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Sunset Riders Fantasy Western! (Campaign Setting thoughts)
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<blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 9238894" data-attributes="member: 6796468"><p>So thinking on the setting a bit more last night when I -should- have been sleeping... I think the setting structure I kind of want is Faerunian.</p><p></p><p>The Plains and the Southwest taking on the role of the Sword Coast, and everywhere else being the 5e Forgotten Realms. >.></p><p></p><p>A Wild West game isn't played in the big cities. It's not a game of heavy politics or intrigue. It's all frontier-living and traveling between smaller communities. Whether to rob banks or gunfight outlaws. Making the setting High Fantasy shouldn't eliminate that. If anything, it should heighten it and provide fantasy tropes and trappings onto it. And what's more High Fantasy than ancient civilizations leaving their ruins all over the place to be filled with monsters that move in to help create the setting's dungeons? But... Cowboys don't Dungeon Dive.</p><p></p><p>Ancient evils locked away, unleashed by greed or folly. The biggest issue I've been having with the idea is that everything great and terrible in High Fantasy happens in darkness, and everything great and terrible in the Wild West happens in broad daylight.</p><p></p><p>And I think, to some degree, that's a lesson in storytelling differences between England and the US. In England in the 1800s the horrors of industrialism were hidden away from the fancy folk during most of their lives. Your average Duke or Baron never went to the Poor Houses that their taxes paid for and their families voted for in the House of Lords. It was sanitized and separate. A thing happening "Somewhere else". Same thing for the thousands who died of lack of proper ventilation because of there being no windows. Or in the fires that killed so many. These things were abstracts that happened in the darkness away from the shining country homes and the soft cushions of the aristocracy who benefitted from the horrors and tried to reframe history. And that cultural ideal of the softness of living in the countryside compared to the horrors and dangers of city life is core to High Fantasy. In no small part because Tolkien presented Sauron's existence as Industrial (omnipresent smoke, death of plants and animals, pumping out orcs almost on an assembly line) and the Hobbits' existence as pastoral.</p><p></p><p>So of course their horror comes out of the darkness. Whether that's Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula, or Attack the Block.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile America's terrible actions happened in broad daylight. Everyone knew about them. There was no sanitizing of slavery or the genocide of Native Americans that could wipe it away. You could pretend it was appropriate, through slogans and beliefs like manifest destiny or the inferiority of Africans, but you couldn't hide it. But the wealthiest people who directly benefited from it were -right there-. Witness to it. Saw every bit of the horrors of slavery 'cause they participated in that system. And in many cases fought against the Native Americans -directly-, since one of the paths to wealth and status was the military academies like West Point.</p><p></p><p>So in a Western? The evil is slain at High Noon. The Bad Guy is the Tycoon that everyone knows is evil, employing local bandits to drive cattle ranchers away from where the railroad is being built. Heck, that's part of the core plot of a western -COMEDY-. In Blazing Saddles, Headley Lamar needs to divert the railway's path around quicksand flats to go through the sleepy town of Rock Ridge so he convinces the foolish puppet-mayor to send a Black Sheriff (scandal) to piss everyone off and drive them out. When that doesn't work in comes Mongo to kill the Sheriff and drive everyone out. When that doesn't work he hires every horrible person he can to drive the people from Rock Ridge away.</p><p></p><p>And it all happens out in the open. His minions know the plan and Mongo is the one to spill the beans that didn't get unleashed around a campfire. And when do the bandits and marauders attack the fake mockup town of Rock Ridge? Broad Daylight. None of what he does is hidden in shadow and it's barely kept halfway secret.</p><p></p><p>So I spent a lot of time last night thinking about how to reconcile these issues. The shadowy ancient threat sealed in darkness with the openly known evil sitting in broad daylight, with the final conflict not happening under an alignment of the proper stars at Midnight to unleash horrors... but at High Noon in the middle of the street where everyone can see it.</p><p></p><p>And, if I'm honest... it's rough. Reconciling the two very different storytelling styles with their significant tonal differences is going to mean that sometimes the setting leans more in one direction than the other. When the heroes delve into a dungeon it's going to be D&D with guns rather than anything wild westy. And when they gun down the black hat at high noon on the streets of Hatchetfield it's not going to feel high fantasy.</p><p></p><p>But then... there's Xaveor the Shadow Dragon to split the difference. The ancient evil sealed away for all time unleashed upon the world and taking on the public role in broad daylight. And that got me thinking of other stories that hold to a similar structure... and you know what I found in that line of thought?</p><p></p><p>David Lo Pan.</p><p></p><p>Big Trouble in Little China -is- this sort of storytelling. The ancient evil trapped between life and death performing terrible rituals with his evil cult of sorcerous minions and gang violence. He's got the public facing persona of the little old man who runs the Wing Kong Exchange, and presumably other front companies in Chinatown.</p><p></p><p>... granted. Both Lo Pan and Xaveor rely on being in large cities for their respective storylines to 'Work' as they're currently written. But the Hag who pretends to be an innocent old lady is sort of the same thing, no?</p><p></p><p>So while the dungeon delve is high fantasy and it can't -really- be made truly Western 'cause of a lack of comparable narrative structure due to the storytelling origins and directions of the two genres... one can bring the HIgh Fantasy into the Wild West. By putting the ancient evil right in the open, in a position of power, ready to be challenged.</p><p></p><p>The devil who claimed the souls of a town in the Great Basin remaining there as the new Mayor or Town Priest or the Corrupt Sheriff blends the high fantasy in. But he can also be the Calvera. Coming -to- take the souls with his band of soulless criminals acting as bandits and opposed by the Magnificent Seven.</p><p></p><p>And I think that's a strong storytelling understanding that can help to shape the setting in a lot of interesting ways.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Steampunkette, post: 9238894, member: 6796468"] So thinking on the setting a bit more last night when I -should- have been sleeping... I think the setting structure I kind of want is Faerunian. The Plains and the Southwest taking on the role of the Sword Coast, and everywhere else being the 5e Forgotten Realms. >.> A Wild West game isn't played in the big cities. It's not a game of heavy politics or intrigue. It's all frontier-living and traveling between smaller communities. Whether to rob banks or gunfight outlaws. Making the setting High Fantasy shouldn't eliminate that. If anything, it should heighten it and provide fantasy tropes and trappings onto it. And what's more High Fantasy than ancient civilizations leaving their ruins all over the place to be filled with monsters that move in to help create the setting's dungeons? But... Cowboys don't Dungeon Dive. Ancient evils locked away, unleashed by greed or folly. The biggest issue I've been having with the idea is that everything great and terrible in High Fantasy happens in darkness, and everything great and terrible in the Wild West happens in broad daylight. And I think, to some degree, that's a lesson in storytelling differences between England and the US. In England in the 1800s the horrors of industrialism were hidden away from the fancy folk during most of their lives. Your average Duke or Baron never went to the Poor Houses that their taxes paid for and their families voted for in the House of Lords. It was sanitized and separate. A thing happening "Somewhere else". Same thing for the thousands who died of lack of proper ventilation because of there being no windows. Or in the fires that killed so many. These things were abstracts that happened in the darkness away from the shining country homes and the soft cushions of the aristocracy who benefitted from the horrors and tried to reframe history. And that cultural ideal of the softness of living in the countryside compared to the horrors and dangers of city life is core to High Fantasy. In no small part because Tolkien presented Sauron's existence as Industrial (omnipresent smoke, death of plants and animals, pumping out orcs almost on an assembly line) and the Hobbits' existence as pastoral. So of course their horror comes out of the darkness. Whether that's Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula, or Attack the Block. Meanwhile America's terrible actions happened in broad daylight. Everyone knew about them. There was no sanitizing of slavery or the genocide of Native Americans that could wipe it away. You could pretend it was appropriate, through slogans and beliefs like manifest destiny or the inferiority of Africans, but you couldn't hide it. But the wealthiest people who directly benefited from it were -right there-. Witness to it. Saw every bit of the horrors of slavery 'cause they participated in that system. And in many cases fought against the Native Americans -directly-, since one of the paths to wealth and status was the military academies like West Point. So in a Western? The evil is slain at High Noon. The Bad Guy is the Tycoon that everyone knows is evil, employing local bandits to drive cattle ranchers away from where the railroad is being built. Heck, that's part of the core plot of a western -COMEDY-. In Blazing Saddles, Headley Lamar needs to divert the railway's path around quicksand flats to go through the sleepy town of Rock Ridge so he convinces the foolish puppet-mayor to send a Black Sheriff (scandal) to piss everyone off and drive them out. When that doesn't work in comes Mongo to kill the Sheriff and drive everyone out. When that doesn't work he hires every horrible person he can to drive the people from Rock Ridge away. And it all happens out in the open. His minions know the plan and Mongo is the one to spill the beans that didn't get unleashed around a campfire. And when do the bandits and marauders attack the fake mockup town of Rock Ridge? Broad Daylight. None of what he does is hidden in shadow and it's barely kept halfway secret. So I spent a lot of time last night thinking about how to reconcile these issues. The shadowy ancient threat sealed in darkness with the openly known evil sitting in broad daylight, with the final conflict not happening under an alignment of the proper stars at Midnight to unleash horrors... but at High Noon in the middle of the street where everyone can see it. And, if I'm honest... it's rough. Reconciling the two very different storytelling styles with their significant tonal differences is going to mean that sometimes the setting leans more in one direction than the other. When the heroes delve into a dungeon it's going to be D&D with guns rather than anything wild westy. And when they gun down the black hat at high noon on the streets of Hatchetfield it's not going to feel high fantasy. But then... there's Xaveor the Shadow Dragon to split the difference. The ancient evil sealed away for all time unleashed upon the world and taking on the public role in broad daylight. And that got me thinking of other stories that hold to a similar structure... and you know what I found in that line of thought? David Lo Pan. Big Trouble in Little China -is- this sort of storytelling. The ancient evil trapped between life and death performing terrible rituals with his evil cult of sorcerous minions and gang violence. He's got the public facing persona of the little old man who runs the Wing Kong Exchange, and presumably other front companies in Chinatown. ... granted. Both Lo Pan and Xaveor rely on being in large cities for their respective storylines to 'Work' as they're currently written. But the Hag who pretends to be an innocent old lady is sort of the same thing, no? So while the dungeon delve is high fantasy and it can't -really- be made truly Western 'cause of a lack of comparable narrative structure due to the storytelling origins and directions of the two genres... one can bring the HIgh Fantasy into the Wild West. By putting the ancient evil right in the open, in a position of power, ready to be challenged. The devil who claimed the souls of a town in the Great Basin remaining there as the new Mayor or Town Priest or the Corrupt Sheriff blends the high fantasy in. But he can also be the Calvera. Coming -to- take the souls with his band of soulless criminals acting as bandits and opposed by the Magnificent Seven. And I think that's a strong storytelling understanding that can help to shape the setting in a lot of interesting ways. [/QUOTE]
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