PrinceAlbert

Seeking a Western

Ah, so we're leaning into the Pale Rider angle? :^P

Seeking a Western

Ooooh -- option one is on the MONEY! Awesome. Now -- I'm very happy to play the protagonist... but I don't want to steal anyone's thunder. We need a team, and I don't want to drive anyone off by making it all about me-me-me. Need some more blood in here before we take off a-runnin'

@deegee

Of course. I'm not suggesting you want to hog all the limelight; I just figured we need to start off with strong relationship and motive between at least one protagonist and the bad guy. Someone that, no matter what else unfolds, has a strong arc to complete with the antagonist. So, that way, other writers have freedom to play with character concepts more tangential to the antagonist, but there still is at least one character with a motive that has to go all the way to the end. So, not so much saying "me me me," but saying "I'm committing to a certain arc and a certain background that will carry the story through to the end, allowing others to explore a wider range of characters without worrying the plot will stall."

Seeking a Western

I love the idea of a heist. On a train? Maybe. But I also love the notion of a payroll heist that necessitates getting into someplace they shouldn't be in the first place. In town? In the Big Bad's stately home? In addition to this, I like the idea of coming to learn a little of the town, what makes BBEG deserve his title.

@deegee

I have two proposals for the Bad Guy and his relation to the main character: BBEG is a railroad/mining/space dust/whatever magnate, that keeps the local town under his thumb with his hired goons. The Protagonist used to be his right-hand-man, his troubleshooter and enforcer, before The Tycoon crossed a moral line that forced the now-Repentant gunslinger to grow a spine and a conscience. Left for dead and filled with guilt for his past wrongs, the Repentant gathers strength and allies to hit back. Perhaps, like in Pale Rider, he comes to the aid of an outlying community of people the Tycoon wants to run off. After beating back his initial thugs, the Repentant leads his ragtag team of downtrodden townies and hired allies on the offensive, planning to hit a gold/payroll/uranium/magic-space-healing-plant shipment. They Tycoon doesn't take this lying down, calling in the best, meanest troubleshooters money can buy from out of town. Big themes: Guilt, Atonement, Justice, Corruption.

The other concept I had goes something like this: Your kid brother hit it big out west. Gold, Oil, Cattle, whatever. You were happy for him, watching him build a name (and a town) for himself. But then a woman got off a train from the east and wrapped him around her finger. You could tell from the start she was no good, but your brother - God rest him - was naive about these sort of things. She whispered poison in his ears and drove a wedge between you. Unfortunately, it would seem she was not only a gold digger, but a black widow too; not long after they were wed, your brother dies suspiciously. The town comes under the iron grip of her pristinely-painted fingers, and devolves into a den of fraud, oppression, and vice. For your brother's sake, you're going to make her pay, and there's plenty of disaffected townies that - if they could be made to grow a spine - would like to see her go down as well.

Seeking a Western

Alright, allow me to forward some ideas:

I mentioned before the idea of a heist. As the overarching Big Bad, we might have a powerful moneybags-type character (A corrupt frontier governor, a Doc Durant*-style railroad tycoon, or maybe a Space-Casino owner?) and his Dragon would be a brutish and unsympathetic security chief (whether gleefully cruel like The Swede*, or a steely consummate professional - maybe a Pinkerton Detective.) Your main character would lead a team out to hit the Big Bad where it hurts : in his wallet. Your character would have been wronged by the man in the past, so it's personal (and sympathetic, from a meta perspective), but the other characters can be either opportunistic or altruistic in their motives. I'd happily volunteer to play the Enforcer bad guy, in addition to a team member. A lot of this is from War Wagon; they had a back-to-back Kirk Douglas double feature on the TV - sue me.

Next idea is also a revenge story. In the vein of Murder on the Orient Express and Bullet Train a cast of characters enter a train or other mass transit seeking to kill a target or complete some other objective. If you want something like Express, they all want to kill the same man, but don't know each other. I think the Civil War gives a good pretext for this kind of revenge killing, if you want a traditional western setting. IRL, many of the blood feuds which broke out in the Wild West found their origin in the War Between the States. Perhaps you've got a Cullen Bohannon* type my-wife-is-dead schtick. If it's a chaotic web of conflicting goals, you have lots of tension since, by it's nature, the characters are stuck in close proximity and are far away from help.

Another team-oriented, goal-oriented premise would be a cattle drive (or setting-appropriate equivalent) whereby the team has to make a difficult journey over a large distance and encounter some difficulties. These could be light-hearted moments like an unfortunate cowboy getting bucked off onto a cactus, or brutal scalped-by-Apaches violence. Depending on the setting, this one might be an all-male cast and focus on themes of mentorship, coming of age, brotherhood, and sonship. Lots of banter between crusty old drovers and wet-behind-the-ears greenhorns just off the train from the east. Something like this.

So, those are some plots. I had an idea for an open-world setting, but it's a little esoteric and bends the definition of Western. An "Eastern," as it were. I like historically-grounded settings, so if you want hear my pitch of a gunslinger saga in the interwar far east, let me know.

*from Hell on Wheels

Seeking a Western

@deegee Do you want to make a decision on the tech level and setting before we build a plot? Or do we build a setting/plot outline that's agnostic to the tech level and will fit on top of either a traditional or space western, and just pick once we have a concept?

Seeking a Western

I think I could be persuaded.

For space westerns, Firefly is good; or, if you'd like some cassette futurism aesthetic while keeping the western theme, I had been thinking about a romp in the Cowboy-Bebop universe.

To keep things linear and on track, at the expense of "open world", I might suggest a heist plot ala War Wagon. That's a good movie, btw.

History-heavy CoC Hooks

I'd probably want to hear from one or two more peeps before launching a thread in earnest.

@rush99999@Randomguy If you did join, did you have a preference on which scenario?

History-heavy CoC Hooks

Yes, the focus on non-combat investigative activities should reduce the slowdown and "crunch" of the game. I figure for the cases where combat/chases occur, we can game them out mechanically in dice or OOC thread, and then put together the actual narrative from there.

History-heavy CoC Hooks

Had some ideas a while back for a Call of Cthulu game. Nothing came of it then, but I'll post the hooks here. The idea is to zoom in on the real life history and ethnography through the vehicle of the supernatural investigation. Of course, all of them, I think, could be done without the supernatural stuff as well. Could be done with dice on the forum.

The Night Train to Harbin
As the bells in the St. Sofia cathedral ring the evening compline, a whistle pierces the night. From much-embattled Vladivostok, a train rattles into the icy Manchurian city. Suspicious glares bathe the locomotive as it brakes squeak and slow the engine into the railyard. Who will disembark the train? What be their creed? Their color? Are they prepared for the bitter cold, the shifting political loyalties, and the ancient magic they will soon encounter?

Creatures Creep in Carpathian Crypts
The smoldering ashes of the Austrian empire puff their last gusts of smoke as a desiel truck rumbles in the courtyard of an ancient Habsburg palace. The first morning light creeps over the mountains to show a group of men hustling artifacts into the truck. Who could they be? A deserter, trying to score a payday now that their war is lost? A cleric, trying to save religious relics from looters? A spy, looking to secure vital information? Will they make it out of the mountains before Green Cadres accost them? Can they know that some of the items they move are much older, and much more dangerous, than the human mind can fathom?

Shifting Sands
Through the roar of the sandstorm, a party of men shuffle east as the moon rises to greet them. The Great War rages here in Egypt as much as in Europe, but it moves a little differently here. When a British patrol is lost in the Sinai, the War Office needs answers. Gathering soldiers, Egyptian allies, and Arab scouts, they sent a second party to find them. Neither the men in Cairo nor the men in the storm, though, are prepared for the answers they will soon receive.

Let me know if this piques anyone's interest. The ideal would be we have about 3-5 people and pick the scenario that everyone likes the most, but if there's a lot of interest and we split into multiple threads for different teams and campaigns, so much the better.

Noble Arms - The ASEAN War, Second Thread

As the deep blue of the ocean gave way to the emerald green of the shallows, Sam watched the boats and coral reefs sweep by below. Five years ago, before the weapon now in his armpit holster had changed his life and made him grow up, he probably would have passed a trip this long with his face buried in his phone, even one as beautiful as a low-altitude flight over the Gulf of Thailand. Probably would have been reading some generic webcomic or arguing with strangers online about proper anime watch orders. He cringed a little, internally. Feeling a little introspective, he wondered if self-indulgent, time-wasting behavior like that emerged out of a lack of gratitude. He knew for certain that he hadn't shown his parents the gratitude they deserved for the comfortable life he got from them. Running missions and living rough over the past few years had really drilled that into him.

As he looked around the interior of the helicopter, he came out of his little reverie and noticed one of the Obsidian backup operators - all non-Masters, just normal soliders - fidgeting a little. A younger man, Filipino. He seemed to remember from the briefing him being new to the team. Unbuckling and shifting over to the other side of the aircraft, he sat down next to him. "Howya feelin'?" Sam's Filipino wasn't as good as his English, but it seemed to be appreciated, since the young man answered honestly instead of putting up a machismo front. "I'm just a little nervous, haha. And that..." He paused, and looked at the floor; his tone dropped. "... and that seems stupid, since nothing's really happened yet." Sam placed a reassuring hand on the shoulder, managing to rest a pinky and ring finger on the skin of the neck. He began lowering the man's adrenaline and cortizol as he said, "Nah, that's pretty much universal. After all, when something's happening, then you can focus on that and do something about it. When nothing's happening, but you know it might go ass-up at any moment, that's scary, cuz' you can't do anything about it. That's why a lot of the guys here smoke in their downtime - hell, I'd be smoking right now if not for being in the helicopter." He pulled a Kretek out of a pocket in his grey jumpsuit and wagged it around to illustrate the point. The young soldier exhaled and relaxed a little, it seems Sam's words - and discreet hormone adjustment - had their intended effect.

His headphones crackled, and the pilot spoke: "We're approaching Kampong Som now; ETA to Phnom Penh, two hours."