The Fantasy of the Wild West

[OfSpaceandTime]

So, I'm a fan of fantasy. Dragons, elves, orcs, magic, the like. I also like westerns. You know, Clint Eastwood smoking a cigar whilst not having a name because he didn't need one.

And I wanna combine them into an emotionally compelling story about twin Elven sisters who go about their way in this wildly western fantasy setting. I've been toying with the idea of having two other primary protagonists as well, but the sisters are the two leads.

The one's a typical gunslinger, not much to say there about her loadout other than that she primaries with her dual revolvers but she knows her way around a rifle.

The other sister's a spellslinger, because western. She's basically a battlemage but more suited for the wild west.


I know I want different species. Humans, Elves, Orcs, Dwarves(With shotguns!), Fairies. . . You get the point there.


My problems that I am running into here:

Having some semblance of a logical story that's both compelling for questers as well as emotional when the time gets serious. This quest is going to get the mature tag next to it.

Some of the worldbuilding. Since this was taken from what was my quest about a woman resurrecting from the dead, somethings are. . . Well, they're too fantasy and mixing the two is a bit odd. Doable, but odd.

I'm also bad at maps and naming things like towns.

Any ideas, thoughts, or questions would be appreciated.

 

[Arkalest]

WHy can't the gunslinger be the spellcaster also? And have the "spellcaster" be something cooler, like IDK, a druid of the frontier, or some steampunk- Aesthetic, not genre- Inventor, or a snake oil salesman.

 

[Simon_Jester]

WHy can't the gunslinger be the spellcaster also? And have the "spellcaster" be something cooler, like IDK, a druid of the frontier, or some steampunk- Aesthetic, not genre- Inventor, or a snake oil salesman.

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Maybe because the gunslinger is supposed to be the Clint Eastwood type character

---

Anyway. @OfSpaceandTime , let's think deep background. What makes a Wild West setting the way it is? If you can recreate similar conditions, you can create a similar environment that has its own internal logic.

Consider the key elements of the Wild West setting as a genre:

1) Enormous territory in the process of being colonized and settled by outsiders. Like, physically huge, so huge that even high-speed transportation like railroads takes days to get anywhere, and traveling across a respectable fraction of the region takes weeks on foot or horseback.

2) Harsh landscape, with some of the resources necessary for survival being scarce (e.g. water for irrigation or for powering water-powered machinery or for supplying steam engines or for cattle to drink; there are conflicts of interest there). And people are deliberately settling in this harsh landscape, because it has valuable resources (e.g. minerals) or because land that is theirs for the taking if they try hard enough is just too desirable to pass up.

3) Pre-existing populations competing with newer arrivals: the natives facing squeeze-out from ALL the settlers, but also some settler groups pressing against each other, such as the famous conflicts between cattle ranchers, sheep ranchers, and farmers, or some of the conflicts that arose from the railroad expanding into a new area.

4) In part because of (2) and (3), but also for other reasons, there are constant conflicts within the region, between people with different ideas about how to use resources, or about who owns land, or between people who want to be relatively 'free' and lawless against people who want to enforce rules.

5) Physical infrastructure still very under-developed; the technology allows for a lot of things to exist in principle (like railroads and big factories) that just do not exist in the region yet. Permanent settlements are far apart, and much of the landscape is completely untouched, or seemingly so, and there is an endless supply of wilderness for outlaws to fade into.

6) Legal and administrative infrastructure still under-developed- the power that nominally controls the territory is still so thinly scattered across it. This is important because it explains why there are bandits. And makes it easier to understand why there are so many disputes over things like real estate, water rights, and legal ownership of cattle. And explain why a town like Tombstone can get so tired of random gunfights that they institute gun control for people in town and hire Virgil Earp to enforce it at all costs. Criminals can move fairly freely, but often overplay their hand and take unnecessary risks.

...

So basically, everything you set up needs to be designed to provide these half dozen or so conditions. As long as that's borne in mind, you have the consistent tools for a Wild West setting. For instance, Russian fiction has its own 'Wild East' genre involving the colonization of Siberia- in which all these conventions apply. The TV show Firefly had it going too, and to dissect how:

1) You literally need your own spaceship to get from most places to most other places, and even then it can take a while. And in principle any given world is, well, a world, complete with a whole planetary surface.

2) There are a looooot of little rocky moons and planetoids, so many that totally unknown and undocumented settlements are a thing. And, yes, a lot of them are in harsh or unforgiving places, to the extent that things like ration bricks can be effectively a form of currency.

3) The Alliance's presence on the Rim is clearly rising, or they're trying to make it rise. Lots and lots of competing interests.

4) Oh boy howdy are there a lot of these conflicts.

5) Core world technology allows for things like floating hover-islands and giant high-tech cityscapes, but little such tech is found on the rim. Mal doesn't care; he's still free. You can't take the sky from him.

6) The Alliance nominally controls everything, but a revolt against their authority occurred recently, and Alliance presence on many worlds appears to be minimal.

...

So by establishing these patterns, you ensure that everything in the setting will be pervaded naturally by "Wild Westness."

By contrast, failure to establish these patterns tends to make Wild West tropes not fit very well. It doesn't make sense to hire Virgil Earp to clean up Tombstone in a place where powerful enforcers from the central government can flood the place within hours any time they want to. It doesn't make so much sense for renegades and outlaws to wander the land freely if "the land" is just a stretch of river valley a few hundred miles long and no more than 10-15 miles wide. It won't feel like the Wild West unless there are equivalents of the cattle-sheep-farming conflict, something like "the railroad is coming through" to motivate changes and conflicts, and so on.

 

[Arkalest]

I don't see how "Spellslinger" and "Clint Eastwood type" are at odds there.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I don't see how "Spellslinger" and "Clint Eastwood type" are at odds there.

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It depends on the archetype of the spellcaster's powers.

Also, the point isn't that spellslinger doesn't work with "Clint Eastwood archetype," it's that 'warrior who uses weapons' does work with it. So if you want two characters that play off each others' character traits, and you want a Clint Eastwood archetype and you want a spellslinger, combining those traits into the same person means you need to think of a third, entirely different thing to build your other character around.

It's like, if you're writing a Western and you need a doctor and a 'dude' from back East, there's no reason in principle the doctor can't BE a dude from back East... unless you were planning to write scenes in which the interactions and character contrasts between the doctor and the dude are kind of the point.

 

[Arkalest]

Which could be a good starting point for a lot of creative worldbuilding, IMO.

Like, let's take Malifaux- Another "wild-west meets fantasy" setting- For an example. Here, the local railway company is also the local arcanist guild, for double the exploitative practices. Like a spiderweb, they branch out into things like journalism, forbidden cults, golems and rioting workers via logical association.

 

[Enmascarado]

Hmmm, this seems... familiar.

*Looks at own quest in signature*

Oh, that's way.

Though honestly I think the more wild west stories in this site the best.

The first thing I think you should focus on is: Westerns are about the frontier, a wild lawless land that people is trying their best to tame and boy the land loves fighting back.

What's your frontier? And why are people trying to settle there?

 

[OfSpaceandTime]

I'm currently at work so I can't get a proper response at the moment. I will say you're all raising good points and I'm going to take note of them while I work on this.

 

[OfSpaceandTime]

What's your frontier? And why are people trying to settle there?

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Oil, gold, land with good fertile soil and good for grazing cattle all fit.

This also brings in conflict with natives. In this case, they may be Ursine(Bear people) as well as some other species.

I figure elves, humans, and dwarves as well as some others may originally hail from a different continent entirely.

 

[Enmascarado]

Oil, gold, land with good fertile soil and good for grazing cattle all fit.

This also brings in conflict with natives. In this case, they may be Ursine(Bear people) as well as some other species.

I figure elves, humans, and dwarves as well as some others may originally hail from a different continent entirely.

Click to shrink...

Got it.

Are they new to the land or the colonization has been going for years now?

If they're new then the relations with the natives could go in any direction for now, with settlers exploring prosper lands full of riches but with tribes already occupying them.

On the other hand if they're years in, then there could have been some wars with the natives over fertile lands and now people are getting more desperate to get a place to call home and so more willing to settle in more dangerous places for resources.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Oil, gold, land with good fertile soil and good for grazing cattle all fit.

Click to shrink...

Is this society industrialized enough to make good use of oil? That in turn has implications for other technology. Oil was known well before 1900 but did not become a highly demanded and prized resource until after that time, and there were reasons for that.

 

[Arthur Frayn]

There's all kinds of ways to make spellcasting analogous to gunfights, from having spellcasting require some kind of channeling object to work (magic wands as fantasy guns is nothing new) to having actual, real magic be difficult to perform, so objects are imbued with the ability to "make" magic (in limited quantities) - what is a gun but a directed fire/lightning/whatever spell?

Or you could just make everyone do finger guns to cast spells, that works too.

 

[OfSpaceandTime]

It depends on the archetype of the spellcaster's powers.

Also, the point isn't that spellslinger doesn't work with "Clint Eastwood archetype," it's that 'warrior who uses weapons' does work with it. So if you want two characters that play off each others' character traits, and you want a Clint Eastwood archetype and you want a spellslinger, combining those traits into the same person means you need to think of a third, entirely different thing to build your other character around.

It's like, if you're writing a Western and you need a doctor and a 'dude' from back East, there's no reason in principle the doctor can't BE a dude from back East... unless you were planning to write scenes in which the interactions and character contrasts between the doctor and the dude are kind of the point.

Click to shrink...

The two are meant to play off of each other, and with the spellslinger someone can pull a Han Solo with the "Ancient weapons and hokey religions are no match for a good blaster at your side." Not the sister, but someone.

And anyone can use magic. Just simply requires training, and certain magics are taboo.

Got it.

Are they new to the land or the colonization has been going for years now?

If they're new then the relations with the natives could go in any direction for now, with settlers exploring prosper lands full of riches but with tribes already occupying them.

On the other hand if they're years in, then there could have been some wars with the natives over fertile lands and now people are getting more desperate to get a place to call home and so more willing to settle in more dangerous places for resources.

Click to shrink...

Colonization has been going for a few years. Battles with natives has happened, and possibly even a civil war.

Is this society industrialized enough to make good use of oil? That in turn has implications for other technology. Oil was known well before 1900 but did not become a highly demanded and prized resource until after that time, and there were reasons for that.

Click to shrink...

The further East, the more industrialized. The further West, the less. Oil might not be much of a thing and industrialization might be replaced with simply civilization instead. I kinda want this to feel closer to "Wild Western Fantasy" than dying western fantasy.

There's all kinds of ways to make spellcasting analogous to gunfights, from having spellcasting require some kind of channeling object to work (magic wands as fantasy guns is nothing new) to having actual, real magic be difficult to perform, so objects are imbued with the ability to "make" magic (in limited quantities) - what is a gun but a directed fire/lightning/whatever spell?

Or you could just make everyone do finger guns to cast spells, that works too.

Click to shrink...

I was thinking a mixture of both. Anyone can inherently channel magic, though it can be used with something else. Spellslingers tend to use wands in combat, but it isn't needed.

 

[Triggerhappy]

I'm also bad at maps and naming things like towns.

Click to shrink...

The thing about the Wild West was that it was shaped by people moving west to exploit untapped resources and land. A lot of the pop up towns that appeared when the west was wild were built to serve a singular business interest such as a mine or the surrounding farms. So if you're looking for names you could kitbash them together from interesting terrain features and the towns purpose.

i.e. a mine near a canyon mouth could be 'Silver Creek' or it could be aspirationaly named, such as 'El Dorado' for a dusty town of wood shacks, (or Gondor to stick with the fantasy tone )

 

[OfSpaceandTime]

The thing about the Wild West was that it was shaped by people moving west to exploit untapped resources and land. A lot of the pop up towns that appeared when the west was wild were built to serve a singular business interest such as a mine or the surrounding farms. So if you're looking for names you could kitbash them together from interesting terrain features and the towns purpose.

i.e. a mine near a canyon mouth could be 'Silver Creek' or it could be aspirationaly named, such as 'El Dorado' for a dusty town of wood shacks, (or Gondor to stick with the fantasy tone )

Click to shrink...

I know at least a state or province will be named Brimstone or New Brimstone.

 

[OfSpaceandTime]

I need to get a map going for this, kinda feel it'll be a little easier that way I can know a definite "East to West" and where people are from and the like.

 

[Simon_Jester]

There's all kinds of ways to make spellcasting analogous to gunfights, from having spellcasting require some kind of channeling object to work (magic wands as fantasy guns is nothing new) to having actual, real magic be difficult to perform, so objects are imbued with the ability to "make" magic (in limited quantities) - what is a gun but a directed fire/lightning/whatever spell?

Or you could just make everyone do finger guns to cast spells, that works too.

Click to shrink...

I mean, yes, you could.

But @OfSpaceandTime says she doesn't want to.

Basically, I'm saying that instead of trying to convince the author to alter the core premises of her setting ("She's a Wild West gunslinger! She's a battlemage! Together, THEY FIGHT OUTLAWS!"), we should work within those core premises and actually be helpful. Since it's not like there's some inherently glaring flaw in the premise that requires alteration for the story to be good.

Colonization has been going for a few years. Battles with natives has happened, and possibly even a civil war.

Click to shrink...

Er, when you say "a few years," do you mean literally a few years, or do you mean "for several generations," as is the case in the English-and-others settlement of North America that started on the Eastern Seaboard in the early 1600s and didn't really reach out into and through the American West until the mid- to late 1800s?

The further East, the more industrialized. The further West, the less. Oil might not be much of a thing and industrialization might be replaced with simply civilization instead. I kinda want this to feel closer to "Wild Western Fantasy" than dying western fantasy.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, best to skip oil and add more and higher works of magic in my opinion. Like, out west you have hardscrabble farms and people riding horses, but back east generations of mages have done careful geomantic landscaping to make the crops more productive, and the ley lines are well enough mapped out that you can set up a pegasus ranch or something.

Unless you're specifically aiming for a steampunk flavor to go with the gunpowder flavor?

The thing about the Wild West was that it was shaped by people moving west to exploit untapped resources and land. A lot of the pop up towns that appeared when the west was wild were built to serve a singular business interest such as a mine or the surrounding farms. So if you're looking for names you could kitbash them together from interesting terrain features and the towns purpose.

i.e. a mine near a canyon mouth could be 'Silver Creek' or it could be aspirationaly named, such as 'El Dorado' for a dusty town of wood shacks, (or Gondor to stick with the fantasy tone )

Click to shrink...

I know at least a state or province will be named Brimstone or New Brimstone.

Click to shrink...

There were also a lot of crudely unimaginative terrain names: "Deadwood" or "Basalt" or "Hot Sulphur Springs." And depressing names: "Tombstone," "Bitter Water," "Dead Mule."

 

[OfSpaceandTime]

I mean, yes, you could.

But @OfSpaceandTime says she doesn't want to.

Basically, I'm saying that instead of trying to convince the author to alter the core premises of her setting ("She's a Wild West gunslinger! She's a battlemage! Together, THEY FIGHT OUTLAWS!"), we should work within those core premises and actually be helpful. Since it's not like there's some inherently glaring flaw in the premise that requires alteration for the story to be good.

Er, when you say "a few years," do you mean literally a few years, or do you mean "for several generations," as is the case in the English-and-others settlement of North America that started on the Eastern Seaboard in the early 1600s and didn't really reach out into and through the American West until the mid- to late 1800s?

Yeah, best to skip oil and add more and higher works of magic in my opinion. Like, out west you have hardscrabble farms and people riding horses, but back east generations of mages have done careful geomantic landscaping to make the crops more productive, and the ley lines are well enough mapped out that you can set up a pegasus ranch or something.

Unless you're specifically aiming for a steampunk flavor to go with the gunpowder flavor?

There were also a lot of crudely unimaginative terrain names: "Deadwood" or "Basalt" or "Hot Sulphur Springs." And depressing names: "Tombstone," "Bitter Water," "Dead Mule."

Click to shrink...

By a few years, I mean generations. Something close to post Civil War era United States as to my knowledge that's when the Wild West era was truly around as some of the veterans didn't know what to do. And so they went out west and started killing and became outlaws.


As for our two leads, I'm unsure yet if they themselves may be outlaws or bounty hunters.

 

[Triggerhappy]

I need to get a map going for this, kinda feel it'll be a little easier that way I can know a definite "East to West" and where people are from and the like.

Click to shrink...

Just don't spend too much time fleshing it in vs. actually writing your story.

My advice is just sketch out a rough map and then fill in the most basic of details, i.e. story relevant locations relative to each other. The point is to create a structure for some consistency, then just start filling it in as you write.

 

[OfSpaceandTime]

Alright, so I know the general idea of the country that this will take place in. Unified Provinces of Wysteria. Feels kinda fantasy and is also an obvious nod to United States of America.(Why not just take the actual U.S. and use it? Not a bad idea but feels kind of lazy just doing that.)

It is, as one would assume, 'The New World' of its planet which has its share of Native Wysterians, being Ursine and some other tribes and peoples of differing species. Along the east coast, it's much more 'civilized' compared to the west. Bigger cities with the starts of factories coming along. The further west you get, much less civilized. Much more untouched land. And it's much more dangerous.

The province of Brimstone is around central to what Wysteria would be if it takes on the rest of its continent. Maybe around what Kansas and Oklahoma are. There are settlements past Brimstone's borders, but they are nowhere near as civilized as what Brimstone is. And Brimstone isn't a very civilized place.

Obviously, you have your outlaws, your lawmen, your bounty hunters, and the natives. Settlers who fight each other in some way.

Then we have our two leads. I'm debating on how I'll be implementing them. I may leave that up to vote in the quest proper on how and why they're out here on the very edge of what civilization is. I may also leave other information for their backstory up to vote with some chargen.


Thoughts?

 

[Simon_Jester]

Sounds like a viable start.

 

[OfSpaceandTime]

Because I'm bad at maps. . .

I'm either looking into doing one of two things for this quest.

A.) Just take the map of our own world and redo the states into the provinces and what not, rename things and reshape them except for the actual continents.

B.) Find a decent map making program and mess it around in a photo editing software.

Anyone have any thoughts and or suggestions on this?

 

[jakodee]

Alright, so I know the general idea of the country that this will take place in. Unified Provinces of Wysteria. Feels kinda fantasy and is also an obvious nod to United States of America.(Why not just take the actual U.S. and use it? Not a bad idea but feels kind of lazy just doing that.)

It is, as one would assume, 'The New World' of its planet which has its share of Native Wysterians, being Ursine and some other tribes and peoples of differing species. Along the east coast, it's much more 'civilized' compared to the west. Bigger cities with the starts of factories coming along. The further west you get, much less civilized. Much more untouched land. And it's much more dangerous.

The province of Brimstone is around central to what Wysteria would be if it takes on the rest of its continent. Maybe around what Kansas and Oklahoma are. There are settlements past Brimstone's borders, but they are nowhere near as civilized as what Brimstone is. And Brimstone isn't a very civilized place.

Obviously, you have your outlaws, your lawmen, your bounty hunters, and the natives. Settlers who fight each other in some way.

Click to shrink...

So... this may be a bad place to insert my amateur historian voice, but I'm going. To do it anyway.

Westerns are often stories about entrepreneurial people taking a risk to build things in unspoiled wilderness. These stories are mostly lies.

More historically accurate westerns, the sort of stories people who lived in the "wild west" would have told you, rather than what circus performers from the 1950's would have told you, are the stories of people moving into newly conquered territory. The land isn't so much unsoiled as it is recently cleared via war.

The idea that there existed a sort of equal competition between American Settlers and Native American groups is part of this inaccuracy. "Cowboys" rarely ever fought "Indians". The military fought native peoples; most of the people we think of as having "tamed the Wild West" were (often government subsidized) economic opportunists trying to get rich off of newly acquired military prizes. The actual conflict between natives and colonizers was mostly in the form of open warfare.

So I guess my advice to you would be to not forgot the large scale when you write your smaller scale interpersonal stories and conflicts. The natives who lives near the settlement are probably the remnants of some vast nation, recently dismembered; and the railways being built are the thing attracting all the people, rather than railways piping into existence because people have moved in.

Edit: And never forget the inherently interesting nature of farmers who hate each other. "Farmers come to blows." is an accurate description of the entirety of the Icelandic Sagas, which are basically westerns a few hundred years to early.

 

[Katamariguy]

@OfSpaceandTime What are your attitudes vis a vis trains?

 

[OfSpaceandTime]

So... this may be a bad place to insert my amateur historian voice, but I'm going. To do it anyway.

Westerns are often stories about entrepreneurial people taking a risk to build things in unspoiled wilderness. These stories are mostly lies.

More historically accurate westerns, the sort of stories people who lived in the "wild west" would have told you, rather than what circus performers from the 1950's would have told you, are the stories of people moving into newly conquered territory. The land isn't so much unsoiled as it is recently cleared via war.

The idea that there existed a sort of equal competition between American Settlers and Native American groups is part of this inaccuracy. "Cowboys" rarely ever fought "Indians". The military fought native peoples; most of the people we think of as having "tamed the Wild West" were (often government subsidized) economic opportunists trying to get rich off of newly acquired military prizes. The actual conflict between natives and colonizers was mostly in the form of open warfare.

So I guess my advice to you would be to not forgot the large scale when you write your smaller scale interpersonal stories and conflicts. The natives who lives near the settlement are probably the remnants of some vast nation, recently dismembered; and the railways being built are the thing attracting all the people, rather than railways piping into existence because people have moved in.

Edit: And never forget the inherently interesting nature of farmers who hate each other. "Farmers come to blows." is an accurate description of the entirety of the Icelandic Sagas, which are basically westerns a few hundred years to early.

Click to shrink...

Good points. I hadn't really planned on our leads fighting natives, as I'm aware that natives aren't bad. I will keep this in mind, though. I appreciate the input.

@OfSpaceandTime What are your attitudes vis a vis trains?

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Vis a vis? Sorry, I've never heard this phrase before. If you mean my thoughts on them, they are a thing. They just only extend so far into the provinces.