Settings for your Weird West D&D Game
I love western RPGs. I ran a Serenity campaign back when it first game out in 2004 or so, followed by a D20 Modern game using Sidewinder: Recoiled, inspired by a storyline going on in Knights of the Dinner Table at the time.
Back in October, @TheGodDamnDM shared the picture to the right, saying: “Solid idea pic for Western themed #dnd session!” And they were right! Check that out! Skeleton cowboy, arrows sticking through him, carrying a gun! That’s some evocative stuff!
I’ve had a few ideas for D&D campaigns set in a Western-style era. (I know all about Deadlands and Savage Worlds, don’t @ me.) I’ll also be writing up the 5e stats for western firearms soon.
The Long-Forgotten Realms
Take the Faerun timeline and bump it up by a few hundred years. Give some reason why technology is FINALLY advancing, and imagine how different the world looks. Does Waterdeep survive? Does Baldur’s Gate? I imagine one of the great parts about this is that you could simply make these decisions when it comes up. Someone asks about Baldur’s Gate? “It fell 100 years ago when the forces of Vecna overtook it and destroyed it. It’s nothing more than a deserted ghost town now.” You’ll still have all kinds of monsters, but firearms are now prevalent. Where have the train-lines connected in the world?
Eberron: We’re already looking at a near-Western setting. Magical Trains, alchemists (some snake-oil salesmen?), and no reason not to include firearms. When my heroes went planehopping, they stumbled into an Eberron with firearms and ended up wandering into other worlds with advanced weaponry.
Westeros County, Wyoming
This would be for an (initially) lower-magic campaign. You can see where I’m going with this. Robert Baratheon is the mayor of King’s Crossing, WY. His power is generally excepted as ruling all of Westeros County, known as The Seven Cities. He recruits his buddy, Eddy, to come down to King’s Crossing as the Sherriff. One thing leads to another, you’ve got lots of people dead, you have the daughter of the previous mayor seeking revenge and rounding up a posse to reclaim Westeros County, and there’s a mysterious force moving through the mountains toward the pass guarded only by Fort Black. I’d love to run a campaign set here. You don’t even have to feature much in the way of plots of Game of Thrones, instead have it as background information. Have what happens in the novels or TV show influence how different towns act toward one another and the outside world. There’s a lot of cool possibilities.
