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Wild West RPGs - who knows one of them?

LCJr.

Erudite
Joined
Jan 16, 2003
Messages
2,469
Gambler said:
The problem is that most of the modern RPGs are based on completely unrealistic equipment. It's not really noticeable in sci-fin or fantasy games, but in a western game that would be immediately obvious.

As always it would depend on the implementation and how grounded in reality the game was. There's quite a few real modifications a gunsmith can do that give you your weapon bonuses as one example. And if the game went for the more Hollywood/steampunk approach you could have mad inventors ala Deadlands/Arcanum or Briscoe County Jr.

Say good-bye to armor.
Say hello to armor. http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs ... pter11.htm

"Body armor is not new."Some form of personnel protective device has probably been used in every war which has been recorded in the pages of history.

During the Civil War,a number of types of protective shields and breastplates were developed by interested parties, and some of these were considered for possible official military usage. However, no standard official form of armor was available, and all forms were purchased by individual soldiers. Two types have been described as being most popular among Union soldiers. These consisted of the "Soldiers’ Bullet Proof Vest" manufactured by the G. & D. Cook & Company of New Haven, Conn., and the second most popular type of breastplate was manufactured by the Atwater Armor Company, also of New Haven. Both types consisted of metallic ballistic material made up of a number of steel plates. The product from the Cook & Company consisted of two pieces of steel inserted into pockets in a regular black military vest. The infantry vest weighed 3½ pounds, and another model for cavalry and artillery weighed 6 pounds. The purchase price of a vest for an officer was $7 and for that of a private was $5. The Atwater armor consisted of four large plates of steel held in position on the body by broad metal hooks over the shoulders and a belt around the waist. In addition, smaller pieces could be attached to the bottom of this cuirass. This vest was heavier than the Cook models and cost approximately twice as much. The supply of these finished commercial products was augmented by specimens of armor apparently of individual manufacture by some local blacksmith.

During the course of his investigations, Dr. Bashford Dean of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was able to test the Atwater armorplate and found that it would defeat a jacketed bullet fired from a caliber .45 pistol at a distance of 10 feet. In his short but excellent discussion of body armor in the Civil War, Harold L. Peterson felt that the chief factors in the discontinuance of body armor at that time were the inconvenience due to the extra weight and bulk and the marked ridicule of those individuals who were wearing the armor by their comrades who did not avail themselves of the protection.

Add to that the classic spaghetti western boilerplate. If you're going more Hollywood/fantasy you'd have the classic tin star or bible that stops a bullet, medicine bags/indian charms or even a Ghost Dance shirt.


Say good-bye to performance-enhancing stuff. Heck, even health potions would look completely retarded in a western setting. Mind you, it's not really the problem of the setting - it's more of a problem with design of modern RPGs. But it still is a problem.

Again depending on how much realism you're going for. Realistic you have drugs like cocaine and amphetamine(1887) for a performance boost. Opium, first aid and doctors for healing. Hollywood style you have the classic snake oil. And lets not forget good ole alcohol to make you brave and kill the pain.

Trains move, though.

Which doesn't matter if you're already on the train. Or use one of the often used ploys of stopping the train by sabotaging a trestle, barricading the tracks etc... Another one was catching the train on a steepest grade on the line where it's speed would the lowest.

Again I've yet to see any crpg really do a good job with crime.

Skill progression. In an average RPG you become more, and more powerful as the game goes. Why? Because you completely suck at everything in the beginning, and because you have hitpoints. Now, imagine a quickdraw duel where shooters miss half the time, and it takes 6 shots to kill someone.

And how would that be any different than any of the fantasy or sci-fi games where you start out not being able to hit most of the time? While your at it read some period accounts of gunfights. Even the professionals missed and it generally does take quite a few bullets to stop a determined human.

Well, yes, but many of them suck too much to be put into a semi-realistic setting. Overall, wild west is much closer to our everyday life than usual fantasy and sci-fi settings are. You can't put masked dungeons and artifacts into western setting and expect players to buy it.

I'd be very happy if I went the rest of my gaming life without seeing another dungeon. Why even bring up something that illogical? Do you feel crpg's have to have dungeons? Towns and wilderness settings work just fine for me.

But to the point. Social interaction will stay the same regardless of the setting. Killing is killing, just the tools change. Same thing for theft, obstacles, methods and tools change based on the setting.

Artifacts can be changed to fit the setting. On a small scale you could be sent out to retrieve someone's great grandpappy's watch that was stolen. On the major quest scale have you ever seen James Stewart movie Winchester 73' or John Wayne in The Searchers? In Winchester 73' they're after a prized rifle and in the Searchers a kidnapped family member but they serve the same purpose. That of being an item of great value that takes the hero on a epic quest.
 

aries202

Erudite
Joined
Mar 5, 2005
Messages
1,066
Location
Denmark, Europe
As for the healing in a western type rpg game, I think it can be done by having the avatar (the player character) befriend some native american tribes and have them teach him (or her) how to use plants & herbs to heal wounds etc.
 

kingcomrade

Kingcomrade
Edgy
Joined
Oct 16, 2005
Messages
26,884
Location
Cognitive Elite HQ
aries202 said:
As for the healing in a western type rpg game, I think it can be done by having the avatar (the player character) befriend some native american tribes and have them teach him (or her) how to use plants & herbs to heal wounds etc.
Or you can take all the points from your Hippy stat, put them into Dexterity or Strength, and heal yourself with whiskey like they do in the movies.
 

Gambler

Augur
Joined
Apr 3, 2006
Messages
767
JarlFrank said:
Still, if you completely suck at shooting and the one you are dueling with does not, you draw, shoot, miss, he shoots back and you are dead
In most of the RPG systems you completely suck at everything, until you have a very high level. And then all your enemies have tons of hitpoints and resistances, so while you don't miss them anymore, you need to hit them many, many times.

LCJr. said:
I'd be very happy if I went the rest of my gaming life without seeing another dungeon.
Me too, but you're missing the point. There are certain things people expect from westerns, there are certain features they like in the genre. You can, of course, add armor and health potions, and the system where you miss 70% of the time, until you're level 60. But doing so will destroy the setting, and negate all those things that make wester a favored setting in the first place.

Also, you're making a common mistake of using some loose pieces of data about real life to prove something about a computer game setting. That's simply wrong. FYI, there are laser guns and power armor out there. But while they are out there, they aren't _really_ usable. Same thing about 3.5 pound bullet-proof wests in wild wests.

Ghost Dance shirt
You know what happened to people who wore them, don't you?

Which doesn't matter if you're already on the train.
I was speaking about the classical sequence where train is chased on horses. Besides, a train robbery looses all of its appeal if train is just a static location.

As a side note, it is important to distinguish between the western genre setting (which is a setting used in certain movies) and the setting of historic America during late 18th century. Those two are quite different from one another.
 

Moggs

Liturgist
Joined
Jul 30, 2005
Messages
164
I'd dearly love to see a Wild West RPG. I think it has great potential, for all the reasons LCDJr and others have mentioned.

Gambler - I think you're missing the point? It wouldn't be a Wild West *simulation*, it would be a *game* in a Wild West setting. Sure, a suitable level of suspended disbelief is required to make it fun and playable, and I think 99% of people would be willing to do so. Hell, what CRPG has had anything close to realistic combat? You chop someone in the neck with an axe and the fight is over pretty quick, Endurance 18 or not!
 

Gambler

Augur
Joined
Apr 3, 2006
Messages
767
Moggs said:
Gambler - I think you're missing the point? It wouldn't be a Wild West *simulation*, it would be a *game* in a Wild West setting.
My point was exactly that it wouldn't be a game in a true Wild West setting. There are too many traditional RPG features that would conflict with such setting. That's why I think that doing Wild West RPG would much harder to create than, say, a sci-fi RPG.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Gambler said:
Moggs said:
Gambler - I think you're missing the point? It wouldn't be a Wild West *simulation*, it would be a *game* in a Wild West setting.
My point was exactly that it wouldn't be a game in a true Wild West setting. There are too many traditional RPG features that would conflict with such setting. That's why I think that doing Wild West RPG would much harder to create than, say, a sci-fi RPG.

Maybe, but wouldn't that bring opportunities to make a completely *different* RPG?
When traditinal concepts conflict with the settings, make some new, innovative concepts, which might even offer good roleplaying. You know, Fallout did something in that direction.
 

Dgaider

Liturgist
Developer
Joined
Feb 21, 2004
Messages
316
While it's a pen and paper game and not a CRPG, I've always adored "Dogs in the Vineyard". Very innovative. I think it would make an excellent computer game if anyone cared to try.
 

Higher Game

Arcane
Joined
Apr 14, 2005
Messages
13,662
Location
Female Vagina
Dgaider said:
While it's a pen and paper game and not a CRPG, I've always adored "Dogs in the Vineyard". Very innovative. I think it would make an excellent computer game if anyone cared to try.

One thing I think that holds back DitV, like many indie RPGs, are the non-PC aspects, namely the handling of religion. Mainstream computer RPGs don't even bother with it. Look at how Oblivion was in that regard. It's just ridiculous how Western liberalism finds its way even into our geeky fantasy games. I want escapism, damn it!
 

Gromnir

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
Messages
394
first of all, depending on the decade, the Wild West of the American Fronteir coulds pretty much encompass anything west of the appalachians... which gives you 'bout as much diversity o' environemnt as you could hope for. 'course even if you has west o' mississsippi or west of rockies, you is still talking massive variation. heck, California alone is offering more than enough diversity to keeps people entertained.

second, add magic and all gambler issues dissolve. fallout gots magic. bg gots magic. pretty much ever crpg gots magic, whether you call sci-fi or fantasy not matter a bit to Gromnir. ray guns and healing packs/injections and mutant monsters is the product o' magic just as is wizards and trolls and wands that shoot fireballs. to make any crpg work you throws in some magic... to greater or lesser degrees. orson scott card gots those alvin maker books that combine frontier America and folklore magics quite well.. though we ain't really a fan o' the books as lit. regardless, you can go high magic or low magic, but magic is gonna be there even if you is pretending to keep it real.

you want your magic subtle... use only to explain how the player can has been shot with arrows and bullets thousands o' times during course o' game w/o dying? sure, is no obstacle. minor herbal remedies and access to doctors who is far more skilled than those we gots in rl is magic that won't be too hard for even the average rabid codexian to swallow. use magic to explain why getting shot with a deringer is so much less lethal than is being hit by a henry repeating rifle? go for it.

*shrug*

oldie west setting gots more than enough diversity o' locations, and once you accept that magic is part o' all crpgs, is easy to see how to makes old west as compelling as any other crpg setting explored thus far.

HA! Good Fun!
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
Let's do some good old necromancy here...
:necro:

14 years have past since that discussion, a wave of new rpgs came and what do we have on the topic of wild west?

West of Loathing, but it's a comedy with stick figures.

Hard West, but it's western mixed with dark fantasy, and is more like a tactical game.

New Vegas is post apocalypse in western flavor.

New release of Wild West and Wizards, but again its fantasy version of wild West.

Have we ever gotten a rpg in true western setting?
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
Have you given the demo of Lawless Legends a try? I have not myself yet, but from what they shared I assume it's pure wild west.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
Patron
Joined
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Messages
19,110
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
Is there any good mods with Wild West theme?
Games like RimWorld, Kenshi or Mount & Blade could be good base for those.

I think I've seen one for some version of Mount & Blade, but I don't remember name of that mod.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,237
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Is there any good mods with Wild West theme?
Games like RimWorld, Kenshi or Mount & Blade could be good base for those.

I think I've seen one for some version of Mount & Blade, but I don't remember name of that mod.
1886 a mount and blade western, I think.
There is also Bounty train which though, it's set in the era is not confined to the west.

What I want though is a game set in the early days of the frontier. But that could just be after seeing the Mohicans movie.
 

Cross

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2017
Messages
2,983
Although technically not wild west, since 'weird west' is its own subgenre of fantasy takes on the wild west.

We also don't know just how much of an RPG it will be. The RPG elements could turn out to be superficial.

 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,523
The way to do a wild west RPG would be to show the development of a frontier town over the span of 15-20 years (think DA2, only competent). Give the player the opportunity to take on the role of a sheriff, outlaw, mayor, etc and influence the town's development at key moments in time. Westerns aren't about saving the world, but about strong men planting the flag of civilization in a harsh wilderness, fending off agents of Chaos all the while.
 

bandersnatch

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Dec 27, 2020
Messages
118
Modern western RPGs created these days? Ha, that's a good one. Haven't you been educated yet that the wild west was full of toxic masculinity? Oh and I thought guns are bad to the libtards? Hippycrites.

I'd expect nothing less from these games than a bad taste of woke libtard in our mouths as they try to ram a million gender roles down our throats and educate us on how bad the white people really are. And forget about sleeping with "female" prostitutes in the game, as you'll most likely discover that was no gun hidden between their legs. Don't kid yourselves, if the libtards get their way they'll continue rewriting the history books while turning Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday into nothing more than faggy lovers.
:codexisforindividualswithgenderidentityissues:
 

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