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SkyeAuroline posted:It's less about taking it out and more about not embracing it as a positive thing the way most Westerns do. Dust Witches started off with the idea of playing as the people resisting settlement but even then my earliest drafts (and the only ones to come anywhere near a workable idea) had issues. Laying it out, the goal was essentially to "fix" Dogs in the Vineyard by taking its gameplay loop and repurposing it with a less broken system for a West explicitly decoupled from the real one; no more "Mormon sex police" (which was never what DitV was anyway but it's the only thing anyone wants to call it), no more "the native people just happened to all leave when we arrived and come back after we settled", no implicitly justifying settlement with civilization and faith. Drafts of the "intent" for design ended up taking that loop and pushing it outside of the original "travel between towns, solve problems" into more explicit anti-imperialist design; the PCs were people from the West explicitly out to keep their communities safe from threats mundane and supernatural, including the eastern Authority's reach. If you're playing as the natives what you want is to look at alien or demonic invasion RPGs for inspiration. You're playing as the underdogs under assault from a technologically (or magically) superior foe with an unassailable point of origin. If it's explicitly set during the wild west era then the invaders have effectively already won. You're playing as members of a dying civilisation trying to survive as best you can in the face of annihilation. As a core premise every member of the party will have lost multiple loved ones to the invaders so you'll want something with mechanics that reflect that. Anyone who shows up rooting and tooting is a monster that considers you less than human and can and will kill you if they want, and retaliating will lead to even more retributive genocide. If you're playing the invaders and want to do colonialism bad you'll want to look at RPGs where you're explicitly playing the villains. Splicer fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Jul 21, 2021 |
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Jul 21, 2021 09:06
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I can't think of a less harsh way to say this but you're basically saying you want to write a pro-palestine RPG where you're a bunch of IDF members in the settlement zones but, you know, fun. e: so you need to compromise on the colonialism (no sapient natives to oppress, or are sapient but are happy or indifferent to your presence, or are sapient and being oppressed but that's a good thing), or lean into being on the bad side, or go down the "noble nazi" route, or be playing the people being colonialized, or be from the bad side but join the good side to fight off the invaders which is kind of white savioury. And the problem with compromising the colonialism is the more cowboy themes you layer on the more obvious the unfortunate implications. Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Jul 21, 2021 |
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Jul 21, 2021 09:32
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Whybird posted:I feel the blow is softened here if there's a really good reason why the land is truly empty. I feel this raises other interesting questions. If we're talking sci-fi, does it make a difference if we're talking planets instead of territories? Like, do the planets need to be barren? What if there are only plants and non-sapient creatures? What if a civilization used to exist but died before we arrived? Does it change anything if the exploring civilization is already post-scarcity? I don't have specific answers to these, but they seem interesting to think about.
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Jul 21, 2021 09:44
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I ran a pretty obviously colonialism-themed D&D game with the rub that most of the PCs are representative of the native and local cultures dealing with attempts to colonise them. Also it's a ludicrously deadly post-apocalyptic setting with dinosaurs and robots and such.
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Jul 21, 2021 10:16
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You've got to tread extremely carefully with an anti-colonialism setting because your failure state is accidently creating a nationalist anti-immigrant "preserve tradition / reject modernity" alt-right setting.
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Jul 21, 2021 11:10
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It's completely within the Western genre for the antagonists, the evil force that violently prevents honest hard working people from living peacefully in the new land, to be rail barons or mining company owners or other stand-ins for capitalism/industrialism. It's also completely within the fantasy and scifi genres (although the trope is much less common nowadays) to have some kind of portal / spaceship / macguffin that provides transport to a new land that is harsh and dangerous but also uninhabited and promising, and the plot to be driven by people being horrible to other people for profit or power. Seems like you could smash those two things together and get something close to "a western" in terms of towns, wilderness, gunslinging, etc but without the genocide. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:15 on Jul 21, 2021 |
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Jul 21, 2021 11:13
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:It's completely within the Western genre for the antagonists, the evil force that violently prevents honest hard working people from living peacefully in the new land, to be rail barons or mining company owners or other stand-ins for capitalism/industrialism. If you just want to make Terra Nova the RPG hell yeah though. Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jul 21, 2021 |
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Jul 21, 2021 11:34
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Splicer posted:I can't think of a less harsh way to say this but you're basically saying you want to write a pro-palestine RPG where you're a bunch of IDF members in the settlement zones but, you know, fun. So just kill the project entirely. Got it. E: because the only non hosed up route here is one I already suggested and that didn't apparently do enough to avoid being "abhorrent". SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Jul 21, 2021 |
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Jul 21, 2021 13:49
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SkyeAuroline posted:So just kill the project entirely. Got it.
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Jul 21, 2021 14:00
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Aside something that's really weird to me is that Westerns, along with some related genres, have both very casual murder and low population densities. Even societies that have high murder rates and low population densities don't tend to be the kind of murder fests that even a pretty peaceful rpg or video game produces (because they would very rapidly run out of people). That said if you want a bit of a genre expanding experience, the USSR made Westerns, usually very blunt Revisionist stuff.
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Jul 21, 2021 14:30
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neonchameleon posted:Genuine Terra Nulla has been rare for good reason, but the Falkland Islands qualified. And Antarctica arguably still does. It's just hard to have NPCs in Antarctica Now here's an idea, set it in post-global warming Antarctica. The glaciers have melted enough for a land-grab along the coasts, lots of displaced peoples making hard-scrabble settlements extracting what livelihood they can from the barren rock, with the interior of the continent still being dark and cold and utterly inhospitable and full of mystery. It's like a western but cold instead of hot! You can even put in John Carpenter Things or Shoggoths or whatever if you wanna go more fantastical with it.
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Jul 21, 2021 14:40
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neonchameleon posted:
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Jul 21, 2021 14:44
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Halloween Jack posted:This is shoggoth erasure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWqJTKdznaM
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Jul 21, 2021 15:38
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I've never actually played Dust Devils (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/83481/Dust-Devils) but I've always thought there were some interesting ideas in it, and certainly some hard thinking about the genre. It's not a fantasy, it's straight Western, but it does at least have passages like this:quote:There’s plenty of reason to recognize that America has a collective Devil, and the best Westerns point directly at this issue. America and its citizens have to reckon with this violent history, and forget any romantic notion that Gene Autry and Tonto represent the Western.
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Jul 21, 2021 15:44
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neonchameleon posted:I'm getting an early Arthuriana vibe from this part. The Roman Empire has collapsed, telling the provinces to look to their defences. Vortigern has invited the Saxons over to settle as mercenaries... which hasn't stopped the raids. And now some nobody has ended up with a sword, which is no basis for a system of elective government. Vince Baker's first big post Apocalypse World project was set up like this. It got into playtestable shape but didn't go forwards for reasons I never heard.
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Jul 21, 2021 16:23
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I really liked the new damage system in that; I wasn't part of their forum community so like you I never heard more about it. (If I remember right, weapons defaulted to 2-harm unless you are in a circumstance, usually a given range, where your weapon is especially deadly. Then it does 3-harm.)
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Jul 21, 2021 16:37
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If I remember right, Greg Keyes had a series where Enlightment-era Europe used alchemy to nuke itself, and had to be recolonized by American and Metis survivors. French king: "gently caress England. Philosophers, use your newfound alchemic sympathy to drop a comet on them" Philosopher: "what size rock u want?" Louis: "Did I loving stutter? A rock the SIZE OF ENGLAND" A campaign of Indigenous Americans exploring the ruins of alchemy-crazed, demon-infested Europe could be fun.
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Jul 21, 2021 16:39
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moths posted:Firefly did a pretty clever thing in filling the role of "savages" with hyper-aggressive non- agency-having failed experiment subjects. I'd argue that's a better route than sentient-but-always-Evil fantasy races, or any of the other analogies for indigenous people. Eh, kinda disagree with the reavers from firefly being a good execution of this. An attempt was made, but the moment you realize the rape and murder savages that can't be reasoned with is the indian analogue for Joss's "old Cowboy media in space!" some gross readings become possible. Also from what I remember the science experiment twist from serenity also was a bit of a retcon and didn't mesh with the show's original portrayal of reavers, since we see a dude 'go feral' from exposure to them, which doesn't mesh with the movie's explanation of the failed(?) experiment. I agree with any attempt at "space western" or really any old genre fiction requires a lot of care, but I don't think it's impossible. Editiorial sidebars and forewards are probably good and so is getting a bunch of different eyeballs on things. Some folks will say you need to humanize every faction and make it shades of grey, others that you need some inhuman bad guy faction, And I don't think there's a 1 size fits all answer.
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Jul 21, 2021 18:50
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Squidster posted:If I remember right, Greg Keyes had a series where Enlightment-era Europe used alchemy to nuke itself, and had to be recolonized by American and Metis survivors. Dark Souls except you're a Navajo warrior.
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Jul 21, 2021 18:56
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You cant put the genie back in the bottle and play westerns as a goodguy badguy morality tale like its 1935 anymore. Look at all the revisionist westerns since and the morality tops out at grey and tends toward being very dark. The most recent real big western to hit as far as I remember is Deadwood. You can run Deadwood, but its explicit there that you are playing people who are taking advantage of a situation, and most often are just outright bad people. In RPG's in general, you probably are playing bad people, its been the norm in the hobby until recently when people started to question this really. Westerns put you into the unfortunate situation of being bad people to a currently oppressed group of people. It's not historical, the pain is still ongoing. Deadwood maybe can get away with it because its explicitly a drama. RPG's are games, its right there in the word, and the question people are asking now, more than ever, is how appropriate is it to play games about hurting real people, and by extension, standins for real people?
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Jul 21, 2021 20:27
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I am curious, when are you playing a not-Western with cowboy hats and six-guns (just the trappings), and when are you playing a Western and erasing? Cad Bane has a cowboy hat, a drawl, and is quick on the draw, but I wouldn't describe Clone Wars as a Western. Can one player have a game of "rootin tootin pistols at dawn yeehaw", and it's okay, and it only becomes problematic when the whole group is about that?
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Jul 21, 2021 20:47
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In the end its going to be on you and your group to answer that for yourselves. Some people are totally fine playing bad people and acknowledging that its a fiction. As for erasing, that again is on you and your group, some people are comfortable sidelining unpleasant bits of a setting, others will not be. The best thing a game can do is present its contents honestly and sensitively as regards actual historical issues at play in its setting.
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Jul 21, 2021 20:53
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Does anyone know of any particularly good npc generation tables? Like "roll 3 physical traits, roll 4 personality trait, roll 2 backstory prompts" type thing?
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Jul 21, 2021 22:34
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Reigns actual character creation might work for you
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Jul 21, 2021 23:07
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fool of sound posted:Does anyone know of any particularly good npc generation tables? Like "roll 3 physical traits, roll 4 personality trait, roll 2 backstory prompts" type thing? Persons of Interest for Stars Without Number - easily adaptable to other genres.
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Jul 21, 2021 23:38
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fool of sound posted:Does anyone know of any particularly good npc generation tables? Like "roll 3 physical traits, roll 4 personality trait, roll 2 backstory prompts" type thing? Pocky In My Pocket posted:Reigns actual character creation might work for you
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Jul 21, 2021 23:53
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Coolness Averted posted:Eh, kinda disagree with the reavers from firefly being a good execution of this. An attempt was made, but the moment you realize the rape and murder savages that can't be reasoned with is the indian analogue for Joss's "old Cowboy media in space!" some gross readings become possible. In cases like the Reavers or the various sorts of Bandits, Cultists, Robots, and Aliens that fill Western influenced Sci-Fi, at least for the better made ones they aren't meant to be an analogue for Native Americans and other Indigenous Peoples from a cultural one, merely to fill the role of an external enemy so that you can use the genre's trappings without having to be a genocidal rear end in a top hat
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Jul 22, 2021 00:24
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Deadlands tried (keyword "tried") to do an anti-colonial adventure path where PCs fought for indigenous autonomy. Or at least, that was the intent; it seems to be a case of differing writers and the project going off in different directions mid-project. Basically the AP went out of its way to avoid having the US army as villains and placed the blame more or less entirely on Ravenites, an indigenous faction who is behind the rising tensions on both sides. I know it's not a helpful means of showing "how to do it right," but figured it'd be pertinent to the conversation.
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Jul 22, 2021 01:44
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neonchameleon posted:I'm getting an early Arthuriana vibe from this part. The Roman Empire has collapsed, telling the provinces to look to their defences. Vortigern has invited the Saxons over to settle as mercenaries... which hasn't stopped the raids. And now some nobody has ended up with a sword, which is no basis for a system of elective government. I forget where I read it, but there was a very good article I once came across that posited that the worldbuilding in early D&D, Greyhawk specifically, had a lot less in common with medieval feudalism and a lot more in common with the American frontier as presented in Westerns. Drakyn posted:This is a few days old but I'd like to hear more details on the stealth stuff if that's possible? That seems like the kind of thing a LOT of fiction-influenced rpg setups could make good use of. Sure, I just need some time to get an effortpost together.
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Jul 22, 2021 03:41
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Do the western vibes in Mad Max count? Society on the brink of ruin (or well past in the rest of the series) with a lone lawman (or all your PCs I guess) out to keep a small spark of order alive. Samurai narratives lend themselves pretty well to the tone as well. A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven are just blatant ripoffs of Yojimbo and Seven Samurai respectively.
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Jul 22, 2021 04:36
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You could go the route of natives fighting back against invaders, maybe. I once brainstormed a D&D setting idea that was basically reclaiming land, destroying settlements, and eliminating explorers from an invading force that were forced to serve gods that would drat them for not participating in the invasion. The invaders were supernatural in origin, spawned as adults, and their monuments to their gods inflicted supernatural harm on the spirits of the land and were also necessary for invaders to spawn.
Hexmage-SA fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Jul 22, 2021 |
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Jul 22, 2021 04:44
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fool of sound posted:Does anyone know of any particularly good npc generation tables? Like "roll 3 physical traits, roll 4 personality trait, roll 2 backstory prompts" type thing? It might have to be adjusted somewhat for setting stuff that doesn't apply to whatever you're doing, but Blades in the Dark has NPC tables that give you adjectives for looks, goals, preferred methods, professions (common or rare), traits, interests and quirks.
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Jul 22, 2021 13:52
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Oh! The NPC tables in Ironsworn and Starforged are top-grade.
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Jul 22, 2021 14:01
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KingKalamari posted:Sure, I just need some time to get an effortpost together.
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Jul 22, 2021 16:23
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Man have none of you seen a Spaghetti Western ever or like, the Wild Bunch? Manifest Destiny really isn’t being endorsed when all the colonialists are some flavor of bastard
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Jul 22, 2021 18:25
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Angrymog posted:Persons of Interest for Stars Without Number - easily adaptable to other genres. Thanks for all the suggestions, this one is particularly good!
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Jul 22, 2021 18:31
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potatocubed posted:Oh! The NPC tables in Ironsworn and Starforged are top-grade. Seconding this, the effectiveness of those tables is a large part of why those games work so well. Ironsworn's tables are great, Starforged's tables are even better.
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Jul 22, 2021 18:36
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I freakin' love tables
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Jul 22, 2021 18:38
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If I can interrupt for a moment of self-promotion: It's itch 'Creator Day' today, which is when they do a Bandcamp Friday and funnel 100% of money to the creators. To try and get lots of promotion a person on Twitter organised a bundle -- which was then split into 10 bundles because she got way more uptake than she was expecting, and my game Bleak Spirit is in Bundle #6. Bleak Spirit is a GM-less storygame about exploring a world of fallen grandeur in the manner of Dark Souls or Hollow Knight. Of the other games in the bundle I only know Dragonhearts, which is a GM-less storygame (built on Firebrands, if you know that one) about being dragons who do flirting and duels and have mystic dreams about an upside-down flying mountain wherein the world may be saved or damned. Links to the other nine bundles, which contain just piles and piles of other games I know nothing about, are at the foot of the Bundle #6 page. I'm doing a terrible job selling this because I haven't slept properly in like a week, but now you know it exists at least.
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Jul 23, 2021 09:11
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I have played Bleak Spirits. It's a good game. I liked how the rules were presented to teach as it explains.
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