Dungeons & Dragons (5e): Weird Western/Cattlepunk Setting

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

The Weird Western is an obscure setting genre, and is essentially the fantasy counterpart to the Cattlepunk genre, much as how Gaslamp Fantasy is the fantasy counterpart to Steampunk. The most iconic example of this is, ironically, also the most iconic Cattlepunk game: Deadlands, a game setting where magic and monsters plague towns in the wild west and wandering drifters can be zombies gunslingers or wizards.

So, why am I not just playing Deadlands? Because, whilst I do like the game, I like the idea of creating a world that takes standard D&Disms, like multiple races or magical classes, and filters them through Western themes. There are some elements of Deadlands that just don't quite sit with me, so I want to try and explore the Weird Western in a more D&D sort of way.

It's not as insane as it sounds. Back in the days of 3rd edition D&D, Fantasy Flight Games released a mini-setting that did much the same thing. Called "Spellslinger", it took place in a nebulous pseudo-American new land called, simply, "The Territories", with standard D&D races representing the waves of migrants hailing from the Old World. It had its own unique way of doing things, including a very low-magic feel, but it's not quite what I'm looking for either.

And so I came here, hoping that people might be interested in helping me brainstorm in how to put this world together.

What do I have so far? Well...

To get that Weird Western feel, I was thinking of using a Magic vs. Technology base. The Migrant Races are hailing from a country where technology (or at least "magic-powered pseudo-science" with steampunk trappings) rules and they have forgotten their magical heritage, if they ever had it. The Native Races, in contrast, have never developed the smoke-spewing, superfuel-guzzling technologies of the invaders, but have mastered the arts of sorcery.

I want to go for a proper Gray and Grey Morality feel to the setting. Neither side is squeaky clean, but both should have sympathetic, viable points; players in this setting should feel validated whether they want to be a migrant, native or peace-focused group.

To help explain the "wide open spaces" aspect... well, I think I read somewhere that the Native American tribal cultures had actually been devastated by plagues and other disasters even before the first European settlers arrived, leading to vast depopulated areas that they were able to just sweep on into? So, perhaps something similar could have afflicted the native races in this setting. Or it could just be part of the Quality vs. Quantity conflict between the races; magical races naturally gravitate towards smaller, more efficient populations, whilst technological ones try to compensate with sheer numbers?

Beyond that... well, unfortunately, my mind's gone all blank now, so this is where I have to leave off and hope that others take an interest in making this come to life.

[Mechalich]

To help explain the "wide open spaces" aspect... well, I think I read somewhere that the Native American tribal cultures had actually been devastated by plagues and other disasters even before the first European settlers arrived, leading to vast depopulated areas that they were able to just sweep on into? So, perhaps something similar could have afflicted the native races in this setting. Or it could just be part of the Quality vs. Quantity conflict between the races; magical races naturally gravitate towards smaller, more efficient populations, whilst technological ones try to compensate with sheer numbers?

The impact of introduced diseases on aboriginal populations of the Americas was certainly very high...among the existing settled peoples. The population of the Great Plains, Great Basin, and Southwestern Desert regions was never high to begin with and was severely restricted due the limited domesticated animal resources available prior to European contact - in the Northern Hemisphere it was basically just dogs, guinea pigs and lamas were available in the Southern Hemisphere. The traditional image of the 'Plains Indian' is of a culture that only developed after the European introduction of the horse.

Steppe cultures in Asia had access to a far more substantial assemblage of domesticated animals including but not limited too: camels, cattle, goats, horses, sheep, and yaks. As a result societies in roughly the same ecological circumstances were actually able to develop sophisticated pastoralism and regularly dominate their settled neighbors (hi China, we're the Mongols, we'd like to borrow this nice empire you have, 'k thanks) something that really wasn't possible in the Americas.

The thing is, with D&D style magic, it's almost trivial for a circle of druids to domesticate anything with an Int score of 1-2, or simply permanently charm creatures into supplying your needs. So that's something to address. Perhaps the native population, if largely nonhuman, can't even conceive of domestication (this would make sense for say lizardmen, who find the idea of working with mammals bizarre, or for catfolk, who possess a predator mentality that precludes working livestock) and has been stuck in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a result.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

The impact of introduced diseases on aboriginal populations of the Americas was certainly very high...among the existing settled peoples. The population of the Great Plains, Great Basin, and Southwestern Desert regions was never high to begin with and was severely restricted due the limited domesticated animal resources available prior to European contact - in the Northern Hemisphere it was basically just dogs, guinea pigs and lamas were available in the Southern Hemisphere. The traditional image of the 'Plains Indian' is of a culture that only developed after the European introduction of the horse.

Steppe cultures in Asia had access to a far more substantial assemblage of domesticated animals including but not limited too: camels, cattle, goats, horses, sheep, and yaks. As a result societies in roughly the same ecological circumstances were actually able to develop sophisticated pastoralism and regularly dominate their settled neighbors (hi China, we're the Mongols, we'd like to borrow this nice empire you have, 'k thanks) something that really wasn't possible in the Americas.

The thing is, with D&D style magic, it's almost trivial for a circle of druids to domesticate anything with an Int score of 1-2, or simply permanently charm creatures into supplying your needs. So that's something to address. Perhaps the native population, if largely nonhuman, can't even conceive of domestication (this would make sense for say lizardmen, who find the idea of working with mammals bizarre, or for catfolk, who possess a predator mentality that precludes working livestock) and has been stuck in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a result.

I actually meant that I'd read somewhere online that the American aboriginal populations had actually already been winnowed by diseases before settlers arrived to begin with. Still, some good points here.

Spellslinger made some rather silly claims - seriously, why you have it that a race with a mentality "strongly influenced" by its lupine kinsfolk has "no concept of land ownership"? Wolves may not be agrarian, but they still understand the concept of "this is my territory to hunt in, so stay out of it!" - but there was one beautiful statement in it, when the Gray Runners' section on racial relationship notes that they call the elves out on being huge hypocrites who preach reverence for nature, but still consider themselves its masters, forcing it into molds of their choices.

...Keep losing my damn chain of thought. I'm thinking currently to go with a fairly small section of races - say, 3 or 4 to represent the Old World and then about the same to represent the New World, with humanity representing the "balance" between. Make sense to anyone? For example, for Old World Races, I could see Gremlins (goblinoids with Rock Gnome stats) being the "mad scientist race", Dwarves or Elves being the "applied technology race", and Orcs (using half-orc stats) as a race pushed to the margins and essentially used for heavy labor, with very little social mobility.

Hmm... maybe I should actually just outline all of the races I could come up with concepts for in order to fit this setting and we can winnow it down to the best ones?

[Bob_McSurly]

I actually meant that I'd read somewhere online that the American aboriginal populations had actually already been winnowed by diseases before settlers arrived to begin with. Still, some good points here.

I'm fairly sure that the biggest reason the native populations were decimated was because of European diseases. Even if many of them had never actually met a European, they might have met someone who met someone who met a European, and since there were very few domestic animals in the Americas to catch diseases from, none of the natives had immunities to the European's diseases, and Native American populations dropped radically, rather or not they actually had met the Europeans in person.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

Alright, I've spent the last week or so too sick to think straight, but now I want to try and breathe some life back into this project.

Only problem is... I have no idea where to start. Can anyone help me figure out where to go?

[Ninja_Prawn]

Can anyone help me figure out where to go?

Perhaps this might inspire you? Unfortunately it's not free* content, but it represents everything the five of us at MFoV could come up with on the theme of 'weird west', so I'm sure there'd be something in there that will be of interest.

*Though you can get it for crazy cheap via our Patreon, and some of the component parts are freely available on the blog.

[raygun goth]

I'm fairly sure that the biggest reason the native populations were decimated was because of European diseases. Even if many of them had never actually met a European, they might have met someone who met someone who met a European, and since there were very few domestic animals in the Americas to catch diseases from, none of the natives had immunities to the European's diseases, and Native American populations dropped radically, rather or not they actually had met the Europeans in person.

That's right. Those diseases were actually brought well before Columbus arrived in the West Indies. Portuguese fishermen brought European diseases to the Americas almost a hundred years before. The populations of the Americas were reduced by well over 90% before European colonists even arrived. This is how the Europeans spread for the most part - their diseases would get to a place first, and their first few colonies would die off due to starvation and cannibalism, but eventually a colony would stick, and then they'd send wave after wave of colonists to overwhelm local populations.

The plains tribes did just fine before the horse - buffalo are not particularly fast, and the tribes were engaged in mass forest clearing to grow the prairie - so much so that much of their alterations to the environment lasts for today. The horse just made them more efficient.

There were cultures trading with each other from Nova Scotia down into Mexico. The Mayan Empire was almost the same size as Rome at its height. The Americas were as populated as China, India, and Central Europe before the plagues brought by the Portuguese. Europeans constantly wrote about how the Americas seemed to be a land that was already tamed, as if the soil itself had been made to plant, as if man-made gardens could be had simply by scattering seed, and the truth was that it had - the Europeans were moving into a post-apocalyptic landscape that they never knew they had destroyed.

Magic, of course, is a ridiculous edge. It could cure and prevent diseases with even trivial access. Consider the trouble the Europeans had from the natives (Benjamin Franklin often wrote that the Americans should base their government on the Iroquois system or there'd be constant defections, and it took killing off the buffalo to effectively wage war on the plains tribes) and multiply that by a factor of ten.

I would also advise that you have the native races and the colonist races be the same - don't shoehorn orcs as savage tribes and elves as noble wilderness tribes skilled in magic. That way lies a trap that we have suffered for generations. I would almost suggest that everyone be human, considering how sticky this can potentially get. Barring that, there are plenty of creatures in native mythology that can fit your bill:

There are things you could call elves, things you could call halflings (or gnomes, if you want to be a monster), things you could call orcs (giants are very common in our stories), and a variety of other creatures you could call upon.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

You know, Raygun Goth raises a point that I've been unable to stop contemplating... namely, should I actually include "native races" in my Weird Western?

Let's face it, we all know that the big reason Westerns fell out of favor was because of the awareness movements by the Native American peoples in 60s and 70s which forced Americans to confront the fact that their "noble pioneer" ancestors had been, in the end, "genocidal invaders".

Now, the fact that this is basically what humanity has been doing to itself since the first shambling ape learned it could use a stick or a bone as a club isn't important. What's important is that this is a controversial element of any Western setting - there's a reason that Deadlands and Castle Falkenstein both include deliberate attempts to empower the indigenous peoples of America and give them the strength to resist the White Man.

The Western is, ultimately, a very flexible genre. Its themes of frontier exploration and unexplored wilderness actually resonate very strongly with D&D, and modules like Keep on the Borderlands are practically Western games in their own right if you ignore the window dressings (forests vs. lonesome prairies, sixshooters vs. swords, etc).

Still... is it really worthwhile using one, or more, races as the indigenous peoples of my "wild untamed land"?

[raygun goth]

Erasure is almost as bad as misrepresentation. I think if you're going to do this, you should definitely not leave out the bit where the group that believes it's expanding into unknown territory has some hard choices to make about how it wants to expand and why it's expanding outward into these new regions. It has the potential to create the kind of moral dilemmas that D&D, to me, at least, is known for.

What's most important is that you present the areas being expanded into as place to be from and to defend just as much as they're places to visit and conquer. Set it up so it's not always wrong to come in and move out the locals - maybe there's a terrible threat about to emerge from the land beneath them that they don't know about - but also set it up so it's not always wrong to come to peaceable terms. Set up choices - a local tribe has been making backroom deals with a trading company, and now two nations are out for their territory, one of whom will destroy their culture, the other who will destroy them if they don't comply with the new rulers, and now there's choices - reveal the backroom deals, help push the backroom deals to prevent one of the other two factions from taking control and helping the tribe stay independent, or help one of the new factions take over.

Most of the only successful campaigns against indigenous peoples in the United States were due to treachery - the army often had to be called in to murder everyone after a treaty was signed, because even the vastly reduced numbers of indigenous peoples were still tactically superior and won more often than they lost against better numbers and technology. I could certainly see situations where this is something to mull over - attempt a costly war, or make an actual, lasting peace? Find common ground, or turn the land into a meat grinder of beliefs and ideals.

A large portion of the aggressive nature of the United States government in policy relation to the indigenous peoples was the belief that there was a holiness to the methodical extermination of the locals. Without something like this, you might end up with a situation like Central America, where the two cultures merge, or in Canada, where the reservation systems isn't so absolutely terrible - and that's assuming the locals lose due to zerg-rush armies kicking them when they're down.

[Murk]

While I completely agree with the idea that the natives shouldn't just be enemies - that good adventurers might find themselves siding with the natives too - I would be cautious about making them too good, too.
While yes, in colonists-native battles the natives were the innocent victims, the natives themselves weren't bothered by some good old massacres either. At times, they were perfectly happy slaughtering rival tribes, enslaving their people, stealing their livestock, claiming their territory, etc.

So no, don't go the route of the primitive savages, but don't take the other extreme (the innocent pacifists who just want peace) either. Somewhere inbetween would be best.

[raygun goth]

Oh, definitely. I'm not saying they all ought to be good, I'm just saying that you need to be careful when portraying them, and they shouldn't all be bad. I have seen too many of these cattlepunk western D&D games where the indigenous peoples are elves (if they're the nature magic "goodies") and orcs (if they're the massacre-loving "baddies") - both of these perspectives are wrong.

It is also important to remember that most of what we call "massacres" would, if the participants were flipped, be called "military actions." That doesn't mean that there weren't massacres performed by indigenous peoples (certainly in the southwest post-Andrew Jackson), it's just that retaliatory strikes, attacks on military forts, and preemptive actions on military camps were almost always called "massacres" by history books. Settlers didn't have much to worry about from indigenous peoples, but if the army was in town, many tribes (again, particularly in the southwest) would kill everyone.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

Well, after a lot of thought, I've managed to grasp some tentative ideas about this setting, so I might as well elaborate.

I've decided I'm going to make this a "subsetting" to a Dark Fantasy world I'm also building - if the corebook of that setting is the "Old World", then this setting here is the "New World" of the same planet, if that makes sense. This is "America", that is "Europe".

In contrast to the "European" races, which are mostly humans and parahumans (tieflings, dhampir, devas, shifters, haglings) with a small collection of humanoids (orcs, dwarves, kobolds, dragonborn), I'm thinking the "American" races are a blend of naturalized fey and beast-folk races. Waht do I mean by that? Well...

Elves: Proud, haughty, strongly warlike; they control some of the most well-developed territory in the "New World", and they're not friendly. Mind you, they weren't friendly to their neighbors before the newcomers showed up; think of them as the Aztecs of the setting. You gotta respect them and what they've achieved, but you almost certainly don't like them, both because they think they're better than you and because they're likely to decide on a whim to kill and eat you.

Gnomes: Inspired by a Dragon Magazine cover that featured awesome gnome cavalry riding dire weasels, these gnomes inhabit the cooler regions, making their territory in the alpine forests of the hill country and the deep woods. Friendly and gregarious if you approach them honestly, but more than warlike enough to defend themselves; they're used to fighting each other, the native monsters, and hostile elves. Respect craftsmanship and animal husbandry.

Minotaurs: Bison-based plains-dwellers who live either in large agrarian communities or in semi-nomadic tribes. Eat both meat and vegetables, so they are skilled hunters. Most conflict amongst themselves is ceremonial - ritualized contests used to settle dispute or prove manliness - but can defend themselves sincerely if treated with hostility.

These three, I'm fairly set on. I'm considering maybe adapting Coyote's myths to create a "trickster race" of fey-touched coyotes, sort of a North American analogue to the Kitsune. Not sure what else I should consider adding...

[raygun goth]

These three, I'm fairly set on. I'm considering maybe adapting Coyote's myths to create a "trickster race" of fey-touched coyotes, sort of a North American analogue to the Kitsune. Not sure what else I should consider adding...

There is not a lot of press, but Spider is almost as important, if not more so, to several groups that also revere Coyote. Coyote is Spider's sidekick in very many stories. In the Southwest, Spider Grandmother is almost single-handedly responsible for every red rock you see - she transformed a race of cannibal giants into stone using stolen ant magic.

Also, in many of the cultures that revere Coyote, shapeshifting is taboo - something done by witches and black magicians, the skinwalker, which is an evil monster who is still said to haunt the desert, so much so that the police in the Navajo Nation often carry medicine with them to protect them from the skinwalker. I could still see a place for it - one of the things I have always wanted to do was put together a race similar to Hengeyokai and call them "wilderness brothers." Blue jays, squirrels, egrets, possum, coyotes, red wolves, spiders, salmon, and turtles are really good animals for this.

Another race of beings talked of very much is the sky people. They move about in their own cities on top of clouds in shining baskets, and sometimes come down to the earth and marry humans, and they produce hero-children when they do.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

There is not a lot of press, but Spider is almost as important, if not more so, to several groups that also revere Coyote. Coyote is Spider's sidekick in very many stories. In the Southwest, Spider Grandmother is almost single-handedly responsible for every red rock you see - she transformed a race of cannibal giants into stone using stolen ant magic.

Also, in many of the cultures that revere Coyote, shapeshifting is taboo - something done by witches and black magicians, the skinwalker, which is an evil monster who is still said to haunt the desert, so much so that the police in the Navajo Nation often carry medicine with them to protect them from the skinwalker. I could still see a place for it - one of the things I have always wanted to do was put together a race similar to Hengeyokai and call them "wilderness brothers." Blue jays, squirrels, egrets, possum, coyotes, red wolves, spiders, salmon, and turtles are really good animals for this.

Another race of beings talked of very much is the sky people. They move about in their own cities on top of clouds in shining baskets, and sometimes come down to the earth and marry humans, and they produce hero-children when they do.

Hmm... Aranea, a race of spiders with innate sorcerous powers and the ability to assume a humanoid form, are an actual D&D race. I could incorporate them into the setting based on what you've said about Spider Grandmother.

I have to say, if I'm actually remembering things right and Coyote does shapeshift as part of his Trickster archetype, it seems a little odd to consider shapeshifting an inherently evil thing. Mind you, I probably known Skinwalkers best from Deadlands, where they more than justify the hatred.

Getting back on topic, I'm actually not a huge fan of the classic D&D treatment of Hengeyokai as "one race defined by which animal it can shapeshift into". I feel it does the mythology of the actual tanuki, kitsune, mujina, etc a disservice. That said, your "Wilderness Brothers" would be an awesome addition to a Western setting.

That said... I'm not entirely sold on them here, because I'm thinking there are no "native humans" - humans are one of the invaders from the foreign continents. Still... I'm grateful to you for the animal list.

Hmm... I'd had this idea earlier, but rejected it as feeling too racist: what if, for at least some of the beastfolk, their origins lie in the native elves? As they turned to worship of the primal spirits, some clans became enamored with particularly powerful animal totems, embracing them so thoroughly and devoutly that they magically transformed to be more like their totems.

Also, the Sky People kind of make me think of the Avariel, winged elves who once had lore stating that youngsters who were feeling mischievous liked to pass themselves off as divine to unwitting people. Maybe the Avariel could be a more peaceful, if perhaps xenophobic and/or arrogant, offshoot of the elves?

[raygun goth]

The Avariel thing reminds me of a story my grandmother told me about thunder-people. There were people who lived in the sky, as the sky people mentioned, but they were just like the people on the ground, only they had wings of light and thunder they could put aside. One day they swept up a normal man, and one of the women gave him her put-aside wings, and he flew with them for many years, while the woman went into a town and got married. For a long time he would live with his new siblings up in the sky, and showed them how to hunt with bows and arrows, and even brought them rifles. They hunted giant birds with no legs and other monsters in the sky. Eventually he decided he had enough of that life, and came and found the woman and gave her wings back.

It wasn't very often I got to hear a story that didn't end with violent death, somebody failing, or a joke about balls, so I remembered it. Speaking of which, I know a lot of stories that are just really long-winded jokes about balls.

Yes, Coyote is allowed to shapeshift, he's Coyote (and often when he shapeshifts, he catches a lot of trouble for it, like the time he was raped to death by ducks after turning into a... trout? I think it was, it was some kind of fish). To shapeshift, other beings have to steal it by killing just to kill, or by creating fear (they do this by beating on your doors and windows at night - as an aside, often a story told by an elder would be punctuated by a partner in child-scaring beating on the house walls when you're trying to sleep), or by burning human remains into ash and using them as paint in "black sings."