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Forget the ones that were never successful, like heartbreakers or most Forge games.

I mean games or settings that sold moderately well or more, and yet you think they sucked absolute ass.

I'm not taking that bait!

Quote from: Dumarest;962633I'm not taking that bait!

Pundit has really walked into that one hasn't he?

Quote from: yojimbouk;962637Pundit has really walked into that one hasn't he?

The devil in me wanted to answer a certain game near and dear to his heart. :D

Waiting for the first FR blast (which has sold moderately well...or more...).:-)

Actually, if you want a serious answer , can you tell us what games sold well enough to be considered popular? Aside from D&D and its various derivatives, are there any that qualify? I've got a roomful of RPGs but aside from Classic Traveller, I'm not sure how well any of them have sold.

It depends if you mean lame at the surface - or a setting which makes no freakin' sense once you delve in.

I can't think of many popular settings which are the first.

Quite a few are the latter.  Rifts being foremost amongst them.

When I was young and pretentious and had a big stick up my ass I would have said "Palladium", but since then I've gotten less mature and realised that there is nothing wrong with grown men pretending to be mutant ocelots and horned toads with katanas and uzis having epic battles with ninja in the middle of 80's strip malls.

I can't see how anyone could answer this with out claiming someone (actually many people since it must be a popular game) are haveing bad/wrong fun.

Quote from: Headless;962687I can't see how anyone could answer this with out claiming someone (actually many people since it must be a popular game) are haveing bad/wrong fun.

I don't know about that.  I can't stand the taste of beer - but that doesn't mean that I think that people who drink beer are horrible people.  (I prefer scotch.)

I have mixed feelings about some popular settings.

1. Golarion - well detailed BUT way too much going on here. There are aliens and dimensional travelers and magic and every culture and every god and every city and this and that and... it's exhausting.
2. Forgotten Realms. I grew up running this setting. I love it and hate it. Mostly because I'm just tired of it. I don't like using it for games because of the cannon-wanks, the meta-plot, and all the "celebrity NPCs" monkeying about. Recently I picked up a bunch of the new stuff, starting reading and just felt... meh.
3. Shadowrun. Now that we're in the future the future in SR seems silly. Too much history and baggage to start over. I prefer to invent my own from scratch with the same "elements" that make SR so awesome. Don't get me wrong. I love it. I just also think it's too far afield to be internally consistent (setting-wise).

Now, these are not bad settings. I just have a complicated relationship with them. :-D

Planescape. Take the awe and majesty of the outer planes and dimensional travel and turn it into Oliver! Even the art was terrible, everything grey and brown, as opposed to something by Roger Dean

Traveller's Imperium.  Space travel is about exploration. So let's make a galaxy where every single system within reach (because of our slow star travel) is statted up and any blank areas is not left to referees, but given to 3rd parties to stat up. Also, lame aliens.

Quote from: JeremyR;962703Traveller's Imperium.  Space travel is about exploration. So let's make a galaxy where every single system within reach (because of our slow star travel) is statted up and any blank areas is not left to referees, but given to 3rd parties to stat up. Also, lame aliens.

Ha ha...I never understood the transition from Traveller's implied setting being the wild frontier to the civilized imperium, nor did I ever understand the appeal of the imperium for reasons similar to your words. But I can't comment in the aliens one way or the other as I never bought any of those books. I saw the wolf people and lion people and whatever in the Journal of the Travellers Aid Society and that was plenty for my taste.

The best approach to Traveller is to stick with the basic set plus a half dozen LBB's that suit your interests, and then put together your own pocket empire sort of area, which can either be its own thing or whatever corner of the Imperium you might want to say it sits in. That is, it's OD&D in space.

Shadowrun would have to be it. Like Gibson, my basic reaction to cyberpunk with elves is not a positive one. The system is not much cop either, but it's one of the most successful RPGs ever.

Also Champions. I know it's a seminal system, and some people love it, but jeezuz it's an overly complex system that has some awful explanations of rules in it's current iteration. Any game that bases it's core roll in combat as:

"Attacker's OCV + 11 - 3D6 = the DCV the attacker can Hit"

....is not an intuitive game for a beginner! Too many TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), to many 'see pXX' references, too many ruling stipulations to learn.

And bad art for a game supposing to simulate the comic genre.

Not sure if I could say what is 'worst' as that would be so subjective. Much of what I dislike is much loved by others here. FR is mediocre but there are some great supplements buried in the mountains of material.

Perhaps Brave New World...  In the core book it comes across fairly well, Alt-history with supers, the U.S. a dictatorship-in-all-but-name, etc.  But as soon as you read the GM secrets, it sort of fell apart.  And I gave up on it entirely once I read how being a Bargainer (one of the core PC types) turned out.

Honestly? The only game that's even nominally popular that I nonetheless can't even see the basic appeal of?

Dungeons & Dragons. Any edition. Any retroclone. Any imitation that doesn't do some serious reconsidering of the basic principles.

And yes, the fact that I can at least theoretically get behind every single roleplaying game except the one that sees ten times as much actual play as all the rest of them combined is a bit troublesome at times, actually... :p

Well I hate Shadowrun and Spelljammer - certain approaches to combining fantasy + sf just don't work for me. 'Orcs in space' and 'elves on the subway' certainly fall into that. I think it's the mundanification of fantasy that bugs me in Shadowrun. Conversely I love the Wilderlands approach of making technology seem weird and magical.

I strongly dislike Deadlands' backstory having the South abolish slavery but continue the Civil War, enough that I refused to play in a friend's offered Deadlands campaign.

Quote from: RPGPundit;962627Forget the ones that were never successful, like heartbreakers or most Forge games.

I mean games or settings that sold moderately well or more, and yet you think they sucked absolute ass.

Shadowrun. All of it.

Worst RPG? Well, I never liked Rifts. Mega Damage stuff shoved out any notion of playing a normal.

Savage Worlds. Great settings. Frustrating rules. No one ever seems to die or even stay hurt. No danger and no resolution.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;962683When I was young and pretentious and had a big stick up my ass I would have said "Palladium", but since then I've gotten less mature and realised that there is nothing wrong with grown men pretending to be mutant ocelots and horned toads with katanas and uzis having epic battles with ninja in the middle of 80's strip malls.

sure, I can see that, but does it have to be done with one of the worst RPG systems possible?

Quote from: RPGPundit;962627Forget the ones that were never successful, like heartbreakers or most Forge games.

I mean games or settings that sold moderately well or more, and yet you think they sucked absolute ass.

Quote from: Dumarest;962633I'm not taking that bait!

I will take the bait and say Dungeons and Dragons.

I mean, it is clearly successful, and even though I would not mind playing it if nothing else is offered, I would actually prefer almost any other game.
It could be that there actually are really good settings for it, but even then I still don't like the system, be it the magical system, the combat system, the alignments, the character specs, the levelling system, or the classes(even if multiclassing is ok).
The general setting is not very fun either, perhaps just because it has become what one often refers to as "generic fantasy".
Yes, I know that can be seen as unfair, as it being "generic" is a result of it being successful, and therefor often having been copied in multitude versions.
(The only settings I think is worse, is Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.)

I find so many flaws and things in it that I really don't like, so even though i'm aware of that others like it, I think it is The Worst. (With LotR a close second due to having the worst Setting.)

Quote from: S'mon;962779Well I hate Shadowrun and Spelljammer - certain approaches to combining fantasy + sf just don't work for me. 'Orcs in space' and 'elves on the subway' certainly fall into that. I think it's the mundanification of fantasy that bugs me in Shadowrun. Conversely I love the Wilderlands approach of making technology seem weird and magical.

I strongly dislike Deadlands' backstory having the South abolish slavery but continue the Civil War, enough that I refused to play in a friend's offered Deadlands campaign.

Elves on the subway...hilarious...I've never played the game as the whole "cyberpunk" thing was not my thing. And the cover art just made me laugh, but not in a good way.

Orcs in space...were they ripping off The Muppet Show? PIGS IN SPAAAAACE!

So the South abolished slavery but kept fighting the Civil War because...?

Quote from: Headless;962687I can't see how anyone could answer this with out claiming someone (actually many people since it must be a popular game) are haveing bad/wrong fun.

I can, not only because i'm smart and knows it would upset a lot of people, but also because I know that others may like what I don't like.
It's as simple as that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;962627Forget the ones that were never successful, like heartbreakers or most Forge games.

I mean games or settings that sold moderately well or more, and yet you think they sucked absolute ass.

Forgotten Realms, Palladium's setting (and system, of course), Shadowrun pretty much top my list of places I don't want to visit;).

Very personal reactions against these:
Eberron as a setting.
Shadowrun as a setting and system.
Palladium's system.

World of Darkness and its goddamn awful fiction and patronizing prose and non-sensical setting.

You can't kick a garbage can without disturbing a changeling, two werewolves, a mage and a weeping ghost while a vampire is killing someone and a wereshark terrorises New-Jersey.

It always felt to me like the unholy wedding of a telenovela and Anne Rice's novels. Any soap opera episode can be turned into a WoD adventure : just replace the old guy with a Vampire Prince, the gardener with a werewolf and the young lovers nemesis with a technocrat Mage.

It's pretty much The Young and the Restless, with a supplement of fangs and fur.

Any setting longer than 2 pages sucks.

Hard to say which one I think is worst, because I tend to stop reading and playing as soon as they pass a certain threshold of disinterest for me. Since I really like TFT and GURPS and few games even try to do the things that I like about them, that has me not playing most other games.

Also it's clearly a matter of preference and type rather than quality per se. Even when I mention how white box D&D seemed cryptic and incomplete, fans reply that they like that as a feature because then the referee gets to make up everything. So, seems unanswerable.

As someone who played a lot of D&D, I'd have to agree with that sentiment.  The system needs a lot of hand waving or just houserules for ME to not complain about it.

I call BS. The basic structure of D+D is excellent, and kicks the shit out of most later roleplaying games, just considering the structures of the rules. Classes, levels, resource management (mostly HP and spells) are great core elements for a game; it scales well across power levels; and, most importantly, the 'meat' of the game - monsters, spells, items, dungeons - is outstanding and always has been. People who turn their noses up at D+D because they don't like to-hit tables or whatever are totally full of shit.

Quote from: Larsdangly;962916I call BS. The basic structure of D+D is excellent, and kicks the shit out of most later roleplaying games, just considering the structures of the rules. Classes, levels, resource management (mostly HP and spells) are great core elements for a game; it scales well across power levels; and, most importantly, the 'meat' of the game - monsters, spells, items, dungeons - is outstanding and always has been.

It's very representative of a specific style of game, which everyone tries to shoehorn into settings that just won't work for it, like Eberron, Dark Sun.

Quote from: Larsdangly;962916People who turn their noses up at D+D because they don't like to-hit tables or whatever are totally full of shit.

Uh hunh.  You've never paid attention to the edition wars?  That are STILL raging to this day, under the new banner of OSR vs. New School?  There are issues, issues that no one agrees on.  So I'm calling bullshit on you're wanna be 'You're Doing It Wrong.'  Gronan is much better at it.

I thought I'd be all original and say Shadowrun, but apparently I'm not as alone as I thought!

I'm playing in a Shadowrun 5e game that's starting this week. In my opinion the tone of the setting and the fact that the tech just isn't impressive anymore mean that I doubt I'll enjoy the game very much (alongside Catalyst being involved with it). In my case at least it feels like the game is just too close to reality setting-wise (obviously barring the weaboo katana orks and techie dwarves) and the writers are actively trying to point out how hip and relevant they are by throwing in sidebars about every possible -phobia and -ism they can muster. It's like the book is complaining to me about its own setting, and that seems to me to be about the worst thing a writer can do.

Take Godbound for example. It's a different genre obviously, but both games have a default setting that I'm not wild about. The difference is that Godbound's setting is presented with tact, a level head, and without judgment. Well, that and the writer admits upfront that you can just use whatever setting you want.

I could never get into Shadowrun because my first Cyberpunk experience was William Gibson unless you count Blade Runner, and my ADD did not like the idea of mixing D&D into it.

Quote from: kobayashi;962866World of Darkness and its goddamn awful fiction and patronizing prose and non-sensical setting.

You can't kick a garbage can without disturbing a changeling, two werewolves, a mage and a weeping ghost while a vampire is killing someone and a wereshark terrorises New-Jersey.

It always felt to me like the unholy wedding of a telenovela and Anne Rice's novels. Any soap opera episode can be turned into a WoD adventure : just replace the old guy with a Vampire Prince, the gardener with a werewolf and the young lovers nemesis with a technocrat Mage.

It's pretty much The Young and the Restless, with a supplement of fangs and fur.

It would have been so much fun if it was written and advertised as a monster mash soap opera simulator. Instead we got literal social justice warriors who try to enforce their political views on the laws of physics while brutally and pointlessly killing everything in their path.

Quote from: cranebump;962640Waiting for the first FR blast (which has sold moderately well...or more...).:-)

FR, like about every TSR setting. Started out fine. And later iterations sucked all the joy out of it.

Greyhawk I've heard had this happen. I missed it as I was happy with my boxed set.

Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance are in competition for title of posterchild for this.

Dark Sun devolved.

Karameikos was turned into Mystara which totally sucked every erg of openness from the setting.

Star Frontiers would have been ruined by Zebulons Guide if ZG werent effectively a new game and setting.

Gamma World up till Alternity gradually devolved into stupider and stupider.

Freaking Spelljammer and maybee Planescape are the only two that somehow didnt and that because both were so weird to begin with nothing you could do with the setting could break it.

Quote from: Krimson;962939I could never get into Shadowrun because my first Cyberpunk experience was William Gibson unless you count Blade Runner, and my ADD did not like the idea of mixing D&D into it.

Oddly enough the fantasy races are the only thing keeping me interested in the game. If I wanted a cyberpunk game I'm sure there are options more palatable to me, but at least I can play an oni I suppose.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;962942It would have been so much fun if it was written and advertised as a monster mash soap opera simulator. Instead we got literal social justice warriors who try to enforce their political views on the laws of physics while brutally and pointlessly killing everything in their path.

I'd say it'd be fine if the fluff was less heavy handed, but I suppose fluff is all they really have isn't it? My group asked me once why I'm so aggressively opposed to playing a WoD system and honestly the best answer I had is that I don't even see room for a game beneath the morass of social commentary. I have a hard time believing they aren't just fiction books masquerading as a game system. Are there rules? Do you roll dice? I may never know.

Quote from: Omega;962947Freaking Spelljammer and maybee Planescape are the only two that somehow didnt and that because both were so weird to begin with nothing you could do with the setting could break it.

  Ravenloft endures. It had some problems in the latter part of the 3.5 run, but the core endures. :)

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;962852Very personal reactions against these:
Eberron as a setting.
Shadowrun as a setting and system.
Palladium's system.

I echo points 1 and 3 (especially point 1). No experience with Shadowrun.

On topic. For me theres games that are popular but for whatever reason just dont click for me. I cant think of any right off that totally repulsed me other than Sanguine's Albedo RPG and that is partially because they yanked the IP deal out from under me when I made the mistake of showing them my manuscript in progress. And then totally botched the book. AND stuck in a few art pieces that aren't even Steve's or from the comic! ARGH! But cant say it was actually popular. Ive not met anyone who had it and liked it. There must be some out there. But they arent speaking up.

Gumshoe and Trail of Cthulhu pretty much turned me off in the first few pages with their pretentious attempt to fix something that wasnt broken to begin with.

Runescape might count. But from other peoples comments here I just chalk it up to having the bad luck to have the less than optimal starter box from Avalon. I can see its a good system. But the damn layout is a mess to me and makes processing the rules harder.

Oh and honourable mention goes to 4e D&D Gamma World. Everyone praises the mechanics as 4e D&D done right. And then savages the slapstick setting and attached CCG as being GW in name only. Doesn't help that the writers insult the players right out the gate if they baulk at the near total lack of choice in chargen. oh joy. not.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;962952Ravenloft endures. It had some problems in the latter part of the 3.5 run, but the core endures. :)

I didnt like the 3e version of Masque of the Red Death in its tone and changes. But it is a nice little reference for Victorian era playing. The rules and setting just seemed, lacking somehow?

Havent seen the 3e Ravenloft. I know theres some who dont like the change in 2e of Ravenloft to a demiplane.

5e D&D sucks ass.

3e&4e Earthdawn are horrible clusterfucks of stupidness

Oh yeah, Eberron seemed amazingly weak. I got the 4e hardback and gave it away. So dull. Worse than Kalamar.

The WH40K RPG's all need lots of work to be playable. oWoD isn't all that great. nWoD had big issues. D&D, Pathfinder aren't that great either. Exalted 1e and 2e had issues. In fact, I'd make the case that just about every good selling RPG had glaring flaws in it.

Settings:
oWoD makes no sense re: vampire populations and all the various sects in the past.
Forgotten Realms is great if you only focus on the RPG products and ignore the novels
Golarian is like a marketing department tried to develop a setting. It's skin deep and shoehorns everything possible in it while having no soul at all

More just about my personal dislikes.

Rifts - For me a melting pot of 'zaney' ideas and I haaate the system.
After the bomb (or anything similar) - I really hate the concept of playing little furry animal mutants with martial arts (or laser guns).
Shadowrun - I still can't get my head around the idea of Orcs in trenchcoats. The mix of fantasy and cyberpunk is just horrible.

Original World Of Darkness.

Hands down. It was a complete and utter mess.

Eberron and 3rd Edition were certainly a terrible mix. Eberron was supposed to more pulpy and high action than regular D&D, so they gave you Action Points that let you re-roll an action. That's fine, but they gave you around five per level, and the opportunity for one re-roll isn't enough to make me feel much more comfortable jumping between two airships than I would be in a normal D&D game.

Because 3E was so protective of its math about how powerful character were supposed to be at every level, and how what items they were supposed to have, it seemed like they had the idea for Action Points, then realized they didn't want them to mess up their formulas for encounter difficulty, so they made sure they were almost entirely useless.

Quote from: Krimson;962939I could never get into Shadowrun because my first Cyberpunk experience was William Gibson unless you count Blade Runner, and my ADD did not like the idea of mixing D&D into it.

Neuromancer and its sequels played heavily with the idea of technology as humanity's way of trying to find a kind of transcendence. Cyberspace was clearly meant to evoke a spirit world and using it evoked magic.

Shadowrun took all that stuff from Neuromancer that was symbolic, then also put a literal Astral Plane and magic in the world right next it. It's all painfully redundant. "In case you didn't get that deckers are symbolic of shamans entering the spirit world, we have put some shamans going into the spirit right next to your decker so you can see it more clearly!" It's just dumb, over-cluttered world design.

Of course, the correct answer is: all RPGs I don't like suck, as do all the fans of those games.

I not a fan of 3e/5e D&D, but worst for me isn't truly meaningful if those games somehow bring pleasure to the inferior humans. :)

I know most of the fans say that the 90s was the "Golden Age" for Glorantha, but I think the setting pretty much peaked in the 80s. Back then, it was a really awesome sword & sorcery setting, with some unique ideas about cults and monsters and things. But since the early 90s, it's been all navel gazing and anthro-wankery. Now it takes itself way too seriously, and current attitudes about the setting have basically ruined it for me.

Quote from: RPGPundit;962627Forget the ones that were never successful, like heartbreakers or most Forge games.

I mean games or settings that sold moderately well or more, and yet you think they sucked absolute ass.

Pathfinder.  Took 3e/3.5e and turned the munchkin dial up to 11.  For that matter I never liked 3rd or 3.5 much to begin with.

Quote from: Herne's Son;963022I know most of the fans say that the 90s was the "Golden Age" for Glorantha, but I think the setting pretty much peaked in the 80s. Back then, it was a really awesome sword & sorcery setting, with some unique ideas about cults and monsters and things. But since the early 90s, it's been all navel gazing and anthro-wankery. Now it takes itself way too seriously, and current attitudes about the setting have basically ruined it for me.

Glorantha was a lot more fun before it took itself seriously.  King of Sartar is when I lost interest.

Quote from: Dumarest;962834So the South abolished slavery but kept fighting the Civil War because...?

Because the demon possessing Jefferson Davis wanted the war to continue.

Quote from: CRKrueger;963034Because the demon possessing Jefferson Davis wanted the war to continue.

I can't tell if you're pulling my leg or the setting is really that stupid.

Quote from: Dumarest;963040I can't tell if you're pulling my leg or the setting is really that stupid.

In Deadlands there's a chance everyone who dies comes back as a demon-possessed corpse.  Abe Lincoln came back too, and most of the time can control the spirit, but he kept it secret.

Quote from: CRKrueger;963042In Deadlands there's a chance everyone who dies comes back as a demon-possessed corpse.  Abe Lincoln came back too, and most of the time can control the spirit, but he kept it secret.

Wow. But then again people watched Two and a Half Men so there's an audience for everything.

Quote from: CRKrueger;963042In Deadlands there's a chance everyone who dies comes back as a demon-possessed corpse.  Abe Lincoln came back too, and most of the time can control the spirit, but he kept it secret.

Close. The public thinks Lincoln is dead and buried, but when he came back Harrowed he was snatched up by the Pinkertons/Agency. Then he was supposed to be killed for good by Stone until Pinnacle got cold feet from reader backlash about the deaths of Lincoln and a bunch of other iconic figures.

Quote from: Headless;962687I can't see how anyone could answer this with out claiming someone (actually many people since it must be a popular game) are haveing bad/wrong fun.

That's the point. Its chum.

Quote from: Brand55;963047Close. The public thinks Lincoln is dead and buried, but when he came back Harrowed he was snatched up by the Pinkertons/Agency. Then he was supposed to be killed for good by Stone until Pinnacle got cold feet from reader backlash about the deaths of Lincoln and a bunch of other iconic figures.

I figured Dumarest would prefer a short version.

Quote from: Dumarest;963040I can't tell if you're pulling my leg or the setting is really that stupid.

normally, I'd say both, because it is funnier that way, but yeah, JD was replaced by a demon who serves the Horseman War, and is keeping the civil war going. or at least he was, one of the last published adventures has JD being assassinated, but the people who took over (and weren't demons this time) decided to keep the south separate from the north.

Quote from: CRKrueger;963060I figured Dumarest would prefer a short version.

Oh, no doubt. Sadly, while the setting of Deadlands is fun the metaplot takes a lot of twists and turns and it's way too complicated for its own good. I think most people ignore the biggest chunk of it in favor of just playing Cowboys vs Zombies, or whichever other part of the Weird West they prefer.

Quote from: Brand55;963071Oh, no doubt. Sadly, while the setting of Deadlands is fun the metaplot takes a lot of twists and turns and it's way too complicated for its own good. I think most people ignore the biggest chunk of it in favor of just playing Cowboys vs Zombies, or whichever other part of the Weird West they prefer.

The crazy, convoluted metaplot is part of the fun.  Looking at it over all three gamelines I've come to appreciate the method to the madness.  It's gonzo that doesn't wear a clown suit screaming GONZO!!1!!, so a lot of people get thrown by the tone.  It's definitely not for everyone, but the slavery complaint always makes me laugh, it's like someone calling the Three Stooges "sizist" because Moe beats up on Curly or an egyptologist complaining that the funeral wrapping are incorrect in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.  The weirdest part is, the game does have a rationale that makes sense, considering the setting we're talking about, but it's kind of spread across different books, but there's no way to have a sane conversation about it over the internet.

For RPGing a bad setting is one where the PCs know way more about the setting than the players or the players know way more about the setting than the characters.

It can be really annoying grappling with a world when you have to constantly ask the GM what your PC knows about basic stuff or to pretend that you don't know a lot of stuff that you really do know.

Of course this varies from group to group but it's why a lot of popular media settings (players know too much) or sci-fi settings (players don't know basic day to day stuff that their PCs know) are often a struggle. This is also why the standard "you're a bunch of hicks from a small vanilla fantasy village and there's a big fucked up wilderness outside of that" works well since players know standard fantasy village stuff and neither of them know about what's in the big fucked up wilderness (unless it's really cliched in which case the players know and the PCs don't which is a problem).

Quote from: Herne's Son;963022I know most of the fans say that the 90s was the "Golden Age" for Glorantha, but I think the setting pretty much peaked in the 80s. Back then, it was a really awesome sword & sorcery setting, with some unique ideas about cults and monsters and things. But since the early 90s, it's been all navel gazing and anthro-wankery. Now it takes itself way too seriously, and current attitudes about the setting have basically ruined it for me.

Correct. The RQ2 boxed sets were a lofty peak of table top rpg, generally. Then it turned into a shitty fan-fic thesis in speculative anthropology. Luckily all the good stuff still exists, so you can just buy and play it.

GURPS, yuck. Just, no. It is soulless. Useful sourcebooks to mine for other games though.

D&D 3+ and d20. Way overcomplicated for little ROI.

WoD. 2nd edition (the first round of hard covers) was best. Back when they didn't try to make all the games consistent with each other. Vampires as presented in Vampire were not exactly the same as Vampires presented in Werewolf and vice versa. Then it all devolved into hopeless levels of pretension, and D&D with fangs.

Quote from: CRKrueger;963076The crazy, convoluted metaplot is part of the fun.  Looking at it over all three gamelines I've come to appreciate the method to the madness.  It's gonzo that doesn't wear a clown suit screaming GONZO!!1!!, so a lot of people get thrown by the tone.  It's definitely not for everyone, but the slavery complaint always makes me laugh, it's like someone calling the Three Stooges "sizist" because Moe beats up on Curly or an egyptologist complaining that the funeral wrapping are incorrect in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.  The weirdest part is, the game does have a rationale that makes sense, considering the setting we're talking about, but it's kind of spread across different books, but there's no way to have a sane conversation about it over the internet.

Deadlands was definitely guilty of the '90s trend of going overboard on metaplot, but it saved by the fact that all the big setting secrets are right in the core book. The GM knows who the Reckoners are, what they are up to, how they make themselves more powerful, and concrete steps PCs can take to weaken them. The game line does hold back mysteries at times to get you to buy the next book, but it didn't do it with the BIG secrets.

That saves it from being one of those '90s games that never got around to releasing the information a GM needed to actually understand the setting or being one that built up a stupid reveal that annoyed all the fans.

Quote from: CRKrueger;963076The crazy, convoluted metaplot is part of the fun.  Looking at it over all three gamelines I've come to appreciate the method to the madness.  It's gonzo that doesn't wear a clown suit screaming GONZO!!1!!, so a lot of people get thrown by the tone.  It's definitely not for everyone, but the slavery complaint always makes me laugh, it's like someone calling the Three Stooges "sizist" because Moe beats up on Curly or an egyptologist complaining that the funeral wrapping are incorrect in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.  The weirdest part is, the game does have a rationale that makes sense, considering the setting we're talking about, but it's kind of spread across different books, but there's no way to have a sane conversation about it over the internet.

The problem is that, in the real world, the rhetoric of white supremacists includes the fake-history claim that the Civil War wasn't about slavery and it was just purely coincidental that all the Confederate States were slave-owning, that slave ownership was explicitly protected as constitutional right in the Confederate constitution, and that slavery was mentioned as a primary cause in most of the declarations of secession. So when you have a game setting that seems to say, "Actually, the Confederacy could have trivially given up slavery, but the Civil War would still have happened." the echo of that rhetoric is really hard to ignore.

It's like creating a game where demonic forces were threatening the planet in the 1930s and the only way to stop the destruction of the planet was by sending those carrying the mystically empowered bloodlines dating back to the founders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel to the abandoned cities of the Martian invaders from War of the Worlds using dimensional portals that were later disguised as gas chambers in order to prevent a mass panic. It's not that there's nothing interesting that could arise from such an alt-history setting; it's that your alt-history of a fake Holocaust has some rather troubling associations with racist rhetoric in the real world.

It just doesn't matter how much it "makes sense" in the context of the setting or how cool it is to have General Anne Frank lead the mecha legions based on tripod-technology through the Portals of Hell during the Invasion of Gehenna.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;963111The problem is that, in the real world, the rhetoric of white supremacists includes the fake-history claim that the Civil War wasn't about slavery and it was just purely coincidental that all the Confederate States were slave-owning, that slave ownership was explicitly protected as constitutional right in the Confederate constitution, and that slavery was mentioned as a primary cause in most of the declarations of secession. So when you have a game setting that seems to say, "Actually, the Confederacy could have trivially given up slavery, but the Civil War would still have happened." the echo of that rhetoric is really hard to ignore.

This is incorrect on a few points.  It WAS about Slavery, but it wasn't about the PEOPLE.  It was about the ECONOMICS.  See, you can't tax slaves, but you can free people. So slave owning was a losing proposition for the government, and the North knew it.  It also didn't help that the Plantation model of farming was destructive to the land in general.  So as rose coloured glasses you want to make up the whole abolishing of slavery, it has very little to do with the people being enslaved, but more about the money generated by it.

Like most things in life.

Now as for the Civil War still happening, actually probably.  Because the South was very resentful of the North, which they saw as soft and unworthy to own the land they got.  In some parts, they still believe this.  They'd likely would have found another excuse.  But there's no way of really knowing.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;963111It's like creating a game where demonic forces were threatening the planet in the 1930s and the only way to stop the destruction of the planet was by sending those carrying the mystically empowered bloodlines dating back to the founders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel to the abandoned cities of the Martian invaders from War of the Worlds using dimensional portals that were later disguised as gas chambers in order to prevent a mass panic. It's not that there's nothing interesting that could arise from such an alt-history setting; it's that your alt-history of a fake Holocaust has some rather troubling associations with racist rhetoric in the real world.

I'd play that.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;963111It just doesn't matter how much it "makes sense" in the context of the setting or how cool it is to have General Anne Frank lead the mecha legions based on tripod-technology through the Portals of Hell during the Invasion of Gehenna.

Does it matter if it's fun?

Keep it on point. If you want to debate the wisdom of Deadlands taking up the topic, fine. But no more derails into the root causes of the Civil War. If you want to discuss that topic take it somewhere else.

Apologies.  I've said my piece on which game/setting I think is overhyped.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;963114This is incorrect on a few points.  It WAS about Slavery, but it wasn't about the PEOPLE.  It was about the ECONOMICS.  See, you can't tax slaves, but you can free people. So slave owning was a losing proposition for the government, and the North knew it.  It also didn't help that the Plantation model of farming was destructive to the land in general.  So as rose coloured glasses you want to make up the whole abolishing of slavery, it has very little to do with the people being enslaved, but more about the money generated by it.

Like most things in life.

Similarly, the 3/5ths compromise is often touted as an example of southern racism, when it's not.  It's the *north* that didn't want slaves to be counted as people, because that would give the south more representation at the federal level.  The south wanted slaves counted as people, but, again, not for any altruistic or principled reasons.

Quote from: robiswrong;963119Similarly, the 3/5ths compromise is often touted as an example of southern racism, when it's not.  It's the *north* that didn't want slaves to be counted as people, because that would give the south more representation at the federal level.  The south wanted slaves counted as people, but, again, not for any altruistic or principled reasons.

No more derails into this topic guys. Keep it on RPGs. Like I said, if you want to argue about whether Deadlands should have tackled the subject, that is fine. But this is taking the thread well outside the realm of RPGs.

Apologies.  I've deleted my post.... feel free to delete your response and this.

Dragonlance: Its still really propular despite the best efforts of the original writers and later writers to ruin it utterly. But the setting itself is so bog standard boring.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;963111The problem is that, in the real world, the rhetoric of white supremacists includes the fake-history claim that the Civil War wasn't about slavery and it was just purely coincidental that all the Confederate States were slave-owning, that slave ownership was explicitly protected as constitutional right in the Confederate constitution, and that slavery was mentioned as a primary cause in most of the declarations of secession. So when you have a game setting that seems to say, "Actually, the Confederacy could have trivially given up slavery, but the Civil War would still have happened." the echo of that rhetoric is really hard to ignore.

It's like creating a game where demonic forces were threatening the planet in the 1930s and the only way to stop the destruction of the planet was by sending those carrying the mystically empowered bloodlines dating back to the founders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel to the abandoned cities of the Martian invaders from War of the Worlds using dimensional portals that were later disguised as gas chambers in order to prevent a mass panic. It's not that there's nothing interesting that could arise from such an alt-history setting; it's that your alt-history of a fake Holocaust has some rather troubling associations with racist rhetoric in the real world.

It just doesn't matter how much it "makes sense" in the context of the setting or how cool it is to have General Anne Frank lead the mecha legions based on tripod-technology through the Portals of Hell during the Invasion of Gehenna.

It is a difficult line to negotiate. Many things could make cool and interesting setting particularly alt-history that might touch in sensitive subjects and, I hate to use the word, problematic topics. I'm not an advocate of "PC" to the excessive level its been taken too in recent times but there is a point of being insensitive to real world issues. Its is something to consider especially when weaving real world issues into fiction.

Its also a subjective line. Where is lies is going to vary from person to person for a number of reason. So I also think there is some, not to say burden, but responsibility perhaps to think a little before taking offense and not assuming the creator(s) are automatically assholes or their work should be censored in some fashion. Otherwise they're can be a significant chilling effect that road blocks potentially interesting, entertaining idea right out of the gate or even before they're seen. Two examples that come to mind are The Thunderplains in The Strange (published but more or less disavowed) and Switch's original concept in The Matrix.

Edit: Whoops, I missed the mod call. If this post is too off topic, delete it or I will.

For mechanics, Shadowrun -- and it only got worse over time in subsequent hands. As for its setting, there is an initial charm there that it could never really deliver later in its setting development or metaplot. (Granted most metaplot is not all that great, but my threshold wasn't that high. I just wanted some 'great moments in the future to dick around in!', but sorta got mostly 'meh!' instead.)

Quote from: Opaopajr;963148For mechanics, Shadowrun -- and it only got worse over time in subsequent hands. As for its setting, there is an initial charm there that it could never really deliver later in its setting development or metaplot. (Granted most metaplot is not all that great, but my threshold wasn't that high. I just wanted some 'great moments in the future to dick around in!', but sorta got mostly 'meh!' instead.)

I definitely have to agree with this. I was really hopeful that the newest edition would finally deliver a clean system that worked well, but I got so disgusted by the absurd lengths the devs were going to just so hackers could fuck over everyone (but especially street sams) that I haven't looked back. Thank heavens for better options like Interface Zero.

Quote from: Omega;963137Dragonlance: Its still really popular despite the best efforts of the original writers and later writers to ruin it utterly. But the setting itself is so bog standard boring.

Are you sure it's still popular? I'm not sure you can even find any of the RPG books in print, pdf's notwithstanding.


Agreed, however, it's an incredibly boring setting. You either (a) run the the original campaign of the dragon-lance war or (b) do something else that doesn't mean as much, because hey, The big war already happened, or WILL happen. Geh.

Its still got enough of a following that WOTC was seriously considering dropping Forgotten Realms and rebooting Dragonlance for 5e. Then things fell through. Which might have been for the best. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Brand55;963157I definitely have to agree with this. I was really hopeful that the newest edition would finally deliver a clean system that worked well, but I got so disgusted by the absurd lengths the devs were going to just so hackers could fuck over everyone (but especially street sams) that I haven't looked back. Thank heavens for better options like Interface Zero.

Their editing is inexcusable. Lazy reprints, choppy splicing, poor indexing... An utter travesty hard bound and glossed for posterity on how to not handle an IP.

Quote from: Iron_Rain;963327Are you sure it's still popular? I'm not sure you can even find any of the RPG books in print, pdf's notwithstanding.


Agreed, however, it's an incredibly boring setting. You either (a) run the the original campaign of the dragon-lance war or (b) do something else that doesn't mean as much, because hey, The big war already happened, or WILL happen. Geh.

  The setting is running on the reputation and nostalgia of the original six novels. There have been no less than four attempts at revival (Taladas in 1989, Tales of the Lance in 1992, the Fifth Age in 1996, Dragonlance 3E in 2003), and all but the last have petered out--and the last probably only held out because the goals for a mid-tier company like Margaret Weis Production are considerably less demanding than those of the market leader.

Quote from: Iron_Rain;963327Are you sure it's still popular? I'm not sure you can even find any of the RPG books in print, pdf's notwithstanding.


Agreed, however, it's an incredibly boring setting. You either (a) run the the original campaign of the dragon-lance war or (b) do something else that doesn't mean as much, because hey, The big war already happened, or WILL happen. Geh.

One thing I liked about the Savage Worlds Plot Point Campaigns was that they mostly involved settings that were meant purely for that campaign. 50 Fathoms is a sandbox with an quest to save the world inside it. When you save the world, you are done. They did one companion book that added a little more detail to the main campaign and that is it.

That's how I feel Dragonlance should have been. You play the War of the Lance, then find some other world to play in.

Quote from: Iron_Rain;963327Agreed, however, it's an incredibly boring setting. You either (a) run the the original campaign of the dragon-lance war or (b) do something else that doesn't mean as much, because hey, The big war already happened, or WILL happen. Geh.

If you substitute Middle-earth for Krynn and "ring" for "lance," this is why I have no interest in playing in Tolkien's world.

Quote from: Dumarest;963370If you substitute Middle-earth for Krynn and "ring" for "lance," this is why I have no interest in playing in Tolkien's world.

Tolkien only got about one chapter into the sequel before realizing it was a bad idea. That says a lot.

I'll throw in another for Deadlands. What a silly mess.

Quote from: Iron_Rain;963327Are you sure it's still popular? I'm not sure you can even find any of the RPG books in print, pdf's notwithstanding.


Agreed, however, it's an incredibly boring setting. You either (a) run the the original campaign of the dragon-lance war or (b) do something else that doesn't mean as much, because hey, The big war already happened, or WILL happen. Geh.

Actually the Taladas setting is excellent and I played a few games in the pre-Catastrophe time period where the preist king embarkes on a religious inspired genocide of certain races and it was a lot of fun.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963368One thing I liked about the Savage Worlds Plot Point Campaigns was that they mostly involved settings that were meant purely for that campaign. 50 Fathoms is a sandbox with an quest to save the world inside it. When you save the world, you are done. They did one companion book that added a little more detail to the main campaign and that is it.

That's how I feel Dragonlance should have been. You play the War of the Lance, then find some other world to play in.

That's what we did, except it went, play the War of the Lance without the book characters, head to Taladas, then end up on another world. :D

Quote from: Baulderstone;963374Tolkien only got about one chapter into the sequel before realizing it was a bad idea. That says a lot.

Yeah, that after Morgoth and Sauron, Sauron's Offspring doesn't have the same punch in a new novel...and that's really all it says.  

The Fourth Age is wide open. Set it in FA...around 124 I think...all the Fellowship are dead or West, all the named Noldor are gone except maybe Glorfindel and Maglor the minstrel.  All that's left to do is :

• Retake Moria, the greatest dungeon in history.
• Cleanse what's left in the lands of Mordor.
• Cleanse and retake Angband.
• Rebuild the rest of the Reunited Kingdom.
• Head to Umbar the southernmost city of the Reunited Kingdom...then start walking south or east...for a couple of decades.
• Quest to find the underwater ruins and treasures of Beleriand, or Numenor.
• Sail West until you find Aman, or the other side of the world.
• Find the lost Palantir.
• Now that the over-arching threat of Big Bad Evil is gone, have fun dealing with petty human evil as the Dunlendings/Rohirrim/Easterlings/Southrons/Gondorians each play their own versions of Game of Thrones amongst themselves and against each other.
• Eldarion just offered title and lands in the Trollshaws, all you have to do is claim it and keep it.

Even if you think the First, Second and Third Age are ruined for gaming by the novels and canon, it's really hard to see the Fourth Age as anything other than one of the greatest settings ever for PC adventure.

Quote from: CRKrueger;963076but there's no way to have a sane conversation about it over the internet.

Alexander proves my point.  Justin's self-satisfying polemic is irrelevant, because it doesn't matter why the war started or how it began...because all of that is the same as Real Earth.  Deadlands does not change the Civil War's casus belli one bit.  The Deadlands timeline diverges July 1st 1863*, the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, when dead soldiers begin to rise and both sides temporarily cease fire, which prevents the victory of the North and allows the South to continue.

Why did they free the slaves?

• The same reason Cleburne in Real History wanted the South to: soldiers and labor.
• The same reason other southerners in Real History wanted: to remove the only obstacle England and France had to supporting the South.
• The Reckoners wanted to keep the South a nation and keep America broken into multiple nations.

Why do the Reckoners want America fragmented?  
Imagine WWI and WWII fought with mad science and no Real World USA involvement...the most horrific thing imaginable?  Yeah they thought so too.

You want to crucify Shane for not detailing this all in the main book instead of waiting until the supplement Back East: The South and others to lay it all out, go ahead.

You want to argue the history as it applies to the Real World, go ask Ken Hite, he wrote Back East: The South along with Stephen Long.

The point is, the setting does have reasons, and they have absolutely nothing to do with the classic Real World Civil War apologist arguments you hear about the topic of why the Civil War started.

Ok Brendan, I kept it to Deadlands, but enough Deadlands because...

Quote from: CRKrueger;963076there's no way to have a sane conversation about it over the internet.

...and...

Quote from: 3rik;963385Deadlands. What a silly mess.

*actually it changes a little earlier with some Reckoner-controlled mayhem in the Spirit World that allows the dead to rise, but's that's got nothing to with the decisions of anyone in the physical world.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963374Tolkien only got about one chapter into the sequel before realizing it was a bad idea. That says a lot.

T.H. White managed to write one of the greatest fantasy novels ever about the passing of an era of magic and heroism into history. If I recall right that is what Tolkein suggests happens to Middle Earth.

The worse RPG ever in my opinion Dungeons and Dragons*.

People try to use it for everything including shoehorning campaigns that have no business being level based or mini combat centric (for some editions). Not every game needs the same rules and a 1-20 class based system has limits.

The fact that it's so prevalent everywhere in gaming has kept some great games from getting the much deserved attention that could have springboarded some great innovations.

*not that it's badwrongfun, I've played it for decades. Just to dominant.

Quote from: HorusArisen;963447has kept some great games from getting the much deserved attention that could have springboarded some great innovations.

Like...?

Just curious.

Quote from: CRKrueger;963457Like...?

Just curious.

Do you know what my minds gone blank.

Mythras is obviously my sweetheart of choice at the moment. I'll post back on some others when I wake up properly.

I think what I'm really bemoaning is D&Ds market dominance keeping games like Runequest, Dragon Warriors etc being more visible and competitive prior to the interweb evening the playing field. The vast majority of games being played are D20 derived.

Nope I'm too fuzzy headed hopefully my point is coming across.

Setting-wise, Forgotten Realms.

System-wise, Shadowrun.

Quote from: HorusArisen;963461I think what I'm really bemoaning is D&Ds market dominance keeping games like Runequest, Dragon Warriors etc being more visible and competitive prior to the interweb evening the playing field. The vast majority of games being played are D20 derived.

Nope I'm too fuzzy headed hopefully my point is coming across.

I don't know if you can blame D&D for RuneQuest's problems. During the 2nd Edition era, it was doing just fine in the US, and was arguably doing better than D&D in the UK. It was the disastrous publishing deal with Avalon Hill that wounded RuneQuest. They printed it with the flimsy quality of a board game instruction booklet and charged insane prices for it. They also had their regular and deluxe version, which meant every supplement needed a section explaining the deluxe version in case a person with the regular version bought it.

In the UK, the Avalon Hill deal revoked Games Workshop's license to print the game. Fans there now needed to pay four times the price for the game and its supplements. Games Workshop was given the license again a few years later, but most fans had already moved on. Games Workshop had already developed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to fill the void left by RuneQuest, so while it no longer got the push from the company it once did.

Given all of this, it seems a little unfair to lay RuneQuest's decline on D&D.

Generic fantasy. Not going to mention a setting, but if it's stock, vanilla Tolkienesque fantasy consider my enthusiasm lukewarm. At least give it a little spin, please.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963471I don't know if you can blame D&D for RuneQuest's problems. During the 2nd Edition era, it was doing just fine in the US, and was arguably doing better than D&D in the UK. It was the disastrous publishing deal with Avalon Hill that wounded RuneQuest. They printed it with the flimsy quality of a board game instruction booklet and charged insane prices for it. They also had their regular and deluxe version, which meant every supplement needed a section explaining the deluxe version in case a person with the regular version bought it.

In the UK, the Avalon Hill deal revoked Games Workshop's license to print the game. Fans there now needed to pay four times the price for the game and its supplements. Games Workshop was given the license again a few years later, but most fans had already moved on. Games Workshop had already developed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to fill the void left by RuneQuest, so while it no longer got the push from the company it once did.

Given all of this, it seems a little unfair to lay RuneQuest's decline on D&D.

Nor was I. My point, I think is that better marketing and promotion hasn't necessarily led to the better product dominating the market. Either originally or now.

The only difference now is that you can rely on word of mouth to carry your product forward so finally we live in an age where other games can exist even if it's in the giants shadow.

Quote from: HorusArisen;963477Nor was I. My point, I think is that better marketing and promotion hasn't necessarily led to the better product dominating the market. Either originally or now.

The only difference now is that you can rely on word of mouth to carry your product forward so finally we live in an age where other games can exist even if it's in the giants shadow.

I stopped playing D&D in 1985, and I didn't play again until 2001. I played an enormous range of games in that time. The idea that other games couldn't exist is news to me.

Quote from: Voros;963443T.H. White managed to write one of the greatest fantasy novels ever about the passing of an era of magic and heroism into history. If I recall right that is what Tolkein suggests happens to Middle Earth.

My goodness, I have to disagree if you are referring to The Once and Future King; that was one of the most annoying books I've ever tried to slog through.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963479I stopped playing D&D in 1985, and I didn't play again until 2001. I played an enormous range of games in that time. The idea that other games couldn't exist is news to me.

Which still isn't my point. They may still exist but I can't help but wonder if we would have had greater variety and quality if a better game(s) had been the market leader. Like yourself I played many games but not many gamers did. I do think that has changed mind you.

Quote from: HorusArisen;963484Which still isn't my point. They may still exist but I can't help but wonder if we would have had greater variety and quality if a better game(s) had been the market leader. Like yourself I played many games but not many gamers did. I do think that has changed mind you.

That's like speculating about what it would have been like if a better show than Star Trek dominated sci-fi TV. Star Trek created the genre as we know it. Star Trek didn't overshadow Farscape and Babylon 5; it created an environment where the latter shows came to exist in the first place. When Star Trek is hot, everyone does well. When Star Trek is cold, everyone hurts. It's not that Roddenberry created the best show in its genre, it's that he created the genre, his show is its icon, and everyone and everything else lives downstream of it.

D&D is like that.

The internet allowed us to see what was cool about other old games besides D&D and build on it. So while Horus point is valid, it's not that relevant anymore.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963479I stopped playing D&D in 1985, and I didn't play again until 2001. I played an enormous range of games in that time. The idea that other games couldn't exist is news to me.

It's hyperbole, man. Arguing with hyperbole because it exaggerates is like arguing that the sun is wrong to be radiant:).

Quote from: Itachi;963497The internet allowed us to see what was cool about other old games besides D&D and build on it. So while Horus point is valid, it's not that relevant anymore.

True, that;).

Now that I'm finally awake I think I agree my point isn't really relevant these days and the Star Trek analogy is probably fair.

Quote from: HorusArisen;963484Which still isn't my point. They may still exist but I can't help but wonder if we would have had greater variety and quality if a better game(s) had been the market leader. Like yourself I played many games but not many gamers did. I do think that has changed mind you.

I think dissatisfaction with D&D was the thing drove the creation of a lot of RPGs, going back to Tunnels and Trolls and RuneQuest. Early D&D works, but it is a system where almost everyone finds a hole in it. "How come armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing damage?" "If hit points are a combination of endurance, luck, combat skill, and physical injury, why does it take days to get your hit points back?" "What if my fighter wants to sneak around?" "How can we use this to play Star Wars?"

These are the questions that drove people to make hundreds of role-playing games. I'd argue that if D&D has been closer to perfect, we would have seen fewer RPGs, not more.

For example, let's looks at the early days of D&D 3E. It seemed to solve many of the issues people had with the game over the years. It played well at low-levels, so the cracks weren't showing yet. People all flocked to the game, and other game lines underwent an extinction-level event. Fortunately, as the flaws in d20 became more apparent, there was a game in new and resurrected games a few years later. People were dissatisfied with the biggest game, so they had to make other ones. Even within D&D, we got the OSR scene where everyone was busy making their own versions of D&D.

Dissatisfaction breeds creativity. Whether D&D remains on top or not, I hope a lot of people remain dissatisfied with the game on top and keep tinkering.

Quote from: AsenRG;963499It's hyperbole, man. Arguing with hyperbole because it exaggerates is like arguing that the sun is wrong to be radiant:).

Oh, so now you are saying that you think skin cancer is cool? Whatever, man. ;)

Quote from: Baulderstone;963503I think dissatisfaction with D&D was the thing drove the creation of a lot of RPGs, going back to Tunnels and Trolls and RuneQuest. Early D&D works, but it is a system where almost everyone finds a hole in it. "How come armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing damage?" "If hit points are a combination of endurance, luck, combat skill, and physical injury, why does it take days to get your hit points back?" "What if my fighter wants to sneak around?" "How can we use this to play Star Wars?"

These are the questions that drove people to make hundreds of role-playing games. I'd argue that if D&D has been closer to perfect, we would have seen fewer RPGs, not more.

For example, let's looks at the early days of D&D 3E. It seemed to solve many of the issues people had with the game over the years. It played well at low-levels, so the cracks weren't showing yet. People all flocked to the game, and other game lines underwent an extinction-level event. Fortunately, as the flaws in d20 became more apparent, there was a game in new and resurrected games a few years later. People were dissatisfied with the biggest game, so they had to make other ones. Even within D&D, we got the OSR scene where everyone was busy making their own versions of D&D.

Dissatisfaction breeds creativity. Whether D&D remains on top or not, I hope a lot of people remain dissatisfied with the game on top and keep tinkering.

What you say is what I think. I've never been satisfied by D&D and games derived therefrom. I'll play it when there's nothing else on offer, but it wouldn't rank even in my top 50 in quality or interest. However, without it coming along I probably would not have Traveller, The Fantasy Trip, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, Flashing Blades, Boot Hill, and all the rest of the games I prefer.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963504Oh, so now you are saying that you think skin cancer is cool? Whatever, man. ;)

No, I'm saying the exact opposite and if that was an attempt at hyperbole, it was a poor one.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963503I think dissatisfaction with D&D was the thing drove the creation of a lot of RPGs, going back to Tunnels and Trolls and RuneQuest. Early D&D works, but it is a system where almost everyone finds a hole in it. "How come armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing damage?" "If hit points are a combination of endurance, luck, combat skill, and physical injury, why does it take days to get your hit points back?" "What if my fighter wants to sneak around?" "How can we use this to play Star Wars?"

These are the questions that drove people to make hundreds of role-playing games. I'd argue that if D&D has been closer to perfect, we would have seen fewer RPGs, not more.

For example, let's looks at the early days of D&D 3E. It seemed to solve many of the issues people had with the game over the years. It played well at low-levels, so the cracks weren't showing yet. People all flocked to the game, and other game lines underwent an extinction-level event. Fortunately, as the flaws in d20 became more apparent, there was a game in new and resurrected games a few years later. People were dissatisfied with the biggest game, so they had to make other ones. Even within D&D, we got the OSR scene where everyone was busy making their own versions of D&D.

Dissatisfaction breeds creativity. Whether D&D remains on top or not, I hope a lot of people remain dissatisfied with the game on top and keep tinkering.

You argue a very good point.

Quote from: JeremyR;962703Traveller's Imperium.  Space travel is about exploration. So let's make a galaxy where every single system within reach (because of our slow star travel) is statted up . . .

Oh, you're one of those idiots, huh?

QuoteA dot on a Traveller map is assumed to represent a planet in the habitable zone. It may have a satellite; it may be a satellite itself, perhaps one of many, or maybe an asteroid, again one of many. But let's say it's a planet, just for the sake of discussion, with one sizeable natural satellite of its own. It's in a system with three other terrestrial planets, one of which has small two satellites as well, two planetoid belts, and three gas giants. Each of the gas giants has several significant satellites and dozens of tiny moons, as well as significant ring systems around two of them. The system is one half of a binary pair, and the companion is also home to a half-dozen rocky and icy planets of its own, as well as another planetoid belt. The whole is surrounded by an Oort cloud which includes a small wandering planet in a highly eliptical inclined orbit, captured from interstellar space.

The next hex is "empty" according to the map, but it in fact is home to a brown dwarf and its six satellites.

A single binary star system with a fourteen planets, scores of satellites, and an uncounted number of small rocky and icy asteroids and KBOs. Plus a brown dwarf and another half-dozen satellites. In just two hexes.

How much is known about them? The First and Second Surveys were Class IV surveys - the Scouts spent an average of seven months surveying the habitable zone around each star.

A Class V survey, the most detailed, takes an average of seven years. They are only undertaken by special request to the IISS.

There are an estimated 11,000 worlds in the Golden Age Third Imperium.

But for the sake of argument, let's say that a Class V survey was undertaken for our hypothetical system. That covers the main planets and perhaps their satellites, but not the belts or the Oort cloud. Does the Class V survey discover every Ancient ruin, every exotic organism, every sentient species, every wrecked starship, every pirate lair, every secret lab, every military cache, every alien probe? According to the survey descriptions, the surveyors do not contact sentient species - that's the Exploration Office's job, not the Imperial Grand Survey's. The surveyors take samples of alien biota, but do not catalog every species in every habitat. And they do not map every asteroid, every KBO.

And things change. Indigenous sophonts die off. Colonists arrive, and depart. Battles are fought. Natural disasters occur. Things change.

And maybe what is "known" is really a myth. Or at least that's the rumor.

Everything's been explored extensively? Really?

The idea that the Third Imperium setting in its Golden Age is too settled, that there's nothing left to explore, suggests to me that too many referees have never really considered the scale of what a star system is really like.

I've never lacked for places to explore, for things to discover. I hope new referees don't find their imagination constrained by the myth of the "too settled" Imperium.

Quote from: Dumarest;963482My goodness, I have to disagree if you are referring to The Once and Future King; that was one of the most annoying books I've ever tried to slog through.

No accounting for taste. I think it is brilliant and it is widely viewed as a classic.

Quote from: JeremyR;962703Traveller's Imperium.  Space travel is about exploration.

Is it, though?  That's one approach you can take in a space-oriented science-fiction game.  However, most of the Traveller campaigns I've run have been for parties of merchants, troubleshooters, or some combination of the two, with sessions structured more or less like heist movies with planning and execution phases.  (A tone and feel a lot like Firefly, except years before it ever existed.)

Quote from: Baulderstone;963503I think dissatisfaction with D&D was the thing drove the creation of a lot of RPGs, going back to Tunnels and Trolls and RuneQuest. Early D&D works, but it is a system where almost everyone finds a hole in it. "How come armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing damage?" "If hit points are a combination of endurance, luck, combat skill, and physical injury, why does it take days to get your hit points back?" "What if my fighter wants to sneak around?" "How can we use this to play Star Wars?"

These are the questions that drove people to make hundreds of role-playing games. I'd argue that if D&D has been closer to perfect, we would have seen fewer RPGs, not more.

For example, let's looks at the early days of D&D 3E. It seemed to solve many of the issues people had with the game over the years. It played well at low-levels, so the cracks weren't showing yet. People all flocked to the game, and other game lines underwent an extinction-level event. Fortunately, as the flaws in d20 became more apparent, there was a game in new and resurrected games a few years later. People were dissatisfied with the biggest game, so they had to make other ones. Even within D&D, we got the OSR scene where everyone was busy making their own versions of D&D.

Dissatisfaction breeds creativity. Whether D&D remains on top or not, I hope a lot of people remain dissatisfied with the game on top and keep tinkering.

Huh, that's a good point.

Quote from: HorusArisen;963484Which still isn't my point. They may still exist but I can't help but wonder if we would have had greater variety and quality if a better game(s) had been the market leader. Like yourself I played many games but not many gamers did. I do think that has changed mind you.

I think it likely that better games dominant in the market early on would have led to even less diversity and quality than we have today.  Many good games have come about as responses to what the designers viewed as bad games. I'll grant many bad games have come about for the same reason.

Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963569Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

I figured that by now everyone was tired of hearing it from me. :D

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963569Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

I liked the hot mess that was first edition, but 2nd edition was an unlimited font of wank and I was amazed at how popular it became. Still on the fence about third as there's a lot to like fluff-wise but the system...it burns...

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963569Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

It's popular?  I thought it was just a flash in the pan, in the long view.  And I'm being honest here.  It has none of the life expectancy of Vampire.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;963604It's popular?  I thought it was just a flash in the pan, in the long view.  And I'm being honest here.  It has none of the life expectancy of Vampire.

It's been around over a decade, and the first two editions were extremely successful with dozens of books seeing print. Third edition will likely be around for another 5+ years unless OPP does something to lose the license, and despite my issues with the third edition it's still a top seller on DTRPG. After that there's no telling what might happen. In the grand scheme of things Exalted is a much bigger hit than all but the really big names in the RPG industry.

Quote from: Nexus;963571I figured that by now everyone was tired of hearing it from me. :D

Never! Rolling in the hot mess that is Exalted is a tradition! :D

Quote from: Christopher Brady;963604It's popular?  I thought it was just a flash in the pan, in the long view.  And I'm being honest here.  It has none of the life expectancy of Vampire.

While its popularity has declined somewhat, Exalted still have an almost fanatically zealous core fandom that appears to be significant particularly in today's rpg market. 3rd has at least 5 yrs of core supplements, probably longer to release and should get to them baring something unusual happening at sales are almost guaranteed as its spawned imitators and adaptations who's players will likely pay the books for setting material even if they dislike the rules. As rpgs go its still up there and barring some major fan alienating fuck up (which is difficult to imagine what it might be) will probably stay that for awhile, my personal opinions aside.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963611Never! Rolling in the hot mess that is Exalted is a tradition! :D

Ha!

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963569Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

I would have mentioned Exalted, if I was dissatisfied with it, but so far, it's delivering;).

And it was, even if briefly, in the top 10 or top 5 of most popular games. Count on Cupcake to not notice such details:D!

The one session of Exalted I played, ok the system sucked, but the setting seemed ok? What went wrong with it?

Quote from: S'mon;963669The one session of Exalted I played, ok the system sucked, but the setting seemed ok? What went wrong with it?

Nothing, it's mostly the same setting, even if the art sucks lately. The system also works, with the crafting being a notable exception.
You're witnessing Internet butthurt syndrome, that's all.

Quote from: AsenRG;963679Nothing, it's mostly the same setting, even if the art sucks lately. The system also works, with the crafting being a notable exception.
You're witnessing Internet butthurt syndrome, that's all.

Everyone has his own ideas, of course, but characterizing the refusal to invest the time needed to master 700 exception-based Charms as "internet butthurt syndrome" sounds a tad biased.

Exalted is a system which can only work for someone who has lots and lots of free time and mental space to invest in it.

Quote from: Luca;963680Everyone has his own ideas, of course, but characterizing the refusal to invest the time needed to master 700 exception-based Charms as "internet butthurt syndrome" sounds a tad biased.

Exalted is a system which can only work for someone who has lots and lots of free time and mental space to invest in it.

Yeah being put off by the ideas of slogging through 700+ (and growing) fiddly little charms (that mostly boil down to less an 1 success added) that interact in minute ways with a complicated and in places ill described system that, in my and others opinion is vague, slow and tedious to handle isn't just "Butthurt". Particularly coming from a system that was hyped as "totally new" and 'streamlined' and came years late.

 Yes, the system 'works' in the sense that it will do what it meant to do (thought some cracks are showing already) but some don't find how it accomplishes that fun, engaging or worth the effort of slogging through to understand let alone master. Some (idiots I guess, like myself) thought the promises to stream line and rebuild the system to be faster and easier to use actually, I dunno, meant something other than adding an order of ton more crunch including different forms of experience points, a Crafting mini-game and even more resource management to combat.

But it seems to 'work'. Mostly. Just I and others don't think its terribly fun or anything like what we were hoping for from the hype. I mean 1st edition 'worked' if you just didn't pull too hard at (several) loose threads so functional isn't that high a bar. People have been bailing on Exalted due to the mechanics for its entire lifespan. Less so due to its setting but there's been quite a few driven off from that too. S'mon experience of "setting is okay, system sucks" is incredibly common.

Quote from: S'mon;963669The one session of Exalted I played, ok the system sucked, but the setting seemed ok? What went wrong with it?

(IMHO)

The system is now an over-complicated train-wreck  that while more functional than earlier version  yet only technically meets that low bar which like winning the "Tallest Little Person" award. It works but its still a tedious, slow pain in the ass that feels like its fighting you every step of the way where even many of its fans most common advice for dealing with system is to ignore swaths of it.

The setting has gone from interestingly gonzo high octane fantasy to overwrought, overly crowded stage for the writer's to posture on and trying to cram everything they think is "cool" in until its bursting at the seams, contradictory in area and with items that don't bear anything more than the most superficial examination. oWOD with a glitzy paint job and marginally bigger special effects budget.

But the social rules are nice.

Also, IMO, most of the art is fine (aside from the piece or two mucked up by hasty censorship for showing too much female skin or the audience they've chosen to pander too).

Dark Sun: It sounds interesting and looks potentially interesting on paper. But once you start looking at the setting and the situation it starts to feel a little, or a-lot off? It didnt seem to live up to its own hype and the setting felt kinda... bland? And then 2nd ed tossed some of the premise and added in an invasion and whatever and it actually felt more bland somehow.

Planescape is the other that evokes this feeling. Even moreso for me. Really should have been its own dimension or something rather than trying to glue it onto the outer planes.

Quote from: Omega;963692Dark Sun: It sounds interesting and looks potentially interesting on paper. But once you start looking at the setting and the situation it starts to feel a little, or a-lot off? It didnt seem to live up to its own hype and the setting felt kinda... bland? And then 2nd ed tossed some of the premise and added in an invasion and whatever and it actually felt more bland somehow.

Planescape is the other that evokes this feeling. Even moreso for me. Really should have been its own dimension or something rather than trying to glue it onto the outer planes.

I feel that way about most of the 2e AD&D settings for some reason. They never feel quite right. Contributed a lot to me dropping D&D and (pretty much) RPGs for much of the 1990s, coming back with the 3e D&D release in 2000.
I liked the late-Classic D&D Mystara stuff though. One of the last campaigns I ran BiTD was Dawn of the Emperors 1000-1045 AC using the Mystara box set.

Quote from: Omega;963692Planescape is the other that evokes this feeling. Even moreso for me. Really should have been its own dimension or something rather than trying to glue it onto the outer planes.

While a lot of the focus retrospectively gets put on Sigil, the majority of materials in the Planescape line dealt with the planes (inner and outer alike) more generally, either providing more detail than had been attempted before or providing monsters and adventure ideas that made planar adventuring more accessible across the full range of levels.  To a significant degree, the setting isn't something that's grafted onto the planes;  it is the planes.

Even to the extent that Sigil was sort of glued on, making it its own dimension wouldn't have made sense, since a big part of the appeal is that it contains portals to pretty much everywhere.  While it would be possible to run whole campaigns in Sigil (just like any other big fantasy city), it was intended as a home base for extraplanar campaigns.

Quote from: The Scythian;963539Is it, though?  That's one approach you can take in a space-oriented science-fiction game.  However, most of the Traveller campaigns I've run have been for parties of merchants, troubleshooters, or some combination of the two, with sessions structured more or less like heist movies with planning and execution phases.  (A tone and feel a lot like Firefly, except years before it ever existed.)

I have always liked the Third Imperium. This was like the sophisticated center of known space with all of the available tech and enhancements, and everyhting available for sale that you could possibly want, but that came with a repressive and overly bureaucratic highly centralized but slowly to respond government. The problem with the response, they often use a hammer where a suggestive whisper, or perhaps a touch of diplomacy,  would be just as effective.

That said, I always set my new Traveller campaigns on the fringes of the imperium, or some considerable distance into frontier space, where whoever is the strongest, is the law. There is room for both, the unrestrained freedom of the frontier, where anything goes, but where it can be prohibitively expensive to purchase a new jump drive, or the latest beam lasers and missile systems for example, to the sophisticated and decadent empire, where everything is available, but almost no one is truly free. On the frontier spontaneously rocking and rolling with all guns blazing is a fine way to resolve things, in the core of the empire, to achieve your goal, you are going to have to put together a three part symphony, complete with an interlude, an intermission, and at least two cliffhangers to achieve the same result, ohhhh but the payoff, might just make a trip like this into the imperium a completely worthwhile endeavor.

Quote from: Brand55;963610It's been around over a decade, and the first two editions were extremely successful with dozens of books seeing print. Third edition will likely be around for another 5+ years unless OPP does something to lose the license, and despite my issues with the third edition it's still a top seller on DTRPG. After that there's no telling what might happen. In the grand scheme of things Exalted is a much bigger hit than all but the really big names in the RPG industry.

Well, if that's the case, and is considered a 'popular' game system, I will change my answer to Exalted, but I still say D&D is second place.

I think that D&D, as the seminal RPG, was basically an accident.  

Imagine that the first ever RPG was something like Fate instead! Ooooh! :eek:

Shadowrun, for being a bloated mess of a system.

Forgotten Realms, for being a bloated mess of a setting.

Quote from: Luca;963680Everyone has his own ideas, of course, but characterizing the refusal to invest the time needed to master 700 exception-based Charms as "internet butthurt syndrome" sounds a tad biased.

Exalted is a system which can only work for someone who has lots and lots of free time and mental space to invest in it.

Which makes it different from every other crunchy system...how, exactly:)?
And if people complain that a system that works doesn't work the way they want, that is, to me, almost the definition of Internet Butthurt Syndrome.

Of course, the whole thread is about slamming games that we dislike;).

Quote from: TrippyHippy;963736I think that D&D, as the seminal RPG, was basically an accident.  

Imagine that the first ever RPG was something like Fate instead! Ooooh! :eek:

[Heresy]

Like so called "Story games" coming first?

[/Heresy]

Quote from: S'mon;963694I feel that way about most of the 2e AD&D settings for some reason. They never feel quite right. Contributed a lot to me dropping D&D and (pretty much) RPGs for much of the 1990s, coming back with the 3e D&D release in 2000.

For me it was the opposite: Dark Sun and Planescape brought me to D&D. Then I saw how little people actually played them (instead preferring things like Forgotten Realms), that I ended up giving up on D&D altogether. So I think these settings are only a problem for the public of D&D, weirdly.

Quote from: Itachi;963764For me it was the opposite: Dark Sun and Planescape brought me to D&D. Then I saw how little people actually played them (instead preferring things like Forgotten Realms), that I ended up giving up on D&D altogether. So I think these settings are only a problem for the public of D&D, weirdly.

For whatever reason, the market prefers the generic and bland Forgotten Realms while original spins like Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, etc are unpopular. All of these settings exist in the same overarching universe, so I find strange that there are no source books or adventure paths which take advantage of that. You could mix and match this stuff to have an eclectic setting that combines Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian, Sliders and Star Wars.

Oh no! The Happy Hunting Grounds are under attack by the Dark Elf Star Empire! Send in the Warforged and their steam-powered giant mechs!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;963903For whatever reason, the market prefers the generic and bland Forgotten Realms while original spins like Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, etc are unpopular. All of these settings exist in the same overarching universe, so I find strange that there are no source books or adventure paths which take advantage of that. You could mix and match this stuff to have an eclectic setting that combines Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian, Sliders and Star Wars.

Oh no! The Happy Hunting Grounds are under attack by the Dark Elf Star Empire! Send in the Warforged and their steam-powered giant mechs!

If you want to play the campaign directly suggested by a setting, then the more flavorful options are a good choice (assuming, of course, you can find one with a flavor you enjoy).  If you want to do mash ups, then lots of flavorful options are also good.  If instead, you want to do your own thing, but using the setting as a starting place to save some work, then generic is by far the superior option most of the time.  You'll note that most of the push back on the Forgotten Realms through the years has not been because it is generic, but when it is has gotten too specific or "out there".    Go back to the 1E setting materials, ignore the novels, and it's a fine starting point for cheap DIY.

I've never played or owned any settings published by anyone. I'm curious, does anyone have actual sales figures? Are they actually popular in general or just "popular in relation to each other"? For instance, how many copies of the actual rules were sold compared to copies of the settings? Do most people make up their own (which is what I always assumed) or is there really a large audience buying these settings and using them?

Quote from: Omega;962947Dark Sun devolved.

It got better. 4th actually brought it back from the abyss of stupidity.

I'm going to say Greyhawk. I think it's popularity is in large part being "Gary's campaign". The actual material is boring as all get out.

Call of Cthulhu.  The metaplot sucks -- I hear the game designers have some kind of global war planned in the late '30s that culminates in some kind of superweapon changing the face of the Earth, and that's only after a global Depression where all of your antiquarians and wealthy characters lose their money.

When did Call of Cthulhu get a metaplot?

Was the question I was going to ask till the penny dropped :D

Quote from: HorusArisen;963926When did Call of Cthulhu get a metaplot?

Was the question I was going to ask till the penny dropped :D

:)

What I hate the most is some of the players have read the metaplot notes and are always trying to catch me on stuff.  "The first deSoto didn't roll off the line until 1928!"  Luckily it's Call of Cthulhu, so I just blame it on Yith.

"Why would Yith care about the deSoto automobile?"  "You don't know.  The universe is alien and horrifying.  Just pondering why these automobiles are special costs you SAN.  You sure want to pull on this string, Dave?"  "The taxi driver is driving a deSoto it is!"

Quote from: Justin Alexander;963111The problem is that, in the real world, the rhetoric of white supremacists includes

Quote from: Christopher Brady;963114This is incorrect on a few points.  It WAS about Slavery, but it wasn't about the PEOPLE.  It was about the ECONOMICS.  See, you can't tax slaves, but you can free people. So slave owning was a losing proposition for the government, and the North knew it.  It also didn't help that the Plantation model of farming was destructive to the land in general.  So as rose coloured glasses you want to make up the whole abolishing of slavery, it has very little to do with the people being enslaved, but more about the money generated by it. (...) Now as for the Civil War still happening, actually probably. Because the South was very resentful of the North, which they saw as soft and unworthy to own the land they got. In some parts, they still believe this. They'd likely would have found another excuse. But there's no way of really knowing.

Yup. That's a perfect example of the sort of white supremacist rhetoric that makes Deadlands' alternate history problematic.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;963114Does it matter if it's fun?

Yes. Because, as you've just demonstrated, it gives people spouting white supremacist rhetoric both an excuse for doing so and then a pseudo-plausible claim that it's "just for fun" or "just for the game" even in situations where they literally just got done using the game as an excuse for introducing the fake-history rhetoric into a conversation about the real world.

Quote from: Dumarest;963911I've never played or owned any settings published by anyone. I'm curious, does anyone have actual sales figures? Are they actually popular in general or just "popular in relation to each other"? For instance, how many copies of the actual rules were sold compared to copies of the settings? Do most people make up their own (which is what I always assumed) or is there really a large audience buying these settings and using them?

Given that a number of RPGs in the top 5 sellers contain a setting in the corebook, and a number of their fans dislike the system that comes with it, you can answer that question for yourself;).

Egalitarian progressivism is such a latecomer to world-historical affairs that constructing a fantasy setting that has absolutely no "troubling" or "problematic" callbacks to the Unenlightened Before Times*. In fact, based on the latest developments in Progress, I doubt you can even reference anything before 2012.

*Most people on the Union side were white supremacists, including Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman. So it's best to avoid that era entirely.

Star Wars

The movie-era of Star Wars as a setting sucks so bad it makes my skin crawl. Metaplot hangs over everything like a soggy turd, dumb assumptions about the way in which the politics and organizations within the setting operate are ludicrous. While everyone freaks the hell out about Force users being too OP - the setting assumes there's only two Jedi and two Sith which makes trying to get away from the metaplot even more impossible without much hand-wavery.

Now there's enough material to ignore all this stuff. But the setting still sucks.

Quote from: AsenRG;963933Given that a number of RPGs in the top 5 sellers contain a setting in the corebook, and a number of their fans dislike the system that comes with it, you can answer that question for yourself;).

Really can't as I don't know what the Top 5 are either.:o

Quote from: Dumarest;963942Really can't as I don't know what the Top 5 are either.:o

Nobody is sure, but the latest I've found with a Google search is this:).
https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/35144/top-5-rpgs-spring-2016
Three or four of the top sellers do contain their own settings, which are then expanded by setting supplements, I'm not sure whether PF does.
If Pathfinder doesn't introduce its default setting Golarion in the corebook, that would be "only" three out of five;).

Quote from: AsenRG;963951Nobody is sure, but the latest I've found with a Google search is this:).
https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/35144/top-5-rpgs-spring-2016
Three or four of the top sellers do contain their own settings, which are then expanded by setting supplements, I'm not sure whether PF does.
If Pathfinder doesn't introduce its default setting Golarion in the corebook, that would be "only" three out of five;).

Pathfinder corebooks are setting neutral and in fact are only 99% compatible with Golarion. Eg Golarion Clerics must have a patron deity unlike in core Pathfinder.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;963930Yup. That's a perfect example of the sort of white supremacist rhetoric that makes Deadlands' alternate history problematic.



Yes. Because, as you've just demonstrated, it gives people spouting white supremacist rhetoric both an excuse for doing so and then a pseudo-plausible claim that it's "just for fun" or "just for the game" even in situations where they literally just got done using the game as an excuse for introducing the fake-history rhetoric into a conversation about the real world.

Are you calling Christopher Brady a White Supremacist? :confused:

(I find the Deadlands alternate history for much the same reasons you do, not disagreeing on that.)

Quote from: fearsomepirate;963937Egalitarian progressivism is such a latecomer to world-historical affairs that constructing a fantasy setting that has absolutely no "troubling" or "problematic" callbacks to the Unenlightened Before Times*. In fact, based on the latest developments in Progress, I doubt you can even reference anything before 2012.

*Most people on the Union side were white supremacists, including Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman. So it's best to avoid that era entirely.

You're equating the accurate reporting of racism with the whitewashing of history in order to pretend the racism never existed and then describing both acts as equally racist. There's not one step in that train of logic which makes any sense.

Quote from: S'mon;963956Are you calling Christopher Brady a White Supremacist? :confused:

I'm saying that he's posting white supremacist rhetoric. The degree to which you feel that makes him a white supremacist is at least somewhat a matter of personal opinion.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;963914It got better. 4th actually brought it back from the abyss of stupidity.

I'm going to say Greyhawk. I think it's popularity is in large part being "Gary's campaign". The actual material is boring as all get out.

I like Greyhawk for its relatively mid-range between high and low magic settings and the general backstory of the land. Oddly its overall even-ness became my yardstick for if a setting was too high fantasy or not. Much like BX's Karameikos.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;963930Yup. That's a perfect example of the sort of white supremacist rhetoric that makes Deadlands' alternate history problematic.

Except, Deadlands alternate history doesn't split until Gettysburg, and regardless of what you think of it, they never once claim what's Brady's claiming.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;963983You're equating the accurate reporting of racism with the whitewashing of history in order to pretend the racism never existed and then describing both acts as equally racist. There's not one step in that train of logic which makes any sense.

Did you just copy and paste a bunch of random strings from tumblr? Because I said nothing of the kind.

Quote from: S'mon;963954Pathfinder corebooks are setting neutral and in fact are only 99% compatible with Golarion. Eg Golarion Clerics must have a patron deity unlike in core Pathfinder.

Thank you, so we can inform Exploderwizard that it's just the other three in the Top 5 that contain a setting, and in at least one case, the setting is used more than the system;).

Quote from: S'mon;963956Are you calling Christopher Brady a White Supremacist? :confused:

(I find the Deadlands alternate history for much the same reasons you do, not disagreeing on that.)

What's going on with Cupcake:D? I mean, enough people quoted his posts for me to know that he went MRA in an earlier thread, what did he do now?

I'm a white supremacist MRA now?

And no one told me??

WHY AM I THE LAST ONE TO KNOW THESE THINGS???

Quote from: AsenRG;964057What's going on with Cupcake:D? I mean, enough people quoted his posts for me to know that he went MRA in an earlier thread, what did he do now?

MRA? What are you talking about?

You know what?  Let's stop this, this has nothing to do with Vampire or what people claim that Hite is going to do with it.  This thread is past the 11 page mark anyway, let's go bash another game or something on another thread.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;964103You know what?  Let's stop this, this has nothing to do with Vampire or what people claim that Hite is going to do with it.  This thread is past the 11 page mark anyway, let's go bash another game or something on another thread.

This is not the Kenneth Hite Thread.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;964105This is not the Kenneth Hite Thread.

Whoops.  They're all starting to blur.  Sorry, this thread IS about bashing game systems.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;964105This is not the Kenneth Hite Thread.

Speaking of...

I've seen people bash the various WoD settings and while Im not overly fond of them I think part of the problem for others seems to be they didnt bother actually reading the backstory enough. If at all. Moreso in later iterations where they tried to merge the settings into one. Its an odd approach. But it works perfectly for the sort of combined setting they eventually went with.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;964040Did you just copy and paste a bunch of random strings from tumblr? Because I said nothing of the kind.

You were just free-associating your thoughts on the inappropriateness of a game set during the historical civil war in a thread talking about the inappropriateness of alt-history? My apologies, then. I assumed you weren't posting a non sequitur. Sorry for misinterpreting your post.

Quote from: CRKrueger;963990Except, Deadlands alternate history doesn't split until Gettysburg, and regardless of what you think of it, they never once claim what's Brady's claiming.

You'll note that I never claimed that Deadlands was saying what Brady claimed, any more than actual Holocaust deniers claim that General Anne Frank traveled through a dimensional portal and is now leading the Invasion of Gehenna. As I said, the element that some people find potentially problematic is the echo of real world racist rhetoric. If it was actually just straight-up mouthing racist rhetoric it would be less "potentially problematic" and more along the lines of "completely unacceptable for any decent human being".

And, as I said, you don't have to be racist to think that General Anne Frank piloting a Martian tripod through the Portals of Hell sounds pretty fucking metal. But that's not a free pass from being problematic.

Some of us are less scared of echoes than you are.

Did I also mention Pathfinder & Golarion? Pathfinder & Golarion. (Inner Sea setting book was one of the few setting books where I just put it back murmurring, "I've worked with dreamscape settings more coherent.") And Pathfinder is pretty much 3.x+, but "plus!" not in a good way, more in "an overflowing pig-trough of a buffet plate" way.

I don't think there's any setting that's overhyped, though some perhaps need to die (Forgotten Realms, Rokugan, Shadowrun's timeline). I've managed to make most settings into something useful, especially if you're willing to ignore "official" details and just go with your own material where things don't match up. I'm a Tolkien fan and I used Middle Earth any way I wanted, and damn was it a lot more gameable.

Systems, Exalted takes the cake. Gave away every book I owned (100% of 1st edition books and at least 60% of 2nd edition), and have never gone back.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;964343You'll note that I never claimed that Deadlands was saying what Brady claimed, any more than actual Holocaust deniers claim that General Anne Frank traveled through a dimensional portal and is now leading the Invasion of Gehenna.

I do note that you continue to refer to this strawman metaphor of yours (awesome that it may be in sheer gonzoness :D) instead of what is actually said in the Deadlands texts, possibly because you've never read any of them.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;964343As I said, the element that some people find potentially problematic is the echo of real world racist rhetoric.

Except, of course, that it isn't.  Deadlands doesn't describe the casus belli of the Civil War at all, so there is no way to "echo" anything said by either John Brown or the KKK's grand dunce or anyone else.  As alt-history, it does what all alt-history does, it presumes that history is the same...until it changes...in this case with Gettysburg.

Faced with the economic realities of a Cold War and with an external force manipulating things, the South ends slavery to gain soldiers and labor (which was a historical viewpoint of some) as well as gain international support from Britain and France, who were held back by the South's stance on slavery.

Do we need to attach the full transcript of the Nuremberg Trials to every WWII RPG just to make sure the problematic elements of WWII can't be echoed on some stormfronter's table somewhere?

All you're basically saying is, we can't make a game about that era without a disclaimer essay so everyone can tell without reading a single word of the game text who wears the Black Hat.  Wait, no one's reading the text...ok, we'll put this on the cover...

Spoiler

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4xkVRi9bt34/UKV17eadm_I/AAAAAAAABxM/Ejzp6FF7xKU/s1600/no-south-1024x1024.jpg)

Then we can check the "Problematic Matter Appropriately Echo-Cancelled" box on Form 757975633-A to send to the Ministry of Truthistory.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;963359The setting is running on the reputation and nostalgia of the original six novels. There have been no less than four attempts at revival (Taladas in 1989, Tales of the Lance in 1992, the Fifth Age in 1996, Dragonlance 3E in 2003), and all but the last have petered out--and the last probably only held out because the goals for a mid-tier company like Margaret Weis Production are considerably less demanding than those of the market leader.

I don't know, I could see a good weird horror game in the Dragonlance world.  Sometimes if the fantasy world is boring, then when the characters go on weird adventures, that means the adventures are outside the norm.  Just plug in adventures that have nothing to do with anything.  The players won't know how to deal with it.  Throw them into a Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure while they are playing a Knight of Solamnia or Cleric of Mishakal.... that would be hilarious.

Quote from: CRKrueger;964678All you're basically saying is, we can't make a game about that era without a disclaimer essay so everyone can tell without reading a single word of the game text who wears the Black Hat.  

Heh, my reaction to being told the Deadlands alt history (which telling long predated the current Hollywood-Obama "Confederates = Nazis" meme) was that they took a historical war between two equally 'shades of grey' factions and turned it into Black Hat Union vs White Hat Confederates. Made it a literal War of Northern Aggression vs the brave (and now not racist) freedom fighters of the Confederacy.
And I didn't like them insulting the Union side like that.

Quote from: S'mon;964706Heh, my reaction to being told the Deadlands alt history (which telling long predated the current Hollywood-Obama "Confederates = Nazis" meme) was that they took a historical war between two equally 'shades of grey' factions and turned it into Black Hat Union vs White Hat Confederates. Made it a literal War of Northern Aggression vs the brave (and now not racist) freedom fighters of the Confederacy.
And I didn't like them insulting the Union side like that.

Let me assure you that you were told wrong. Someone was either ignorant or had an axe to grind; I've seen plenty of both.

What Deadlands does do is present a post-Civil War (North, South, and elsewhere) setting where bigotry of all kinds has lessened quite a bit simply because those aren't the sorts of stories that the game is intended to tell. It's not looking to punish players for wanting to play blacks, women, Native Americans, etc. Bigotry still exists but it's explicitly called out as bad, and it's not meant as an everyday challenge in-setting unless of course the group decides dealing with things like discrimination are interesting and want to explore them. Is that realistic? Not really, no, but then Deadlands is a setting where the dead keep getting back up and automatons with human brains fight actual witches. Realism isn't exactly the point.

I can't believe that there is this much debate on Deadland's back story. It's about as deep as a puddle of rain and can be ignored as such. Deadlands sells itself on capturing the imagery of westerns mixed in with cartoonish horror tropes. It is fun to play as it captured a particular niche. The background is barely worth reading beyond that.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;964732I can't believe that there is this much debate on Deadland's back story. It's about as deep as a puddle of rain and can be ignored as such. Deadlands sells itself on capturing the imagery of westerns mixed in with cartoonish horror tropes. It is fun to play as it captured a particular niche. The background is barely worth reading beyond that.

Blame one keyboard waaaaahrior who keeps trying to make it into something more than it is.  Like you said, it's a vehicle and it's up to gamers to decide how to utilize it or not.

Quote from: S'mon;964706Heh, my reaction to being told the Deadlands alt history (which telling long predated the current Hollywood-Obama "Confederates = Nazis" meme) was that they took a historical war between two equally 'shades of grey' factions and turned it into Black Hat Union vs White Hat Confederates. Made it a literal War of Northern Aggression vs the brave (and now not racist) freedom fighters of the Confederacy.
And I didn't like them insulting the Union side like that.

That's not even close.  Like I said, the rationale for the cause of the war isn't touched on at all.  With a fragmented US, Indian and Mormon nations and the European powers being much more influential in North America there's much less of a monocultural effect on the West.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;964732I can't believe that there is this much debate on Deadland's back story. It's about as deep as a puddle of rain and can be ignored as such. Deadlands sells itself on capturing the imagery of westerns mixed in with cartoonish horror tropes. It is fun to play as it captured a particular niche. The background is barely worth reading beyond that.

It's certainly not in depth, but when most of the criticism of what is there comes from people who obviously haven't read even that, and are just spreading the "common bullshit" about it, it gets tiring, especially when people start erroneously conflating the backstory with real world Southern Apologia.  Shane's one of the nicest guys in the industry, he doesn't deserve that shit, especially when it's just obviously incorrect.

Quote from: GameDaddy;963722I have always liked the Third Imperium. This was like the sophisticated center of known space with all of the available tech and enhancements, and everyhting available for sale that you could possibly want, but that came with a repressive and overly bureaucratic highly centralized but slowly to respond government. The problem with the response, they often use a hammer where a suggestive whisper, or perhaps a touch of diplomacy,  would be just as effective.

That said, I always set my new Traveller campaigns on the fringes of the imperium, or some considerable distance into frontier space, where whoever is the strongest, is the law. There is room for both, the unrestrained freedom of the frontier, where anything goes, but where it can be prohibitively expensive to purchase a new jump drive, or the latest beam lasers and missile systems for example, to the sophisticated and decadent empire, where everything is available, but almost no one is truly free. On the frontier spontaneously rocking and rolling with all guns blazing is a fine way to resolve things, in the core of the empire, to achieve your goal, you are going to have to put together a three part symphony, complete with an interlude, an intermission, and at least two cliffhangers to achieve the same result, ohhhh but the payoff, might just make a trip like this into the imperium a completely worthwhile endeavor.

I've always liked the Third Imperium, too, although I've always played it as indifferent, which is a refreshing break from all of the evil empires and good federations out there.  I wish my group had been more into the setting, so I could have gotten involved in more Imperium-centric roleplaying (with nobles, Imperial society, etc.).

Quote from: S'mon;964706Heh, my reaction to being told the Deadlands alt history (which telling long predated the current Hollywood-Obama "Confederates = Nazis" meme) was that they took a historical war between two equally 'shades of grey' factions and turned it into Black Hat Union vs White Hat Confederates. Made it a literal War of Northern Aggression vs the brave (and now not racist) freedom fighters of the Confederacy.
And I didn't like them insulting the Union side like that.

Sure. Which is why the game made Abraham Lincoln a guy who came back from the dead, yet is still working hard behind the scenes to combat evil, while Jefferson Davis is a demon wearing human skin.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;964732I can't believe that there is this much debate on Deadland's back story. It's about as deep as a puddle of rain and can be ignored as such. Deadlands sells itself on capturing the imagery of westerns mixed in with cartoonish horror tropes. It is fun to play as it captured a particular niche. The background is barely worth reading beyond that.

It's funny because Shane directly addressed why he did this in one of the first books for the game. He said wanted to have a setting where you could play a black character and have it not be a problem. He also explicitly states that the extended length of the Civil War had accelerated women's rights due to male casualties in the war. It makes it clear that women are accepted in any role. He was bending over backwards to make the game "welcoming" as the kids say today, and he has gotten nothing but shit for it.

Quote from: Baulderstone;964772Sure. Which is why the game made Abraham Lincoln a guy who came back from the dead, yet is still working hard behind the scenes to combat evil, while Jefferson Davis is a demon wearing human skin.



It's funny because Shane directly addressed why he did this in one of the first books for the game. He said wanted to have a setting where you could play a black character and have it not be a problem. He also explicitly states that the extended length of the Civil War had accelerated women's rights due to male casualties in the war. It makes it clear that women are accepted in any role. He was bending over backwards to make the game "welcoming" as the kids say today, and he has gotten nothing but shit for it.

My would-be GM didn't mention that about Lincoln & Davis when pitching the game. Is that even in the core book? That does seem more like the modern "Confederacy = Evil" trope which only popularised post-2000 AFAICT. Lincoln as angelic is a much older trope though.

Re bending over backwards to make game welcoming - I think a lot of players don't want semi-historical games/settings to feel too welcoming/inclusive/multicultural. And even those who find female adventurers in Victorian London acceptable may have trouble with a non-racist Confederacy. (I remember briefly playing a black female Majestic 12 agent in a homebrew 1950s setting, our PCs were sent down to I think Louisiana, and it felt weird that the (Chinese female) GM didn't have my PC face any issues of discrimination. Especially as chargen gave me extra points for being non-white & non-male!)

The stupid thing being that none of this backstory is necessary to the Weird West setting where the game is actually played. The outside world could be historically accurate and there would be no problem with PCs in the Weird West being as diverse as they wanted.

Quote from: S'mon;964780My would-be GM didn't mention that about Lincoln & Davis when pitching the game. Is that even in the core book?

Yeah. The basic info is clearly there in the Marshal's section. To clarify, Lincoln is Harrowed and working for the Agency (the North's group that fights supernatural evil) and Davis has been dead for years. After his death, he was secretly replaced by an evil shapechanger who impersonated him to further the Reckoners' agenda.

Quote from: S'mon;964780And even those who find female adventurers in Victorian London acceptable may have trouble with a non-racist Confederacy.

If they're the type of people who complain about the South becoming more tolerant but don't have a problem with the North getting that very same treatment, then frankly I don't see how their biased opinions matter at all.

Quote from: Baulderstone;964772It's funny because Shane directly addressed why he did this in one of the first books for the game. He said wanted to have a setting where you could play a black character and have it not be a problem. He also explicitly states that the extended length of the Civil War had accelerated women's rights due to male casualties in the war. It makes it clear that women are accepted in any role. He was bending over backwards to make the game "welcoming" as the kids say today, and he has gotten nothing but shit for it.

Hence the lesson is "don't bend over backwards", or should be:).

Quote from: S'mon;964780My would-be GM didn't mention that about Lincoln & Davis when pitching the game. Is that even in the core book? That does seem more like the modern "Confederacy = Evil" trope which only popularised post-2000 AFAICT. Lincoln as angelic is a much older trope though.

If you think zombies are angelic;).
Though he's a zombie that fights evil.

QuoteRe bending over backwards to make game welcoming - I think a lot of players don't want semi-historical games/settings to feel too welcoming/inclusive/multicultural.

Yes, myself very much included.

QuoteThe stupid thing being that none of this backstory is necessary to the Weird West setting where the game is actually played. The outside world could be historically accurate and there would be no problem with PCs in the Weird West being as diverse as they wanted.

When I played it briefly, our GM said "feel free to read the GM info, because I'm scrapping the setting anyway, and replacing it with one that proceeded more or less as described in history books, except for the discovery of ghost rock". My poker player who played a hand with the Devil for his magic didn't notice any difference, nor was any other PC impacted.
OTOH, we met a British Great Game Hunter who was chasing some kind of magic-mutated beast;). I guess the GM was reminded by the parts about the European influence.

If I ran Savage Deadlands I think I would set it in the Segio Leone Dollarverse. Only more zombies. :)

Quote from: S'mon;964829If I ran Savage Deadlands I think I would set it in the Segio Leone Dollarverse. Only more zombies. :)

I would be effortless to do that. My Deadlands core book spends maybe three paragraphs on the Civil War and dozens of pages on combat, high noon shootouts and undead.

With respect to Deadlands, why is the Civil War a thing in the setting at all?  So much of the reality and mythology of the Wild West is rooted in the after effects of that war that it's tough to imagine a setting in which the war grinds on as capturing the right mood at all.  It seems like it would feel more like...  I don't know... Harry Turtledove with ghosts and ghouls or something along those lines.  (Which isn't necessarily bad, but it's not quite what I imagined.)

Quote from: The Scythian;964850With respect to Deadlands, why is the Civil War a thing in the setting at all?  So much of the reality and mythology of the Wild West is rooted in the after effects of that war that it's tough to imagine a setting in which the war grinds on as capturing the right mood at all.  It seems like it would feel more like...  I don't know... Harry Turtledove with ghosts and ghouls or something along those lines.  (Which isn't necessarily bad, but it's not quite what I imagined.)

The Civil War is over in the Deadlands setting; it just lasted a lot longer than it did in reality. The effects of it running into a long stalemate is that the North and South are still competing, especially for things like ghost rock. That sets the stage for the Rail Wars and competition (and even sometimes cooperation) between The Agency and Texas Rangers whenever the supernatural rears its head.

But most of that is in the background if you don't want to play it up, and Deadlands is really easy to just play as a straightforward western.

Given that I don't care for alternate history or fantasy injected into historical settings, the premise of Deadlands holds no appeal for me, but what is the actual system like? Does it have good resources for running a straight for Western in the "real" West? Or would it be a pain in the neck to scrape off the alternate universe fantasy zombie barnacles?

Quote from: Dumarest;964884Given that I don't care for alternate history or fantasy injected into historical settings, the premise of Deadlands holds no appeal for me, but what is the actual system like? Does it have good resources for running a straight for Western in the "real" West? Or would it be a pain in the neck to scrape off the alternate universe fantasy zombie barnacles?

It has some support for running westerns but no more than GURPS Old West or other generic western supplements. For me, Aces & Eights is built to support westerns better out of the core book. All the minigames in A&8 reinforce the milieu (prospecting, setting up businesses, etc.).

Yeah, if you're looking into buying into a brand-new game for a straight western experience, there are better options out there. A&8 will give you a grittier experience, if that's your preference, and all of its features come readily packaged right out of the book. Deadlands has the advantage of running off of Savage Worlds, so there's a ton of material that can easily be lifted and/or modified from other sources. I can do anything from set up cattle drives to build an entire campaign around a group having to build and run their own brothel in real-life Tombstone with a little work, but then I have a huge library of SW resources to build from.

Quote from: Brand55;964854The Civil War is over in the Deadlands setting; it just lasted a lot longer than it did in reality. The effects of it running into a long stalemate is that the North and South are still competing, especially for things like ghost rock. That sets the stage for the Rail Wars and competition (and even sometimes cooperation) between The Agency and Texas Rangers whenever the supernatural rears its head.

But most of that is in the background if you don't want to play it up, and Deadlands is really easy to just play as a straightforward western.

That still seems like it's a little sideways for a Wild West setting, but since it's not really my thing, I guess it doesn't matter too much.  Thanks for filling me in!

Quote from: Justin Alexander;964343You were just free-associating your thoughts on the inappropriateness of a game set during the historical civil war in a thread talking about the inappropriateness of alt-history? My apologies, then. I assumed you weren't posting a non sequitur. Sorry for misinterpreting your post.

God forbid anyone's fantasy setting be...inappropriate. What's next, witches and devils in D&D?

Quote from: fearsomepirate;965080God forbid anyone's fantasy setting be...inappropriate. What's next, witches and devils in D&D?

Won't anyone think of the children:D?

Quote from: AsenRG;965085Won't anyone think of the children:D?

...Not that way, you pervert!



:D

I recently was thumbing through the 1e MM. I came across a...*choke*... naked lady. I was so disgusted that I screamed, threw the book across the room, and sold my house. How can I dwell in a place that has been defiled by inappropriateness?

Quote from: fearsomepirate;965106I recently was thumbing through the 1e MM. I came across a...*choke*... naked lady. I was so disgusted that I screamed, threw the book across the room, and sold my house. How can I dwell in a place that has been defiled by inappropriateness?

The obvious response is that you should have burned the place down and salted the earth so that no one else should have had to suffer as well.

On a serious and related note, I was reading the Weird War I player's guide a few weeks ago. For art, Pinnacle used actual photographs and propaganda posters from World War I, and I was pleasantly surprised to see this one made the cut:

Spoiler

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1007[/ATTACH]

I might be forgetting something, but I think that's the only bit of true nudity I've ever seen in a Savage Worlds product.

Quote from: CRKrueger;964678I do note

What I note is that you failed to provide a quote of me saying the thing you lied about me saying. Then you went on to lie about me saying some other stuff I never said.

So here's my final question for you: Why would I bother continuing a discussion with a proven, unrepentant liar?

(It's a rhetorical question.)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;965191What I note is that you failed to provide a quote of me saying the thing you lied about me saying. Then you went on to lie about me saying some other stuff I never said.

So here's my final question for you: Why would I bother continuing a discussion with a proven, unrepentant liar?

(It's a rhetorical question.)

Ooo, nice fake outrage to try and sell the dodge.  I guess that's a "no" on having actually read the Deadlands texts, eh? ;)

Quote from: Omega;964107I've seen people bash the various WoD settings and while Im not overly fond of them I think part of the problem for others seems to be they didnt bother actually reading the backstory enough. If at all. Moreso in later iterations where they tried to merge the settings into one. Its an odd approach. But it works perfectly for the sort of combined setting they eventually went with.

Yeah, probably.

World of Darkness games are weird; they present the setting in the core books via mediocre-at-best in-character fiction that you really end up wanting to skip past. But then when you actually play the game, on an individual scale with a group of player characters, it works pretty well. And only then do you go back, give the mediocre introductory fiction a second look, and realize that, as often as not, it was actually fairly relevant in what it was suggesting and describing to the way you ended up getting the damned game to work.

It's the same deal with the metaplot. You hate it when you first read about it...and then, months later, you somehow find yourself mining it for ideas to use.

They...reward thorough digestion, let's say.

Quote from: Omega;963692Dark Sun: It sounds interesting and looks potentially interesting on paper. But once you start looking at the setting and the situation it starts to feel a little, or a-lot off? It didnt seem to live up to its own hype and the setting felt kinda... bland? And then 2nd ed tossed some of the premise and added in an invasion and whatever and it actually felt more bland somehow.

Planescape is the other that evokes this feeling. Even moreso for me. Really should have been its own dimension or something rather than trying to glue it onto the outer planes.

Huh. I'm with you on Planescape, but I'm not sure about Dark Sun. I had a lot of fun with it when it first came out.

With regards to Deadlands, I don't think anyone can accuse me of being an SJW, but as an historian I found it beyond the limits of believable and very obviously a whitewashing to treat racial relations in their Confederacy the way they did. I find that kind of thing immensely stupid and annoying, whether it was well-meaning or not.

Also, it seems to me that some nerds have a kind of love-affair with the CSA, not necessarily out of racist motives but because they somehow think it's "more exciting".  Aces & Eights was way less egregious with the whole "it's the 19th century but race relations are just like the 1990s" deal, but they also somehow thought it would be way more interesting to have a setting where the Confederacy still exists, rather than play in the authentic wild west which was absolutely shaped by the END of the civil war and would not have been even remotely the same had the war gone differently.

Quote from: RPGPundit;965473With regards to Deadlands, I don't think anyone can accuse me of being an SJW, but as an historian I found it beyond the limits of believable and very obviously a whitewashing to treat racial relations in their Confederacy the way they did. I find that kind of thing immensely stupid and annoying, whether it was well-meaning or not.

Also, it seems to me that some nerds have a kind of love-affair with the CSA, not necessarily out of racist motives but because they somehow think it's "more exciting".  Aces & Eights was way less egregious with the whole "it's the 19th century but race relations are just like the 1990s" deal, but they also somehow thought it would be way more interesting to have a setting where the Confederacy still exists, rather than play in the authentic wild west which was absolutely shaped by the END of the civil war and would not have been even remotely the same had the war gone differently.

Leaving the supernatural alone and sticking with Aces & Eights, I think a USA/CSA can still get you the Wild West, only even Wilder.

• Territories stay territories for longer, because there is no single Eastern Industrial Juggernaut to steamroll and assimilate everything.
• The native tribes can hold out longer or even thrive, for the same reason.
• Two American nations, plus continental holdings from the French, British, and Spanish make the politics and espionage way more interesting.
• Mexico is likely to be much stronger relatively, and Texas remain independent.
• Everyone's too busy to stop the Mormons from making their own country.

The real "Wild West" was a very short period in time due to the incredible expansion of the fully United States.  Anything that slows that down is going to be better for a long-term campaign I think.

Quote from: RPGPundit;965472Huh. I'm with you on Planescape, but I'm not sure about Dark Sun. I had a lot of fun with it when it first came out.

Sigil is a pretty fun city to start a campaign in. I will always ignore the Faction Wars and just use the setting as a jump point to adventure.

Quote from: RPGPundit;965473With regards to Deadlands, I don't think anyone can accuse me of being an SJW, but as an historian I found it beyond the limits of believable and very obviously a whitewashing to treat racial relations in their Confederacy the way they did. I find that kind of thing immensely stupid and annoying, whether it was well-meaning or not.

Also, it seems to me that some nerds have a kind of love-affair with the CSA, not necessarily out of racist motives but because they somehow think it's "more exciting".  Aces & Eights was way less egregious with the whole "it's the 19th century but race relations are just like the 1990s" deal, but they also somehow thought it would be way more interesting to have a setting where the Confederacy still exists, rather than play in the authentic wild west which was absolutely shaped by the END of the civil war and would not have been even remotely the same had the war gone differently.

Personally I think that no what-if scenario has ever been as interesting as actual history. Crazy, weird stuff happens all the time in real life.

Quote from: CRKrueger;965515The real "Wild West" was a very short period in time due to the incredible expansion of the fully United States.

Any chance you'll define what you mean by "real Wild West"?

Add another vote for Shadowrun as one hell of a lame idea. Adding elves and shit does nothing for the CP genre.

In fact, adding magic and fantasy elements to other genres is tired.

Quote from: Dumarest;965596Any chance you'll define what you mean by "real Wild West"?

Real as in the one that existed in reality, as opposed to the supernatural one of Deadlands or the alt-history one of Aces & Eights.

FASA's Battletech and Palladium's Robotech both suck as settings and games. If they were trying to create a game that emulated giant robot action from anime and manga, they missed the mark by a very wide margin. R Talsorian Games' Mekton beats both of them hands down in emulating the genre.

Quote from: CRKrueger;965622Real as in the one that existed in reality, as opposed to the supernatural one of Deadlands or the alt-history one of Aces & Eights.

Sorry, I meant the time frame you are referring to in the previous post. I know what the word real means; I just don't know what period you are referring to as the "real Wild West."

Quote from: jeff37923;965630If they were trying to create a game that emulated giant robot action from anime and manga...

I don't think they were, actually. Battletech has nothing to do with Japanese cartoons and comics aside from using the giant robots for a war game, and Robotech is emulating a specific American TV show that recycled art from three different Japanese cartoons into a new story. Personally I think the Robotech setting is pretty fun.

Quote from: Dumarest;965631Sorry, I meant the time frame you are referring to in the previous post. I know what the word real means; I just don't know what period you are referring to as the "real Wild West."

I wasn't referring to a "Real Wild West", I was referring to the real-world "Wild West". If you're asking me to define "Wild West" - America, West of the Mississippi, roughly last half of the 19th century.

Quote from: CRKrueger;965638I wasn't referring to a "Real Wild West", I was referring to the real-world "Wild West". If you're asking me to define "Wild West" - America, West of the Mississippi, roughly last half of the 19th century.

I'd say maybe even into the early 20th century, at least until cars became a common mode of transportation. I guess there was no definitive ending. I mean here in Calgary there are still businesses with hitching posts, and there's still a law on the books that they have to provide water for your horse. I think there may also be a law about providing a horse for anyone invited to leave town. In the mid 80s I walked to the store and a classmate of mine was riding into town on horseback. The area is all developed now, but then it was just farms and ranches. I think most of the ranches are still there.

Doing a quick search, one site gives the Wild West Era as 1865-1895. Another lists the Old West as being prior to 1912, and a third says the terms Old West and Wild West are interchangeable. So if you were talking about 1900, you technically wouldn't be wrong.

Quote from: Krimson;965676I'd say maybe even into the early 20th century, at least until cars became a common mode of transportation. I guess there was no definitive ending. I mean here in Calgary there are still businesses with hitching posts, and there's still a law on the books that they have to provide water for your horse. I think there may also be a law about providing a horse for anyone invited to leave town. In the mid 80s I walked to the store and a classmate of mine was riding into town on horseback. The area is all developed now, but then it was just farms and ranches. I think most of the ranches are still there.

Doing a quick search, one site gives the Wild West Era as 1865-1895. Another lists the Old West as being prior to 1912, and a third says the terms Old West and Wild West are interchangeable. So if you were talking about 1900, you technically wouldn't be wrong.

Yeah, 50 years was being generous, it's probaly closer to 25-30 years after the Civil War, perhaps even taking a few years too kick into high gear, so 1870-90.  In any case, 50, 30, 25, 20...it's not a long time and things moved lightning fast because all of the US could face West.

If you have a fractured America, with North, South, Great Britain, France, Spain, Mexico, Texas, two or three actual tribal nations, Deseret...it's a glorious mess and will probably result in a slowing down of industrialization as well as extend the timeframe of frontier america.

I think of Wild West era as predating the Gilded Age; 1865-1888 seems about right. The frontier was effectively closed by 1890 - https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/history/us-history-ii/settling-the-west/the-closing-of-the-frontier

If I had to narrow down the end of the Wild West to a specific moment, it would be when Frederick Turner presented his paper "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.  It had a huge influence on how America's elite viewed the closing of the frontier and its implications, and it also set the stage for the emergence of the Western as a literary genre.  As far as when the Wild West began, the end of the Civil War is the obvious starting point, but that's not necessarily a hard and fast rule, as some pre-war figures and events are sometimes folded in.

Quote from: CRKrueger;965193Ooo, nice fake outrage to try and sell the dodge.  I guess that's a "no" on having actually read the Deadlands texts, eh? ;)

Doubling down on the lie, eh? You're a kooky guy, Kruegy. A really stupid, kooky guy.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;965852Doubling down on the lie, eh? You're a kooky guy, Kruegy. A really stupid, kooky guy.

First of all, let's fix the lie you are telling:

Here's what I actually said:
"Except, Deadlands alternate history doesn't split until Gettysburg, and regardless of what you think of it, they never once claim what's Brady's claiming."
I never said you claimed Pinnacle was making Brady's argument that the cause of the Civil War was based on economics, I said Pinnacle doesn't claim that.  I clarified why that is....

"Like I said, the rationale for the cause of the war isn't touched on at all."

Here's what you did say:
"As I said, the element that some people find potentially problematic is the echo of real world racist rhetoric."

The big problem with your argument that you have been pathethically trying to dodge for several posts now with your lying bullshit is that it is literally impossible for Pinnacle to be echoing any racist rhetoric concerning the cause of the Civil War and who was at fault because they do not talk about the cause of the Civil War at all, and their alt-history doesn't diverge until Gettysburg.

Simply put, you had no idea what the fuck you were talking about, you were simply parroting the "Deadlands is problematic" idea, and are being your usual disingenuous self when caught out, because Justin Alexander is never wrong, right? ;)

I'm sure we'll get at this point:
1. Another drive-by dodge attempt.
2. Ignoring the topic
3. Textual sophistry, grammar, the definition of is, etc...

What I'm sure we won't get...
4. An example of echoes of racist rhetoric concerning the start of the Civil War out of the Deadlands texts, because it's not there, and he never read them. :rolleyes:

With Pundy on this one, love reading good alt history too much to not have shitty alt history get on my nerves especially with such a late POD as 1863. But easy enough to just excise the stupid out.

Quote from: RPGPundit;965472Huh. I'm with you on Planescape, but I'm not sure about Dark Sun. I had a lot of fun with it when it first came out.

With Dark Sun it was initially hyped as this super kill your characters dead setting and all its nearly alien theme going. But the execution seemed like they got cold feet at the last minute (Id lay odds it was an order from higher up) and it feels a little odd. Like its not as deadly as it should be.

Then 2nd ed came along and things started to go downhill like alot of late TSR settings. Greyhawk, FR, etc.

Quote from: Krimson;965587Sigil is a pretty fun city to start a campaign in. I will always ignore the Faction Wars and just use the setting as a jump point to adventure.

Right. Sigil allmost feels like it would have been better off as a Ravenloft domain. This huge bleak Dickensian city full of monsters and men and its hard to tell which is which.

The problems start when you step outside Sigil and the outer planes are this big whatever of blandness.

Quote from: jeff37923;965630FASA's Battletech and Palladium's Robotech both suck as settings and games. If they were trying to create a game that emulated giant robot action from anime and manga, they missed the mark by a very wide margin. R Talsorian Games' Mekton beats both of them hands down in emulating the genre.

Im not so sure. Battletech does capture the feel of Dougram which BT draws alot of mecha from for its mechs. And Dougram was a very tactical series that looked at the logistics and gradual escalation of the resistance. BT just magnified that into a interstellar level.

Quote from: Omega;965969Im not so sure. Battletech does capture the feel of Dougram which BT draws alot of mecha from for its mechs. And Dougram was a very tactical series that looked at the logistics and gradual escalation of the resistance. BT just magnified that into a interstellar level.

I haven't seen that much Dougram, so I could be wrong in that case. Now that is another anime for me to track down.......:D

Quote from: Omega;965969Im not so sure. Battletech does capture the feel of Dougram which BT draws alot of mecha from for its mechs. And Dougram was a very tactical series that looked at the logistics and gradual escalation of the resistance. BT just magnified that into a interstellar level.

Does Dougram spend 6 hours on 1 fight, at the end of which 1 mech from 8 has been destroyed? Because that is my Battletech experience.

Quote from: Krimson;965676Another lists the Old West as being prior to 1912, and a third says the terms Old West and Wild West are interchangeable.

1912 is an interesting date as I just finished reading Riders of the Purple Sage which was written in 1912 and, from what I've seen, is the first really popular "Western" novel. The book takes place in 1871 and the author talks about the frontier as if it were dying out in most places. (whether that's true or not I don't really know). Maybe 1912 is just the date where people considered the frontier "Wild West" era to be in the past. Kinda like how we now consider the "Arcade in the Mall" era to be in the past despite the fact that some arcades still exist.

OTOH, I grew up watching shows like Davey Crocket and Daniel Boone (same show really) which were set in the late 1700s IIRC. When Disneyland opened up it had a Frontierland. Even though Frontierland had stage coaches, mine cars, saloons, and gun fights, Fess Parker showed up on opening day to introduce it. I'd consider the "Old West" to start pre-Revolution. But that's just me.

Quote from: S'mon;965995Does Dougram spend 6 hours on 1 fight, at the end of which 1 mech from 8 has been destroyed? Because that is my Battletech experience.

Really? Ouch. This is why I'm happy I stuck to just reading the books and playing the video games. Mechs blew up left and right in those. I've hardly glanced at the official rpg but I'd almost certainly use a more familiar system if I were to ever try running a campaign in that setting.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;9659961912 is an interesting date as I just finished reading Riders of the Purple Sage which was written in 1912 and, from what I've seen, is the first really popular "Western" novel. The book takes place in 1871 and the author talks about the frontier as if it were dying out in most places. (whether that's true or not I don't really know). Maybe 1912 is just the date where people considered the frontier "Wild West" era to be in the past. Kinda like how we now consider the "Arcade in the Mall" era to be in the past despite the fact that some arcades still exist.

The first Western novel and the first really popular Western novel were one in the same: Owen Wister's The Virginian (1902).  In the preface, he writes about how the frontier looks the same and has the same physical features, but the kind of men who populated it in the recent past will never again ride across the landscape.  He never uses the term "Wild West," but he laments the passing of an era that had ended so recently that he'd used the present tense when he started writing.

The closing of the frontier and the disappearance of the self-reliant, two-fisted men who had settled it is in the DNA of every Western, even if it's never mentioned directly.

Quote from: S'mon;965995Does Dougram spend 6 hours on 1 fight, at the end of which 1 mech from 8 has been destroyed? Because that is my Battletech experience.

heh. Thats why we stuck to mid size mechs. And didnt anyone ever have an ammo blowup? Those things were murder!

Dougrams interesting on several levels. Terrain is a big factor as is supply lines and logistics. About midpoint I think the action shifts from lone action to increasingly larger scales. Takes a while to get revved up though. The Dougram's advantage is its an ATV type. And unlike most anime, it is not a prototype. But due to bureaucratic interference it ends up the only one. Which is the other element the show had, lots of political jockying behind the scenes.

It oddly feels more grounded and "real" than other mecha shows like it. Moreso by far than Gundam for example.

and Dougram came out as a wargame before Battletech. 84. Came with periscopes to use to check LOS from the minis viewpoint. The minis are about half the size of Battletech ones.

(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic204945.jpg)

Quote from: S'mon;965995Does Dougram spend 6 hours on 1 fight, at the end of which 1 mech from 8 has been destroyed? Because that is my Battletech experience.

Hah! Mine was exponentially compressed into an hour or two per mech destroyed because there was always at least two players who memorized the mechanics, tables, hit locations, and more tables! ... and it still took too long. :mad:

I cannot even imagine running the game without at least two engineering students with eidetic memories processing at full. No, really, I can't imagine it. :confused:

Quote from: The Scythian;965830If I had to narrow down the end of the Wild West to a specific moment, it would be when Frederick Turner presented his paper "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

Turner was full of shit.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;966209Turner was full of shit.

I don't agree with his thesis, but that's not necessary in order to recognize Turner's presentation as a pretty good marker for when people stopped thinking of the Western frontier as an ongoing concern and started thinking of it as a closed chapter.

Quote from: CRKrueger;965515Leaving the supernatural alone and sticking with Aces & Eights, I think a USA/CSA can still get you the Wild West, only even Wilder.

• Territories stay territories for longer, because there is no single Eastern Industrial Juggernaut to steamroll and assimilate everything.
• The native tribes can hold out longer or even thrive, for the same reason.

Neither of these are the Wild West, then. A key historical theme of the wild west was that the cowboys and the lawmen and the ne'er-do-wells moved around so much because they had to keep going further west to keep escaping the encroaching civilization.
The indians not getting wiped out and having their own nations able to stand toe-to-toe against the white man is great for a PC alt-history fantasy of the late '90s or SJW revenge-porn of the 2010s, but that's also not the Wild West. A huge part of the Wild West was the tragedy of the Indian Wars and the horror that was for all concerned. If that goes a different way, it changes everything.

Quote

• Two American nations, plus continental holdings from the French, British, and Spanish make the politics and espionage way more interesting.

And destroys the fundamental nature of Wild West society.  The west was full of people who retired haunted from the Union Army or fled the defeated south seeking their fortune and holding grudges. The fights between Republicans (northerners, pro-railway, pro-industrial, dressed in black, generally lawmen) and Democrats (southerners, anti-industry, anti-progress, pro-taverns-and-shootouts, dressed in colorful combinations, generally outlaws) was a central backdrop of all kinds of conflicts that happened in the Wild West. The OK corral was a huge part of that (the Earps were Republicans, the Clantons were Democrats).
You have a civil war still going on, or a cold war, you're not going to have the wild lawless west. You're going to have a totally different setting. No Tombstone, no Dodge City, probably no Deadwood, no Las Vegas, no Fort Worth, no Dog Kelley or Earp Brothers or Masterson brothers or Doc Holliday, probably no Billy the Kid, all kinds of stuff would have been utterly impossible unless you just wave a gigantic magic wand of "I think it would be really cool if the CSA never fell but everything is somehow magically the same anyways, except maybe they're all politically correct and have black confederate colonels and everyone forgot about racism somehow".

Quote

• Mexico is likely to be much stronger relatively, and Texas remain independent.
• Everyone's too busy to stop the Mormons from making their own country.

Again, all of those insanely stupid ideas only championed by people who don't really understand the complex mix of factors that made up the west and why it was the way it was.

QuoteThe real "Wild West" was a very short period in time due to the incredible expansion of the fully United States.  Anything that slows that down is going to be better for a long-term campaign I think.

No it isn't, because the Wild West had to be something that happened fast. That was part of the deal: even if they didn't consciously realize just how fast, everyone knew that it was a moment that was going to be lost forever. The 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 was even shorter than that, from 1876-1882.

And the people in it who wanted that way of life were literally running from place to place, further west and further south and north to the ever-narrowing fringes of civilization because they could literally see it vanishing before their eyes. That's why Wyatt Earp started out in Illinois when the Wild West both began and started to disappear (because it started to disappear almost as soon as one could say it actually started to exist), and within two years he was in Kansas, and within less than 5 years after that he was off to New Mexico, and a year after that he was in Arizona (in his own words: "In 1879, Dodge (Kansas) was beginning to lose much of the snap which had given it a charm to men of reckless blood, and I decided to move to Tombstone (Arizona), which was just building up a reputation" - He was in dodge less than four years total, and in Tombstone less than two). After Arizona he was in Idaho, San Diego and the Klondike but by then it was just a shadow, there was nothing really of the Wild West left.

If 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.

Quote from: Dumarest;965595Personally I think that no what-if scenario has ever been as interesting as actual history. Crazy, weird stuff happens all the time in real life.

Agreed. Alt-history can sometimes be a fun little exercise. Fantasy can be good for escape. But I've never, for example, seen any Wild West Tv Show or movie that was as amazing as the real story of what happened. And the ones that got the closest, shows like Deadwood or Tombstone, were the ones that tried to get closer to real historical events than most.


It's the same in fantasy. Game of Thrones is awesome, and has great characters. But it wasn't as awesome a story or had characters as interesting as the War of the Roses.

Quote from: jeff37923;965630FASA's Battletech and Palladium's Robotech both suck as settings and games. If they were trying to create a game that emulated giant robot action from anime and manga, they missed the mark by a very wide margin. R Talsorian Games' Mekton beats both of them hands down in emulating the genre.

I think Palladium's Robotech setting was actually awesome; particularly if you thought of it not as a "giant robot setting" but as a "apocalyptic post-alien-invasion setting that happens to have giant robots".

Setting wise, I think it was better than RIFTS as a serious kind of world.

Quote from: Dumarest;965631Sorry, I meant the time frame you are referring to in the previous post. I know what the word real means; I just don't know what period you are referring to as the "real Wild West."

I was assuming he meant it in the sense of the time and place that people think of when they think of the "west" and the period where most of the famous events of the post-civil-war west took place.

Custer's last stand (hell almost ALL the indian wars), Wyatt Earp in Dodge city, the great cattle drives, the lawless Deadwood, the death of Wild Bill Hickcok, Calamity Jane, the end of the buffalo trade, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, the Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid, the rise of the Cowboys, the Las Vegas gang, Tombstone and the Gunfight of the OK Corral, Wyatt Earp's revenge ride, the death of Billy the Kid, and the death of Jesse James all happened within a six year period from 1876-82.

Quote from: The Scythian;966001The closing of the frontier and the disappearance of the self-reliant, two-fisted men who had settled it is in the DNA of every Western, even if it's never mentioned directly.

Exactly. Which is why the "super-long never-ending wild west" is a stupid idea.

Except a-lot of action takes place in towns, settled areas, or between town A and town B. It is possibly not so much the encroachment of civilization as it is the advancing wave of law enforcement?. It is one thing when you've got just a sheriff. But it is another when you've hot multiple marshals on your trail. And some kept moving as they wore out their welcome in one town after another.

So perhaps the west can persist to a point but eventually you run out of places the law cant reach you?

So perhaps the end of the West was that point when lawlessness couldn't outrun the law anymore?

Quote from: Omega;966403Except a-lot of action takes place in towns, settled areas, or between town A and town B. It is possibly not so much the encroachment of civilization as it is the advancing wave of law enforcement?. It is one thing when you've got just a sheriff. But it is another when you've hot multiple marshals on your trail. And some kept moving as they wore out their welcome in one town after another.

So perhaps the west can persist to a point but eventually you run out of places the law cant reach you?

So perhaps the end of the West was that point when lawlessness couldn't outrun the law anymore?

The law is a big part of it, but it's also the land.  Once a territory becomes a State, then Counties, land plots get drawn out, land gets bought, and the area a person can roam free in shrinks.

Quote from: Omega;966403Except a-lot of action takes place in towns, settled areas, or between town A and town B. It is possibly not so much the encroachment of civilization as it is the advancing wave of law enforcement?. It is one thing when you've got just a sheriff. But it is another when you've hot multiple marshals on your trail. And some kept moving as they wore out their welcome in one town after another.

So perhaps the west can persist to a point but eventually you run out of places the law cant reach you?

So perhaps the end of the West was that point when lawlessness couldn't outrun the law anymore?

A large part of "civilization" is "law enforcement".

And I have to agree with Pundit that the actual "Wild West" was a very brief eyeblink of an historical period. One that has been romanticized and spun out in the American myth.

Western games that alter core features of the history run into the same problem that most alt-history does. Too much unexamined "butterfly effect". Actually a lot of fantasy and scientific-fi stumble on the same block. Let us posit that for some reason the Natives were able to hold back White advancement, we now have to decide where, when, and how that advance of settlement was stopped. Are the cattle drives still possible? What about the railroads? Do we get an Eastward expansion of the natives?

No era really lasted all that long. because history has always been rather dynamic. What happens is that when you read a lot about or watch a lot of media set in that one era, it seems to be kind of static and eternal. At the other extreme, when you don't know much about something, it has a kind of timelessness about it. So any of these RPG settings that have technology, social structures, borders, and ethnic territories stay relatively static for centuries or even millennia are horribly unrealistic right from the very start.

We also tend, psychologically, to regard anything that has been around since before our parents' birth to be effectively infinitely old, and all things that were gone before anyone alive today was born as lumped together into a single mass of "ancient times" (which is why you'll see royalty in an RPG wearing 18th-century garb while the men-at-arms are wearing 12th-century armor, and there's a rival across the ocean kitted out like it's China in 200 BC).

It's just more obvious when it's the Wild West, since that's close enough to our era for more people to realize it didn't last long.

The notion that the invention and proliferation of barbed wire was what truly tamed the Wild West IMHO makes sense as well.

The thing that bothers me most about Deadlands is how much it does NOT feel like a Western, mainly due to the setting being infested with stupid and out-of-place weird science, giving it the appeal of some kind of silly theme park. Now if you enjoy that sort of thing, fine, but stop recommending the game to people who are looking for a Western RPG.

Quote from: RPGPundit;966396all happened within a six year period from 1876-82.

But that period lasted a lot longer, marked by the continual westward march of the frontier. Remember, "the west" used to be Ohio, and was as rough and untamed in the 1840s as the Black Hills, etc., of the 1880s. Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson was a Mexican War (1846-48) veteran, and folks had been out west well before his character.

The Civil War makes for an interesting time because the frontier effectively rolled back east for a few years as Federal troops were sent elsewhere.

Quote from: RPGPundit;966397Exactly. Which is why the "super-long never-ending wild west" is a stupid idea.

Unless it makes for a fun game at the table.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;966472The Civil War makes for an interesting time because the frontier effectively rolled back east for a few years as Federal troops were sent elsewhere.

Considering 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. As well as the best western video game, Red Dead Redemption.

As 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.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;966495As well as the best western video game, Red Dead Redemption.

Weird way to spell "Outlaws."

Quote from: RPGPundit;966396Custer's last stand (hell almost ALL the indian wars), Wyatt Earp in Dodge city, the great cattle drives, the lawless Deadwood, the death of Wild Bill Hickcok, Calamity Jane, the end of the buffalo trade, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, the Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid, the rise of the Cowboys, the Las Vegas gang, Tombstone and the Gunfight of the OK Corral, Wyatt Earp's revenge ride, the death of Billy the Kid, and the death of Jesse James all happened within a six year period from 1876-82.

I didn't realize that. Sounds like a good period to set a campaign.

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 Leone trilogy is set in a kind of Escher time loop - Fistful of Dollars is set both before and after The Good The Bad And The Ugly (it has a machine gun!), which is set in the Civil War.

Quote from: S'mon;966529The Leone trilogy is set in a kind of Escher time loop - Fistful of Dollars is set both before and after The Good The Bad And The Ugly (it has a machine gun!), which is set in the Civil War.

The Gatling gun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun) was invented in 1862, and was actually used in service during the Civil War. It's authentically a Wild West weapon, not an anachronism.

Or were you referring to the Mitrailleuse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrailleuse) in Fistful? That one was invented in 1851 and used in service by France.

The Old West is a really interesting time for weapons technology--advances were made in fits and starts, so that you can find some surprisingly sophisticated models of firearms in use right alongside guys who are still using cap-and-ball revolvers, depending on where and when you look.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;966495As well as the best western video game, Red Dead Redemption.

Red Dead Redemption sucked. You couldn't play a Marshal or Lawman, and there were only missions to become a varmint or outlaw, or killer, or cold-blooded murderer. Rock Star's Games idea of Grand Theft Auto in the old west, I'm sure. I tried to play a Lawman, but I couldn't because the whole game was a railroad designed to make you a criminal. The real history of the Old West, especially what is the now U.S Southwest is much more interesting.

I have always thought of the Wild West as being from about 1519 to about 1871 or so. Having grown up out west in Colorado, I have had access to many local history books there that just are not available anywhere else in the United States. The first Spanish Expeditions into what is the U.S. Southwest occurred almost simultaneously as the Invasion of Mexico and the Conquest of the Aztecs in 1519... by the time the American War of Independence had begun, Santa Fe, New Mexico had already seen fifty-three Spanish Governors who had lived some or all of their lives in Santa Fe.. This is the true wild west. Check it out...

Espana Conquista
1494 - (La Nueva Isabelle) i.e. Santo Domingo (1498) founded in the Dominican Republic by Bartholomew Columbus (Crhistopher Columbus' brother)
1500 - Nueva Cadiz founded on the island of Cubagua, Venezuela - tributary to Santo Domingo
1502 - Santa Cruz founded in Columbia by Alonso De Ojedo
1504 - Santa Cruz abandoned.
1513 - Ponce de Leon explores Florida

1514 - Santa Marta founded on July 29, 1525 by the Spanish conquistador Rodrigo de Bastidas in Columbia
1508 - Alonso De Ojedo made Governor of New Andalusia, and Franscisco Pizarro (who conqured Peru) was in this expedition to Venezuela. Hernan Cortez was supposed to go to however became Ill right before the Journey to Venezuela.
1519 - Hernando Cortez invades Mexico and wrecks the Aztec Empire in just under two years.
1519-1697 - Spanish conquest of the Mayan empire in the Yucatan Peninsula (Cortez in 1519 but the Mayans rebelled in
1521 - Tampa founded by Ponce De Leon
1524 - Jesuits settle on a hill overlooking the Spanish Fort of Buenos Aires. Officially settled as a Spanish Colony in 1535.
1527 - Paraguay settled by the Spanish on the Parana river. Fort Spiritu Sanctu.
1532-1572 - Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire (Francisco Pizarro)
1533 - Cartagena founded in Columbia by Pedro De Heredia
1535 - Nueva Espana founded, Nueva Espana is everything North of the what was formerly the Aztec Empire in central Mexico. This includes California, Texas, and the U.S. Southwest.
1536 - Bogota captured by the Spanish Conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and resettled by the Spanish.
1537 - Asuncion founded in Paraguay by Pedro De Mendoza. Official Name: Nuestra Señora Santa María de la Asunción
1537-1543 - Nuevo Reino de Granada founded from all of thea settlements in what is present day Columbia.
1539-1543 - Hernando De Soto with a Spanish military company of conquistadores explores Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois,
1540-1542 - Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján leads an ill-fated overland expedition from Mexico city to Kansas in search of cibola, the seven cities of gold, The expedition returns to Texas, makes it way to Alabama, and then to Pensacola, Florida, where the survivors are rescued.
1565 - St. Augustine founded by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Florida's first governor


Spanish in the U.S. Southwest
1598-1610 - Town of San Juan de los Caballeros - Juan de Oñate y Salazar (1550–1626) was a conquistador from Nuevo Espana, explorer, and the first colonial governor of the Santa Fe de Nuevo México province in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. He led early Spanish expeditions to the Great Plains and Lower Colorado River Valley, encountering numerous indigenous tribes in their homelands there. In 1606, Oñate was recalled to Mexico City for a hearing regarding his conduct. After finishing plans for the founding of the town of Santa Fé, he resigned his post and was tried and convicted of cruelty to both natives and colonists. He was banished from New Mexico for life and exiled from Mexico City for 5 years.San Juan de los Caballeros
1610 - Santa Fe de Nuevo México established by the Spanish Conquistador Don Pedro De Peralta and Mexican Settlers that travelled North into this newly established Spanish Territory, ironically taken using force from the Commanche, many of whom had died of smallpox leaving an empty land. The Spanish Conquistadors found both silver and gold in New Mexico, and very quietly looted New Mexico, until it was taken over by a Spanish Military Governor in 1777. The never did find the Golden City of Cibola. Don Pedro formally founded the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1610. In August 1613 he was arrested and jailed for almost a year by the Franciscan friar Isidro Ordóñez. Later, he was vindicated by the Mexican Inquisition and held a number of other senior posts in the Spanish imperial administration.
1614-1618 - Bernardino de Ceballos was the third Governor of New Mexico
1618-1625 - Juan Álvarez de Eulate y Ladrón de Cegama, Fourth Governor of New Mexico
1626-1629 - Felipe de Sotelo Osorio became the fifth governor of New Mexico. After becoming governor, Sotelo rejected the Roman Catholic Church that he viewed as a dictatorship, thus provoking clashes with the institution. he was convicted of Blasphemy against the Cbhurch, and removed from office.
1629-1632 - Captain Don Francisco Manuel de Silva Nieto left Mexico City on 4 September 1628, reaching Santa Fe on 1 May 1629, when he took office as sixth Governor of New Mexico.
1632-1635 - Francisco de la Mora y Ceballos was a Spanish military officer and merchant who served as governor of colonial New Mexico between March 1632 and 1635.
1634-1637 - Francisco Martínez de Baeza was the colonial governor of New Mexico from November 1634 to 18 April 1637. He was heavily criticized for rejecting the participation of Franciscan missions in the territory, for impeding the conversion of indigenous people to Christianity, and for exploiting the labor of the local people, spanish, mexicans, and indians.
1637-1641 - Luis de Rosas (died January 25, 1642) was a soldier who served as the ninth Governor of New Mexico from 1637 until 1641, when he was then imprisoned and assassinated. During his administration, de Rosas clashed with the Franciscans, mainly because of his handling of the indigenous Americans, whom he forced to work as slaves. The Franciscans promoted a revolt of the citizens of New Mexico against him. de Rosas was imprisoned after an investigation relating to his position as governor. He was killed by soldiers while in prison.
1641 Juan Flores de Sierra - The fatigue caused by the long journey (he had traveled over 1,500 kilometers from Mexico City to Santa Fe made Valdes seriously ill. He appointed Sergeant Francisco Gomes lieutenant governor in order to continue the investigation of Luis de Rosas. Valdés died in autumn 1641 as the shortest-serving governor of New Mexico (from spring 1641 to autumn 1641)
1641-1642 Sargent Francisco Gomez (born 1576, died in either 1656 or 1657) was a prominent Portuguese military leader who held the charge of acting governor of New Mexico between 1641 and 1642. He was among the first permanent Spanish settlers of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Alonso de Pacheco de Herédia
1643 - Alonso de Pacheco de Herédia, 12th Governor of New Mexico.
1644 - Fernando de Argüello was a Spanish soldier who served as the 13th Governor of New Mexico, between 1644 and 1647. He put down an Apache revolt but was Imprisoned for other offences against the Spanish Crown. Fernando De Arguello subsequently escaped, and forfeited his family estates and wealth.
1648-1649 - Luis de Guzmán y Figueroa  was a Spanish soldier who served as governor of New Mexico from 1647 to 1649. During his legislation, Figueroa apparently accepted a bribe from the previous governor of the province, Fernando de Arguello, related to the report and accounts of the residence, which was required for all administrative officials. The accusations against Figueroa and his important charges caused him to leave office as governor in 1649, before his term ended. Rumors suggest that Figueroa died in November, 1650, in a duel in Mexico.
Hernando de Ugarte y la Concha
1649-1652 - Hernando de Ugarte y la Concha was Governor of New Mexico from 1649 to 1653. In 1650, Ugarte put down an uprising among the Jemez Indians, allied with the Navajos and some of the Tigua villages, that was meant to include all the pueblos, although not all joined in. Nine of the Jemez Indians were hanged as traitors, and others were sold as slaves. Following Ugarte's governorship, the New Mexico Pueblo people became increasingly restless, resenting Spanish efforts to resettle them and convert them to Christianity, and eventually revolted and broke free of Spain in 1680
1652-1656 Juan de Samaniego y Xaca - better known just as Juan Samaniego y Jaca, was a prominent Spanish military who served as Governor of New Mexico between 1653 and 1656. He realized several expeditions against some Amerindian people who attacked, kidnapped and took as prisoners to people of other native peoples, in order of liberate these people.
1656-1659 - Juan Manso de Contreras, 17th Spanish Governor of New Mexico.
1659-1660 - Bernardo López de Mendizábal (1620–September 16, 1664) was a Spanish politician, soldier, religious scholar, and native of modern Mexico, who served as governor of New Mexico and as alcalde mayor (or royal administrator) in Guayacocotla (on the Sierra Madre Oriental, northeast of Mexico City). Among Lopez' dictates as governor of New Mexico, he prohibited the Franciscan priests to force the Native Americans to work if they were not paid a salary and he recognized their right to practice their religion. He also permitted the Pueblos Native Americans to perform their religious dances (thus endorsing religious practices that had been prohibited for 30 years). These acts caused disagreements with the Franciscan missionaries of New Mexico in their dealings with the Native Americans. He was indicted by the Inquisition on thirty-three counts of malfeasance and the practice of Judaism in 1660. He was replaced in the same year and his administration ended. He was arrested in 1663 and died a prisoner in 1664.
1661-1664 - Diego Dionisio de Peñalosa Briceño y Berdugo (1621–1687) was a Lima-born soldier who served governor of Spanish New Mexico in 1661–1664.When left New Spain, Peñalosa went to London to propose to Charles II of England an alliance between them in case England was planning an invasion by the Spanish America. However, his idea was rejected. Therefore, in 1678, he traveled to France. For several years, he proposed to the King of France, Louis XIV, to colonize different parts North of New Spain, such as Quivira (probably in Central Kansas) and Teguayo, through a collaboration between both. However, the king always declined his offer. Diego died in France in 1687.
1664 - Tomé Domínguez de Mendoza (1623 - After 1692) was a Spanish soldier (native of modern Mexico) who served as acting Governor of New Mexico in 1664. In Isleta, the Dominguez family settled to the west of El Cerro de Tomé, near Tome Hill (next to Rio Grande). However, when the Pueblo Revolt broke out in 1680, thirty-eight members of the Dominguez family were attacked and killed by the Pueblo Native Americans. In addition to his four sons who fought in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 (among them Tome III), his other two sons, Juan and Diego, were seriously injured due to poisoned arrows. Other family members, such as grandchildren, son-in-laws, brothers and nephews may have also been killed in the war. For the most part, those who survived were forced to leave the place, emigrating south to El Paso del Norte (modern Ciudad Juarez, North of modern Mexico).So, in 1682, Don Pedro de Tomé y Chaves (brother of the first wife of Mendoza, Catalina López Mederos) got permission to migrate to modern-day Mexico with his family and the family of Mendoza. They never returned to New Mexico, even after the Spanish resettlement in New Mexico, which occurred in 1662. Thanks to the Peace Treaty between the Puebloans and the Spanish, Mendoza emigrated to Spain also never to return to New Mexico.
1664-1665 Durán de Miranda was appointed governor of New Mexico for in 1664. He was expelled and arrested in 1665. Despite this, he was appointed for a second term in New Mexico in 1671.
1665-1668 Fernando de Villanueva y Armendaris (died May 17, 1679) was a Spanish soldier, judge and politician who served as governor of Spanish New Mexico between 1665 and 1668. During his period in office, The Apache increased their raids against the Spaniards and the Puebloans. These raids affected especially the Piro Pueblos of the Salinas Basin, causing some to rebel. As a result, Villanueva hanged six Piros and sold others as slaves. The governor of Salinas Pueblo, the Amerindian Esteban Clemente, plotted a revolt against the Spanish throughout New Mexico on Holy Thursday. The Spanish authorities, though, discovered the plan and hanged governor Clemente.
1671-1674  Durán de Miranda was again appointed as governor for a second term.
1675-1679 Juan Francisco Treviño was the 25th Spanish Governor of New Mexico. As governor he persecuted the Pueblo Native Americans, causing the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish settlers.
1679 Antonio de Otermin was the 26th Spanish Governor of the northern New Spain province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, today the U.S. states of New Mexico and Arizona, from 1678 to 1682. He was governor at the time of the Pueblo Revolt, during which the religious leader Popé led the Pueblo people in a military ouster of the Spanish colonists. Otermin had to cope with the revolt with help of the settlers and their descendants in New Mexico, fighting against the Pueblo in some military campaigns and establishing a refuge for the surviving settlers and loyal native Pueblo in the vicinity of the modern Ciudad Juarez.
1680-1692 Nueva México had no governor as the Pueblo Indians revolted and massacred any Spanish they could find, temporarily driving them out of their missions as well as Santa Fe, and Bernalilo, and Las Cruces.
1683 -Misión de San Bruno founded on the east coast of the Baja Peninsula (abandoned) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misi%C3%B3n_San_Bruno

1691-1697 - Diego de Vargas (titular 1688 – 1691, effective 1691 – 1697) He is most famous for leading the reconquest of the territory in 1692 following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. This reconquest is commemorated annually during the Fiestas de Santa Fe in the city of Santa Fe.  In July 1692, de Vargas and a small contingent of soldiers returned to Santa Fe. They surrounded the city and called on the Pueblo people to surrender, promising clemency if they would swear allegiance to the King of Spain and return to the Christian faith. After meeting with de Vargas, the Pueblo leaders agreed to peace, and on September 12, 1692 de Vargas proclaimed a formal act of repossession.

De Vargas' repossession of New Mexico is often called a bloodless reconquest, since the territory was initially retaken without any use of force. Later, when de Vargas returned to Mexico in early 1693 to retrieve a group of settlers, they had to fight their way into Santa Fe. Warriors from four of the pueblos sided with the colonists, but most opposed them. When the capital had been taken, Don Diego ordered some 70 of the Pueblo men killed. Women and children were distributed as servants to the colonists. Similar bloody fighting occurred at many of the other pueblos before the governor felt that the native people had truly submitted to his and the king's authority. The end of widespread hostilities did not mean an end to Pueblo resentment over continued heavy-handed treatment by the colonists. The plundering of Pueblo stocks of corn and other supplies, to sustain the struggling colony, was a periodic occurrence that inflamed animosity. By the end of the century the Spanish colonization was essentially solidified.

1697 - Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó - Loreto Baja. The Jesuits went on to found more eighteen more missions on the Baja Peninsula which were taken over by the Dominican Friars in 1767.

1697-1703 - Pedro Rodríguez Cubero (baptized July 29, 1656 – died 1704) was a Spanish admiral who served as the 31st Spanish governor of New Mexico between 1697 and 1703.
1703-1704 - Diego de Vargas (Yes, for a second time).
1704-1705 Juan Páez Hurtado (born near December 22, 1668 – May 5, 1724) was a Spanish official. He was Captain General, Governor and Mayor of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico.
1705-1707 - Francisco Cuervo y Valdés  (also 3rd Governor of Spanish Texas from 1702-1705, and a Knight of the Order of Santiago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Santiago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Santiago)  Arriving in the province, Cuervo y Valdés found that social and political conditions in the area were very poor. The continuing war between the Apaches and Navajos against the settlers and Pueblos (who were allies of the Spanish), as well as their common assault on the peoples of the province had created those problems.Cuervo y Valdes led troops against Apaches, but the number of soldiers was very small to defend the whole New Mexico territory. So, he sent a letter to the Viceroy asking for reinforcements, but the Viceroy did not attend to the request. Shortly after, he asked for help from the Puebloans, who accepted and joined with his troops. The soldiers needed clothing and supplies. The governor asked the viceroy for weapons, ammunition and clothing. However, the viceroy sent only a small amount of weapons and ammunition to New Mexico. On April 23, 1706, Cuervo y Valdés founded La Villa Real de San Francisco de Albuquerque  (formally Albuquerque) and named the town in honor of the Viceroy. Cuervo y Valdés ordered that a Spanish garrison be established in the city, and it was inhabited by thirty or thirty-five families. The families settled in a piece of land located along the Rio Grande.
1707-1712 José Chacón Medina Salazar y Villaseñor (1668 - ??), also a Knight of the Order of Santiago was a Spanish official who served as the 35th Spanish Governor of New Mexico. Chacon rebuilt the chapel at San Miguel, Santa Fe, which had been destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt uprising of 1680. Under his orders, Hurtado made a military campaign against the Navajo peoples.
1712-1715 - Juan Ignacio Flores Mogollon was a Spanish military officer who served as governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico. Mogollon was commissioned governor of New Mexico by Felipe V at Madrid and, having reached Santa Fe, assumed the office on October 5, 1712. His salary, which had been fixed by the king, was two thousand dollars per annum. Within the first year of the new governor's term, he had to cope with a rebellion of the Suma Indians against the Spaniards in El Paso. He was accused of malfeasance in office and was relieved of his position by royal order on October 5, 1715, being replaced by Felix Martínez de Torrelaguna. The trial was finally held in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1721, long after Mogollon had left the province. The finding of the court was sent to the viceroy of New Spain for confirmation, the costs having been adjudged against Mogollon. However, the officer charged with collecting the costs reported that neither the accused nor any of his property could be found.

1715-1716 - Félix Martínez de Torrelaguna was acting Governor of New Mexico from 1715 to 1716.
1716-1717 - Juan Páez Hurtado (again). Under his governance, The Faraones Apaches had stolen the horses and mules of the Spanish (...all of the horses and mules). In 1714, Hurtado had been assigned to punish this tribe. He led an unsuccessful expedition to search for them.
1718-1721 - Antonio Valverde y Cosío (Interim Governor)
1721-1723 - Juan Estrada de Austria Hmmm John Estrada from Austria.... really???
1723-1731 Juan Domingo de Bustamante ...hmmm John Domingo, the busy, ....really???? - This entry seems like it was made up by a priest who tells bad lies... because their is absolutely no information on this dude in the Spanish Archives.
1731-1736 - Gervasio Cruzat y Góngora was Governor of New Mexico. Records from Cruzat's term as governor include many cases dealing with questions of cattle and land, indicating that the economy of New Mexico was prospering. Cruzat authorized construction of an acequia, or irrigation channel, through Albuquerque, overruling the objections of some landowners. Cruzat reluctantly permitted Fray José de Irigoyen of San Ildefonso to build a new church in Santa Cruz, using Indian laborers, as a public works project for the benefit of the colony. Cruzat followed the formal approach of writing to the viceroy in Mexico City. His letter of 14 July 1732 was answered by a letter dated 31 October 1732. The license to build was received in Santa Cruz in June 1733. He heard various cases against local officials involving abuses against the Pueblo Indians such as extortion and forced labor, generally ruling in favor of the Indians. Officials who were dismissed in 1733 included the alcalde of Bernalillo and the alcalde mayor of Laguna and Acoma. In 1735 the lieutenant alcalde of Chama was found guilty of trading illegally with the Comanches, dismissed and fined.

1736-1738 - Enrique de Olavide y Michelena -  Michelena, accepting a petition of Alferez Juan Josh Moreno, designated seven grazing lands (Cara Del Rio, Santa Cruz or San Marcos), to be exclusively used to graze herds of horses. Owners of herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were notified that these lands would now be designated for horse grazing only. They were ordered to move from these newly-designated lands in fifty days or pay a fine of fifty pesos. Toward the end of his term of appointment, in 1738, Olavide y Michelina visited Albuquerque. Nicolas Duran De Chavez Grant asked him for a grant that would allow him to maintain his large family (9 children) and to graze non-equine livestock on the newly designated lands. Michelina refused, but gave him permission to use the lands temporarily, until a new governor was appointed to New Mexico to officially grant the request.

1739-1743 Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza y Delgado was a Spanish soldier in the War of the Spanish Succession. He later served as the 45th Spanish colonial governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México province (present day New Mexico) from 1739 to 1743. In 1741, Mendoza issued laws to protect and defend women and children in Taos. So, he punished all men who wounded, killed or mistreating to "infidel" woman and boys, fining them with three-hundred silver pesos and six years in exile. However, this law was impossible to carry out, especially due to the distance between Santa Fe (capital of New Mexico), and Taos. During Mendoza's administration, many children were captured, especially children who belonged to the Navajo, Utes, Comanche and Apache tribes.

Later, a group of seven Comanches traveled to Taos Pueblo to trade tobacco and they explained that his tribe would be visit the valley when the snows abandoned the mountains. However, they also indicated the French had armed him with muskets and then they traveled to some unknown direction beyond their lands (colonial New France). However, they indicated also that two French traders would go to visit New Mexico in the spring. When the news reached Mendoza, he decided to establish a presidio (fort) in the north to protect the population of Taos from the possible French invasion, and did so in the Jicarilla Apache's abandoned settlement. The presidio would use many shelters that had been built in the place.

Despite this, for some reason, when the French traders visited Santa Fe, Mendoza accepted them and gave them a map showing the Spanish settlements in Santa Fe de Nuevo México. The traders later brought the map back to the French Louisiana colony in New France where they were based, causing the repentance of Mendoza for having given them the map. The trade with the French did allow the Spanish obtain French guns

1743-1749 - Joaquín Codallos y Rabal was a Spanish soldier who served as the Spanish colonial governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México during this time. After assuming the charge of governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, Codallos started to issue new laws. They included banning illegal trade and gambling, and the posting of notices for caravans that came from elsewhere in New Spain. Residents in Albuquerque presented a petition to the governor, asking for permission to sell wool locally and as an export and was granted a license. During the tenure of Codallos, crime increased slightly. A major case of crime in the Codallos government was instigated by Manuel Sanz de Garvisu, who caused an insurrection and disobeyed the governor. As a result, Sanz de Garvisu was seized and sent to Chihuahua with an armed escort. He was then sent to Mexico City to be tried before the viceroy.  Early in the governor's term, Codallos proposed a campaign against the Native American people. He forbade the mistreatment of women and children, but only while campaigns were ongoing. Codallos often fought the Utes and Comanches. In October, 1747, Codallos (according to the historian L. Bradford Prince) "killed 107, captured 206, and secured about 1000 horses".[1] In 1748, he ordered that all persons who had left the presidio of El Paso del Norte return there at once. The purpose of this decree was to increase the number of people available for a campaign against the Indians who, following the Gila Campaign of 1747, had attacked Spanish settlements. In that same year, a Genízaro sent a statement to Codallos regarding the conditions of Navajo lands. He noted that the Navajos were being attacked by the people of the Ute lands (From Colorado), though they (The Navajo)  were loyal to the Spanish. However, the governor could not help the Navajo, and they continued to be attacked by the Ute people. In 1748, under his administration, the Franciscan Menchero re-established the Sandia Pueblo.


1749-1754 Tomás Vélez Cachupín was a colonial judge, and the Spanish colonial governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México province (present day New Mexico), located in the northern Viceroyalty of New Spain (colonial México), from 1749 to 1754 and 1762 to 1767. Cachupín's courage and compassion during the War of San Diego Pond won him great respect among the Comanches, Utes, and Apaches. Because of this, he was able to maintain peaceful relations with nomadic tribes in the province. He created practical solutions for keeping the peace between the Amerindians and the Spanish. He also protected the right to the possession of lands by the people of New Mexico, including the Amerindians, fining and imprisoning those who occupied the lands of others under the theory that these lands were property of their inhabitants.

1754-1760 - Francisco Antonio Marín del Valle (born near July 12, 1722 - ??) was Governor and Captain General of New Mexico. In 1754, he commissioned Spanish engineer and cartographer Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco to make the new map of El Paso, where he had lived since 1743. His work was the first accurate and detailed map of southern New Mexico, in El Paso. As the Spanish had no churches in New Mexico, Marin del Valle ordered the construction of one church for the 1000 men living there with their wives. He named the church as Nuestra Señora de la Luz.

1760 - Mateo Antonio de Mendoza Díaz de Arce was a military leader and the governor of Nueva Vizcaya and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico in 1760. He was the interim governor between Francisco Antonio Marin del Valle and Manuel Portillo Urrisola.

1760-1762 - Manuel de Portillo y Urrisola, was a judge who served as the acting Spanish colonial governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. In 1761, the Apaches violently attacked the Pueblo of Taos, New Mexico. To punish them for this, Portillo y Urrizola sent a military expedition against the Apaches, which ended with the murder of 400 Apaches.

1762-1767 -  Tomás Vélez Cachupín  After completing his first term in 1754, Vélez Cachupin returned to Spain. He requested a new term as governor of New Mexico, and King Charles III granted his wish on 14 March 1761. He was appointed for another six years. However, when he returned to New Mexico, he again faced many of the problems he had solved during his previous term, as his successor had not followed his advice on to how to interact peacefully with the native peoples.

When he began his second term as governor, Vélez Capuchin freed six Comanche female prisoners as a gesture of good will to the Comanches. Because of this, nine warriors and six female Comanches traveled to Taos to negotiate with the Spanish governor and verify that he had returned to the province. The governor banned the sale and purchase of Comanche genízaros because he knew the importance of trading captives when negotiating peace with the Comanches. He also ordered Comanche captives be held near Santa Fe, in case they were needed for prisoner exchange with the Comanches. Another era of lasting peace with the Amerindian nomads began.

In addition to his military duties, the governor also attended to the economic and judicial affairs of the people of the province including the Spanish, Creoles, and mestizos as well as the indigenous community. The governor was the highest ranking civil and criminal judge of New Mexico and he was also the judge of some serious municipal cases.

In November 1750, French traders, Paul and Pierre Mallet, visited New Mexico from New France. They had previously visited New Mexico in 1739 and, on this second visit, the Governor gave them a cool reception. This was because the French had started a trade war with New Mexico and were trying to occupy most of northern Spanish Texas, making France one of its main rivals. The governor seized the French traders' possessions and auctioned them to raise funds to pay four guards who escorted them to Mexico City.

In 1762, after learning that an Ute had been found in possession of a silver ingot, Vélez Capuchin ordered Spanish explorer Juan Maria Antonio de Rivera Joaquín Laín, Gregorio Sandoval and Pedro Mora, to Colorado to locate where the ingot had come from.[Locating gold and silver was a priority in order to replenish the royal coffers. The expedition traveled through southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah (which belonged to Spain at this time),[4] establishing sections of future Old Spanish Trail.

In 1764, Vélez Cachupin gave land to the Amerindians and later convinced the Suma Amerindians to settle in San Lorenzo[disambiguation needed], on land near to that he had given the Amerindians in 1764, promising to protect them. He also banned inhabitants from El Paso (which was by this time a city) from entering Amerindian land for any reason including grazing sheep, or gathering firewood. In addition, any person who cut trees on the Sumas lands would be punished with a fine of 40 pesos or imprisonment for two years. Additionally, he would confiscated their carts and oxen. These fines were to be used to purchase agricultural tools for the Sumas. In 1766, he banned the inhabitants of Atrisco from occupying land in San Fernando, because they were to be used only by the native inhabitants. Whoever broke the ban would have to pay a fine of 30 pesos for each infraction. He also protected the lands of the Genizaros of Belen and of Santa Clara, and San Ildefonso Pueblo.

In November 1765, a viceregal ban was issued implementing a tobacco monopoly that forbid growing tobacco in New Mexico. However, the governor tried to prevent enforcement of the law, because it could disrupt the local economy and adversely affect the good relations with the province's nomadic tribes who got their snuff from New Mexican farmers. In January 1766, the governor outlined in a report to the viceroy the negative effects that would result from the ban. However, in the end, he was obliged to enforce the law in the spring. His predictions proved true.

1767-1777 - Pedro Fermín de Mendinueta was the 53rd Spanish colonial governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México province. Mendinueta became governor and captain-general of Santa Fe de Nuevo México province in 1767. In October 1767, the rising Santa Fe River caused a flood in the town. Mendinueta called on the residents to build retaining walls between the riverbed and the pueblo to protect public buildings. Afterwards, the Palace of the Governors remained unharmed in subsequent floods. In November 1767, Mendinueta established a law to regulate the hardest crimes in order to set an example. In addition, In early 1768 Mendinueta sent orders to Francisco Trebol Navarro (alcalde mayor of the city of Albuquerque) and Felipe Tafoya (alcalde mayor of Santa Fe) that they punish crimes taking place in their cities (gambling, concubinage, theft, prostitution, etc.) or else be fired. Indeed, Mendinueta considered Albuquerque to be one of the most dangerous places in New Mexico. In January 1768, Mendinueta was named a captain, so he led the Spanish troops that would participate in a military campaign against indigenous peoples. However, Mendinueta did not support all the requests from the residents of New Mexico. For example, he refused the citizens' request to replace Trebol as mayor of Albuquerque because they felt Trebol was incompetent. Indeed, during his administration, the crime rate increased in Albuquerque. He also fought with the Commanches.

1768 - January 28th - Las Californias, was established by a joint dispatch to the King from Viceroy de Croix and visitador José de Gálvez
Alto California Sur, what you tards call NoCal included everything North of Los Angeles and the capitol was San Francisco (Named of course, after the Franciscan mission at the Presidio at Monterrey that had been established their earlier at Yerba Buena. Juan Bautista de Anza officially settled San Francisco (Yerba Buena) for the King of Spain in 1774.
Baja California Sur (SoCal) included Los Angeles, and everything south to Mexico, and east to Texas. Spanish caballeros settled California and built these ginormous cattle ranches. Some of these ranches were so large they spanned across several modern states. Little known fact: By

1777 - Francisco Trevre  Acting Governor of  Santa Fe de Nuevo México province.

1778-1788 - Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto (July 6/7, 1736 – December 19, 1788) was a New-Spanish explorer of Basque descent, and Governor of New Mexico for the Spanish Empire. On his return from a successful exploration expedition to Colorado in 1777 he journeyed to Mexico City with the chief of the lower Colorado River area Quechan (Yuma) Native American tribe who requested the establishment of a mission. On August 24, 1777, the Viceroy of New Spain appointed Anza as the Governor of the Province of Nuevo México, the present day U.S. state of New Mexico.

Governor Anza led a punitive expedition against the Comanche group of Native Americans, who had been repeatedly raiding Taos during 1779. With his Ute and Apache Native American allies, and around 800 Spanish soldiers, Anza went north through the San Luis Valley, entering the Great Plains at what is now Manitou Springs, Colorado. Circling "El Capitan" (current day Pikes Peak), he surprised a small force of the Comanche near present-day Colorado Springs. Pursuing them south down Fountain Creek, he crossed the Arkansas River near present-day Pueblo, Colorado. He found the main body of the Comanche on Greenhorn Creek, returning from a raid in Nuevo México, and won a decisive victory. Chief Cuerno Verde, for whom Greenhorn Creek is named, and many other leaders of the Comanche were killed.

1789-1794 Fernando de la Concha was the Governor of New Mexico. He opened a trade route in Santa Fe from the East. In 1792, on orders of the viceroy Revillagigedo, Concha sent Pedro Vial, Vicente Villanueva, and Vicente Espinosa to Saint Louis, Missouri, from Santa Fe, establishing a trade route. This route would become in the trade Santa Fe - Missouri of Santa Fe Trail.

1794-1804 - Fernando Chacón was a Spanish soldier, and a Knight of the Order of Santiago who served as a governor of what is now New Mexico. By decree of Salsedo, on May 3, 1804, Chacón sent an expedition to Northern New Mexico in order to find Lewis and Clark, who had begun their exploratory trip four months earlier. The expedition, consisting of 52 soldiers, Spanish settlers, and Native Americans, was led by Pedro Vial and José Jarvet and was named the expedition of Captain Merri. The expedition left Santa Fe, New Mexico, on August 1.

1800 California and New Mexico were the largest beef exporter in the world, and Spain was the largest Beef importer in Europe. The capitol of Baja California Sur was San Diego and it was officially settled in 1769 by Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto (who was also the first governor of what is now New Mexico. The Apache, Commanche, the Navajo and the Yuma indians held the mountains of Eastern California and Arizona in between San Diego and Santa Fe, New Mexico and they pissed on the Spanish, hard... for more than a century!!!

1804-1807 - Joaquín del Real Alencaster was a Spanish soldier who served as the governor of New Mexico.



1804-1806 - Lewis & Clark Expedition West to survey lands ceded by the French to the United States.
1804-1807 Joaquín del Real Alencaster, Second Mexican Governor of New Mexico
1806 - Zebulon Pike survey expedition to Colorado ( General Pike was detained by Facundo Melgares , the last Spanish Governor and the third Mexican Governor of New Mexico at the request of the Second Governor of New Mexico, the two explorers became lifelong friends)
1807-1808 - Alberto Maynez was a lieutenant colonel who served as Governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico. During his administration in New Mexico, he allowed the Neomexicanos to trade with pagans and the province of Nueva Vizcaya. This meant the merchants needed only government approval and passports to trade with them (the passports were required to confirm that the number of armed men in the transactions was enough). In 1808, he was replaced by José Manrique. Several years later, in 1850 he was appointed acting Governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México and city councilman in Santa Fe after Santa Fe was a United States Territory.
1808-1814 - José Manrique was the Governor of New Mexico from 1808 to 1814 during the period just before the Republic of Mexico gained independence from Spain.
1810-1821 Mexican Rebellion against Spain
1814-1816  Alberto Maynez Second Term. In October 1815, Maynez issued a law that defended the Indigenous rights of New Mexico. In 1816, during the final year of his government in New Mexico, 280 Spanish colonists protested the new 5% tax (which had been set by the Alcalde Mayor of Taos, Pedro Martin). The complaint was delivered to Maynez who represented them. Alcalde Mayor Pedro Martin resigned.
1816-1818 - Pedro María de Allande served as the Spanish Governer of New Mexico.
1819-1821 - Facundo Melgares (1775, Caravaca, Murcia, Spain - unknown) was a Spanish military officer who served as both the last (63rd) Spanish Governor of New Mexico and the first Mexican Governor of New Mexico. Melgares was, like most of the officials of the Spanish crown in his time, a member of the Spanish upper class. He is described as a "portly man of military demeanour" and as "a gentleman and gallant soldier". Melgares' post as Governor of New Mexico was held under the scrutiny of the commanding general of Chihuahua and the viceroy in Mexico City. His responsibilities included administration of civilian activities; defence of the province from local Indian hostilities and foreign invaders in the north; and control of the prison troops and civilian militia.

In the first month of Melgares' office, there were hostilities by Navajo against villages in the north. The governor issued a call to all the citizens of New Mexico, for contributions of grain and other supplies (such as metals for weapons) to aid his forces stationed in Santa Fe. Melgares himself, made a personal donation of cereals, metal and sheep. A local priest donated his local church bell to be cast into munitions. The Presidio of Santa Fe had only 167 soldiers to battle the Navajo and so Melgares sent troops from Chihuahua and some 60 soldiers from San Eleazario (near El Paso).

In late October 1818, Melgares tasked Captain Andrés Gómez Sanudo, chief of the military second in Taos, with marching to Jemez and attacking no later than 7 November 1818. Melgares determined that the Navajo should yield or be driven to the Deserts of California.

Two months before the New Mexico viceroy's alert about an imminent attack by the United States, Melgares had ordered a reconnaissance of the Arkansas Valley to verify rumours of a US presence among the Pawnees. Melgares source was Sergeant José Cayetano Hernández, who said that while he was in captivity, a US army officer visited the Pawnees to propose a plan of unification with the Kiowas in an effort to invade the Spanish territory. The officer, according to Hernández, promised to arm the Indians in exchange for their allegiance. Both tribes were to meet in the fall, in the Gerbidora (Colorado Springs, Colorado), to finalize plans for an attack on New Mexico. While admitting that he never really saw the US officer, he estimated more than 300 Indians were trained and armed.

Although Melgara did not believe the sergeant, he notified General Garcia Conde and sent Lieutenant Jose Maria de Arce north of the New Mexico border to confirm the intelligence. On 1 September 1818, Arce left Taos with 120 men. Shortly after his departure from northern New Mexico, 400 men under the command of Juan de Dios Peña, the mayor of Taos, joined the expedition. Arce crossed the Blood of Christ in the Huerfano Valley and proceeded to the Platte River but did not find any invading force. Arce confirmed that the Amerindians were loyal to Spain and would alert New Mexico of any planned invasion by the US. Despite the reassurances, Melgares requested a reinforcement of 500 soldiers, half as infantry, armed with rifles and bayonets, to strengthen the outposts of the north. Melgares also resumed war against the Navajo. He sent 600 soldiers to Taos, and 400 to El Vado. 800 men were held in reserve to deal with the Navajo. Melgares fought ongoing difficulties related to unrealistic demands of his distant commanders.

In February 1819, when it seemed the US-Mexico border was safe, the commander, General Antonio Cordero, tasked Melgares to make peace with the Native Americans in every way he could. However, Melgares continued to fight under the unlikely mandate of the Hopi requesting Spanish protection against the Navajo. Despite the objections of Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca and General Cordero, Melgares succeeded and on 21 August 1819, imposed a formal peace agreement between Spain and the Navajo. The next three years in New Mexico were peaceful.

In 1821, Thomas James, an American trader commented that Melgares' troops in Santa Fe were a bedraggled, motley lot and said of Malgares himself,

"The doughty Governor Facundo Melgares, on foot, in his cloak and chapeau de bras, was reviewing this noble army....he was five feet wide, as thick as he was long, and as he waddled from one end of the line to the other, I thought of Alexander, and Hannibal, and Caesar, and how their glories would soon be eclipsed by this hero of Santa Fe."

Melgares remained a staunch monarchist despite the strong likelihood of Mexican independence. Following Agustín de Iturbide's Plan of Iguala, Melgares reluctantly supported the new republic. On 26 December 1821, Melgares received official word that he should swear allegiance to the new New Mexico government.[ In 1821, after independence, Melgares welcomed the first US trade delegation (under William Backnell) to Santa Fe. On 6 January 1822, a local celebration of independence was made.

On 5 July 1822, Melgares was dismissed from his post. He continued as a soldier under the command of his replacement, Francisco Xavier Chávez. The charges leading to Melgares demotion are not known but may have involved the priest of Abiquiu who tried to appropriate town property for his church. In August 1823, Melgares was cleared of all charges. After that, at age 58, Melgares falls from the pages of history.
 

Americans in the Spanish Southwest
1811-1840 - Oregon Trail established by Fur Traders, Trappers, and Traders (horses only. Until 1836 the wagons could only go as far west to Fort Hall, Idaho before the trail became too wild even for a six-oxen pulled Wagon. From 1846-1869 some 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners, ranchers, and business owners and their families joined a Wagon Train and resettled in the West. Many died of starvation, disease, from Indian raids (Mostly Ute, Piutes, Commanche, Lakota, Yuma) , died of thirst (Especially in Utah and Idaho), and from dysentery.

1821-1823 First Mexican Empire - was a short-lived monarchy and the first independent post-colonial state in Mexico. It was the only former colony of the Spanish Empire to establish a monarchy after independence and for a short time, together with the Empire of Brazil, it was one of two empires in the Americas. The First Mexican Empire was short-lived, lasting less than two years. Ruled by General Augustin I, of Mexico until he abdicated and fled from Mexico in 1823 after a rebellion than began in Veracruz under General Antonio López de Santa Anna.

1822 - Mexican Governors of New Mexico - There were seventeen more Governors of New Mexico from 1822-1848. They are all listed here for brevity, and becuase I'm tired of typing... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexican_governors_of_New_Mexico (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexican_governors_of_New_Mexico)
1824 -  Estados Unidos Mexicanos, also known as the First Federal Republic formed in Mexico

1829  - Kit Carson joins American trappers and fur traders in a company under Ewing Young as a trader, trapper, and trail guide and travels from Franklin, Missouri to Taos, New Mexico, and then onward to California.  From Kit Carson's autobiography: We left Taos in August of 1829. In those days licenses were not granted to citizens of the United States to trap within the limits of Mexico. To avoid all mistrust on the part of (mexican) Government Officers, we traveled North fifty miles, and then changed our course to the Southwest. Traveling through country occupied by the Navajo Indians, we passed the village of Zuni, on on to the head of the Salt River, one of the tributaries of the Rio Gila (near the Eastern Border of Arizona). Here we met the same Indians that had defeated the former party. Young directed the Greater part of his men to hide themselves, which was done, the men concealing themsleves under blankets, pack saddles, as best they could. The hills were covered with Indians, and seeing so few of us they concluded to make an attack and drive us from our position. Our commander allowed them to enter our camp, and then ordered us to fire on them, which was done, the indians having fifteen or twenty warriors killed and a great number wounded. They were routed, and we continued our march, trapping down the Salt river to the mouth of the San Francisco River, and up to the head of the latter stream. We were nightly harassed by the Indians, who would frequently crawl into our camp, steal a trap or two, kill a mule or horse, and do whatever damage they could.

On the head of the San Francisco River the party was divided, one section, of which I was a member, to proceed to the valley of Sacramento in California, and the other, to return to Taos for traps to replace those that had been stolen, and to dispose of the beaver we had caught. Young took charge of the party for California, consisting of eighteen men. We remained where we were for a few days after the departure of the party for Taos, for the purpose of procuring meat and making necessary arrangements for a journey through a country that had never been explored (from the headwaters of the Verde River to the Mohave River of California). Game was very scarce. After remaining three days continually on the hunt to procure the necessary supplies we found we had killed only three deer, the skins of which we took off in such a manner as to make tanks for the purpose of carrying water. We then started on our expedition in the best of spirits, having heard from the Indians that the streams of the valley to which we were going were full of beaver, but that the country over which we were to travel were very barren, and that we would suffer very much for want of water; the truth of which we were very soon to know.

The first four days' march was over a country sandy and burned up, and without a drop of water. Each night we received a small quantity of water from the tanks we had been foresighted enough to provide. A guard was placed over them to prohibit anyone from making use of more than his due allowance.After four days' travel we found water. Before we reached it, the pack mules were strung along the road for several miles. They smelled water long before we had any hopes of finding any,and all made the best use of their strength left to them after their severe suffering to reach it as soon as they could. We remained here two days. It would have been impractical to continue the march without giving the men and animals the rest which they so much required.

After remaining in camp for two days we resumed our expedition and for four days traveled over a country similar to that which we had traversed before our arrival at the last water. There was no water to be found during this time, and we suffered extremely on account of it. On the fourth day we arrived at the Colorado of the west below the great Canon. (this is actually on the Colorado River at the California/Arizona border close to Havasu, Arizona). Our joy when we discovered the stream can better be imagined than described. We had also suffered greatly for want of food. We met a party of Mohave Indians and purchased from them a Mare, heavy with foal. The Mare was killed and eaten by the party with great gusto, even the foal was devoured. We encamped on the bank of the colorado for three days, recruiting our animals, and trading for provisions with the Indians, from whom we procured a few beans and some corn. Then we took a  Southwestern course and in three days march struck the bed of a stream running Northeast, which rises in the Coast range and si lost in the sands of the Great Basin. We proceeded up this stream for six days, and two days after our arrival on it, we found water. We then left the stream and traveled in a Westerly direction, and in four days arrived at the Mission of San Gabriel (close to Los Angeles).

At the mission was one priest, fifteen (spanish) soldiers, and about one thousand Indians. They had eighty thousand head of stock, fine fields and vineyards, in fact, it was a paradise on earth. We remained one day at the mission, receiving good treatment from the inhabitants, and purchasing from them what beef we required. We had nothing but Butcher knives to trade and four for of these they would give us a beef.

In one days' travel from this mission, we reached the mission of San Fernando, having about the same number of inhabitants, but not conducted on as large a scale as the one at San Gabriel. We then took a Northwest course and passed over the mountains into the valley of the Sacramento. We had plenty to east and found grass in abundance for our animals. We found signs of trappers on the San Joaquin, we followed their trail and in a few days overtook the party and found them to belong to the Hudson's Bay Company. They were sixty men strong, commanded by Peter Ogden. We trapped down thh San Joaquin and found but little beaver, but plenty of other game, elk, deer, and antelope in thousands. We traveled near each other until we came to the Sacramento, where we parted, Ogden going up the Sacramento bound for the Columbia River. We remained on the Sacramento during the summer (of 1830), and since it was not the season for trapping, we passed our time hunting...
 
1836- California is unified as one province in Nuevo Espana by The Spanish Viceroyal.
1840 Republic of the Rio Grande - After a decade of strife, Mexico had won its independence from the Kingdom of Spain in 1821. After a failed attempt at a monarchy, Mexico adopted a new constitution, the 1824 Constitution. This new constitution established los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, or "the United Mexican States," as a federal republic. During the war for independence, many rebels were driven to Coahuila and Nuevo León, where this revolutionary mentality won the hearts and minds of the people.[1]
In 1833, General Antonio López de Santa Anna was elected to his first term as president and was, at the time of his election, in support of the federal republic. However, after some members of government angered Santa Anna's political allies, Santa Anna decided to start a centralized government. Santa Anna suspended the constitution, disbanded Congress and made himself the center of power in Mexico. States were converted into departments without political or fiscal autonomy by replacing elected governors with appointed ones and substituting state assemblies for juntas under Santa Anna's policies. Dismayed by these policies and the perception that the government was deaf to the complaints and plight of the villagers in the North, republic leaders aimed to expel the government-appointed centralist officials and restore the Constitution of 1824. On November 3, 1838, one of the republic leaders, Antonio Canales, issued a pronunciamiento against the government and in favor of federalism and succeeded from Mexico. Now this rebellion was crushed by Santa Anna. He might have been able to easily crush the Republic of Texas in 1840, but didn't, because he was too busy dealing with this.

The American Southwest
1835-1847 - Mexican-American War.
1846 - American Governors of New Mexico - Listed here for Brevity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_New_Mexico (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_New_Mexico)
1847 -Callifornia (all of it), Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and and Texas ceded to the United States after the Mexican American war of 1847 in 1848.
1848 - Gold discovered up near Sacramento, kicking off the largest ever migration of Europeans to the new world, and the largest ever migration west of miners, pilgrims, and settlers. U.S. Cavalry Regiments dispatched west to protect settlers.
1849 - California Gold Rush.
1850 - California Territory becomes the first State in the United States west of Illinois.
1860 - April 3, Pony Express founded. Stations setup every forty miles from Chicago to San Francisco and from Santa Fe to Los Angeles.
1866 - Railroad from Chicago to San Francisco completed. Pony Express dies. Oregon Trail dies as people take train west (much faster) instead of a oxen driven wagon.
1866-1868 - red Cloud's War (Lakota in Wyoming & Nebraska)
1869 - End of the Oregon Trail as a pilgrims route.
1874 - Custers Last Stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
1875-1877 - Black Hills War.
1890 - Wounded Knee Massacre
1898 Last Indian (Chippewa) Uprising at Sugar Point, Minnesota
1912 - New Mexico Admitted into the Union and becomes a part of the United States.
1924 - Last uprising of the Apache ends.

There were more than 1,800,000 spaniards that had already emigrated to the New World before the first boat load of English under Sir Walter Raleigh colonized Roanoke, Virginia in 1585.


1564 map of New Andalusia where Alonso De Ojedo was Governor until 1515.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/1562_Diego_Gutierrez_Amazonas.jpg)

Buenos Aires in 1628
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Buenos_Aires_%28Aldus_Verthoont%2C_ca_1628%29.jpg)

1550 Map of Cartagena
Sacked, burned, and looted by Sir Francis Drake with 23 ships and over 3,000 men in 1586.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Boazio-Sir_Francis_Drake_in_Cartagena.jpg)

The Oregon Trail 1811-1869
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Wpdms_nasa_topo_oregon_trail.jpg)

Pueblos of the Northern Rio Grande Valley
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Pueblos_Rio_Grande_valley.JPG)

Red Dead Redemption suffered from typical Rockstar bloat. I lost interest long before the end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_San_Diego_de_Alcal%C3%A1

This is just a few miles from where I was born and predates the existence of the United States, so I'm well aware of what was going on out here well before the Civil War, but when people refer to the Old West or the Wild West they usually mean Cowboys and Indians,  not Conquistadores y Aztecas.

Holy crap GameDaddy, that is an impressive chunk of information. Any good books on the subject that you would recommend?

Quote from: 3rik;966466The notion that the invention and proliferation of barbed wire was what truly tamed the Wild West IMHO makes sense as well.

ooh barbed wire! Mean stuff. One of my brothers accidentally ran full tilt into some concealed by tall grass and ow! that wasnt fun!

Back on topic. Sometimes it feels like the "steampunk" theme itself is losing, ahem, steam. Ive talked to a few now who are getting tired of the over-use of the theme, and a few who are more than tired of the term being slapped onto things its obviously not.

Quote from: Omega;966403Except a-lot of action takes place in towns, settled areas, or between town A and town B. It is possibly not so much the encroachment of civilization as it is the advancing wave of law enforcement?. It is one thing when you've got just a sheriff. But it is another when you've hot multiple marshals on your trail. And some kept moving as they wore out their welcome in one town after another.

So perhaps the west can persist to a point but eventually you run out of places the law cant reach you?

So perhaps the end of the West was that point when lawlessness couldn't outrun the law anymore?

That's one part of it, for sure. But not all of it.  Another part already mentioned here was that the increase in ranchers and later farmers settling in the west closed off land.

But in towns, the increase in law and order was a consequence of the phenomenon of business and industry moving west first.  You'd see towns like Dodge City, which started as a big drinking hole for buffalo hunters in 1872, becoming a boomtown specifically because the Eastern half of Kansas closed off their towns to cattle drives on the behest of "respectable people" and businessmen, and for a while being essentially run by the Saloon owners and semi-crooks, only to end up being usurped by the "Better People" (that was literally the name of the political cabal of respectable business owners, judges, politicians, churchmen and other 'respectables' that banded together as a political machine to oust the saloon-owners from local government!) by around 1881.

So as regions became more settled they also became more controlled and there wasn't room for the eccentrics and outlaws and fly-by-night profiteers that characterized the West.

Quote from: Baulderstone;966473Unless it makes for a fun game at the table.

I already covered that.  If all you want is to run a game in Fictional Wild-West Themepark Land, more power to you. Just don't pretend your alt-history meant to make the west last forever "makes sense". Shit, just don't even try to explain it, just admit that you're running a game with no historical coherence and be done with it.

Quote from: Dumarest;966507I didn't realize that. Sounds like a good period to set a campaign.

There's a reason my current Wild West campaign started in 1875 and will likely finish around 1883.

The PCs are currently in late 1878, and they're already realizing that Dodge has hit its peak and is starting its transition (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2017/06/wild-west-campaign-update-end-of-era.html) into being Not The West Anymore.

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.

Quote from: RPGPundit;966394Agreed. Alt-history can sometimes be a fun little exercise. Fantasy can be good for escape. But I've never, for example, seen any Wild West Tv Show or movie that was as amazing as the real story of what happened. And the ones that got the closest, shows like Deadwood or Tombstone, were the ones that tried to get closer to real historical events than most.


It's the same in fantasy. Game of Thrones is awesome, and has great characters. But it wasn't as awesome a story or had characters as interesting as the War of the Roses.

Quote from: RPGPundit;966860I already covered that.  If all you want is to run a game in Fictional Wild-West Themepark Land, more power to you. Just don't pretend your alt-history meant to make the west last forever "makes sense". Shit, just don't even try to explain it, just admit that you're running a game with no historical coherence and be done with it.

And now Pundit, of all people, expressed how I feel about lots of commercially successful settings:D!

Quote from: RPGPundit;966861There's a reason my current Wild West campaign started in 1875 and will likely finish around 1883.

The PCs are currently in late 1878, and they're already realizing that Dodge has hit its peak and is starting its transition (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2017/06/wild-west-campaign-update-end-of-era.html) into being Not The West Anymore.

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

Quote from: AsenRG;966865And now Pundit, of all people, expressed how I feel about lots of commercially successful settings:D!

That makes sense. Successful settings are likely to be Thempark style settings that combine different time periods and regions together to support the widest variety of character types and adventures possible, thus appealing to the widest audience possible.

Strict historical settings are less appealing to play in because nothing of significance, and nothing surprising, can ever happen. It's like playing in Star Wars where your PCs sit on the sidelines watching Luke save the galaxy.

cue Black Vulmea in 3..2...1...

Quote from: hedgehobbit;966921That makes sense. Successful settings are likely to be Thempark style settings that combine different time periods and regions together to support the widest variety of character types and adventures possible, thus appealing to the widest audience possible.

Strict historical settings are less appealing to play in because nothing of significance, and nothing surprising, can ever happen. It's like playing in Star Wars where your PCs sit on the sidelines watching Luke save the galaxy.

The first part is true.
The second part is BS. But the perception that it's true is the actual reason why strict historical settings aren't as popular as they ought to be!

Quote from: hedgehobbit;966921Strict historical settings are less appealing to play in because nothing of significance, and nothing surprising, can ever happen. It's like playing in Star Wars where your PCs sit on the sidelines watching Luke save the galaxy.

Many fantasy settings fall into this as well. Hyperborea, Middle Earth, the Young Kingdoms, Barsoom, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Krynn, all have their histories already mapped out.  What is the point of a Stormbringer campiagn when you know Elric is going to sound the Horn of Fate and destroy the world anyway?

There is absolutely no reason that a strictly historical campaign has to remain strictly historical once play begins. In any game as soon as the PCs take action they begin to change the world. Maybe in a significant way, maybe not, but begin to change the world they do.

Quote from: Omega;966850

Quote from: 3rik;966466The notion that the invention and proliferation of barbed wire was what truly tamed the Wild West IMHO makes sense as well.

ooh barbed wire! Mean stuff. One of my brothers accidentally ran full tilt into some concealed by tall grass and ow! that wasnt fun!

I didn't make it up, nor was I joking:

QuoteBarbed wire is often cited by historians as the invention that truly tamed the West. Herding large numbers of cattle on open terrain required significant manpower just to catch strays, but with an inexpensive method to divide, sub-divide and allocate parcels of land to control the movement of cattle, the need for a vast labor force became unnecessary. By the beginning of the 20th century the need for significant numbers of cowboys was not necessary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire#In_the_American_West (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire#In_the_American_West)

Yeah, the Winchester '73 might be the Gun That Won the West, but Barbed Wire is the invention that killed the Wild West, even more so than the railroad and telegraph.  Literally strangled it to death.

But any setting with a "future history" whether Middle-Earth or Dodge City, becomes alt-history the second PCs hit the ground, like Clash said.  Or put it this way, they should.

The era from, say, the California Gold Rush upto and including the Civil War also feels quite western-y to me. Is that really not considered part of The Wild West?

Quote from: 3rik;967405I didn't make it up, nor was I joking:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire#In_the_American_West (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire#In_the_American_West)

What the hell made you think I was insinuating you were making it up?

Quote from: 3rik;967452The era from, say, the California Gold Rush upto and including the Civil War also feels quite western-y to me. Is that really not considered part of The Wild West?

I think that period was the "Gold Rush", of course they may overlap.

I 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.

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.

I think that it is significant to note that the Wild West Era did only last for about 25 years, but a tremendous amount of United States national identity comes from that 25 year period.

Quote from: Omega;967459What the hell made you think I was insinuating you were making it up?

Language barrier? I wasn't sure you were taking it entirely seriously, is all.

Quote from: jeff37923;967526I think that it is significant to note that the Wild West Era did only last for about 25 years, but a tremendous amount of United States national identity comes from that 25 year period.

I'm not sure the Wild West era is over yet. Have you seen the craziness on our freeways?

Quote from: Dumarest;967645I'm not sure the Wild West era is over yet. Have you seen the craziness on our freeways?

Heh, there certainly is some of that still floating around, especially some of the "take the law into your own hands" approach of the Vigilance Committees, and groups like the El Monte Boys.  You see that "Wild West Spirit" in a lot of rural California, not to mention Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, etc.

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...
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/j6l19vfu0eu00r6/1o6pt1.jpg?dl=0)

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. :D

Well, since we are talking Western movies, there are a couple of others I really like, that I would add as my Appendix D for Aces & Eights and that would be

The Professionals, starring Lee Marvin.

Vera Cruz with Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine, and Charles Bronson. Quite possible one of the best westerns ever made, set shortly after the Civil War in Mexico,,,

The basic plot is this:
During the Franco-Mexican War, ex-Confederate soldier Ben Trane (Cooper) travels to Mexico seeking a job as a mercenary. He falls in with Joe Erin (Lancaster), a lethal gunslinger who heads a gang of cutthroats (including Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, Charles Bronson, and Archie Savage). They are recruited by Marquis Henri de Labordere (Cesar Romero) for service with the Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico (George Macready) After an almost-miraculous display of shooting with a lever-action model 1873 Winchester rifle, the Emperor offers them $25,000 to escort the Countess Duvarre (Denise Darcel) to the seaport city of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. Trane uses a compliment to the Countess to get the Emperor to double it, impressing Erin with his boldness. During a river crossing, Trane and Erin noticed that the stagecoach in which the countess is traveling is extremely heavy. Erin later discovers that the stagecoach contains six cases of gold coins. First Trane and then the countess discover him looking at the gold. The countess informs them that it is worth $3 million which is being transported to pay for troops for Maximilian's French army. They form an uneasy alliance to steal and split the gold. Unfortunately for their plans, the Marquis was listening from the shadows.

Quote from: Voros;970020Here it is. :D

Well how about that? No Butch Cassidy?

The Wild Bunch is one of my favorites though it probably won't be on anyone rpg Appendix D anytime soon imo. It's a great western imo though for the time it was released (1969) very violent and dare I say gorey. Tame by our standards now caused quite a stir when it was released as it went against many of the tropes of many westerns of the time.

Quote from: sureshot;970128The Wild Bunch is one of my favorites though it probably won't be on anyone rpg Appendix D anytime soon imo. It's a great western imo though for the time it was released (1969) very violent and dare I say gorey. Tame by our standards now caused quite a stir when it was released as it went against many of the tropes of many westerns of the time.

It's the only movie where I've grudgingly come to respect completely unlikable characters. Great movie.

WTF happened to this thread?

Did anyone say Exalted yet?

Quote from: tenbones;970176WTF happened to this thread?

Did anyone say Exalted yet?

We decided cowboy movies are more interesting! :D

Quote from: Dumarest;970195We decided cowboy movies are more interesting! :D

Well I can't rightly argue with that... shit.

Quote from: tenbones;970197Well I can't rightly argue with that... shit.

You are now One with The Body, brother.

Quote from: tenbones;970176WTF happened to this thread?

Did anyone say Exalted yet?

I think someone did, I argued it's not the setting that's the problem, and then everybody started talking cowboy movies. Which is a topic I like, but I'm not well-versed enough to discuss, so I went in lurking mode, and the Exalted off-topic died there:).

Which is a first, now that I think about it;)!

So...name your Top 5 Western movies?

(I need to think a bit before I post mine...I actually haven't seen that many as I prefer books and have seen more Western TV shows than movies.)

I'll play! I'm not a full on aficionado - but I've seen a lot of them. My choices are based purely on the entertainment value, not historical accuracy.

1) The Cowboys
2) The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
3) Silverado
4) The Searchers
5) Butch Cassiday and the Sundance Kid

Quote from: tenbones;970407...based purely on the entertainment value, not historical accuracy.

I would hope so. Historical accuracy is overrated and when intensely focused on it seems to be a detriment to entertainment, like when a rollicking adventure story stops to tell you about the demographics and climate of 13th Century Morocco instead of cutting to the chase.

1. Silverado
2. Outlaw Josey Wales
3. Last Man Standing/Fistful Of Dollars/Yojimbo
4. Wyatt Earp
5. Three Amigos

Came across this list of "The 50 Greatest" in case anyone is interested: https://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-50-greatest-westerns

I totally forgot about Blazing Saddles. I'm still trying to think of my five favorites.

In no particular order:
The Great Silence
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (though I could fill the list with Eastwood's pasta westerns)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Paint Your Wagon
Shane

Quote from: Dumarest;970395So...name your Top 5 Western movies?

(I need to think a bit before I post mine...I actually haven't seen that many as I prefer books and have seen more Western TV shows than movies.)

I'll try not to let Leone & Eastwood monopolize my list, but it's hard. I generally don't like much of anything from the classic western era of Ford & John Wayne.

1. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
2. Lonesome Dove
3. Keoma
4. Unforgiven
5. My Name Is Nobody

Five slots is too little. I want to put The Magnificent Seven in there, but I'd have to bump one of the others.

Quote from: tenbones;970176WTF happened to this thread?

Did anyone say Exalted yet?

I think that one has been more of a foregone concensus for several pages now.

I really liked the Apple Dumpling Gang. :)

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;970460Five slots is too little. I want to put The Magnificent Seven in there, but I'd have to bump one of the others.

It's the limitation that makes you have to stop and think which ones you really want to include, otherwise we'd just get long lists of movies.

Quote from: Dumarest;970195

Quote from: tenbones;970176WTF happened to this thread?

Did anyone say Exalted yet?

We decided cowboy movies are more interesting! :D

Awesome!

Jeremiah Johnson
Little Big Man
Outlaw Josey Wales
Dollars Trilogy
Once Upon A Time in the West

I'm sure I'm forgetting to consider some that I really like...

We obviously should start a Western RPG and film thread.

My top 5, off the top of my head in no particular order:

1. Wild Bunch
2. My Darling Clementine
3. California
4. The Hired Hand
5. Once Upon a Time in the West

I wanted to like Wild Bunch more than I ended up doing.

Glad to see this stupid thread put to good use.

Stagecoach
The Ox-Bow Incident
Rio Bravo
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Unforgiven

This is more properly my five favorite Westerns rather than 'five greatest' because I would have to swap out The Ox-Bow Incident for The Searchers and The Outlaw Josey Wales for Fort Apache if it was the latter.

Hmm....favourite western movies:

1) Once Upon a Time in the West
2) High Noon
3) A Fistful of Dollars (just marginally ahead of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly these days if I had to choose)
4) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
5) Blazing Saddles (ahem)

Tried to watch The Wild Bunch a couple of days ago again, but I always struggle to get through it to the end.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;970637Tried to watch The Wild Bunch a couple of days ago again, but I always struggle to get through it to the end.

There's definitely good things in it, but somehow overall it just didn't rub me and my wife the right way. YMMV but for example we thought the idyllic Mexican village scenes seemed so silly they broke suspension of disbelief. The train heist scene on the other hand was pretty cool.

Now you guys are having me second-guess my list. I didn't put Magnificent Seven on there because it's technically a re-skin (but GLORIOUS). And Lonesome Dove was technically TV - but it makes my living room get *REALLY* dusty... so I try to put that one out of my mind.

And Unforgiven... how in the farkity-fark-fark did I forget that?

Lonesome Dove really made me appreciate Tommy Lee Jones' acting in this kind of role. The scene when he gives his watch to his unacknowledged son almost made me cry man-tears.

If I were to take it out of the list, I think I'd stick either The Great Silence or The Wild Bunch. I really like The Great Silence, especially since it's one of the few where the location is not a hot, semi-arid landscape, but one of heavy snow. Plus everything else rivals Leone for me in terms of directing. However, I've come to hate the ending as a sort of betrayal to the western as a genre. I respect the director, though, for having the balls to go there.

I'm also wondering if so-called neo-westerns like No Country For Old Men should count.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;970631Glad to see this stupid thread put to good use.

Stagecoach
The Ox-Bow Incident
Rio Bravo
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Unforgiven

This is more properly my five favorite Westerns rather than 'five greatest' because I would have to swap out The Ox-Bow Incident for The Searchers and The Outlaw Josey Wales for Fort Apache if it was the latter.

I'm more interested in favorites; that's why I asked for your Top 5 Western movies, not critical consensus best cowboy movies of all time.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;970679I'm also wondering if so-called neo-westerns like No Country For Old Men should count.

Haven't seen that one, but if it's a Western then it counts. Why not?

Quote from: Dumarest;970683Haven't seen that one, but if it's a Western then it counts. Why not?

Well, that's the thing. I don't know if a Neo-Western emerged as a tag because it's not a "proper" western set in the wild west period (it's set in the modern era). But it has what you could call cowboys, and some of the trappings.

Quote from: Dumarest;970683Haven't seen that one, but if it's a Western then it counts. Why not?

I'm having a difficult time deciding on a list, because I can't decide if "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is a western or not.  It's set in a western, but I'm not sure it is a western.

Rio Bravo is definitely on the list.  Out of the spaghetti versions, I liked Hang'em High, but boy is that one uneven (even if it is based on the same original story as the Oklahoma State mascot, which is just weird).  Ask me tomorrow, and I might pick A Fistful of Dollars (for the bit with the mule, if nothing else).  After that, I'm not so sure, in part because there are still a lot of classics I haven't seen.  I'm the only one in my house that enjoys westerns, so I pick my time to watch.

I'm partial to "Destry Rides Again." Still trying to decide on a list of five.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;970679I'm also wondering if so-called neo-westerns like No Country For Old Men should count.

I think No Country For Old Men is a neo-noir...? Anyway, it didn't feel particularly westerny to me.

I haven't seen The Great Silence. I'll have to see if I can check that out sometime.

No Country is set in the modern American West but is more a noirish crime thriller.

My five favourite Westerns are:

1 Dead Man (if you'll give me it)
2 The Searchers
3 The Wild Bunch
4 Two Mules For Sister Sara
5 Bone Tomahawk

UK here, but I've loved Westerns/Cowboy Movies since I was a wee lad.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;970691Well, that's the thing. I don't know if a Neo-Western emerged as a tag because it's not a "proper" western set in the wild west period (it's set in the modern era). But it has what you could call cowboys, and some of the trappings.

Funny sounds like a bull shit split to me A large number of the older westerns out of the 20s/30/40s where set at the time they where made.

Quote from: Gorilla_Zod;9708195 Bone Tomahawk

Every horror fan should check out this terrific horror/western.

Quote from: Voros;970817No Country is set in the modern American West but is more a noirish crime thriller.

I would tend to agree. It seems there's some consensus on it being a "neo-western" as well as a neo-noir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Country_for_Old_Men_(film)

I can sort of see it, not only because of the landscape, but the Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin's characters.

Quote from: 3rik;970807I haven't seen The Great Silence. I'll have to see if I can check that out sometime.

Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rolp5hcxMA

Quote from: Voros;970823Every horror fan should check out this terrific horror/western.

When I watched it, I was more under the impression that it would be a violent revisionist western...boy was I shocked when things got nasty. Best way to experience that movie, I think, if you can manage it.

Same thing happened to me with Alien, when I was  a kid. I was expecting a straightforward sci-fi until John Hurt (R.I.P) got indigestion. I'm sooo glad I lucked out and didn't know it was a horror movie, lol.

Quote from: Voros;970817No Country is set in the modern American West but is more a noirish crime thriller.

Sounds more like Red Rock West then. Probably not really a Western. But again, the only parameters were to name your Top 5 Westerns, with no definition of what a Western is, so I suppose you those Westerns if you like.

Quote from: Dumarest;970928Sounds more like Red Rock West then. Probably not really a Western. But again, the only parameters were to name your Top 5 Westerns, with no definition of what a Western is, so I suppose you those Westerns if you like.

I thought we had already established that Westerns were movies taking place from October 26, 1881 until October 26, 1881.

Quote from: Baulderstone;970939I thought we had already established that Westerns were movies taking place from October 26, 1881 until October 26, 1881.

Ha. RPGPundit will come along soon enough to tell us what is a true Western.  Which we will then ignore since he wrote that Tombstone is the best Western of all time, which is clearly as  crazy as thinking you are practicing "real magick."

Found the problem with the bbs code not accepting non-english characters. Turns out the double quotation mark " is not being recognized when lifted off of some other web pages, because the other web pages are not using a UTF-8 character set, so the vBulletin software that runs this bbs is automatically flagging and prohibiting those characters from being used or displayed. This lame little bug has eaten two or three of my major posts here over the last month or two.

If you get the error code (in red) that your post can't be published because you are using non-english characters, try eliminating every double quotation mark in your post, then try reposting.

As this thread has veered completely from its original subject, and into something that isn't really RPG discussion (more like Media & Inspiration), I'm closing it.

There were lots of great westerns, but Tombstone was the absolute best because of its balance of historical detail and storytelling embellishment.