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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jd Smith1" data-source="post: 8493807" data-attributes="member: 6998052">To demonstrate a different outlook, using the group who I had in my last Western campaign:1) Volunteer? Or more likely: free wagon, team of horses, and slave labor. The nearest (only) prison in Texas at this time is near Houston, hundreds of miles away. The Indian Territory has no prisons.2) Ambush a lone rider, from a distance, probably from behind. He might be a deadly killer, but one well-aimed bullet will do the trick, and death is permanent.3) Finish partying and return to herd. 4) Go to Panama. We're getting a buck a day trailing this herd, after all, and the idiot in charge doesn't seem to grasp that we don't get paid until we hit Kansas.5) Start the herd across; the traders can stand aside or get drowned. Driving a herd means guiding a slow+ avalanche of hide, hooves, and horns. And again: we don't get paid until the herd is delivered. The glory attached to cow-punching is a phenomenon that emerged long after the cattle drives ended. At the time, it was hard work and hard living for low pay. 6) Wonder what a Mexican bandit is doing on a cow trail that starts in north Texas and ends in Kansas. Or why a bandit would bother a herd going north. The money (and railhead) is in Kansas, which is why the cows are going there. You rob anyone, you pick groups heading south with no cattle.Different groups, different expectations and motivations. My players tend to motivated by the four pillars of petty-mindedness, spite, greed, and illogical reactions to random NPCs; this cuts across all settings. They follow the Zen of What's In It For Me. And they tend to dig into the setting, which would, as noted above, eliminate a lot of those paper-thin 1960s TV plots.But different groups, different approaches.</blockquote>

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