Shootout at the D&D Corral

Dungeons & Dragons has many influences, including European and American authors. Of the American influences, one genre is sometimes overlooked but just as critical: the Western.

View attachment 100812
​

[h=3]D&D and the Wild West[/h]One of TSR's earliest founders was co-creator of D&D Gary Gygax's good friend Don Kaye. In addition to helping fund TSR in its early days, Kaye was one of the first players of D&D, even hosting Gygax's sand table in his garage. In the second round of playtesting, Murlynd would debut, a magic-user who was fond of Westerns.

Kaye's fondness for Westerns seeped into D&D itself; Gygax allowed an exception for Murlynd to use his six-shooters in Greyhawk, a world where gunpowder doesn't work. Kaye had plans to create a Wild West RPG, aspirations that were tragically cut short, as retold by Gygax in an interview with Scott Lynch:

As D&D was "blowing out the door" at the rate of over 100 a month by summer, Don began to look forward eagerly to doing a Wild West RPG. He planned to draft rules as soon as he could quit his job to work for TSR. We projected that would be possible in about a year or so. Don was very happy. Then, in January of 1975, he had a massive and fatal heart attack. He was only 36 years old when that happened. How ironic, I thought, as I became the first paid employee of the company in June of 1976, Don's birthday month, he being exactly one month older than I. Don was then and still is sorely missed by me. Brian Blume and I went on to create the Boot Hill RPG in Don's memory. He would likely have done it better.
​

Gygax never forgot Kaye's contributions. There's a section in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide that provided conversion rules:

D&D’s earliest GMs were encouraged to bring guns into their fantasy worlds in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, which included a short section called “Sixguns & Sorcery.” This provided not only rules for converting between AD&D and Boot Hill (TSR’s Wild West roleplaying game, first published in 1975), but it also statted up several different guns. Derringers did 1d4 damage, while other handguns did 1d8 damage. Dynamite did a whopping 4d6 damage—or 6d6 if the DM allowed a saving throw!​

[h=3]The Weird West[/h]We know that Gygax was a fan of Westerns, but what's sometimes overlooked is how the themes of the genre carried over into D&D. Blog of Holding points out how Gygax's sources of inspiration had Wild West elements to them:

Re-reading Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars recently, I was struck with how explicitly it’s a Western. John Carter fights savages on dead sea bottoms, gropes through caverns looking for treasure, and fights weird monsters. And that’s all before he goes to Mars. The first episode of the novel is a shoot-em-up Arizona adventure which encapsulates all the rest of the book. Mars is Arizona writ large, with bigger and drier deserts, more savage natives, more accurate guns, faster horses, and more faithful dogs. In structure, the book is a lot like the Wizard of Oz movie: a reasonably plausible day, followed by a fantasy dream sequence version of the same events. The second of Gygax’s sources, Howard’s Conan, is similar. Howard was a Texan who wrote Westerns along with his fantasy stories, cowboys-in-the-Middle East stories, and boxing stories. It’s frequently argued that Conan is a Western hero. His martial skills allow him to triumph over the lawless savages and over the decadent “civilized” folk of his wild land. That’s what cowboys do.
​

For more parallels, a Hungarian author named Melan provides some much needed perspective:

Let us examine the world of the Western. What we see is wilderness. You can find a few settlements (mainly small towns) here and there, but the main stage for the action is the almost entirely uninhabited land. This is a rather important trope, as spotlights one of the main qualities of „adventurers”: the perform their acts not due to the social motivation or compulsion, but because of their own inner conviction. In the West – and in Hyboria or many parts of Greyhawk – the individual is alone. He cannot expect the Law to stand by or against him. The city guard (the sheriffs) are busy with the survival of their own little community and do not represent a serious obstacle for a sufficiently armed and dedicated guy. He has to create justice by himself, and his only reliable tool for that is armed violence.
​

This may be why recent Star Wars installments feel like RPG sessions, because they're both drawing on Western tropes:

It also follows from this logic that society cannot keep sufficiently high-level adventurers in check. In a world like this, social position is much less important than a strong arm or a sharp blade. This world is completely at oppositon to the High Middle Ages, and is much more similar to the world of tales where the youngest son of the poor farmer can become a king, he just has to defeat the giants first. This doesn’t mean that this sort of fantasy world cannot have oppressed masses, but it’s certain that it won’t be emphatic in the sphere where player characters move. A game can have adventurers be individuals located outside the normal world of bulls and feudal lords, or it can have the idealised American world hide behind the chainmail, the peasantry and the longsword. Here, the individual can pick up a sword or a gun as he wishes, and set off into the big nothing to make his desires come true. And when he retires and buys the inn in Dodge City, nobody will ask him if he got his first five levels from looting tombs and massacring orcs (bandits? indians? peaceful villagers?). What is certain is that whatever he achieved, he achieved it with his own strength.​

D&D is a mix of many influences, but its tone and style of play -- adventurers on their own making a name for themselves -- seems like it was influenced as much by high fantasy epics as it was by gritty showdowns in the Wild West.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[Henry]

There are plenty of Fantasy/Western trope mixes out there - Paizo, ever a fan of the old TSR tropes and campaign worlds, has Alkenstar as a nation of gun-wielders in a blasted wasteland called the Mana Wastes, and firearms are a part of the Golarion campaign world. I agree with the supposition that the Western genre is an important component of the origins of D&D, and of the long-standing tropes of individuality and "player character manifest destiny" that is a core component of the classes and levels system of games. Even in heavily urban adventures, a lone group of PCs are usually forging order from chaos by gaining power and setting right circumstances that are wrong somehow. (e.g. See Hell's Rebels, War for the Crown).

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

A lot of stories both real and fictional seem to repeat. Magnificent Seven vs Seven Samurai.

Well in this case the Magnificent Seven was explicitly based on the Seven Samurai... indeed the Japanese title translates essentially to "magnificent seven" as I recall. Of course Seven Samurai is very strongly based on Westerns, which Kurosawa loved.

And guns can mix reasonably well in a fantasy setting if proper limits are set. The Mountain Men from early US history had effective guns but a very limited supply of powder and bullets. One of the characters in a Pathfinder game is a gunslinger. Doesn't seem to unbalance things too much.

I let people use guns in my game, though I've long liked and allowed a good bit of clockpunk influence so it fits. To really rock and roll you need to invest a lot, which means you're not doing other things.

As to guns and melee co-existing: Melee combat was actually quite important as late as World War I.

Obviously, if the GM lets a fully equipped and supplied modern military platoon loose in a D&D setting, could be problematic. But they could still be threatened by a large number of goblins shooting short bows. Roll enough d20, some are going to come up 20 and hit.

That and they're going to run out of bang fairly quickly, at which point they won't be nearly so awesome. But, holy cow will they do a lot before that happens. If you want a pretty good read on an example of guns in fantasy, where guns are limited, check out Brian Daley's Doomfarers of Coramonde. He discusses this in A Tapestry of Magics, too.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

A fireball can kill a herd of elephants, or dinosaurs, but magic is too expensive for the warfare. With that same money you could buy a lot of RPGs, Rocket-propelled Grenades, I mean. To hire a squad of mercenary crossbowmen is cheaper to buy a magic crossbow what reloads itself.

 

[Hussar]

A gun is cheaper, and it can be reloaded by a squire or there were more in the backpack, like that dwarf mercenary Long Drong slayer pirates from Warhammer Fantasy. If D&D was a real-time strategy game, a squad of musketeers would cheaper than hiring a warmage (3.5 class from the Complete Arcane).

With a good shotgun, an elephant can be killed with only a shot.

What if a player who likes the martial adepts classes (3.5 Tome of Battle: Book of nine Swords) creates a homebred maneuver about resistance against ballistic damage?

You would need one HELL of a shotgun, even with slugs, to kill an elephant. Much more likely, you're just going to make it very, very angry with you.

The biggest problem with guns in RPG's is that people have incredibly unrealistic views of what a gun actually does. Pistol? Even modern ones are not terribly effective beyond a handful of feet. Until the 20th century, most guns, used individually, aren't particularly more effective than a bow or a crossbow.

Guns became so effective because they are cheap and easy to use. Not because they are particularly better weapons.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

If the guns are allowed in a fantasy setting then everybody would want to be gunfighters and nobody paladin or barbarian, and the spellcasters would try lot of (homebred) magic tricks against enemies with firearms, for example a a little piece of ectoplasm to block canons or to water gunpowder, covering with a smoke bomb or summoning swarns or cloning illusionary squads. Guns may be fun in PCs' hands but if the PCs are from a ancient culture and the enemy can use firearms, then a simple goblin with a sniper rifle from the top of a tree may become a nightmare. Other matter is if the enemy can create a simple spark, like a match, in the "wrong" place, for example the ammunition dump. And what if the enemy throw a stone with a magic rune of teletransportation. Then the enemy isn't far but next to you, with ballistic shields.

Westerns have barbarians, they are called "Indians". What happens if a western town is transferred to the Forgotten Realms? I am thinking more of Faerun, what if a western town appeared in a similar climatic area of Faerun, maybe Amn perhaps. How would the cowboys US Army cavalry and local Indians get along with their surrounding neighbors?

 

[Derren]

A lot of western comparisons have already been made in the previous article about influences of D&D. And yes, westerns are a big inspirations for it as most trademarks of D&D adventuring parties, like them being unaccountable for their actions, their tendency to ride into a town in the middle of nowhere, solve their problem and then ride into the sunset again can all be copy pasted to westerns.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

A lot of western comparisons have already been made in the previous article about influences of D&D. And yes, westerns are a big inspirations for it as most trademarks of D&D adventuring parties, like them being unaccountable for their actions, their tendency to ride into a town in the middle of nowhere, solve their problem and then ride into the sunset again can all be copy pasted to westerns.

I think crossbow, longbow, or shortbow duels out on the street are unlikely.

 

[GreyLord]

You would need one HELL of a shotgun, even with slugs, to kill an elephant. Much more likely, you're just going to make it very, very angry with you.

The biggest problem with guns in RPG's is that people have incredibly unrealistic views of what a gun actually does. Pistol? Even modern ones are not terribly effective beyond a handful of feet. Until the 20th century, most guns, used individually, aren't particularly more effective than a bow or a crossbow.

Guns became so effective because they are cheap and easy to use. Not because they are particularly better weapons.

True, never seen anyone take out an elephant with a shotgun...but I wouldn't say guns were ineffective until the 20th century or that having a bow or crossbow were on par with having a rifle.

Natives of many continents would go through great lengths to get their hands on guns from the colonials that invaded their lands.

Canons could be far more effective than a catapult, and once the rifle was invented guns became far deadlier at longer distances than any bow or crossbow. Even Muskets were pretty dangerous with the right caliber. Go black powder shooting sometime with a musket fashioned after a late 18th century weapon and you'll see large holes blown into various targets (IF you hit, of course).

The Gunpowder age came about because guns WERE more effective than other missile weapons of the times. I'd say Guns became far more powerful and effective than bows and crossbows long before the 20th century.

However, when we talk about when we typically imagine D&D, the guns from those eras probably were not quite as effective as we may imagine them to be.

 

[Imaculata]

I'm currently running a pirate campaign that features flintlock weapons heavily. Some how it hasn't devalued the use of spells or other default D&D weapons. Flintlock weapons deal a lot of damage in my campaign, but they do have their drawbacks. They can misfire, and they can stop working if the weapons are exposed to water. But any spells that focus on projectiles/missiles (which would usually mean sling bullets, arrows and crossbow bolts) now also work on pistol/rifle bullets. This means that a spell like "protection from missiles" now also stops a bullet, and any spells that can enchant ammunition, also can be used to enchant a bullet. This allows my players to combine magic with flintlock weapons.

Some of the action takes place underwater however, and this is where flintlock weapons do not function. Also, because reloading a flintlock weapon costs a fullround action, the players are encouraged to fall back on their normal melee weapons when their guns are empty. This is very much in line with how historical pirates fought. The players can carry a bandolier of preloaded weapons, and fire them all until everything is empty (with the aid of the quickdraw feat, this is 3.5 mind you). Lastly when all guns are empty, they can draw their cutlass.

 

[Jhaelen]

and really how is a gun better than a wand of fireball?

I think you're missing the point. Of course a dozen goblin grunts with wands of fireball would be more dangerous than a dozen goblin grunts with guns. But both scenarios are more dangerous than a dozen goblins with pointed sticks.

I'd like to note that the idea of arming grunts with magic items was explored to some degree in the Eberron setting.

I think the more important point is this:

If the guns are allowed in a fantasy setting then everybody would want to be gunfighters and nobody paladin or barbarian

This is actually something I've often experienced in MMOs that have a mix of melee and ranged classes: Unless you either grossly exaggerate the effectiveness of melee weapons (e.g. light sabres in Star Wars) or play down the effectiveness of ranged weapons (e.g. in D&D), ranged weapons are always preferable because they allow you to potentially kill your opponents before they even get into melee range, i.e. without any danger to yourself.

There's a reason knights fell out of fashion in Earth's history!