Night of the Rangers
Like I did back in 2008, I'm posting the four possibilities for the next game that my players are currently deciding among. As I believe I've mentioned, our group's method for coming up with games is for them all to suggest the sorts of things they'd like to see, and for me to boil everything down into four or five possible campaigns. Then they vote on which one sounds best, and off we go.
This, then, is the first of those four nominees. I'll post the rest over the next week or so, just for everyone's entertainment, although one of them is a rerun.
NIGHT OF THE RANGERS
"Back in 1835, when Halley's Comet was overhead, same night those men died at the Alamo, they say Samuel Colt made a gun. A special gun. He made it for a hunter. A man like us, only on horseback .... They say this gun can kill anything."
-- John Winchester, Supernatural, "Dead Men's Blood"
Sadly, Supernatural didn't live up to the wonder and the glory of this quote. Let's see if we can.
It's 1848 and the war with Mexico has got things stirred up all along the frontier. Not just the Indian frontier: the frontier between the living and the dead burns with pale fire. You are Rangers, riding that frontier to quench that fire, to break it, to draw it back across the line. You've got guns and horses and silver badges lettered up in Hebrew ... and maybe some of you have a little o' that pale fire behind your eyes even now. If you ride a little bit on the wild side of the line, you can fight harder and better -- a smear of vampire blood or a dusting of werewolf bone just makes a deadlier Ranger, even if Mister Colt might not agree. But he's back East, and you ride West in the lands of the sunset, into the lands of the shadow.
This is a pretty straightforward "monster of the week" campaign, with the possibility of expanding (or not) into a "season arc" or three. Tone is likely to stay on the action side of the equation rather than the horror side, although with Rangers tempted to "pick up the hex" or "feed their fire" we can hopefully get close to the agon of the Western hero. If people would rather, we can bump the starting date to 1865 instead. Of course, in 1865, Mister Colt is dead ... as are 600,000 other folk.
System: Savage Worlds, which promises relatively fluid combats at multiple scales and not coincidentally offers a whole heaping lot of pre-statted monsters and Western perils in general. I'll probably be looking quite intently at Rippers, as well as Deadlands and the SW Horror Companion.
This, then, is the first of those four nominees. I'll post the rest over the next week or so, just for everyone's entertainment, although one of them is a rerun.
NIGHT OF THE RANGERS
"Back in 1835, when Halley's Comet was overhead, same night those men died at the Alamo, they say Samuel Colt made a gun. A special gun. He made it for a hunter. A man like us, only on horseback .... They say this gun can kill anything."
-- John Winchester, Supernatural, "Dead Men's Blood"
Sadly, Supernatural didn't live up to the wonder and the glory of this quote. Let's see if we can.
It's 1848 and the war with Mexico has got things stirred up all along the frontier. Not just the Indian frontier: the frontier between the living and the dead burns with pale fire. You are Rangers, riding that frontier to quench that fire, to break it, to draw it back across the line. You've got guns and horses and silver badges lettered up in Hebrew ... and maybe some of you have a little o' that pale fire behind your eyes even now. If you ride a little bit on the wild side of the line, you can fight harder and better -- a smear of vampire blood or a dusting of werewolf bone just makes a deadlier Ranger, even if Mister Colt might not agree. But he's back East, and you ride West in the lands of the sunset, into the lands of the shadow.
This is a pretty straightforward "monster of the week" campaign, with the possibility of expanding (or not) into a "season arc" or three. Tone is likely to stay on the action side of the equation rather than the horror side, although with Rangers tempted to "pick up the hex" or "feed their fire" we can hopefully get close to the agon of the Western hero. If people would rather, we can bump the starting date to 1865 instead. Of course, in 1865, Mister Colt is dead ... as are 600,000 other folk.
System: Savage Worlds, which promises relatively fluid combats at multiple scales and not coincidentally offers a whole heaping lot of pre-statted monsters and Western perils in general. I'll probably be looking quite intently at Rippers, as well as Deadlands and the SW Horror Companion.