Thoughts on the Wild West as an Interesting Tabletop Setting

You'd probably never guess my favorite era of history is between the end of the Civil War into the First World War (both internationally and in the US specifically). Industrialization, revolution, guns, jazz, occultism, it's got everything. My fascination with turn-of-the-century vibes can be seen imprinted in a lot of my works, but where it's most obvious is my woefully WIP wild west game WILD. 

That said there's a very good article that recently dropped from 1999 AD called "The Wild West is Boring" which pretty accurately points to how (despite the genre inspiring a lot of RPGs / RPG tropes) no Wild West game has ever really stuck. The post pins this mostly to how being beholden to actual American History is a major pitfall (which I agree with) namely because in post-Civil War America all the big conflicts are resolved (which I disagree with), specifically pointing to Dead Lands as a good example of a game that manages to drum up interesting conflict via its alt-history setting. (And much like the writer of that blog, I really can't get into Dead Lands, it just feels... icky on a lot of levels - But the conflicts are interesting at least!)

What an Unbranded Cow Has Cost - Frederic Remington (If this doesn't look like interesting conflict, I don't know what does)

I do want to emphasize though that I think making something that's not tethered and beholden to history is Generally A Good Idea™ for a lot of reasons. With WILD there's a lot of wild (heh) anachronisms to condense a lot of (what I'd consider to be) the flashpoints of America's colonial history into a cohesive setting with lots of conflicts to join, lands to build on and sides to play - But the biggest reason I have it detached from history is so that a) I don't have to do several theses worth of research and b) the setting can be explored with (relatively) fresh eyes to truly capture that frontier mystique and wonder. After all, if we're going to do the whole colonial mythos thing, we should play into the wanderlust.

Having magic and unknown entities in the frontier makes it a true and wild frontier for the players to explore and (probably) conquer. I think we often forget the looming death march that is the Manifest Destiny is also about the mapping of new geography, taxonomizing (and exterminating) new wild life, and the development and deployment of new technologies. For these things to truly be "novel", you need to be drawing from a new well (which is why a fantastical setting often maps well onto this, where a historical one might feel dry). Speaking of wells...

I Drink Your Milkshake

Where I disagree with the blog post most is that it's the United States itself as an imperial entity that kills the mood. That its hegemony stifles any conflict, that "it's all over but the crying. The Confederacy is gone. The Mormon Rebellion is over. Mexico has been conquered. The border with Canada is settled. Russia is out of the picture. France is out of the picture. Native American resistance continues in fits and spurts, but it is doomed to fail; the war has been lost for decades, if not a century or longer. On an individual level, of course, there's plenty of potential for conflict and adventure (up to a point), but at a societal level, there is no real conflict and no potential for change. It's a lifeless world." [[this line really got my goat as you're about to see]]

Firstly, yes. If you're looking to run a high-stakes political game about changing the entire world, leading and ending nation scale wars, settling disputes between rival colonizer powers, leading a rebellion against the once-rebel state, then yes, it is pretty much over. Democracy won and Pinkertons will be dispatched shortly to remind you.

But societal conflict? Even high stakes conflict? That has gone nowhere. Russia as a state is gone (mostly). France as an empire is out of the picture (mostly). Mexico has been conquered (mostly, until the revolutions start[*1]). And while prospects for Native Peoples are (and would remain) grim, there's a whole host of stories to tell about a people's living within the genocidal nation that all but erased their own. There's people, culture and foreign interests that left marks which still can be felt today. 

For a Playtest of WILD I'm writing a whole territory inspired by Louisiana (in particular New Orleans), and despite being purchased by the US, I can assure you that city is dominated by anything but English sensibilities. From what I can tell, during reconstruction it's a powder kegged mix of newly freed slaves, aristocratic French old money, industrious hunters, industrial innovation, international traders (you could even stretch it to pirates if you really wanted to) all trying to be hegemonized by a deeply horrified occupying state who was glad the slaves are free and all, but was hurrying to try to keep blacks and whites "separate but equal" as the city's new ward.

And that's without card hustlers, absinthe brewers, a fierce but threatened red light district, a pre-existing culture blend whose unique spiritual practices would go on to inspire problematic authors and white rappers for the next century, the birth of jazz, and so much good food. Needless to say I think one doesn't have to reach far for adventure, faction politics and societal conflicts even within the real history.

"But Louisiana is neither Wild nor West," I hear you say. To which I'd answer that you find a lot of these kinds of flashpoints across America, especially during reconstruction. Because while the United States as a government entity, in all its dreadful displacing glory, can claim a territory (and even enforce control over that territory) what it means to be someone who lives there, what it means to be an American, is an identity crisis that, in my opinion, finally came into its own in this era. Where once the colonizer could calmly say "Ahhh well, we the United States are made up of the Anglo Protestant former colonies of course" now things were very messy.[*5]

American meant freed Creole slave and Catholic Spanish missionary. American meant Chinese rail builders and Polish steel workers. American meant "re-educated" first peoples and fresh off-the-boat Irishmen. There's a reason a part of the American mythos involves being a "melting pot" nation. And where there's this many views, peoples, causes and ambitions, there's factions and plenty of politics at play.

While reconstruction era America makes a poor time for waring with Mexico over a border, it makes for a much better time playing railroad barons against each other (or even becoming one yourself). And here (in my opinion) lies the magic of this era of the frontier, it's a whole new era of scum-fuckery that is becoming defined less by genocide and slavery (mind you the genocide is still definitely there and the impacts of slavery freshly felt), and instead by rampant industrialization, rapid expansion and worker exploitation. It's an era of beef between ranchers that ends in blood baths. Deeds to be "acquired", souls to be "saved," wilds to be finally "tamed", hell even the occasional international espionage to participate in. Diverse stories big and small pressed against the weight of a new era.

You won't really be pitting nations against each other no, much more excitingly your actions will come to define a nation on the rise, adding weight to factions fighting for its control. See also; There Will Be Blood - A work that exemplifies the tension between the greed of a business man and the fervor of a power hungry preacher, a set-up that could easily be dropped into any game.

Something Something On the Day of my Daughter's Wedding

My lens on the US identity is definitely colored by growing up in an Italian American household. My mom's side of the family followed the American Dream, they immigrated here to buy and work some farm land, got big enough to send the kids to college, those kids had kids so here I am. The story was similar on my dad's side, with his mother coming here to be a nurse and my grandfather diving (pun intended) head first into the local fishing industry. What could be more stereotypically American than that? Well certainly not the part where they were all Catholic, or how a lot of them struggled with speaking English.

I also grew up (as any good millennial boy would) oooing and ahhing at plenty of mobster films. Goodfellas, Godfather, Untouchables, etc ~ These too told their own story on what it meant to be "American", especially in the context of the stereotypical Italian American (I can firmly say Goodfellas gets the vibes down perfectly). Were these brave, gun totting, misogynistic, (usually racist) men not carving out their own frontier? Braving their own adventures between factions despite the "hegemonic" state government looming overhead? What was the start of Las Vegas as a bustling casino town if not domain play of Bugsy Siegel under such an empire?[*3]

To me the idea that "the adventure, the frontier, the carving new paths, it's all dried up by the time of reconstruction because the State's rolled in and the nations ain't fighting" just feels wrong because I think it misses a core part of what might actually be the "American identity"; disregarding what the state wants and doing your own thing. Sometimes this looks horrific and vile, such as when settlers would just devour, homestead and fiercely defend native lands that the US government explicitly told them not to settle on and to leave as reservations (which arguably the State egged them on to do but that's a whole different thing). Sometimes this looks absolutely based like burning down a polic peacefully protesting in a big show of civil disobedience :^) Sometimes this looks really, really complicated, like taking care of your local community when law enforcement won't, but funding that care by trafficking alcohol and charging "protection money." I don't think it's out of line to say that any perceived national unity this country has is certainly not out of a reverence or respect for any kind of state that enforces its borders (especially not during reconstruction).

Our Names Don't Mean Shit

A friend of the blog (who has done another fantastic reflection on frontiers) made the pertinent point that a lot of "successful" westerny RPGs (like Dogs in the Vineyard) take one aspect of the Western experience to deep dive into and tease out the most interesting (and horrifying) parts in play. In many ways the ideal properly historically beholden Wild West game is probably a Call of Cthulu module where you play as state investigators busting a union or something[*2]. Whereas to have a big frontier open world, you'd "lose yourself in a soup that just does American West Without Metaplot."

I think this is why I approach WILD (in some ways) from an almost Cyberpunky standpoint, as it's mastered the soup of near-future Urban America. Not Cyberpunk the genre mind you, but the 1990 game. For instance, I don't think it's any accident that Cyberpunk 2020 (a game all but explicitly set in the United States) starts character creation with your personal style then ethnic origins in that order. It's because Pondsmith is the GOAT. It's because being "American" (in truth) can mean 100 different things to 100 different people, and it's just as much about what you bring to it as it is what you do with when you're there. Sure, it's a lot (and I mean a lot) of insufferable milk-toast cishet Christian white people, but it's also a whole hell of a lot more than that. Maybe that's the Exceptionalism talking, but at the very least the mythos of America, and the west, is one just as much defined by individualism as it is by diversity. Diversity in views, faiths, finances, ambitions, language, culture, pretty much everything. It's all so perfectly set up for these gears to grind against each other under the uneasy clockwork that calls itself a nation.

Blades in the Dark (another admittedly urban, and definitely more thematically British game) similarly deals with varying factions vying for a stake underneath an empire and state they're fairly powerless to oppose. Even without being outright revolutionary (or even doing anything technically illegal, as many captains of industry would tell you), there's plenty of faction play to be had beneath the thumb of a state. Rival gangs fighting for scraps. Military rail cars just begging to be raided. Cholera outbreaks threatening the peace (and possibly un-quieting the dead if your setting is ~spooky~). Logging operations being general death traps (and sparking lots of beef). Steel barons at each others' throats, while workers go toe-to-toe with Pinkertons to secure basic human rights. There's battles and flashpoints across the frontier just begging for an adventurer to turn the tides. Hell all the good spaghetti westerns are about exactly that.

I don't think the inevitable rolling in of the empire from the east means every adventure has to play out like it's Red Dead Redemption (though that game makes an excellent case for Wild West adventure under the state). Nor does it necessarily mean that those with power (whether from industrial might, religious fervor or the state itself) will necessarily agree with each other and not hire adventurers to do their biding and stab one another in the back. Just because you can't overthrow the government as a lone cowboy doesn't mean you can't get into some nasty impactful conflicts.

There Are Two Kinds of People...

I do my best on this blog not to make too many assumptions, however there's something to be said that the American Frontier itself can be boring if you're going in with a certain set of assumptions of what "play" should look like. If you're looking for (relatively) wide open unmolested, unlived-in land, then you certainly won't get that post-civil war (or arguably pre-civil war TBH). If you're looking for right proper wars where (in the other true "American spirit") one can prove themselves on a global battlefield, this time period wouldn't be my first choice. If your assumption of what an RPG "hero" is, is someone who changes the world, engages in a massive plot and sits at the center of attention of newspapers across the country, the Western probably ain't it. Perhaps for the white anglo fantasy of empty hexes to be filled with no supervision or consequence and colonial powers butting heads and trading territory, it really is all over but the crying. But to me that's not really the appeal of the frontier mythos... Honestly that's the more the appeal of something like playing Sid Meier's Civilization.

But if you're like me and you do like personal stories, stories of wanderers making their way, peoples remaking themselves, factions waging micro-wars that can leave whole communities cold, hexes to be filled with rails and oil rigs and homesteads which will absolutely cause drama and strife beyond the native people's resistance, diverse peoples living diverse lives all trying to carve a name for themselves through the sweat on their brow or the gun in their hand, this era of the frontier honestly has it all. It's still an age ruled by violence and violent expansion, but now it's packed with even more nuance than before. Less Keep on the Borderlands, more Traveler.[*4] Maybe that's why I've always dug space westerns over fantasy...

Look I'm going to be the last one to go up to bat for running any RPG in a historical setting. Shit sucks because you're either creating an alt-history from go, or playing the most railroaded world you can imagine. Even if you open up options to the players, you're also opening yourself up to an endless number of "Um, actually"s any time a mildly inaccurate gun shows up, and that's before we get into the countless factions and languages and motives and personas that you absolutely should know because all of them had their own unique impact on the frontier. Not recommended. That does not sound like leisure to me, I will gladly read a history book instead. Proper history probably has a better home in edu-raps than in TTRPGs. And frankly I think that's the bigger thesis of that post and I heartily agree.

But if you look at the Post-Civil War American Wild West and don't see a powder keg bursting with adventure hooks, domain prospects, faction politics and lots of major, wide reaching conflicts, then you're probably not looking hard enough ~

[After Word : So there's a micro-conversation about how the Western isn't good for playing a "good white", which I actually don't think the original article is trying to engage with. It, much like this, assumes that you have a most basic understanding of the events of that era which should leave you with a pit in your stomach. I don't like speaking for others, but I'd even go so far as to say the author of that article has no illusions about gussying up the frontier to make it more socially palatable, quite the opposite given they seem convinced that the pre-Civil War era (which is even bloodier) would be more interesting. Playing the "good white" is a lost cause from go, (though there's something to be said about how playing a white, esp an anglo protestant white, is one small fraction of the frontier experience) what's more interesting IMO is unflinchingly digging into the mythos of the awful people of that era in all its glory and all its horror (to an extent) - See my aforementioned linked post on WILD's setting for a more detailed dive into that idea.]

[*1 : There's something to be said about how at the time, and in retrospect through the media that tell the mythical tale of the West, Mexico is constantly portrayed as the last true frontier. Calling it conquered feels like it misses part of that. But again I think the original author is thinking Age of Empires styled nations v nations intrigue, through which lens I can get the "Mexico is a settled up" vibe.]

[*2 : I originally had a very poor taste joke of "roll SAN every time you shoot a worker" that felt just a bit too spicy and mean spirited for my usual tone. Especially since I've gone on at length about why SAN really rubs me the wrong way. But hey, here it is if you enjoy that sort of thing!]

[*3 : Answer; A thing an actual person actually did and not a series of player moves within a roleplaying game (though the man did seem to love dice.]

[*4 : As an aside Nova's recent review of remakes of Keep on the Borderlands has me wanting to write something violent and heinous like Fort on the Frontier that take the already genocidal premise to its Cormac McCarthy-esc conclusion.]

[*5 : Additionally I don't think it's any kind of coincidence that the reconstruction era is where the hunt for "the Great American Novel" started. ]