Evening Redness in the West (Western Hack)

Oh, hey, I finally did something in the West with AW. It's mostly just a reflavor.

Reference Sheets:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_dOIZGCUXGkTFpGTm5lbkNWYlE

Playbooks:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iqYwxEVKtgYfQtp_aDxp7IwHuIRue_kOQmWoIQaXPnk/edit?usp=sharing

We did a 6 session game. It worked okay. Town Creation is fun.

I haven't clicked through yet, but reading your title gave me an old familiar dread. I'll take a look!

-Vincent

You're probably going to get more Deadwood or Hell on Wheels than Blood Meridian out of this. But, I guess you could ditch the stationary playbooks (Baron, Homesteader, Proprietor, etc.) and roam the west with a gang and it'd work okay.

This looks terrific!

I love Vice for Weird, and the Preacher being a high-Vice Hocus; that's a great, resonant setup.

I have a few qualms about representation: AW cultivates a great sense of gender ambiguity, for instance, while the phrasing here makes it feel awkward to play a male Madam or female Preacher -- even it's easy in principle to imagine a pretty-boy gigolo/con man getting by on Suave, or a female religious visionary in the mold of Mary Baker Eddy. There's a lot of incidental language (the Proprietor providing "pussy", or "the more gold you spend, the finer your accommodations, foodstuffs, drinks, women, etc. will be") which implies that the PCs are rootless straight men, which is an understandable default for a standard cowboys & indians narrative... but the possibilities are broader.

The Savage playbook feels tonally more over-the-top dime-store-novel absurd and less historical than the other playbooks; the fact that the Savage is lacking firearms and definitively talks to spirits (i.e., isn't at all Christianized) makes them seem like a mythical pre-contact Native, rather than someone living on the fringes of a late-19th c. town with a post office and pharmacy. That latter guy definitely has a gun. Also, the names list needs some German and Southern and Eastern European names (the West was a major locus of migration) and (particularly) Latino names; also, it would be great to have the Chinese who are there to build the railroads -- maybe even a specific playbook. (Laborer in general seems to be a missing playbook, as does Cowboy in the sense of the guy literally engaged in moving cattle over long distances -- vaguely the Driver).

There is of course a decision to be made about how much you're simulating the actual Old West, and how much you're simulating dime-store novels of the Old West. The dime store novels have no Italians or Germans or Chinese or Latinos, and all the Indians have bows and arrows, because racism. Personally I vote for some of the romantic dime-store flavor, but informed and broadened by history, which means more inclusion.

"Gold" as the name of your currency feels awkward; feels more like D&D than the Old West. Sure, right around the gold rush, in California, people might have used ounces of gold dust as currency, but if this is a cattle town in Idaho, then that seems off. I'd prefer "dollars".

The Proprietor's atmosphere list feels like it's lifted straight from AW without being adapted to the Old West. Kink? Restraint? Canned fruit? Meat? A piano? I'm not saying there wasn't what we would now call kink in the West, but the language feels off, and surely canned fruit, meat and a piano aren't distinctively exotic things for a saloon to have. A virtuoso concert pianist, sure, or a French chef?

This looks terrific!

I love Vice for Weird, and the Preacher being a high-Vice Hocus; that's a great, resonant setup.

I have a few qualms about representation: AW cultivates a great sense of gender ambiguity, for instance, while the phrasing here makes it feel awkward to play a male Madam or female Preacher -- even it's easy in principle to imagine a pretty-boy gigolo/con man getting by on Suave, or a female religious visionary in the mold of Mary Baker Eddy. There's a lot of incidental language (the Proprietor providing "pussy", or "the more gold you spend, the finer your accommodations, foodstuffs, drinks, women, etc. will be") which implies that the PCs are rootless straight men, which is an understandable default for a standard cowboys & indians narrative... but the possibilities are broader.

The Savage playbook feels tonally more over-the-top dime-store-novel absurd and less historical than the other playbooks; the fact that the Savage is lacking firearms and definitively talks to spirits (i.e., isn't at all Christianized) makes them seem like a mythical pre-contact Native, rather than someone living on the fringes of a late-19th c. town with a post office and pharmacy. That latter guy definitely has a gun. Also, the names list needs some German and Southern and Eastern European names (the West was a major locus of migration) and (particularly) Latino names; also, it would be great to have the Chinese who are there to build the railroads -- maybe even a specific playbook. (Laborer in general seems to be a missing playbook, as does Cowboy in the sense of the guy literally engaged in moving cattle over long distances -- vaguely the Driver).

There is of course a decision to be made about how much you're simulating the actual Old West, and how much you're simulating dime-store novels of the Old West. The dime store novels have no Italians or Germans or Chinese or Latinos, and all the Indians have bows and arrows, because racism. Personally I vote for some of the romantic dime-store flavor, but informed and broadened by history, which means more inclusion.

"Gold" as the name of your currency feels awkward; feels more like D&D than the Old West. Sure, right around the gold rush, in California, people might have used ounces of gold dust as currency, but if this is a cattle town in Idaho, then that seems off. I'd prefer "dollars".

The Proprietor's atmosphere list feels like it's lifted straight from AW without being adapted to the Old West. Kink? Restraint? Canned fruit? Meat? A piano? I'm not saying there wasn't what we would now call kink in the West, but the language feels off, and surely canned fruit, meat and a piano aren't distinctively exotic things for a saloon to have. A virtuoso concert pianist, sure, or a French chef?

This feedback is brilliant. If I ever return to this, I will update with all this in mind.

In my defense, the Savage was written by one of my players, so yeah, it's a little more mythical. We actually wound up not using it. The town creation actually does have natives with firearms.

I vote for updating the Savage rather than ditching it. I was pleased that there was a way to play a Native American character. You could also include a little more possibilities for diversity in the other character's backstories (eg in the HX round), like giving them a little "how did you end up here?" choice list -- immigrant from Europe? fought in the Civil War (which side)? former slave? Chinese brought to build the railroads? Native convert, grown up in white society? Native from a recently defeated/still hostile/tenuously allied tribe?