Raiding old western films for a short campaign arc.

[jdrakeh]

I'm looking at running RIFTS in the near future (yes, I'm a masochist), and have decided to start the campaign in either Lone Star or the New West, culminating in an incursion into the Vampire Kingdoms. I'm specifically running a very borrowed (i.e. stolen) adaptation of John Ford's The Searchers, with a compacted timeline (so no five year time skip). I'm also going to drop the sexual assault plot point because, well, nobody I know wants that in a tabletop RPG (and if they do, they're not welcome at my table).

I'm posting about it here, because I don't think that any of my potential player pool posts at ENWorld. I could be mistaken, but I can always deal with such issues by adjusting plot points as needed.

Anyhow, the main plot will be lifted from The Searchers (with vampires taking the place of Comanche warriors). Some rustled cattle, some kidnapped girls, one of whom will be killed and one eventually turned (into a vampire). The hard choice will be whether to let the turned girl live with vampires or kill her to "end her suffering" (a lot of that will come down to PC personal convictions). Are there any other westerns you would recommend I look at or borrow plot elements from? What are they and why?

 

[MGibster]

I'm looking at running RIFTS in the near future (yes, I'm a masochist), and have decided to start the campaign in either Lone Star or the New West, culminating in an incursion into the Vampire Kingdoms. I'm specifically running a very borrowed (i.e. stolen) adaptation of John Ford's The Searchers, with a compacted timeline (so no five year tome skip). I'm also going to drop the sexual assault plot point because, well, nobody I know wants that in a tabletop RPG (and if they do, they're not welcome at my table).

Well, uh, your players are searching for a girl who was taken against her will by a creature that is commonly used as a metaphor for sexual assault. i.e. You've got just as much subtext in your premise as The Searchers did in 1956.

Are there any other westerns you would recommend I look at or borrow plot elements from? What are they and why?

Depending on how long you want the campaign to take, you might want to just look at episode synopsis from varies television shows. It sounds like your PCs will be traveling frequently, so I might look into Have Gun, Will Travel, Rawhide, or even Kung-Fu.

"Incident on the Edge of Madness" - Rawhide season 1, episode 5: The drive trapped by high water is approached by a Colonel and lady looking for men to join his Confederacy of Panama. Fearing his men will leave, Favor tries to cross, losing a man. The men leave not realizing what the Colonel's plans are.

You could easily make this about a local warlord who is looking for people to join his cause to unite the Pecos Empire into an actual empire instead of a loose confederation of gangs who squabble among themselves when there's not a large enough outsider nearby.

 

[Deset Gled]

Are there any other westerns you would recommend I look at or borrow plot elements from? What are they and why?

Magnificent Seven, aka Seven Samurai. The classic tale of a town hiring your players as mercenaries to protect them from a band of [insert monsters].

Beyond the standard TTRPG premise this opens up opportunities for the group to lay down some roots and/or have a friendly location to return to later.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Dollars trilogy seems pretty obvious.

High Noon, for when most of the players fail to turn up.

Left field: The War Wagon

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Going even further into left field- and possibly crossing over the fence into the bullpen- Paint Your Wagon. If you don’t know it, it’s a musical comedy with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin set in a town in the throes of a local gold rush.

Substituting silver for gold…

And of course, given the RIFTS setting, you could also freely adapt from the original Westworld. A killer robotic gunslinger could be on either side of the conflict, or even be a random (repeating?) encounter that NOBODY wants a piece of. Especially if it was somewhat modeled after The Lone Ranger (see above comments about silver).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Part of me also wants to inject some of Blazing Saddles, if only to interject the line, “Where the night women at?”

 

[Tonguez]

High Plans Drifter is already a ghost story, a revenge story that features a town with a dark secret, that deserves its fate

Broken Lance is inspired by King Lear and features the relationships and resentments between the rancher, his four sons and his second Native/Mexican wife

 

[Tonguez]

Going even further into left field- and possibly crossing over the fence into the bullpen- Paint Your Wagon. If you don’t know it, it’s a musical comedy with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin set in a town in the throes of a local gold rush.

Substituting silver for gold…

And of course, given the RIFTS setting, you could also freely adapt from the original Westworld. A killer robotic gunslinger could be on either side of the conflict, or even be a random (repeating?) encounter that NOBODY wants a piece of. Especially if it was somewhat modeled after The Lone Ranger (see above comments about silver).

Paint Your Wagon is one of my all time favourite movies - good call
The PCs come across a wild and ramshackle boomtown where ale is cheap, gold is cursed, and love is... complicated.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

SILVERADO (dir. Lawrence Kasdan 1985)

Ragtag group of characters helping to transport a wagon train through dangerous territory.
At some point before or during the trip someone makes off with the money box that contains the savings of every single person on the train. The PC's have to track them and recover the box from a bigger bandit group that the thief is part of.
When they make it to the destination town it's run by a corrupt sheriff and his men who begins to escalate a campaign of harrassment vs the new comers until...Showdown.

 

[TiQuinn]

The Ox-Bow Incident starring Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn and Harry Morgan. Two cowboys join a posse that’s been thrown together to pursue cattle rustlers and it turns out that frontier justice, prejudice, and misinformation can lead to really bad consequences.