Westward Bound

I suppose a name is a good place to start. I wanted for my western campaign a moniker evocative of the setting, while also emphasizing the style and tone of the campaign as I envisioned it. Sounding good is also a plus. The best that I could come up with that fit those things was:

Guts, Grit, and Grace.

That's what I wanted my campaign to be all about. I wanted it to be visceral, immersive, and believable. I did NOT want a clean cut tale of sheriffs in white hats dueling outlaws in black hats, but I also didn't want an ultra-violent, constant shootout with nothing but bandits and Indians and exploding dynamite. There had to be something different, something deeper. I didn't want my game to be like a classic Wild West movie, and I didn't want it to be filled with endless, tired stereotypes, but I also wanted to avoid the real-life history of a lot of repetitive, boring work. What I really wanted was to capture, as well as I could, the tone of harsh, pragmatic survival underscored by hope for a better future and a spirit of honest freedom.

1878, Colorado.

Why then? Why there? Basically, because it's right in the middle of everything. It's got mountains and deserts and prairies. It's got frontier towns and cities and forts. It's got cowboys and miners and ranchers and bandits. It's within easy reach by train or trail to all the other cool places of the west, and it's far enough away from the East Coast to honestly be considered "Western".

More than just the physical though, in 1878 Colorado had just become a state, and was overall a troubled, but growing and eventful place. It's a time ripe with enough chaos for wild adventure but enough stability for interesting downtime and social interaction. Jesse James and Billy the Kid are running loose, but the phonograph is just being invented and the wounds from the Civil War are starting to scab over.

The campaign begins in, and is at least for the beginning centered around a fictional place called Whitewash City, in roughly the center of Colorado. Whitewash City is a place in the middle of transitioning from a ragged frontier town to a legitimate urban center, and it's a place very much in constant flux.

I'll describe both Whitewash City and the campaign's opening sequence in later posts, but for right now I wish to take some more time and elaborate on what I wanted for this campaign in terms of style and tone. Before I do that let me name three things that were strong influences on my design here. Those being the remake of 3:10 to Yuma, the remake of True Grit, and the video-game Red Dead Redemption. Yes, I said the remakes. Why? Because the remakes are way better. I don't care how "classic" and "iconic" anyone thinks the originals are, the remakes are in my opinion the greatest Western movies ever made, and both surpass their progenitors in execution and quality. I digress.

In both those movies and that game you have ordinary men, men who are good hearted human beings but troubled and flawed, going through Hell, getting hurt, jerked around, but tugging down the brim of their hat and sticking things through to the end, whatever it takes. You have woman who are fierce and independent but fragile and innocent. You have villains with clear and sensible reasons for the things they do. Good or bad they are all just people trying to get by one day at a time.

I believe there is a time and place for everything. Sometimes I'm quite in the mood for saving the entire kingdom of Ashintar from the evil ancient red dragon Xybligix by channeling the Runestones of the Beyond through the mighty Sword of Champions. Other times I want to frantically tie down the lashings on my wagon and chase down my panicked horse as a storm blows across the grassland, and it the latter much more than the former that represents the stakes of this campaign.

Guts, Grit, and Grace is ultimately a people story. Characters have lives, and sometimes those lives are perilous or risky, but they are not dungeon delvers or space marines, and the things they do have real consequences, for better or worse, on the people and world around them. It's a personal game, and it plays out one day at a time.