D&D Wild West style!

[Klaus]

In a duel, what you want is rogue levels and Massive Damage a lower Massive Damage Threshold.

After all, it boils down to rolling initiative and going before your flat-footed foe. Being flat-footed, you get sneak attack damage. So your single bullet is dealing 2d6+5d6 damage...

 

[tecnowraith]

Ok for the old west cultures, I like to start with core races first than see which other D&D creatures would fit later on. I know i do not want to use gunpowder or bullets but use magic in some way to replace them.

 

[Toben the Many]

Actually, I'm in the middle of designing a D&D campaign world with a Wild West feel myself.

IMC, what I did to establish a Wild West feel was to first lay down the foundation. The Wild West has to be on a frontier somewhere. It has to be a good distance from civilized society, or the "wild" part goes away.

My campaign is set on a new continent that has been recently discovered. The controlling "civilized" society is overseas, and tries to extert power on the colonies to get resources from the new continent.

Because resources are scarce, so is the law. One law man has to cover a very large territory, making outlaws common. Heck, many come from the civilized lands just to escape justice.

Wizards in my world are quite rare, because most wizards in my world need alot of formal education. Instead, sorcerers are the norm. Wizards, when they show up, tend to be "citified", though there are a few hedge wizards here and there. This keeps the campaign feeling raw and untamed. There aren't a lot of wizard libraries around. There's not a lot of formal education. It's mostly one-room school houses.

I didn't like the idea of guns and gunpower in my campaign either. If I was going to have guns and magic, why not just play Deadlands?

Instead, I kept the main weapon the sword. By keeping the weapon of choice a sword, I keep the campaign feeling like D&D. To get the idea of a Wild West fighter, though, I used the iajitsu rules from Oriental Adventures. So, when fighters duel, they typically call each other out on the street. There's a long stare down. Then, they quickdraw their blade and try to strike each other down, iajitsu style. After all, spaghetti westerns are based on old samurai movies, right?

Also, I've made my campaign set in a very hot climate, so almost no one wears heavy armor. Most people wear leather or hide. A chain shirt is the most armor most anyone will dare to wear. This helps keep the Wild West feel.

For religions, I have a number of "mercenary gods", all of these gods are worshipped by pilgrims and religious types who have been kicked out of their countries. The most dominant god that is worshipped is a god named Jericho, who is very much a fire and brimstone deity. His preachers constantly stand in the streets and rave about how damnation and hellfire are near; and how everyone must repent. Very much a Deadlands approach to religion.

For the natives, I have a variety of lizardmen who fit the bill for me. There are several tribes of lizardmen in different shapes and sizes. I borrowed the Gator Men from the Iron Kingdoms for one of my tribes.

This is a cool thread. Keep it up!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Wizards in my world are quite rare, because most wizards in my world need alot of formal education. Instead, sorcerers are the norm. Wizards, when they show up, tend to be "citified", though there are a few hedge wizards here and there. This keeps the campaign feeling raw and untamed. There aren't a lot of wizard libraries around. There's not a lot of formal education. It's mostly one-room school houses.

That's pretty well thought out. Good job!

 

[Darklone]

Actually, I'm in the middle of designing a D&D campaign world with a Wild West feel myself.
...
I didn't like the idea of guns and gunpower in my campaign either. If I was going to have guns and magic, why not just play Deadlands?

Instead, I kept the main weapon the sword. ...

I like that. That's how I'd like to do it myself, and why I do my quickdraw duels with throwing weapons. Guns do exist, but they are rare and expensive.

 

[Shades of Green]

I think it would be far more interesting if it were less black-and-white than that. You can have evil, expansionist settlers, settlers just looking to survive and settlers sympathetic to the plight of the aboriginals. Similarly, you can have various aboriginal tribes have differing reactions to to the presence of the settlers. If D&D can regularly overlook the inherent nastiness that is medieval serfdom, it can manage this situation without dwelling on evil settlers vs noble aboriginals or vice versa.

I agree with this approach - civilizations and cultures are complex things, and have many internal divisions and conflicts of interest. The Celirans of Southern Renya (a colonial culture) had a semi-feudal culture prior to the arrival of Argexian (Humans and Dwarves) colonists and conquerors; the Celiran Merchant Houses who ruled pre-colonial Renya were as bad (or worse) as the later Argexian colonial rule - Celiran overlords opressing Celiran peasant masses. The Argexan colonial rule is very exploitative, fueled by the ever-increasing thirst of the developing Argexian industry (steampunk-era) for coal, iron, new markets and cheap labor force (four things that are found in Renya in massive amounts), but many Argexian settlers are simple homesteaders who've moved to the Renyan wilderness in order to escape the ever-present poverty, pollution and overcrowding of the larger cities of Argexia. Alot of convicts (some of them political, some of them criminals) were exiled from Argexia to Renya, to serve as a skilled labour force for the South Renya Company (the biggest Argexian colonial charter). And last but not least, the Celiran One Mother religion has some sects who are rabidly opposed to the Argexian colonization - but they dislike the Celiran Merchant houses as well, and wage a guerilla struggle from the swamps against both; some of the more fanatic sects are pretty bloody in their methods, while others aren't. So you have alot of conflicting interests: small farmers (both Argexian and Celiran) vs. rich latifundists (both Argexian and Celiran), industrial workers vs. exploitative bosses, Celiran nationalists vs. Argexians, Celiran nationalists vs. Celirans who embrace Argexian cultural values, One Mother fanatics against each other (sectarianism abounds), against Argexian industry, against secular Celirans, and against believers of other faithes, farmers vs. industrialists, and so on. Potential for adventures and for flavour abounds...

 

[Toben the Many]

Ok for the old west cultures, I like to start with core races first than see which other D&D creatures would fit later on. I know i do not want to use gunpowder or bullets but use magic in some way to replace them.

As far as core races, in my campaign, I made it very human centric. Mainly because when I think of the Wild West, I think of humans. It's hard to picture your classic elf or dwarf in that setting.

I could definately see the elves as a native race. However, in my setting, I made lizardmen the native races, with lots of different tribes. So I had that covered. So in my world, I got rid of elves entirely.

I kept gnomes, so that if someone wanted to become a steam-punk inventor, there would be an outlet for that.

I also took out halflings, because 3.5 halflings are opportunistic nomads. By all rights, they would be taking over the place, and be one step ahead of the human settlers. I didn't want that, I wanted the people on the frontier to be human. So halflings had to go to.

I added an undead race. Basically, if you want to be something like an harrowed from Deadlands, or the guy from the Darkwatch video game, there's an outlet for you to do that.

I want to keep dwarves. I have them working most of the mines in the colonies, shipping materials back to the ruling country. I'm not sure how I'm going to flavor them, though. I'd like to make dwarves a bit different somehow.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of the big dynamics in the Wild West were the Range Wars between Ranchers who wanted open land to graze cattle, and the Sheep farmers who needed to fence in land for their herds.

In a FRPG Western setting, you could have Minotaur "Cattle Barons" and Ibixian "Sheep" farmers?

And while I still think that Centaurs would make for a cool Plains Indian substitute, so would the Equicephs.

 

[entonfire]

I, too, have been working on my own Wild West D&D Setting: Frontiers. I've been shaping it so long it's not really D&D anymore, and I'm eventually going to self-publish as a d20 variant.

The West is in a New World across an ocean from the Old. The drive for settling the frontier comes from the recent collapse of an empire in the Old World. Elves and orcs are natives, and elves are technically the "good" locals, but the Empire used them to fight the orcs and then double-crossed them for their land, a feat that failed to endear them to foreign settlers. Dwarves are communist deep-dwellers. Gnomes are Amish shore-dwellers. All the samurai are halflings, and the guns are all... well, they're just guns.

Don't forget the East while you're busy shaping the West. A lot of the flavor of the people carving their way through the frontier is found in their backgrounds and where they came from.

 

[Wik]

Okay, I haven't read the whole thread... just the first half of the first page... but here's a random thought, and sorry if it hasn't already been metioned:

Old Kurasawa films.. you know, the Samurai films? They had a Wild West overtone to 'em. Samurai would face off, and the camera would zoom in on their eyes. Then, they'd draw their blades, and only one would be standing at the end.

Just my two cents.