What do you think of Western Fantasy?

I had an idea that humans and elves lived together, but humans got sick of ludicrous elven laws and moved away to be in a more lawless, self-governed environment. Then you occasionally get high elven marshals and other government types.

the closest thing to Native American culture in this case is the desert-roaming Warforged that were built by an ancient civilization, and even then it isn't just a 1:1 translation of Natives=Robot People

Only to become catholic within the first three weeks?

Fair point. Especially when some race has a god telling them to expand their territories, then there's a god of desert storms, a god of justice that a bunch of paladin vigilantes could worship, etc.

I would like to see actual storytelling in the western genre, rather than see it be reduced yo window dressing in yet another epic fantasy scenario, much like what too often happens to cyberpunk.

It reeks of colonies pretending to be real countries.

Veeky Forums did a week-long thread several years ago building a Weird West setting for the Dresden Files RPG. Of course, being a Dresden Files thing, it's limited in exactly how blatant the fantasy can interact with the western elements, but it's something you could look at.

If I were asked to make my own setting...I'd have a similar question of whether we wanted a "Fantastic take on the historical west" or "A Fantasy setting with the trappings of the west."

The former, I'd probably snag some Victorian or Gothic elements to transpose, and work from their. but the latter...

>The Sheriff is a knight-like authority
So instead of ladyknights we have ladysherrifs?
>Tomboy Veeky Forums country girl sherrif slams the doors of the local saloon open to confront some murderhobo's that showed up recently
>"Now listen here, I reckon y'all don't know this but this here is a peaceful, Goodfearin' community. We don't take kindly to trash 'round these here parts"
>"Y'all can walk on outa here, or y'all can stay six feet under, if'n ya catch my drift"

I like a mix of these two ideas.

So the High Elves are the elves of the Old World, refined and arrogant. It is their magics that made the great artistic cities of the Old World.

By contrast, there is a race in the New World that is quick of limb, graceful, and has built great cities of their use of blood magics. Humans call them "Blood Elves", but not typically where either breed can hear them, as they each find aspects of the other's culture and style abhorrent.

All the farmboys have crushes on her and all the farmgirls want to be her.

Holy shit I love this.
>farmgirls not also having crushes on her
Let's be real here, user.

>She has a crush on the governor's son, a young man who studied in Yurop and is all fancy-schmancy and eats with three forks and has tiny, girly hands with long, slender fingers and gets upset when she takes off his glasses

>Goodfearin' community
Ah yes, because what's a small town without a good ol' fashion cult of the damned and some quaint local charm.

Read early Gygax stuff. OD&D and AD&D were far closer to the Wild West than to Medieval Europe. Gary's later Q&A stuff also gives that impression (Paladins having full authority to carry out frontier justice, etc.). Also one of the gods in Greyhawk is literally a cowboy.

My big homebrew setting is pretty much Western Fantasy albeit a bit more on the Deadlands end of "oh god zombies everywhere."

That said, you know what's cool as hell in western fantasy? Some wizard figuring out how to put spell-scrolls inside bullets. Sure they're expensive and time consuming to make, but the bandito's face as you shoot a lightning bolt out of your revolver is totally worth it.

It means they behave because if they know they act up the forces of good will smite them off the face of the planet.

I love the idea, frankly western____ is pretty cool in my book. that said im not sure if I prefer the western first or the fantasy first.

I love the idea of a sheriff so dedicated to the law that even after he's been shot in the back 20 times by no good varmints and buried in a shallow grave he still gets up dusts himself off and goes back to dispensing law and order despite his handicap of being a walking deadman. after all someone has to put a stop to that slick vampire oil baron.

Why is it that when people think of Westerns, they immediately jump to desert imagery? You know the Old West included everything between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, right? It's not like there's a SEVERE lack of Western media set in other terrain. You've got mountain ranges (Hateful 8), the Plains (Dances with Wolves), Alaska (The Far Country), and the Pacific Northwest (Bend of the River).

Because most people think of The Dollars Trilogy when westerns come up.

Why have guns when it's more flavorful to have wands and staves in their place? They can obviously be designed 'like' guns for ease of use. They can either cast a powerful spell natively and need recharging from special crystals/rocks/reagents or maybe have reagents put in a shell to serve as the bullet analog.

Dark tower series is a western set in a fantasy land

I like the concept of a Western Fantasy that incorporates a lot of American folklore/cryptids mixed with Native American stories as concepts for monsters, spirits and powers. Not particularly a high fantasy setting, but one that openly uses supernatural concepts in a familiar Western setting.

Isn't this just Deadlands if you play down the steampunk?

What would be the best system for this?

I like Western-Anything.

It is easily my favorite genre, and I think its tropes and convention improve any other genre they get mixed with.

I have a few character requests that drawfriends on Veeky Forums did yeaaaaaars ago (I'm so friggin' old now). Lemme see if I can grab them.

Oh gosh

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Drawfriend stuff of varying quality coming in.

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Because Spaghetti Westerns pretty much popularized the modern depiction of the West and literally all of them take place in New Mexico or someshit in the Mojave. While "The west" occupies nearly the entire continent, the only parts that people were really fascinated with were the deserts and plains. There's two reasons for this. First: Hollywood in the 20s-50s was still mostly and shot in the nearby desert. It was easier to make films about the Mojave when its literally in the backyard. This made the location popular, and the natural wonders in the area help for scenery which is important for shots. Secondly, the deserts and plains are a terrain that is strange and alien to people who don't live in it. At the time westerns were popular very little of the population was anywhere near the west and neither was most of the wealth.

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Last one I have.

Never heard of it.

>What do you think of Western Fantasy?

I think of The Dark Tower newfags won't get this. Dogs in the Vineyard worked well for it, and I think for a lot of that sort of game, given its more narrative structure.

Yes. You have.

>given its more narrative structure.
I've never actually READ Dogs in the Vineyard, despite seeing it talked about and generally praised for friggin' years now.

The first thing I'm doing with the Genesys system is straight Western. If my players aren't into that, I'll probably try it hybridized with a different genre.

We're kind of liking Western/Mecha, but the ideas there are only seeds so far.

This or Dogs In the Vineyard

I want to do weird-west with Genesys, but I'm still not sure how to make everything myself with it.

Here's Dogs for you.

Well, D&D frankly owes more to Westerns than Tolkien. It's very American West take on fantasy anyway, at least by the implied setting

Oh, and I suppose it's worth nothing that the base setting for Dogs is ersatz-Mormon teenage peacekeepers that go around and solve disputes among the faithful. However, the system itself can be pried away from that if you're not into it.

Are you ignorant of the Western genre?
>Dollars Trilogy
>Once Upon a Time in the West
>The Searchers
>Magnificent Seven
>Little Big Man
>The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
>Blood Meridian
>3:10 to Yuma
>Django
>True Grit
>The Wild Bunch
>Bone Tomahawk

Alchemy bullets would be a nice compromise.

There are native American mythical creatures that could stand in. Nunnehi could stand in for elves, and there are several different versions of small people that could fill some kind of dwarf niche.

Both
You can't have a western with all those sweet lever rifles and single action revolvers and you can't have a fantasy without magic.

The problem is people want to play westerns but don't really know much about good old fashion Americana and old American mythology, so they default back to basic european fantasy.
I mean, just look at the artwork and suggestions in this thread, elves and dwarves and dragons and enchanted swords, basically just your typical fantasy setting only with deserts. Look up native American mythology, look into real world examples of what made people come to America in the first place (the gold rush, the fur trade, you could really design some cool stuff around something like the superstition mountains), the birth of Mormonism and the trials they had to face starting off as a cult and becoming America's largest domestically created religion.

Did somebody say Outlaw Star? Because I was gonna make that comment, but if we're committing to it, I'm in.

Isn't this just that Eternal card game?

I see this said a lot, but I don't think it gives enough credence to the imagery guns have. Not just the gun itself, but the movements and actions. You can't fan the hammer with a wand for example. There's no reloading a wand the way you reload a revolver. There's no pump action. And by the time you add that kind of stuff, your thing is basically a gun.

>Magical Wild West
My niggas. This is honestly my favorite setting. Obviously you have to be in the USA, and then you have to have natives with their Druidic magic, Padres as Clerics of God, Sheriffs being fighters with both sword and gun, the deputy being their squire. US Rangers being actual Rangers.

This would be pretty cool

I've actually been brainstorming a western setting a lot more rooted in native american stuff. The spellcraft in the setting for example is derived from native concepts, rather than just generic fantasy magic.

who said cult?

What about Genesys serves the tone of Western? I ask, because other generic systems exist which have a lot of support for it and a lot of good advice on how to run it. I'm a GURPSfag. Do what you want; ultimately I don't care, but I'm curious to your reasons.

Not the guy you're asking, but I'm sure it's mostly a case of, "I have new game. I use new game." Nothing about Genesys particularly serves the Western genre in and of itself, though some people like the way the system uses dice results to encourage some extra narrative on top of the strict interpretation, i.e. a success vs. a success with an advantage or threat vs. a triumph.

You CAN have a lot of that, it's just the basis of it will be more tied to wands and its history in-universe. The modern wand could be the result of centuries of innovation to turn a magical piece of wood into a deadly tool usable by anyone able to aim it and pull the trigger. You CAN reload it the same way with crystals cut to fit the chambers or reagents stuffed in a cartridge. The 'bullets' may be necessary cause the wand, by itself, quickly fades after a few uses or simply isn't anywhere near as strong or long ranged. Maybe by itself, it gives off a strong shove to very close targets, enough to throw some off their feet even, but nowhere near as deadly as when loaded. Maybe an unloaded wand does jack when wielded by a muggle but when loaded is dangerous as fuck in anyone/anythings hands.

What I'm getting at is that I want it to basically be a gun, but have it's history tied more the fantasy aspects of it. Having these assumptions in place could do wonders for the feel of a setting and how others engage with it.

>What about Genesys serves the tone of Western?

What about it doesn't?

More importantly, its a system my players know (from star wars), that I enjoy using and running. I don't really need mechanical support for the western genre, because its basic enough that the core rules cover almost everything (and some gaps can be filled in using star wars stuff).

The core resolution - success/failure x advantage/threat x triumph/despair - lends itself well to interesting and dynamic encounters without a lot of special options or abilities. Its good for "cinematic" fights, and works best with lots of examples. But those examples are easy to draw from films, and don't need to be written out.

I don't think its the end-all-be-all, or even "the best choice for a western rpg", but its a solid little system that works fine for it.

Also
>GURPS
While I generally like what I've seen of it, my players would never agree to that.

>magic guns
I think it's a fine concept, and a great way to do it if that's what you want...

But yeah, I would also agree that there is a certain mystique to guns - especially in westerns. I don't think making them weird and fantastical adds anything, and if you incorporate everything about them into your "wands", it kind of looks like you're just being different for difference's sake.

>My players and I know it well
Totally valid. I can appreciate that.

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.

>GURPS
It really is a good system. Too bad so many people meme about it and never pick it up.

Alternately, wands act as wands, but they drain the user requiring them to slug down energy potions every five or six shots to restore their reserves.

Imagine a cowboy in a gunfight. He lobs of shots as he dives behind a bar to take cover, bolts of magic flying everywhere. Feeling dangerously drained, he snatches a little vial of blue-green liquid from his bandolier, pops the cork and slugs the fluid down as glass shatters above his head and booze splatters down on him from where one random shot hit the bottles of whiskey and rotgut.
As he swallows he feels the magic take effect, recharging him, and he pokes his head up to take stock as he readies himself to rejoin the fray.

This is supposing informative.

Yeah, keep the guns the same. I want fantasy ammo. Explosive rounds, super penetrating rounds, completely silent rounds, paralyzing rounds, light emitting rounds, water rounds, no recoil rounds, etc.

Add the option for some characters to have a single magical power, with a name type character having only a handful.

Can't you do western fantasy by using new world themes and foklore, rather than inserting dragons and spell-slinging?

It's really weird how people think fantasy and "the races" are synonymous and the one automatically implies the other.
Okay, so that sentiment was already mentioned ITT.

I'm not a fan. It's too American.

Stby

Modern fantasy races barely have european ties anymore you pair of autismos, whats so necessarily european about a race of long-lived magical forest knife-ears?, a race of stocky undeground smiths?, America has mountains and forests too.

What kind of dungeons can there be in a Western fantasy settings other than caves and mines?

There are weird ruins all over the Americas. In Central America, you have legit pyramids. In the southwestern United States, you have the remnants of cliff cities. And even in the southeastern United States, there were entire civilizations with cities roughly comparable in size to contemporary European cities.

Haunted brothels, giant tents, molded canyons, druid-grown spiny forests, totem castles, peyote trips, be creative dude, you are not playing an historical game.

If anything I would add magic to the guns, not make the guns themselves magical. Charms, lucky carvings, enchants, magic bullets, this kind of stuff.

They fit their setting because they're derived from those places folklore. The only reason to take them out of that environment is to shine a big spotlight on them a-la "Bright" or shadowrun. When you do that you're not making an immersive setting, you're exploring and deconstructing tropes.

>Modern fantasy races barely have european ties anymore you pair of autismos
only in exceptionally shitty stories

Any links or readings you can recommend?

They're called "spaghetti westerns" because they were filmed in Italy by Italian filmmakers.

I'd argue that Monument Valley (as depicted in John Ford's westerns) is more iconic. The Grand Tetons would be third place.

Agreed. Most of the posters ITT seem to be thinking along the lines of "old west shadowrun".

fucking Arcanum, set in the americas. exchange grimy not!London streets for dusty not!Cheyenne streets, stone buildings for wood

orc slaves would replace black slaves, like how black slaves replaced amerindian slaves; africans would likely (in this setting) lack the history of slavery, as orcs would be stronger and more durable than humans, with less intelligence. orcish slavery may possibly last longer, as there would likely be a lack of cross-species empathy for people to be willing to free orcish slaves.

elves would likely be more old-world, unwilling to adapt to growing technology

gnomes would be the new-american aristocracy, the coal, steel and rail barons of the new world

dwarves would be the skilled tradesmen and engineers, driving progress; present in practical academia and occupying most (if not all) master tradesmen positions

humans would be spread throughout (as they are wont to do), from the lowly irish or chinese rail worker, to the ruthless (albeit reckless and unscrupulous) rail baron, to the poor dirt farmer working a homestead.

ogres, being rare and not venturing far from the old mountains and forests of europe, cause there to be little to no half-ogres living in the new world. the few that are present are either sideshow attractions or used as primitive forklifts in the building of the railway.

No? The southwestern US is still mainly full of protestants, mormons, and others. Catholicism is only common among hispanics.

>Modern fantasy races barely have european ties
And they have absolutely no American ties, some native American legends have legends of cannibalistic dwarves that store their hearts outside of the bodies in caves but they sure as fuck aren't bearded mountain dwelling smiths

>but they sure as fuck aren't bearded mountain dwelling smiths
not like they had much in the way of iron tools and weapons to begin with though

I'd argue there are 3 main counters to this position:

1. Part of the difficulty is that the two cultures (European and Indigenous American) took a somewhat different approach to their mythological entities. There's less of a sense of unity in South American/MesoAmerican mythological creatures, and most of their wants/needs/drives make them difficult to broaden into an entire "race". It's therefore easier to modify European creatures into niches.

2. The naming conventions can serve as simple shorthand. As I noted in my post , the "Blood elves" don't consider themselves elves, and are not considered elves BY the elves, they're simply CALLED that by humans, because they are elf-like and presumably their own name is somewhat difficult to pronounce.

3. An implicit and continual theme in Westerns is, distilled to the core, "where does civilization, and its trappings, end?" What is the law in a land with no one around for miles? Is isolation preferable to interdependence? And "what do we bring with us when we go places?"

As such, the presence of "the East Coast", or "the Old World" is somewhat demanded by the setting: in order for the relative harshness and lawlessness of this region to be notable, we have to have an easier, more ordered world to measure it against.

If we want to evoke the feeling of the fantastical we must look for the elements that flow naturally from the themes. For instance, tolkien-esque fantasy races are anglo-ized versions of the kinds of beings from scandinavian folklore, all the way back in Edda times. They were human-like but otherworldly, often creating strange and wondrous things.
European folklore is filled with this sort of thing, goblins, fairies and trolls which were strange unknowable magic but still intelligent creeatures with wants and needs that you could try to understand or bargain with. From that a setting with multiple intelligent races sort of emerges, because they're evoking the fantastical worldview of that foklore.

However, if the folklore in question does not feature anything like that you're not helping the setting at all by including them. You're only drawing attention to the fact that writing is made up of tropes and building blocks which ruins immersion.

Where I'm going with this is just, if the inspiration doesn't provide any player races, don't include them. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you need to have races because otherwise players would have less choice or something, there are other things you can do for customization options.

You can of course make your setting exist in the same universe as a traditional european fantasy world and have your humans and elves colonize the new world, mimicing history. But then you're not making a western fantasy, it doesn't draw upon the mythology of the western world. It takes the toys from a european setting and shuffles them around.

Except the mythology of the Western is comprised of the toys from a European setting. It's the taming of a vast wilderness rich with natural resources and beauty BY psuedo-European influences.

Cowboys were formed of white settlers seeking a way to achieve financial and resource independence from the cities of the east, former slaves escaping their bondage in the east, indigenous peoples allying with the newcomers, or remnants of previous European incursions, seeking freedom from their civilized strongholds in the South.

Further, the idea of basic races being separated by distance and forming different abilities/cultures doesn't limit them. If the Duergar of the old world are bearded artisans and craftsmen, fond of stone and metal, building mines deep into the mountains, and the Mohan of the new world are hairy river merchants, woodworkers and alligator riders, who flirt with girls of every species, and smoke all the time, it's clear that despite potentially being of distantly similar genetic ancestry, that they're very distinct.