Steampunk Western is Ridiculous
So, a friend of mine has gotten me to start making a Steam-punk Western RPG with him. Hmmm, that intro needs an intro.
So, my friend Kurt and I have a shared love of awful things, and it's long been our habit to come up with terrible movies, comics, etc... and plan them out to minutiae, and then never do a fucking thing with them. My other friend Ben, when he hears about these things, loves them passionately. He likes bad, old games. He desperately wants to make a simple, old-style game out of one of my purposefully terrible ideas.
Sadly, I couldn't convince him to do one of my bad game ideas (almost always a literary classic made into an Atari/Nintendo era video game, the same way movies would be turned into video games. IE, badly. My favorites are "The Scarlet Letter" and "Lord of the Flies". However, as I was working on my Western furry comic concept, I talked to him about how much tribulation I put into deciding exactly what gun everyone uses. He said he'd be useless for help, because he'd say a cowboy should dual wield rocket launchers. Well, I already had some thoughts about Steam-punk Western in my head, so I filed that one away. Well, it came up again, and I mentioned I had actually started working on a plot for a Steam-punk Western using a cowboy dual wielding rocket launchers. He immediately wanted to make an RPG out of the idea.
This is a little tricky in some ways, because we're towing the line between ridiculous and awesome closely, and it'll be very easy to just become ridiculous. We're focusing on making everything extreme and playing it to the hilt, but trying to restrain ourselves. So far it's shaping up nicely, but he's got the programming end, and we'll see if he pulls through. He's VERY excited about this, though, so maybe he will.
I don't want to reveal too much of the plot we've put together yet, but basically, it's a world where Steam technology never got replaced (duh, steam-punk...) but it revolves around a Native American Ghost Dance uprising led by a Shaman whom is utilizing super science versions of various form of science that never really took off in this world, and is using them to simulated miracles, like weather control and working Ghost shirts, to create a super Indian revolt, not just one tribe but all the tribes. I sure hope this doesn't just become retarded.... I'm sure Snake thinks it is (he usually doesn't like my ideas for ridiculous, silly things).
Spent a great deal of time today just naming characters (a process that led to the creation of a great many of the villains). I'm the type of writer that will never use an arbitrary name. The name must be significant. It must be a reference. Every single one of the villains we've made so far has the name of a real person who was involved in the Ghost Dances or other revolts, and the names always make sense for the character they were chosen for. The main character's names are all references, too. It's a lot of fun, and probably my favorite part of writing. The main character names were especially fun. I love the mechanic type character, whose name is the name of the first steam locomotive split into a first and last name (Penydarren = Peny Darren). It's beautiful when something works out that well.
So, my friend Kurt and I have a shared love of awful things, and it's long been our habit to come up with terrible movies, comics, etc... and plan them out to minutiae, and then never do a fucking thing with them. My other friend Ben, when he hears about these things, loves them passionately. He likes bad, old games. He desperately wants to make a simple, old-style game out of one of my purposefully terrible ideas.
Sadly, I couldn't convince him to do one of my bad game ideas (almost always a literary classic made into an Atari/Nintendo era video game, the same way movies would be turned into video games. IE, badly. My favorites are "The Scarlet Letter" and "Lord of the Flies". However, as I was working on my Western furry comic concept, I talked to him about how much tribulation I put into deciding exactly what gun everyone uses. He said he'd be useless for help, because he'd say a cowboy should dual wield rocket launchers. Well, I already had some thoughts about Steam-punk Western in my head, so I filed that one away. Well, it came up again, and I mentioned I had actually started working on a plot for a Steam-punk Western using a cowboy dual wielding rocket launchers. He immediately wanted to make an RPG out of the idea.
This is a little tricky in some ways, because we're towing the line between ridiculous and awesome closely, and it'll be very easy to just become ridiculous. We're focusing on making everything extreme and playing it to the hilt, but trying to restrain ourselves. So far it's shaping up nicely, but he's got the programming end, and we'll see if he pulls through. He's VERY excited about this, though, so maybe he will.
I don't want to reveal too much of the plot we've put together yet, but basically, it's a world where Steam technology never got replaced (duh, steam-punk...) but it revolves around a Native American Ghost Dance uprising led by a Shaman whom is utilizing super science versions of various form of science that never really took off in this world, and is using them to simulated miracles, like weather control and working Ghost shirts, to create a super Indian revolt, not just one tribe but all the tribes. I sure hope this doesn't just become retarded.... I'm sure Snake thinks it is (he usually doesn't like my ideas for ridiculous, silly things).
Spent a great deal of time today just naming characters (a process that led to the creation of a great many of the villains). I'm the type of writer that will never use an arbitrary name. The name must be significant. It must be a reference. Every single one of the villains we've made so far has the name of a real person who was involved in the Ghost Dances or other revolts, and the names always make sense for the character they were chosen for. The main character's names are all references, too. It's a lot of fun, and probably my favorite part of writing. The main character names were especially fun. I love the mechanic type character, whose name is the name of the first steam locomotive split into a first and last name (Penydarren = Peny Darren). It's beautiful when something works out that well.