Quote from: CRKrueger;967480I usually just say back half of the century, so 1850-1900, which would include the Gold Rush and Civil War, but technically the span is much narrower, like 1865 to 1890.

OK so if I run a game set in the west in the 1848-1865 period, what genre is it?

Quote from: 3rik;967787OK so if I run a game set in the west in the 1848-1865 period, what genre is it?

Depends where you are...the California Gold Rush or Mexican-American War come to mind.

Quote from: 3rik;967787OK so if I run a game set in the west in the 1848-1865 period, what genre is it?

If it's in the west I'd call it a "Western". Maybe not the "wild" west, or a horse opera or whatever, but western frontier west of the Mississippi is a Western to me.

Quote from: 3rik;967787OK so if I run a game set in the west in the 1848-1865 period, what genre is it?

It's a time period, an era, not a genre.  You want to run a Hollywood Western or Lovecraftian Horror during that era, you can.

The West is also a geographic locale, albeit a large and nebulously defined one.

Are you running an Action Hero game, a Murder Mystery, a Comedy, a Tragedy? Those are genres.

The time period just came up here because the actual "Wild West", that dynamic migration that brought cowboys, indians, soldiers, cattle barons, rail barons, miners, saloon owners, soiled doves, fire and brimstone preachers, bounty hunters, bandits, lawmen, whites, blacks, latinos, native americans and asians all together in a town that wasn't here last year and might not be here next year as a Frontier became a Country...only existed for roughly 25 years.

That's why some kind of alt-history exists in a lot of settings so the "Wild West" can exist for a little bit longer, (not forever, but maybe long enough so The Sweeping Tide of Civilization doesn't necessarily have to be one of your unintended yet omnipresent and inevitable campaign themes) and give the GM some breathing room and the players some long-term playability.

It was never about "No True Western" or anything like that.

None. It depends on the GM. A shitty setting/rules system can shine if the GM loves it and enjoys what he does.

Quote from: Dumarest;966912Yeah, personally I would not have set a Wild West game in Dodge City. Too far east and too settled for my taste.

In 1872,Dodge was literally just a couple of drinking holes for buffalo hunters. By 1875 it was the "Gomorrah of the West", and by 1879 it was rapidly purging its 'undesirables'.

When that time comes, I presume the people in my campaign will be going further west.

Quote from: RPGPundit;968925In 1872,Dodge was literally just a couple of drinking holes for buffalo hunters. By 1875 it was the "Gomorrah of the West", and by 1879 it was rapidly purging its 'undesirables'.

When that time comes, I presume the people in my campaign will be going further west.

Like I said, I would not have set a Wild West game in Dodge City. Too far east and too settled for my taste.

Quote from: Nexus;966923cue Black Vulmea in 3..2...1...

Hold my beer.

Quote from: RPGPundit;966392The real Wild West as we truly think of it was ridiculously short; it went from around 1870-1885. And the real real wild west, the part that most of the most important stories and movies and whatnot are based on[/b] was even shorter than that, from 1876-1882.

Shit like this is why I consider you such a shallow thinker, Pundejo - you take the period which conforms to the most popularized - told, then retold, then retold again - and take that to mean the "most important."

Your conception of the "Wild West" therefore suffers from being nothing but the same shallow slice of history, excluding the Johnson County War, the Wild Bunch, the Doolin and Dalton gangs, a score of county seat wars, Bill Tilghman, Red Lopez, Tom Threepersons, The Apache Kid, Al Sieber, George Scarborough, Bass Reeves, the Bassett sisters, Laura Bullion, and on and on.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;966495Considering that western had its peak in the late 40s & 50s, I can see the audience appeal of setting westerns in a period immediately following a major war. However, some of the greatest western movies of all time take place outside the rather limited time range previously mentioned, including The Good The Bad & The Ugly, The Wild Bunch, Three Amigos, and The Outlaw Josey Wales.

And it also misses the other direction as well. Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday together didn't have the balls of Kit Carson, and Big Nose Kate is a pale shadow compared to the "Queen of Sin," Maria "La Tules" Barceló.

Quote from: RPGPundit;966392If you don't capture that in the setting, you're not doing the Wild West. You're doing some kind of Buffalo Bill wild-west show, and then you might as well set it in FakeName County, Southwestern America because what you're creating is a pantomime.

Or you could be setting your game in the Mythic West, like, oh, I dunno, Sergio Leone, maybe?

When we first talked about running Boot Hill, I threw this out as a setting idea, with El Dorado County set in 'The Territory,' a vaguely defined area of the Southwest where I'd run previous campaigns which drew much of its inspiration from Anything for Billy, one of my favorite Larry McMurtry novels, but the other players wanted it nailed down a bit more, and after some negotiating we settled on southeast New Mexico, a place that came closest to incorporating all the different elements we wanted to include in the setting.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;966495As mentioned, RPG setting tend to try and create a place where all of the stories of a particular genre can occur simultaneously. It's a contrivance to support game play.

And doing so in no way preclude history informing the setting and game-play, because, as has been stated again and again, history becomes fiction the moment the adventurers' boots hit the ground,

Historical fiction writers understand this. For every Western set in Dodge City or Tombstone or Deadwood, there are two or three more set in a fictional town in a fictional county that nonetheless manages to tie itself into the history of the 'real West,' often right down to the characters walking the streets and the events happening 'off-screen.'

Did Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo share anything but a name with the town in Texas, and is it not one of the greatest Western films ever for it? Is McMurtry's Lonesome Dove less of an epic because the fictional town was named for a Baptist church? Conversely, Pete Dexter's Deadwood is populated almost entirely by historical figures in the shadow of actual events and yet it is nearly fantasy in its exploration of those characters.

This is just more self-congratulatory patting-himself-on-the-back bullshit from Pundejo, who's insufferably proud of himself for reading a book and wants everyone to admire him for it.

Black Vulmea, you're arguing with a guy who thinks Tombstone is the best Western movie of all time.

More importantly did someone really just include The Three Amigos in a shortlist of the greatest Westerns of all time?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;969103Or you could be setting your game in the Mythic West, like, oh, I dunno, Sergio Leone, maybe?

Mythic West, there's a threadworthy idea...

Quote from: Voros;969726More importantly did someone really just include The Three Amigos in a shortlist of the greatest Westerns of all time?

When, where, and who?

Quote from: hedgehobbit;966495However, some of the greatest western movies of all time take place outside the rather limited time range previously mentioned, including The Good The Bad & The Ugly, The Wild Bunch, Three Amigos, and The Outlaw Josey Wales. As well as the best western video game, Red Dead Redemption.

Here it is.