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EccentricOwl
2013-04-08, 12:47 AM
TLDR: What are the best Western adventure modules or campaigns?

After playing the excellent video game "Red Dead Redemption," I got the urge to run a Western campaign. System is not important, really - my players aren't picky and we generally focus on roleplay-heavy games no matter what we play!

Now, I love GMing and I love cowboys, but I've never much been one for writing my own adventures, even less so for writing campagins from start to finish. I don't have that 'big picture' thing.

So therefore I'm asking for your help system and setting specifics aren't big, but I'm looking for the BEST western adventures or pre-published campaigns out there. Help me out, partner?

Rhynn
2013-04-08, 02:50 AM
Unfortunately, I'm not too familiar with any published Western adventures for any system, but...

You might just go sandbox. Aces & Eights is a great game (with rules that are either dead simple or very involved and detailed and still fun - up to you!) and really built for the type of play where the players just try to get along and live their lives. You create a location (using the Devil's Cauldron you'll already have maps of likely silver and gold strikes), a town or two, and just keep throwing events and scenarios at them that complicate life. A realistic western setting doesn't, IMO, lend itself that well to a grand campaign model - shorter, more self-contained adventures fit better. It'd work for other games, too.

For inspiration of events and scenarios... well, there's no end to them!

Some of my favorite western movies for inspiration:


Stagecoach (1939)
Fort Apache (1948)
Red River (1948) - John Wayne makes a great black hat (literally wearing a black hat), but not a one-dimensional one
The Ox-bow Incident (1943) - a great look at the nasty side of posse justice
High Noon (1952) - awesome, just awesome; a sheriff marries a Queaker and wants to retire, but there's one more thing to settle
Shane (1953)
The Searchers (1956) - damn, when did John Wayne even play (straightforward) good guys? A girl is kidnapped by Comanches
3-10 to Yuma (1957 and 2007)
The Magnificent Seven (1960) - I think you mean Seven Samurai (1954)...
A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - I don't actually like them as much as some of the above (High Noon, Shane, The Searchers, Red River), but they're still the best spaghetti westerns, and absolute classics (also, Yojimbo)
True Grit (1969 and 2010) - John Wayne is better, but Jeff Bridges is pretty great, too
The Unforgiven (1992)


Most of these are easy to adapt into adventures, and to change up. The heart of A Fistful.../Yojimo, for instance, is "a town is torn between rival factions, and the protagonist(s) shake things up." Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven is "a rag-tag group of guns for hire defend a town." Some are mundane (but often dangerous) events: Red River is "just" a cattle drive (cf. also Australia, 2008, with Hugh Jackman), Stagecoach is "just" a stagecoach ride, etc.

Also, watch Comanche Moon for ideas if you want it include troubles with Natives, and Deadwood because 1. it is awesome and 2. every episode will include numerous things you can use as seeds for one or more sessions of play.

The westerns of each decade tend to have a different style, and in the late 60s and the 70s, you get a lot of "anti-westerns" that have a completely different approach... it may be a good idea to watch a few from each group to decide what style you like best. IMO, don't bother with 80s and 90s Westerns in general... the genre died off but for some half-hearted attempts (and Tombstone :smallyuk: ).

EccentricOwl
2013-04-11, 04:21 PM
That's an exhaustive list of inspirations. :)

Still, I think I'll have to take your word for it. That sandbox style really does sound appealing. It lets players really come up with those slightly off-kilter elements that bring a "realistic" world to life.

vulcanbardmoon
2013-04-11, 10:46 PM
Deadlands, play Deadlands. It is not in the strictest sense a "pure" western. It is a western, horror, alternate history, steam punk adventure style game. All built around the style of pulp adventure yarns. It's all the gunslinging of a Clint Eastwood western plus mad scientists, zombies, and all manner of horrors. It comes in two versions, classic and the Savage Worlds rules (which incidentally were a cleaned up version of Deadlands original rules). If you play it let me know what you think, I've wanted to run it for years with no success.

Rhynn
2013-04-11, 11:40 PM
I guess I shoud list some systems...

Like I said above, Aces & Eights is, IMO, the best western RPG.

It is, naturally, a take on TSR's venerable classic, Boot Hill (which had 3 editions). Boot Hill is going to be hard to find in any edition, I imagine (try eBay), but it did have adventures published (well, modules; they're fairly location-based) - like Ballots & Bullets, where an Arizona frontier town has a wild west election.

Coyote Trail is a very simple, much newer game, but as a minor game, probably hard to find. It comes with a bunch of ready scenarios. Shady Gulch is actually somewhat similar in the core mechanics - and even some of the same illustrations... I suppose because it's from the same mini-publisher (Politically Incorrect Games), just 3 years earlier. Wild West Cinema is, again, kind of similar, reminding me of Unisystem...

Which could totally work as a system for westerns, BTW; the Unisystem game All Flesh Must Be Eaten has even got a sourcebook, Fistful of Zombies, for the job, and you could cut out all the zombie stuff and run a plain western game. As a bonus, you'd have the single best zombie RPG ever, to boot.

Dust Devils is a pretty indie game, played with cards and chips.

Six Gun is a really simple, really tight (4 pages of rules, 10 pages of scenarios!) game.

That last isn't to be mixed up with Six Gun Sound - Blaze of Glory, which is figure skirmish game that can be used for roleplaying (as in, the rules actively support it). Tombstones n' Tumbleweeds is similar, and really reminds me of Necromunda and Mordheim (Games Workshop miniature skirmish games with RPG elements).

Sidewinder Recoiled is for use with d20 Modern, which says about everything. If you really like d20 and d20 Modern, it works.

IMO, most of the systems actually encourage a sandbox-style play, with short, individual scenarios tied together by the setting.

On balance, Aces & Eights wins out by far for me, and it's actually for sale. I find the rules are superior, even if you use the complex ones (which aren't so complex as to be slow, once you know them); the alternate history setting is easy to ignore and replace with a more strictly historical one if you want; and the Shot Clock combat system is just brilliant.