If you were to apply fantasy tropes to a wild west setting, how would you do it?

I have no idea what I'm doing. So I was hoping for some Veeky Forums magic on the wild west, whether history, or what you'd do to make it fantasy. Hard mode: No guns

a little film called Bunraku had an interesting take on a cowboy with no guns


Basically in that world all firearms where outlawed, so the ways of the fist and martial weapons came back in a big way.

They had a cowboy character that still had his honed quickdraw skills but used them for lightning fast jabs and shit

might be a good kernel to start on

Just read Stephen King's Dark Tower.

Alterntively, refer to Deadlands which is exactly the Wild West with fantasy elements.

I'd put in guns.

Actually, OP, this got me thinking a bit.

And the answer is: "well, fantasy already IS the old west as we fantasize about it", to a great extent.

>if you're thinking about DND-like fantasy. I don't think you're thinking about a talking animals, Watership Down western. Though it would be glorious.

DND is mostly about rags-to-riches adventurers doing shit in and out outposts of civilization, where the law has not arrived. And usally your adventurers are doing for profit as much as for good.
Sounds familiar? Yeah, it doesn't feature your high fantasy shit, but low fantasy really is akin to westerns.

Hell, take the classic band of four heroes: the fighter is the veteran, the cleric is the village doctor's/clergyman, the thief is your usual shady guy, call him a thief already... and the wizard is your blacksmith/scientist, a là Back to the Future.
Most of the other classes are good as well: the sheriff is the paladin, the frontiersman is so much the ranger that I dare to say he is more the frontiersman than Robin Hood; the bard isn't there per se, but you have the saloon and its artists; the barbarian can be linkened to the indians, but needs to be tweaked, maybe.
The only thing really lacking are mystic types for the druid and the monk. Interesting the actual west had a "messianic" streak (mormons) but it's not our thing.

Regarding races, you could do it for comic relief (once I had someone suggesting me to do mexican dwarves with beards AND sombreroes, and chinese-like goblins building railroads) but I think the real thing is the indians. The old movies had indians like orcs: bloodthirsty, primitive warmongers to exterminate. The "newer", sixities and so forth, had them like elves, and I dare to say actually LOTR elves (!): a dying race of noble, ancient, magical and just beings, somehow "out of history" and more in touch with nature.

(cont.)

I think thematically there are two things that really differentiate westerns from dnd-like fantasy in this regard, and you should get in your game:
1) Westerns are more "social". You're more likely to try to outsmart the robber baron before the showdown than explore the dungeon like you before the showdown with the dragons. And that involves the whole village, usually, which is really important. Or if it doesn't, it does involve most of the time not only "adventuring" but relationships and what we could define as "social encounters".
Western protagonists aren't really the "good guys" that often, but they do "the right thing" for communities.
2) This might be a little subtler: oddly enough fantasy is kinda pluralistic in the worldviews it does feature. The dwarves are the good guys as much as the humans and probably they're not gonna fade away because they're "out of the times". The indians on the other hand, well, you know how it went - western is about "normalization" (sorry if this sounds a little SJW-istic), the wilds are gonna be tamed and become the white city on the hill. There's no place for the indians there, and interestingly that's perhaps even truer if they're NOT portayed as noble savages. You can perhaps convert some savage, but the noble savage has no place on this sinful earth.
Maybe for the mexicans, someday, if they can manage to get americanized enough. Anyway, the manifest destiny is really pretty much manifest and inevitable.

Mass emigration of eastern mythological creatures to USA, where they can disappear into vast prairies, untamed forests and quiet frontier towns where drifters come and go and no one notices if a few go missing once in a while.

I can't help but imagine some Youkai and Kami who came to america just to get some America Swag.

A yuki-Onna wearing a USA t-shirt, Oni's going full red neck and mudding in hopped up trucks.

something like kill 6 billion demons set in the afterlife with a bunch of lost/damned souls and demons/pagan deities making their way in the afterlife that looks suspiciously like the Arizona desert

I'd pay for that setting.

>I want a western game
>But instead of western I want samurai

Uh ok

See, you are really asking a fucking weird question. If fantasy tropes were applied to the Wild West, it'd basically be fantasy in a scrub and desert frontier setting, especially without guns or Wild West level technology.

It's not that it's impossible to mix fantasy or sci-fi and cowboys; you're just basically asking for one to replace the other, so you don't really get a unique mix as much as a vague muddle without the definition common in fantasy or western settings.

...

Dust ghosts, Coyote spirits, and other such western spirits could come into play, and be men and women who went into the wastes with nothing but a blade and charms.

Look into mythology of how native americans dealt with vicious spirits, and have these foreign men/women take up those methods to clear way for settlers. Think of them as spiritually armed scouts and hunters.

this desu.

>Western without guns

Literally Jidai Geki.

>Fantasy western with guns

Literally the best kind of Jidai Geki.

>sometime after the end of southern war of independence
>somewhere in the west, land of nameless towns and people looking for a new start
>a land haunted by ex-confederates turned to bandits, general outlaws and worse
>a recent epidemic on the east coast have driven quite few people to seek refuge in the west, with them come dark stories about ravenous dead and deranged cults
>not that it really is any better on the frontier, entire towns have been found dead with all signs pointing towards their inhabitants turning on each other in an orgy of violence
>welcome to the west, land in which disease stalks the streets, dead do not stay in their graves, cults dedicated to queer inhumane deities grow, soldiers of confederacy find new terrifying masters to serve, and people driven from their ancestral lands are preparing to take them back and are more than willing to kill anyone who would try to stop their righteous quest

In my setting humans are pretty rare, and only exist as celtic/hunnic barbarians, and as sort of settlers/natives of the wildlands. These humans live in walled towns and villages, and are protected by several orders of knights whose members wander the land in groups or alone like packs of medieval Lucky Lukes.

I like you.

Make the protag black.

Why? I mean I was going to, but why mention it?

I remember one user talking about doing this, and he had gunslingers with ancient magical armor that was bound to them. Unfortunately I don't remember too much else about the setting except that there were multiple Eras with their own tech/magic balance.

Pic very related.

Also thic voodoo ladies were a thing. I remember that.

Honky mahfah.

There is a comic called "The Sixth Gun" (not to be mistaken by Six Guns) which is pretty much this (but with guns, sorry). Its pretty sweet, check it out.

But also, I read a neat idea on this board once (no idea whos it was originally). Bullets wernt powered by gun powder, but instead were infused with power of captured deamons/spirits. I always thought it had a lot of potential, maybe you can come up with something neat.

>no guns

That's a hard sell in the Wild West. A big part of the lore of the Wild West is tied up in the gun and the freedom it grants. Gunslingers are integral to the Western; a man alone with a gun can make his fate, for good or ill.

Take out guns and it changes it significantly, into a much more samurai/ronin story, as another user pointed out.

Or for a less horror inflected version the Castle Faulkenstien book Six Guns and Sorcery

Yay for Roland? Also, I agree with the Dark Tower magic western setting.

OP basically what that user told you: DnD is already a western with swords.

So I, instead, propose that we do the opposite thing: Take the XIX technology and put it into a really medievalesque/arthurian setting:
The world is a conglomerate of old nations, each one dominated by a king, which has a court of knights (gunslinger knights). They are a socially upper caste, superior to peasants before law and god's eyes. Their mission is to act, kill and die for the king (or the kingdom) which mainly implies riding into foreign lands to solve land disputes, marriages, treasure quests, dirty business and the occasional monsterhunting. They're in charge to lead men into war; take oaths to do the impossible and are the subject of songs as a prize.

The ideals of an ancient empire (like the roman, in our world) are expected to be kept by them; but unknown to the lowmen. Many parents present their kids as squires in order to have them trained as gunslingers, but not many of them achieve it.

The world itself is cursed by plagues, wars, some eventual Morganas and Merlins, but in general is a pretty technological world. One should expect to have a train to go between the main cities.

Think ASOIAF with radios, guns, newspapers and Dynamite. Also, only humans is best for this kind of thing.

...

Also, there are a few pages in Skullkickers that I can't find right now where he fights various American monsters using a magic gun.

>Female bard: Can-Can girl
>Male bard: Upbeat piano player

I'd play the fuck out of a giddy piano man, pencil stache, vest and everything. Just stroll into the saloon and fire that shit up, with brawls breaking out Lucky Luke-style.