Level Up (A5E) Sunset Riders Fantasy Western! (Campaign Setting thoughts)

[Eyes of Nine]

And immediately after posting above decided to do a quick Duck Duck search... Of course Shinto and Buddhism didn't always "get along"... particularly in medieval eras
I was more thinking about modern Japan and my own conception of it

I won't post a link, and probably this topic should be put to rest since it can quickly get a bit political I expect...

 

[Steampunkette]

So... one of the kind of esoteric bits I've been considering is based on something Lars Torgesen, writer and designer of the -excellent- Roll Them Bones Gaming line, talked to me about on Discord... Outer Planes closer.

Rather than having elemental planes each independent of the Material Plane, they're a -part- of it. Like closer than the Mirror Planes. And then Heaven and Hell and such? Right outside the Material Plane. Practically touching it instead of being vastly distant planes lost somewhere in the Astral Sea.

Instead of being remote, the entities on the now-inner planes are acting to -protect- the Material Plane from the horrors beyond, since things from beyond must travel across their realms to reach the Material Plane. Which makes a dead god, and a desolated divine realm, a back door to all those delicious souls that the Heavens and Hells are fighting over. A gap in the defenses of the Material Plane through which monsters can slip in, and souls can slip out into the wider cosmos of the planes.

Anyone ever play Septerra Core? The Orrery of these planes looks something like that. Heaven, Hell, the various 'lesser' planes of alignment... all roiling around the Material as an incomplete shield.

And once every (insert timeframe here) the planes fall into alignment to allow (insert freaky stuff here).

But then... put that into terms of spirits and animism, saints and heroes, and a small pantheon of traditional D&D style deities. You wind up with all the "Spiritual Entities" on nearly equal footing in day to day life. Sure Fox and Crow might not be as individually powerful as Zeus or whomstever, but they're -here-. Manifest. Real enough to touch. Which allows them to use their power more directly.

(Not that I intend to specifically use Fox and Crow or Zeus, just giving examples)

 

[Steampunkette]

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.

 

[Steampunkette]

I think another solution to the issue? Spread adventures and time out.

In a dungeon environment you're moving from room to room to handle threats. You don't get that so much in the Wild West. Instead you get a series of encounters in different locations. The Quarry, the OK Corral, the horseback ride to get to the train, on the train itself. It's way more open and less contained.

One could create dungeons in that way for -mechanical- purposes, if not narrative purposes. After all, what is a dungeon but a series of encounters crammed into a small area? You could spread those locations out over a much larger area and retain the same effective mechanical drain... but.

It requires a timer. In D&D the timer is a question of how much of your resources you have left and how long before you're likely to get into another fight. If the answer to the first question is "Not enough" and the second is "A long time" you take a rest for gameplay mechanics. Either a short rest or a long rest based on how long you think you have and how badly you need your resources.

But when you spread out encounters over longer distances, like a Wild West movie tends to do, you add a bunch of time and not a ton of reason to rush between encounters without taking those short rests. So either we increase the duration of a long rest... or we add urgency to the encounters.

Personally, I'm a fan of Cinematic Rests and I think I'll put them as a core rule into this setting.

In a Cinematic Rest, a short rest can be anywhere from a quick 20 second break in the action all the way up to 8 hours of shut eye. Long rests, similarly, shift in length based on what the story needs. From 8 hours to a week of recoup time in a hospital under the tender touch of the nurse your character will either fall in love with or have to protect.

 

[Tonguez]

In my games I like to use ‘natural dungeons’ and one of my inspirations for such things is the canyons (and gulches) of Arizona -Canyon ambushes are a staple of Western stories too and places like Antelope Canyon are visually amazing, with all the twisting tunnels and caverns of an underground complex and while the sunlight does shine in from above, the shadows, reflections and filtering dust makes it as unworldly and distracting as the darkness

I do like your concept of using time and space as an adventure pacing tool, its a huge factor that differentiates America from Europe afterall - in Britain no where is more than 10 Miles from a Market Town, in the US the gaps between towns were substantially bigger.
The design and building of frontier towns is fascinating to me, you get mining settlements built inside narrow canyons and spread along rivers (some even had mine entrances in their backyards), places like Dodge City built around an old Fort, and rail towns often built on a T-plan with the top of the T being set out from the rail station. You also had wide streets to accomodate horse drawn carts turning around and a clear demarcatiin between the respectable part of town and the seedy ‘red light’ district, with the Saloon in the middle.

As to gods - I was thinking that maybe personifications of Divine Providence and Columbia: Lady Liberty might be usable concepts and uniquely American dieties (Divine Providence is referenced the Declaration of Independence and underpins a lot of American culture development). Lady Liberty also means the Sons of Liberty take on religious connotations and could remain a Paladin sect.

So submit: Philander Hardwick, Cowboy Paladin of the Sons of Liberty
Philander Hardwick strides across the western landscape, a beacon of justice and liberty for the settlers. With his holy six-shooter in hand and a heart aflame with dedication to his cause, he endeavors to ensure that the ideals of Lady Liberty flourish in the untamed wilderness of the frontier.

Ideal: Protect their Souls - Philander feels a deep responsibility to safeguard the souls of settlers, often putting their safety before his own.
Flaw: Rigid Idealism - Philander's unwavering belief in the righteousness of his cause sometimes makes him inflexible in considering alternative viewpoints.
Behavior: Philander tends to take charge in dire situations, leading by example and inspiring others with his words and actions.

Philander Hardwick is a tall, weather-beaten man with sun-kissed skin from years spent under the western sun. His hazel eyes hold a steely determination, framed by a wide-brimmed hat atop his head. He wears a rugged duster coat over sturdy leather armor, adorned with symbols of Lady Liberty, and his belt holds not just a traditional longsword, but a specially crafted holy six-shooter - a symbol of his devotion to his oath.

 

[Steampunkette]

I really do like the idea of using Lady Liberty as a deity... alongside her sisters. Truth climbing out of her well to shame mankind, and Justice weighing evidence and guilt.

But I'm leery of using the Sons of Liberty for two reasons:

1) Boston Tea Party. Not a great look to dress up like Native Americans.
2) They're a real world group and the intention is to have a separate world with Americana without it being Earth.

Philander, though, is cool.

 

[payn]

I really do like the idea of using Lady Liberty as a deity... alongside her sisters. Truth climbing out of her well to shame mankind, and Justice weighing evidence and guilt.

But I'm leery of using the Sons of Liberty for two reasons:

1) Boston Tea Party. Not a great look to dress up like Native Americans.
2) They're a real world group and the intention is to have a separate world with Americana without it being Earth.

Philander, though, is cool.

Remake them?

 

[Steampunkette]

So... the Pantheon is kind of forming, now, in my mind. 5 deities. Liberty, Truth, Justice, Prosperity, and Unity.

Lady Liberty shines her torch to guide the way to freedom. Her aspect in the pantheon is as a leader who guides the others forward. But Liberty can be twisted, particularly by the soulless, into anarchy and destruction. For any who would infringe upon my freedom to do whatever I want forfeit their freedoms before me.

Justice weighs all questions and seeks balance, blind and honest. Her aspect is as the judge who metes out mercy and punishment as appropriate. But Justice can be twisted, too. Soulless may see themselves -as- justice and seek to act as judge and executioner of those they believe have done wrong.

Prosperity carries her cornucopia, for all should be availed of plenty. Her aspect in the pantheon is as the caretaker, the mother, the provider who aids wherever she can. But... Prosperity can be twisted into Greed. Avarice. Jealousy. The desire to take for oneself at the expense of all others, to think only of one's own prosperity.

Unity bears a chiseled slate containing the names of all who live. Her aspect is one of knowledge and collective good. Working with others to achieve something better and provide the next generation with the benefits. But Unity can be twisted. Soulless use her name and pervert it into Tyranny, unity in service to them alone.

Truth bears a mirror. She uses it to force liars to reflect upon their actions. Her aspect within the pantheon is as the rock upon which it is formed. Because while one can lie, deceive, inveigle... the Truth remains. She, alone, can never be twisted to a dark purpose for the Truth remains even when it cannot be seen.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

So... the Pantheon is kind of forming, now, in my mind. 5 deities. Liberty, Truth, Justice, Prosperity, and Unity.

Lady Liberty shines her torch to guide the way to freedom. Her aspect in the pantheon is as a leader who guides the others forward. But Liberty can be twisted, particularly by the soulless, into anarchy and destruction. For any who would infringe upon my freedom to do whatever I want forfeit their freedoms before me.

Justice weighs all questions and seeks balance, blind and honest. Her aspect is as the judge who metes out mercy and punishment as appropriate. But Justice can be twisted, too. Soulless may see themselves -as- justice and seek to act as judge and executioner of those they believe have done wrong.

Prosperity carries her cornucopia, for all should be availed of plenty. Her aspect in the pantheon is as the caretaker, the mother, the provider who aids wherever she can. But... Prosperity can be twisted into Greed. Avarice. Jealousy. The desire to take for oneself at the expense of all others, to think only of one's own prosperity.

Unity bears a chiseled slate containing the names of all who live. Her aspect is one of knowledge and collective good. Working with others to achieve something better and provide the next generation with the benefits. But Unity can be twisted. Soulless use her name and pervert it into Tyranny, unity in service to them alone.

Truth bears a mirror. She uses it to force liars to reflect upon their actions. Her aspect within the pantheon is as the rock upon which it is formed. Because while one can lie, deceive, inveigle... the Truth remains. She, alone, can never be twisted to a dark purpose for the Truth remains even when it cannot be seen.

It would be interesting for Justice to be all genders, or agendered
Also, it would be interesting to connect each deity to a finger on the hand, although Lois McMaster Bujold has already done this with her World of Five Gods series... (Her five gods are the Father, the Mother, the Daughter, the Son, and the Bastard - so nothing like yours)

 

[Steampunkette]

It would be interesting for Justice to be all genders, or agendered
Also, it would be interesting to connect each deity to a finger on the hand, although Lois McMaster Bujold has already done this with her World of Five Gods series... (Her five gods are the Father, the Mother, the Daughter, the Son, and the Bastard - so nothing like yours)

Could.

But also, I do plan to have that one desolate plane of existence... But did Glory -really- die out there? Or did something else happen to her...