31 Days / 31 Characters - The RED RIDER

This character has one of the strangest origins of any I've come up with. 

When I was 6 years old - maybe 7 or 8 - I got a Tank Top shirt as a gift that I loved like no other. It was a white shirt with a character on it in a red outfit on a red motorcycle and he looked awesome. He was a mix of superhero and Evel Knievel and I needed to know who he was.

The truth of course is he was no one. It was just a 1970s graphic but as I was already a fan of comics, Star Trek, and all of that, I was certain he was someone. My older cousin, who was well known to tease me and make up stories to tell my naive younger self, told me who he was. He was called, 'The Red Rider'.

That's all I got and my imagination went wild. I envisioned a mysterious, daredevil motorcyclist who showed up from time to time, seemingly out of nowhere, to help those in need before disappearing once more.

Now, what to do with that...

Character: The Red Rider

Player: Non-Player Character

System(s): Boot Hill, 1st Edition - Seriously modified.

Later Cyberpunk 2020, Champions, and Mutants and Masterminds. 

 

Campaign(s): The Legend of Boot Hill, Champions: The Age of Heroes, The Black Neon Memoirs, and Dynamos Unlimited.

Gamemaster(s): Adam Dickstein and William Corpening

Circa: First created and appeared around 1979. Later appearances in 1986, 1990, 2003...

Origins: I've only ever run one long term Wild West game and it was so good, such a perfect execution of what I was going for, that I've never been able to do it again. Well, more accurately I've never tried to do it again. I've run one-shots, even a string of them but never another dedicated campaign. How could I top 'The Legend of Boot Hill'? 

One element that made it special was the inclusion of possibly supernatural elements that were kept vague and unquantified. No one was really sure if magic was real or if it was just fantasy and superstition. Additionally, if it was real, what was its true nature? A big part of that was the late but powerful inclusion of The Red Rider, a seriously spooky character inspired by the fellow from my shirt.

Backstory: The Red Rider's backstory is completely unknown, largely because I never made one. Throughout his various appearances the Red Rider's in-continuity origins have simply not come up. The sense of mystery around the character is the key to what makes him interesting and special. He works without a background. 

Overview:  During the aforementioned Wild West campaign, the PCs tried to save a stagecoach being hijacked by a group of bandits. The heroes rode off after the bandits while the town Deputy and a posse chased the heroes, sure that they were the criminals trying to rob the stagecoach. If this sounds a little like the situation Frankie the Ferret found himself in it's because this chase scene inspired that one. I love a good multi-faction chase. 

The PCs stalled the law, got ahead, and reached the bandits just in time. A shoot out and some fisticuffs - not to mention some fancy horse ridin' - enabled the party to get to the stagecoach as it careened round a treacherous mountain turn, just short of falling off a cliff. Two of the PCs had been injured or delayed and two of the bandits had hoped atop the stagecoach. The coach driver had been thrown to his death and one of the desperados had the horse's reins. As The Masked Cowboy and The Medicine Man tried desperately to catch up, a cloud of red dust kicked up in the distance. The sound of hooves striking the ground like thunder echoed around them.

"You can make out a rider and his horse heading in your direction. His path is diagonal to intercept the coach it seems. His horse is a dark cinnamon color. His pants are a deep maroon or brick red, caked with clay and...perhaps blood? Red blotches stain his shirt. His hat matches the horse and a bandana covers his face...not like the bandits but more completely, like a mask. Two holes are cut in it for his eyes."

This mysterious man rides up to the stagecoach, leaps off his horse, and motions to The Masked Cowboy to get the passengers out of the vehicle. With some help from his Shaman friend he manages to do so, fighting one of the two coach robbers while their unknown ally tussles with the other. Finally, the criminal upfront shoots the stranger in the chest and he slumps over. The Masked Cowboy spins and shoots the crook, who falls off the stagecoach and goes over the cliff. Placing the passengers on his and The Masked Cowboys horses, the Medicine Man moves away from the edge of the deadly mountain path. The Masked Cowboy turns the horses and then releases them, enabling them to run free to safety. Unfortunately, momentum is going to carry the heroic Cowboy to his death...

Just then, The Masked Cowboy is grabbed and tossed from the driver's seat by a pair of hands possessing incredible strength and moving quick as lightning. As he awkwardly landed on his horse, he saw the mystery man sitting back up and nodding to him as the blood caked rider, the stagecoach, and the rider's horse all went over the cliff. 

Later, after recounting the events with locals in the town saloon, an old prospector said, "Ah, so you seen him too. That there was The Red Rider."

Mask of The Red Rider

The Highlights:

The Red Rider would appear in the Boot Hill campaign once more in the next-to-last episode. He appears in a nearby canyon to aid The Masked Cowboy in tracking down the campaign's Big Bad, an evil Rail Baron responsible for numerous deaths and hardships throughout the game. Once more The Rider is shot but when The Masked Cowboy returns to the spot where the body fell sometime later...it's gone. 

Some years of real time later, during a campaign of Cyberpunk 2020, as the PCs hunt down their Corporate Exec target on the highway between two cities, they are informed of an urban legend...a motorcycle riding vigilante Nomad who takes out criminals from the city traveling on 'his stretch of road'. Sure enough the group is forced to race against time to capture the Corp before the biker gets him. As I described the cyclist, with his crimson cycle and scarlet helmet, one of the players who'd been a PC in the Boot Hill game screamed - yes, he actually screamed - "Holy S***! It's the F***ing Red Rider!". Just as in the previous campaign the Red Rider took severe damage, appeared to slump over his bike, then he rose back to life seconds before he crashed and then rode away. 

I told the story of the Red Rider to my friend and fellow gamemaster William Corpening, who ran the greatest game of Champions I was ever in (see Champions: Age of Heroes and Age of Chaos on this site). He loved the idea so much he secretly built a Red Rider in Champions (he didn't tell me). Many months later when our Champions PCs toured the United States to meet different Superheroes across the country, the Red Rider appeared to team up with us somewhere between Nevada and Oregon. 

I would use this version of him myself - red Harley Davidson, crimson leather outfit, and ruby metallic helmet - in sessions of Champions set in Will's universe and in my own Mutants and Masterminds games. While he is never encountered (I never got a chance to run a planned appearance), he is mentioned in a World of Darkness campaign I ran as well.

Game Info:

There is no surviving (pun intended) Character Sheet for the Red Rider and in point of fact, he never had one in his original appearance. He is more of a Plot Device and a tool for injecting setting color then he is a full-on character. That said, I absolutely love him. 

His abilities are generally undefined but there are some interesting consistent elements. He appears to be unkillable, likely because he is already dead. Some sort of zombie, ghost, or other supernatural entity, he is known to be a solid being and does bleed when shot or stabbed. It usually takes him a couple of minutes at most to recover from minor wounds but much longer for more egregious injuries. 

He originally carried two copper-plated revolvers but subsequent versions of him over the ages have been equipped with a wide variety of weaponry. He is physically stronger and faster than a normal person, with limitless endurance except when damaged. Originally he did not speak, using only grunts and hand signals to communicate when it was necessary. More modern and future appearances have him speaking with an economy of words, his voice deep, low, and gravely. 

His horse or motorcycle, called 'Blood', appears to be as abnormal as its rider. Both are red in color, with the beast a dark cinnamon red and the cycle a deep red. Specifics of the horse and motorcycle vary. Notable are the horse's eyes which usually appear similar to those of a shark. Sometimes they are described as glowing red in the dark. Both animal and machine can travel much faster than normal for their respective modes of transportation but never visibly go supernaturally quick. No, it seems they can only do that when not being directly observed. 

Legacy: I promise you the world of Tabletop RPG gaming has not seen the last of The Red Rider. He is out there somewhere and he'll definitely be back. 

Come back soon and meet another supernatural savior, though he'd never call himself that. If this private eye is on the case, you've got nothing to fear but the bad guys sure do. Meet SHADE of the Wardens - Death can't keep a good detective down..

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Barking Alien 

31 Days / 31 Characters - 'DUSTY' DIBBS

I've only ever run one ongoing campaign in the Western genre, The Legend of Boot Hill. Strangely, while I've mentioned it on this blog a few times, I've never dedicated an entire post to it. I'll need to remedy that sometime this year.

I ran The Legend of Boot Hill campaign way back in 1979 or 1980 and it was so perfect, such a great campaign, that I can't imagine I'll ever match or surpass the pure awesomeness of that game. If I can't see running a game that good again, why bother?

Additionally, while I don't dislike Westerns, my interest in them doesn't come close to my interest in many other genres. The end result is that the pull to run a Western just isn't strong enough to overcome the fact that I don't feel I could do it justice anyway. 

All that being true, there is the case of Virgil 'Dusty' Dibbs and his tales of the Odd West...

Character: Virgil Dibbs

AKA: 'Dusty'

Player: David Cotton

System: Odd West - A Homebrew system of my own creation. 

 

Campaign: The Adventures of 'Dusty' Dibbs

Gamemaster: Adam Dickstein 

Circa: 2010-2012

Origins: Sometime around late 2009 or early 2010 I was discussing RPGs with my good friend David Cotton (who passed away in 2020) and the conversation turned toward games we'd always wanted to play or run but hadn't for whatever reason. There were very few I could think of honestly since, as I've mentioned before, if I want to run a game I do. I find a way. 

The closest thing was a Western game, one like my old Boot Hill-But-Not game from nearly 30 years prior. I told him all the reasons I conveyed to you in the opening of this post. Funny enough, David said he'd love to try a Wild West game, especially if it were crossed over with other genres as I have described my Legend of Boot Hill game being. 

The next time a free game day came up, one where we weren't scheduled to run or play any of our regular campaigns, Dave and I sat down to play a homebrew I'd put together for that very occasion. I dubbed it 'Odd West'. Just me as GM and him as the sole player and PC. It went really well and over the next two years whenever there was a glitch in the usual schedule, we turned to Odd West.

The character himself is largely inspired by real life African American US Marshal Bass Reeves, thought by many to be the basis for the Lone Ranger. His name was originally Dane Dibbs but his first name was changed to Virgil when we realized Dave already had a character with the name Dane. Funny enough, years later he would name his Mobile Suit Gundam RPG character Dane Bradley. Dave liked the name Dane I guess. 

There were really only half a dozen sessions of this 'series' but they were really cool, memorable, and yet another reason I miss Dave.

Backstory: Virgil Dibbs was born the son of two former slaves who escaped the South sometime around 1840, eventually making their way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dibbs would join the Union Army in the fight against the Confederates at the young age of 17 and impress both his White Commanding Officers and fellow Black Soldiers with his marksmanship, resourcefulness, and uncanny luck. 

Whispers and rumors of Dibbs' luck spread as only such stories can and before long many who saw the young man thought him to either be favored by angels or having made a deal with the devil himself. He would leap into a ravine without looking only to land in a convenient pile of soft leaves. He made shots too keen for the Human eye at too far a distance. Riding last among his unit, his horse would clear terrain that threw the riders of horses but a moment behind him. How had they not seen that ditch? How had it not felled Dibbs?

Following the Civil War, one of his former commanders, now a US Marshal, introduced Dibbs to a man named Wilfred Wesley, a law enforcement officer of the US government in charge of a rather secretive branch that dealt with the paranormal. Wesley had collected numerous accounts of Dibbs and his lucky escapes, impossible aim, and nick-of-time saves. Believing Dibbs to be among 'The Gifted', Wesley offered him a job as a special sort of lawman. Dibbs agreed on two conditions: A portion of his pay went to help his family and their community back in Philadelphia and Virgil had some say in which assignments he undertook. Wesley agreed and rest is history. Well...legend...

Overview: The adventures of Dusty Dibbs all began the same way...I would open with Dibbs walking or riding into a town as I spoke a narration in the form of a letter to Dusty from Mr. Wesley. The narration would detail the place Dibbs was heading to and the reason why he was being sent there. Something along the lines of, "Mr. Dibbs, I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing because the owners and lumber workers at the Pine Bay Logging Company have reported a most unusual and hazardous animal in the vicinity of their camps, one that seems consciously determined to upset the White and Red Pine industry vital to our nations' development..."

Dibbs would then investigate, often befriending at least one person directly connected to the situation and with their aid, get to the source of the problem and attempt to solve it. On one occasion that involved fighting a 'Timber Baron' and his thugs as well as the 'Fearsome Critter' (a class of North American folklore creature) whose home territory they'd disturbed. In another instance he had to appease the Rain Spirit of the local Indigenous People who had become so upset it was flooding a section of the Great Lakes Region with an unending downpour. 

The Highlights:

I remember that the first session - the aforementioned scenario with a logging camp under attack by a Hugag - was reminiscent of an outdoor 'Die Hard'. Dibbs started by avoiding the owner of the camp and his heavies, periodically hunting them down and picking them off one by one as the Hugag wrecked the logging operation all around them.

I remembering doing a ton of research for the second (maybe third?) session we ran, which involved a 'Thunder Spirit' of the Kickapoo tribe. A week of torrential rain that was flooding Lake Eerie and a town along its coast was attributed to the anger of this otherwise benevolent entity. Dibbs apparently had some positive dealings with Native Americans in his Civil War days and was considered a friend to the local Kickapoo. It turns out a misguided young man had complained to birds in the area about the lakeside town. The birds conveyed his message to the sky and the Thunder Spirit enacted revenge on the young man's behalf. In the end, Dibbs had to protect the man from the townsfolk while also getting him to apologize to the birds and spirit for blowing things out of proportion. A lesson was learned by all. 

Legacy: As I've already said, doing a Western the way I want to isn't easy but is extremely rewarding when it works. It's hard to convey the balance between the real and the supernatural I am envisioning when I set up to do a Wild West campaign. This series of adventures leaned far more heavily into the mystic and paranormal than my original 'Legend of Boot Hill' campaign but it still maintanced that 'distance' between the 'real world' and the 'world beyond'.  

Dibbs hasn't been seen since 2012 and my other Western campaign concepts in triple that time (except the Red Rider - more on him later this month). Perhaps that should be reconsidered. Maybe there is a future for this peculiar vision of the past. 

Game Info: Odd West, the game I used to run this, was a homebrew, a strange mixture of D6 dice pools and Poker. I looked for my notes but couldn't find anything showing the system. As best as I can recall, the key element of the character mechanics-wise would be coming up with a way to invoke his 'luck power', either by giving him 'Luck Points' that could be spend to alternate/manipulate the outcome of a situation or a limited number of rerolls per session. I prefer the former of course. 

Next up, set coordinates for Amaro Highport at Aequine and initiate the Jump Drive! Look who survived character creation! It's none other than Doctor EMIL FUJIKAWA! See you soon Traveller. 

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Barking Alien

RPGaDay Challenge 2018 - Day 16

This one made me laugh...

Sure.

You want that from newest idea to oldest, alphabetical order, most developed to least, or how likely they are to get to the table based on compatibility percentages with each group?

Seriously, this is the Barking Alien blog kids. Anyone whose been around here before this post knows I'm usually working on at least half a dozen new campaign ideas at any given time. Most of these concepts never get beyond the initial 'hey, you know what would be cool' stage. A select few get nearly the attention of games I manage to run before they are shelved for one reason or another. Developing a Role Playing Game campaign is, for me, very much like pitching a motion picture in Hollywood, complete with concept art that's never used and going over budget on props. 

All kidding aside, the games I plan to run next are...

The Orville

I would really love to give the Orville another chance. I don't feel like my initial attempt truly captured the feel of the series and it certainly wasn't as challenging for the PCs as it could have been. Against my own better judgement, I tried to make it 'Star Trek Lite' instead of serious Space Adventure with more quirky characters. I missed the mark big time and want very much to make another go at it. 

I would use Modiphius Entertainment's Star Trek Adventures system as I like it a lot and of course it designed (or at the very least adapted) to emulate just such a setting. I want to more fully flesh out the Orville universe elements and to do that I may have to wait until after Season 2 of the series has gotten underway. 

Maybe my new campaign for 2019? We'll see.

Bitichin'.

Pioneer

A little secret side project I've been toying with for some time is a Wild West RPG based on the rules of classic Traveller. Right now it lives in a dusty corner of my computer under the title 'Pioneer'.

The idea first came to me about a year ago (maybe two) when I was trying to think of a system for running my very specific take on Westerns. I wanted something that had an air of realism about it but would still enable me to tell the kind of American Folklore, Wild West Ghost Story tales I used in my first and really only Western campaign up to this point. 

The project is currently a bit unfocused. I know what I want for the most part but I am not sure how to present it or where I am going with it. Yet. It is very much a work in progress, though progress does continue. 

Can I / Will I / Should I finish Pioneer in time to make it my next campaign? I haven't yet decided...

and getting honorable mention...

Sentai / Giant Robots

I have been powerfully inspired by Voltron, The Legendary Defender and haven't run a Giant Robot campaign in a very long time. I'd really love to do a game inspired by the Netflix animated series combined with more Sentai elements such as more individualized abilities and gear for the PCs and more Kaiju-of-the-Week enemies.

Maybe. I kind of like how they held off throwing a 'robeast' at the Voltron team episode after episode, making the appearances of said monstrosities extra-special. 

Shelved in my mental archives for later.

Well, that's where I'm at.

Where are you?

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Barking Alien

Cowboys and Aliens

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the first Barking Alien post of 2018! 

I apologize for taking so long to get started this year. I've been incredibly busy of late. All good I assure you.

I am now technically in my 41st year in the Role Playing Game hobby.

Wow. Can you imagine?

So what am I going to be working on this year? What's my current 'State of Gaming'? What is my next big game project (or projects)?

I know you're all waiting, gripping the edges of your respective seats in anticipation. Well, some of you are. That guy is. You know who I'm talking about. Yeah you. This one's for that guy.

Where are we now?

At the moment, I am playing in two games, and running one. The other game I was running has ended, at least temporarily. 

On Wednesday nights, I am involved in a Kapow! Superhero campaign that has been going strong for about three years now. I've been getting a little frustrated with it lately due to no fault of the GM, or the other players. The group is the thing I enjoy most about the game. It's me. I'm a little bored with the Superhero genre right now. Even I find that a strange statement coming from me, so I can only imagine what you're thinking dear reader. I attribute it to too many Supers games in 2017. 

The second game I'm playing in, which has been hiatus for some time now, is an in-person Hogwarts/Wizard World of Harry Potter game run using a homebrewed variant of Apocalypse World. The game is has traditionally been run on alternating Friday nights, except when the GM is unavailable (such as this past holiday season, and into the new year), or when more than two of the players can't show (as there are only four players in the group).

I like this game a lot, although the tone of the last several sessions shifted too dramatically for my personal tastes. Our PCs are in their third year, but the situations and antagonists felt like they were more appropriate to Book 5 (The Order of the Phoenix). This wouldn't be a big deal except Book 3 (The Prisoner of Azkaban) was my favorite book, and Book 5 my least favorite. We all had fun, but I felt a little shorted, or cheated thematically. Still, I am very much looking forward to this games return in the coming weeks.

On the alternating Fridays I mentioned above, I am running Star Trek: Prosperity, a Star Trek Adventures campaign set in the late, Original Series era. Our campaign begins a before the U.S.S. Enterprise under Captain James T. Kirk has completed its 5 year mission, and is now approximately a year, and half in to its own 3 year mission. Our campaign has a number of influences from The Animated Series, as well as various Star Trek comic books.

I was running a Superhero game with a homebrew system that was based on the Japanese Anime/Manga series, My Hero Academia entitled My Hero Academia: American Ultra. I completed the campaign's 'first season', which went well, but I began to feel that aforementioned weariness with Supers that I mentioned. I felt it necessary to end the game while I was just jazzed about it. It could certainly be optioned for a second season at some later date. . 

Kapow! continues, as does Hogwarts, and Star Trek: Prosperity, but a new year means new games, and I have several concepts I want to explore. The question therefore is...

Where are we going?

The two ideas that are foremost in my mind right now are:

The Orville

A traditional Science Fiction/Space Exploration campaign set in the universe of the Seth Macfarlane's TV series of the same name.

In addition to really liking the show, I love that idea that the players will have the kind of familiarity they would have with a Star Trek game, but without having to worry about all the continuity, and elements they don't know. There have only been 12 episodes. We've all seen the same 12. Not hard to keep things straight. 

I also like that although the show is not really the comedy that everyone expected, there are more relaxed and light hearted moments than you might be on other Sci-Fi shows. This milieu is one of serious Science Fiction, but it doesn't take itself too seriously. 

As noted in some earlier posts on the subject, I am adapting Star Trek Adventures for this. Expect to see a lot of The Orville Adventures in posts throughout the year, but especially within the next couple of weeks.

Travellin' West

A working title, with another possibility being Western, or Westward, Traveller. Essentially, a Wild West RPG campaign using a variant of classic Traveller. 

Now, when I say a variant, I am talking about the kitbashed, house-ruled version of classic Traveller I've been running for many years now. Basically it's classic with some updated rules from MegaTraveller, and an optional 'Death During Character Creation' system that can result in some very neat background material, plot hooks, and even special abilities, and items on occasion. 

I've been toying with the idea of returning to the rather unusual approach to running a Western I took when I was very young, and still a relative newbie with RPGs. You can find references to both the original game, and my desire to revisit it here, and here. 

While considering and turning down a number of options for a new campaign for this year, the Western idea kind of crept up on me out of nowhere, but stuck in my head even as others came, and went. While trying to find a system, it occurred to me how relatively simple, and effective it would be to adapt Traveller. It has an ideal balance between simplicity, and mechanical crunch, features a combat system where a pistol can kill an unarmored man, and PCs don't get more hit points as they improve in other way. A bandit's bullet can take you down in session fifty, as easily as it can in session 1.

There are other elements I think also translate over well, including the Character Creation, with Career rolls, and the building of the PCs history as they're being generated. 

I am pretty excited about this endeavor. I will keep you all posted regarding my progress. I hope to get it down, and working, and not drop the project as I did Star Wars Traveller.*

Alrighty now...we've got the ball rolling!

Let's see where it bounces...

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Barking Alien

*Star Wars Traveller is on the back burner, and has been for some time. With my feeling less than impressed with the latest film, and far too many other ideas going through my head, Star Wars Traveller is not my concern at this time. I may get back to it at some later date, but right now that later date seems to be much, much later. 

B is for Boot Hil, Should The Young Men Go West?

Prior to this post, I have only tagged Boot Hill, the 1975 Wild West Role Playing Game created by Brian Blume, and Gary Gygax, and published by TSR, only once before on this blog.

I may have mentioned it briefly a few other times.

That's just wrong.

Hmmm. Wrong might be too strong a word. I'll explain...

Hold it right there partner.

I plum reckon there maybe some clarifications in order.

Before I get into this in depth, I want to note that this is both a Thorough Thursdays entry, and the second installment in the April A-to-Z Blogging Challenge. As you can tell, I'm batting a thousand. I am a week late for both entries, which should have been posted Thursday, April 2nd.

Oh well, life goes on.

On a positive note, the albatross around my neck has finally been removed. I can afford to see a movie once in a while, take a day off, that sort of thing. Not too often of course, but compared to the past several months, it's going to feel like a vacation.

 

***

Now, in addition to having only one post tagged with Boot Hill, only three have ever been tagged with the words 'Wild West'. You'll also notice that there is only one previous entry for Deadlands (even though I may have mentioned it more than once in passing).

Truth be told, I am not a huge fan of Westerns. It's not that I really dislike them per se, I just don't list them among my top five favorite genres. I guess I would put them above D&D, Sword & Sorcery, smorgasbord Fantasy, but below Medieval Folklore Fantasy.

It just ain't my thing, the way my things are my thing.

Still and all, there was that one time I ran a Boot Hill campaign and it was awesome. So awesome in fact that I never even tried to do it again. 

Boot Hill was perhaps the second or third RPG I ever played. It is also possibly the second or third game I ever laid eyes on. This was back in the day when you could count the number of RPGs in print on your fingers.

Unlike Dungeons & Dragons I had an immediate frame of reference for Boot Hill, having already seen many a Western film and TV program by the age of 10. My maternal grandfather (who we called Pop or Poppy) and my Dad were huge fans of the genre. I ended up absorbing the tropes and atmosphere by osmosis. Thanks to my Pop's love of cinema and my father's fascination for old things, I learned to love the generation of John Wayne pictures as much as those of Clint Eastwood.

Add to the mix Wild West tales in the form I understood best, comic books. From DC's Jonah Hex, Batlash, and Pow-Wow Smith to Marvel's Kid Colt and the Rawhide Kid, Western comics were a staple part of my early collection. Actually, they were a staple of my cousin's collection, but I tended to read his comic books far more than he did.

All this exposure pooled together and helped me create one rootin' tootin', sure an' shootin' Wild West 'Boot Hill' campaign back in 1979.

Thirty-six years is a long time to wait for a sequel.

In my mind that means one of two things. Either, if I haven't made one yet that I don't need to make one. Some epics just don't need a '2'. That, or it's about time. Maybe even long overdue.

Sketch by Alan Robinson

 

As I toy around in my head with ideas for a new secondary campaign for my primary, New York group, the idea of a successor to my original Boot Hill campaign has crossed my thoughts more than a few times.

What do you think? Worth assembling a posse for, or should I just let the stage coach be on its way?

B is for Boot Hill

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Barking Alien

ReBoot Hill

One idea that keeps popping into my head lately is a return to the genre of the Western.

In a manner of speaking, a reboot of Boot Hill.

In the 37 years I've been gaming, I've only run a single Wild West campaign.

It was in 1979 I believe, I was about 10, and it's still one of my best campaigns I have ever done to this day.

The campaign featured a Masked Cowboy, a Native American Mystic, a Half-Black/Half-Mexican Gunslinger, a Yankee Dandy who was a Gambler, Swindler, and Snake Oil Salesman, and a honest-to-goodness Singing Cowboy (who sang and played guitar, giving various buffs to the team and debuffs to their enemies).

It featured ghosts, native spirits of the land, The Red Rider, coal burning steam machinery, and deal a with the devil.

In a discussion with one of my current players about my old 'Legend of Boot Hill' game, I listed a number of influences and inspirations for the campaign that would still apply if I ran it again today. As a matter of fact, I can think of very little I would add. My 'Wild West Appendix N' from 35 years ago would be pretty much identical to my 'Wild West Appendix N' now.

While there might be others, these are my primary inspirations for running a Wild West campaign:

All-Star Western and Western Comics from DC Comics
(Featuring Batlash, Cinnamon Star, Johnny Thunder, Nighthawk, 'Pow Wow' Smith, etc.)
Blazing Saddles (Motion Picture) (You can't NOT be influenced by Blazing Saddles)
Bonanza (Television Series)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Motion Picture)
Fistful of Dollars (Motion Picture)
Gunsmoke (Television Series)
Lone Ranger (Radio and Television)
Rawhide (Television Series)
The Magnificent Seven (Motion Picture)

The Wild West comic books are of particular note, since at the age of 10, they were my most accessible window into the genre and the period.

In addition to the DC Comics Western heroes, Marvel's Wild West characters were popular with my friends and I as well. Kid Colt, The Phantom Rider, Rawhide Kid, and the Two-Gun Kid, all played a part in helping me develop the kinds of NPC allies and enemies the PCs would face.

I remember reading a book with a number of ghost stories and local legends from the period that had a major impact on the kind of game I wanted to run. I wanted to infuse the setting with just enough strange and unexplained elements to separate it from a normal Western story, but not make it so obvious that the players felt they were playing a Fantasy RPG.

Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, a favorite, little known resource of mine, originally published in 1910, was another book that saw some use in the aforementioned campaign. The book is a bestiary of fantastic critters supposedly dwelling in the United States and Canada. It is a tome of American folklore and myth at it's finest and well worth a look. 

In the end, what is the final result of this post? Why am I really bringing it up? Am I just reminiscing, or has the time finally come to revisit this campaign setting?

Is this my online game, to be run over Google Hangouts?

Tarnation! You got me Hoss. Got to do some thinkin'.

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Barking Alien

Period Peace

The next few posts are about some things that have been on my mind lately.

They are not meant to be deep or philosophical, although if you find them so be my guest. The posts are not necessarily my opinion, though some may be or my include my open.

More accurately, they contain things that have crossed my mind and which I felt would be fun or intriguing to consider, whether I agree with them or not.

Please feel free to discern for yourselves what you think on these subjects and what I think on the subjects if you so fancy such an exercise.

***

 

My maternal grandfather's birthday was today. Or possibly this past Sunday. He came to America from a small village in Prussia (the border of Russia and Poland) and as he told it, they really didn't keep good records.

My grandfather, who preferred we called him 'Poppy' or 'Pop', was a man, of a time.

He was there for the 'Golden Age of Radio' and it's death at the hands of television. He worked in vaudeville theatres before they were turned into movie theatres and then he worked for those. He eventually became a theatre manager, and opened many of the most well known movie theatres in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and a few in the other boroughs.

He was a manager of theatres when that was a very different job. He did well because he understood people, he understood movies, and which people liked what films. I'll never forget when he ran the Nostrand Theatre on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. The theatre wasn't far from a school, right near a Police Precinct and close to a lot of restaurants. Pop figured out the perfect trinity. He said...

"I show three kinds of films here. Crime dramas, Disney Movies and Romantic Comedies. The boys in blue come for Dirty Harry, the kids will come for Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and a dinner and a movie will end with Bananas."

In those days, if the film did well the theatre manager received a bonus, a big one, almost a cut of the proceeds. Why? They choose which films would end up in their theatres. My Pop had a sixth sense of what would work in the neighborhood he was in, and what wouldn't.

When 20th Century Fox came in to a meeting of various managers with a new Science Fiction film called 'Star Wars', most everyone in the room passed on it. Sci-Fi is dead they thought, the best of it now on television. Only my grandfather took the film by young upstart director George Lucas.

"I have two grandsons (myself and my cousin) and they love this kind of stuff. They'll tell their friends at school. It'll do alright."

Heh. Classic. Guess who got nearly ever major Star Wars figure, and toy that Hanukkah? You bet your sweet Menorah I did.

 
 

***

 

It was thanks to my grandfather that I developed a love of history, of the past, of the old and of 'period'. He fought in World War II. He was a tank driver in the Battle of the Bulge. He received the Purple Heart when injured by shrapnel to the leg as German forces disabled his tank, and then gunned down the crew as they abandoned it. He was thought killed, and left for dead.

 

When I watched films like Midway, The Guns of Navarone, or A Bridge Too Far, I understood them in a way kids my age could not. My Pop explained them. Not only from a soldier's point of view, but from a film point of view.

 

I was raised on comedy before my time, comic books that had long since past, and stories of a New York I had never seen.

 

He had seen it of course, first hand. He was, as I said, of a time.

 

***

 

I never realized how much I loved this Earth of ours as a setting for gaming until recently. Doing research for my most recent campaign helped me notice that the only two Fantasy RPGs I really like are Ars Magica, and Pendragon, two fantasies set in the mythic past of our real world.

 

It got me thinking of why, although I do like Star Wars a great deal, I actually prefer Traveller and Star Trek. Partially it's because the Earth is out there. The Earth may not be the focus, and they may be so far from the PCs' activities that they never visit the birthplace of Humanity, but it's there. The Humans of these settings are not arbitrary Humans from some made up place. They are us, in the future. I like to think of Traveller especially as a period piece set in a period that has yet to occur.

 

This, combined with memories of my Pop, has me contemplating my next campaign, and I can assure you, it will be set in a time and place that is indivisible from a genre. That is the key. To set the genre by setting the era, the age, the time period. A game where my approach is that the two things are one and the same.

 

What periods are like that? Let's think...

 

Westerns

Western style stories can be taken to other times and places but when you think Western you think American West/South West, late 19th Century. I can add fantastic elements as long as it doesn't stop being that time and place and atmosphere.

 

World War II

I have always wanted to run a Golden Age Superheroes game set during The Big One. A war story set in this period with a imaginative twist would be extremely fun as well. Imagine the Predator film as a period piece set in the jungles of Malaysia in 1942.

 

UFO Scare

My obsession with UFOs and aliens doesn't stop at wanting to create and run a game where the PCs are the E.T.s piloting the Flying Saucers. I wouldn't mind a sort of 1950s or 60s Project Blue Book meets Men In Black campaign. That would rock I think. MIB 3 had the right idea but the wrong delivery (though I didn't think it was as bad a movie as some people did).

 

Other eras and ideas:

 

Psychodelic/hippie superhero adventures using Champions or Mutants & Masterminds ala the 1966 Batman TV Series.

 

A Victorian era campaign set in a Dickensian London combining Oliver Twist and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Perhaps with a touch of Little Orphan Annie. See the free RPG Doom & Cookies.

 

A late 70's to early 80s style campaign set in the world of Smokey and The Bandit, Cannonball Run and other films and TV series of that era. Like if Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds starred in a 1979 The Fast and The Furious. With a chimpanzee sidekick. Use Cars Wars or something for this. That's a big 10-4 good buddy!

 

Anyone see those Ruffles commericals with Ruff McThickridge? Bomb Diffusing Sloth. Yeah.

 

Well, that's all the time I have for time.

 

Miss you Pop,

 

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Spectre of The Gun

I can think of very few RPGs or RPG settings where a starting player character has, as his standard method of attack, a weapon that can instantaneously remove his opponent from the face of existence. I would further note that few games and/or settings see starting player characters facing off against relatively commonly encountered opponents with the same capacity.

Star Trek is one such RPG setting.



Each player character in a Star Trek RPG, unless otherwise instructed or prohibited not to, carries as their common sidearm a cell phone sized energy emitter that causes targets, once hit, to vanish. It is a 'go away' gun. Someone is hit, they 'go away' permanently.

This is, in no uncertain terms, really, really powerful. I know the various officially licensed and even some of the less than official Star Trek systems give detailed charts to determine the damage of a Phaser on different settings but really it all boils down to 4 'Conditions...

Stun Setting - You are hit, you are unconscious.
Heat Setting - Used to heat up rocks or weld or burn through doors.
Kill - You are hit, you are dead.
Disintegrate - You are hit, you glow briefly, you go away.

Now this isn't just the good guys we're talking about. This is the basic firearm of the setting. The Klingons, the Romulans, the Gorn, all of them have weapons that turn you into vapor in seconds.

This presents players and their characters with a very different combat dynamic than they are used to in most other games. It may take one or two sword swings to fell an Orc, a couple of rounds to take out a spy and a superhero will blast his opponent with heat vision and lay down a few 10 ton punches before the fellow is merely knocked out.

That is not what is going on here. This is one successful hit, one enemy gone. This is like real life combat where one bullet can kill a person.




So what is Adam getting at with this post? Simple. Armed combat in the Star Trek universe is quite unusual from what you may have encountered in other games. There are numerous ways to handle it but, in my opinion, only one overarching way that keeps the feel of Star Trek.

Perhaps the most common and easiest way to handle the power of a Phaser, Disruptor or similar weapon is to depower it. Assume, as often they seem to do in post-TOS Star Trek, that the default setting on the weapon is similar to a Blaster, simply a beam of light that hurts and nothing more. This is done without much fuss or muss by altering the amount of damage caused on the aforementioned charts most Star Trek RPGs love to give us. This will ensure longer firefights and a kind of action movie approach to Phaser combat.

Another way to handle it is to limit the charges on the weapon. The idea is that the Stun setting draws much less power from a Phaser or Disruptor's power cell but a Disintegrate setting draws quite a lot. There is some precedent for this in the show, although it's never clearly stated how many shots will drain a Phaser.

My last suggestion is both the most Star Trek-like and yet perhaps the hardest to convey to most gamers. This final idea is one of theme. Star Trek is essentially 'Wagon Train to the Stars' and the firing of a Phaser is like a Cowboy drawing his gun or even, a Samurai in a Kurosawa film drawing forth his katana. You do not draw your weapon unless you are prepared to fire it and you do not fire it unless you are prepared to kill somebody.

This respect for the weapon and what it can do often leads my players to set for Stun much more often than Kill or Disintegrate. Enemies need not die if you don't have to kill them in a Star Trek setting. Not every opponent need be vaporized. Disintegrated opponents don't reveal their plans or tell you how to deactivate the world-destroying alien satellite. No renegade starship captain or mad scientist was rehabilitated or stood trial for their crimes in the form of vapor.

At the same time, it always Starfleet officers to walk around with a bit of a swagger. Much like the old west, these are individuals who may not want to wipe you off the face of Gamma Arcturus V but they will if they have to. A Starfleet officer has to do what a Starfleet officer has to do...

More on combat in the Star Trek universe and what it means to gaming there coming up in...

The Arena.

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Barking Alien