rivendell and Lothlorien, etc.
Which are punctuated by lots of travel and challenges across a landscape that you or I might not find unfamiliar.
Anyway, the rules add-ons and modifications aren't going to be too difficult to pull off. It's the settings that is going to be important. I've got some work to do there. But given that it's something that I've had in the back of my mind for a long time now, it's probably time that I start spelling out a few details as they come to me, and for that reason, I've created (of course) two new tags; Western Hack and Swashbuckling Hack. They will be used for rules posts, setting posts, and general discussion about the initiatives.
And, here's a few images to get you ready for what's coming, although don't take these images as indicative of anything specific you'll see in my stuff. These are just some images I found online. But like I said; because both of these ideas are vastly under-served, there aren't a lot of images out there that really work anyway. And some of them are way too steampunky for my taste; steampunk and the Old West in fantasy are not the same thing at all.
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