Wild West or Medieval Europe

How do you see your campaign? Even though my games is standard sword and sorcery my setting tends to be wild west, rough and tumble guys in rough and tumble towns that are on the edge of wilderness, filled with transit workers such as ranchers, miners, and solders. Law is loose and far between. Ghost towns are my ruins, mines my caverns.

I see medieval times as more controlled with less wilderness and long term populations, such as farmers, guards, merchants. Law is defined and almost everywhere. Ruins are catacombs, sewers are caverns.

How do you perceive your campaign?

Hm - bit of both, really.

I guess I tend to set campaigns within my game world in frontier areas like the medieval Scottish Borders or Prussia that are in many ways more like the Wild West than (say) medieval France.

Probably distinctly Wild West as the players will tend to go where there is adventure and loot to be had, which isn't really in the more orderly areas.

The game in which I am a player (rather then DM) is in fact both, a medieval wild west.

IRL, from a european pov, there was a wild west - early Russia.

Neither. I mean, parts of it are wild west like, but much of it is more urban blight and high stakes political intrigue. Mines as much Scarface as it is Paleface, but it isn't really very Medieval Europe.

I mix it up, but mostly the PCs have been in pretty settled areas. We just had a good urban investigation/fight-organized-crime type thing, now they're infiltrating a frontier town currently occupied by an enemy military force. Before that it was high sail and south seas islands.

Medieval Wild West is a very good descriptor of what "Dungeons & Dragons" style game-play is, as a distinct from the rules.

Hand of Evil said:

How do you see your campaign?

Click to expand...

It's a bit of both, with lots of other influences.

My group has played a few pure Wild West games and there are some destinct genre differences having to do with the Sheriff motiff (the players often get sucked into being the Sheriff in Wild West games), guns and gunfights (one-on-one combat and ranged combat being the norm), the lack of magical healing, due process and a modern sense of law and justice, and the fact that Indians, Mexicans, and bandits are never quite inhuman monsters that can be slaughtered without empathy the way many fantasy monsters are. So while there are strong similarities in some of the regards that you've mentioned, there are also a lot of strong differences.

If by Wild West you mean a relatively lawless frontier area with an influx of wealth and settlers due to social upheaval in a more civilized land and/or the discovery of new resources then I think the default or generic campaign style presented in DnD fits the Wild West model. I think its very approrpriate, and gives a plausible reason for there to BE adventurers.

The medieval model's trappings are frequently used in DnD, but the society is actually more like an earlier period after the fall of the Roman Empire, where law/civilization is only truly manifest in cities or within a few hours ride of a fort or other millitary outpost. Settlers on the edge of that land risk the threat of the unknown.

That doesn't answer your question.... my last campaign was based on baroque europe/venitian style merchant families as a back ground. Currently playing in an Iron Kingdoms game as a gunmage, whose father was beyond a doubt a classic Wild West gunslinger for hire on the borders of Cygnar.

My game is an "Ancient Mediterranean meets Wild West" kind of millieu. The analogies are very AD&Desque for both eras, and make for good adventuring potential. In particular, the lack of strong social organization - in the more lawless parts - is very accomodating of adventurer-type play.