Once Upon A Time in the West
I know we've had "elves and dwarves in the Old West" and "let's have a lot of fantastic things going on in an alternate history Old West", but I'd like to see something more like the post-Apocalyptic, sort of Arthurian, fantasy Old West of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I'd settle for the more-coherent-than-Deadlands alt-history fantasy of Mark Sumner's The Devil's Tower, or Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series, which is even better, but really pre-classical Western era.
Bedeviled Dinosaurs
Hairy primitives and their dinosaur companions (or vice versa) versus more belligerent hairy primitives, prehistoric monsters, and space aliens. In other word's Jack Kirby's Devil Dinosaur series exploding into rpg form. It would be a lost world well worth finding.
Giants in the Earth
Take parts of Exalted, but emphasize the Biblical inspirations, and combine it with some wild-eyed von Daniken-esque fantasizing, preferably in the key of Kirby's (him again!) Eternals and put it all in a Sword & Sorcery prehistory. Nephilim tread the jeweled thrones of the earth under their sandaled feet.
I'd like an action/adventure space opera with a little bit more of the trippiness of Dune, particularly as it would have been adapted in Heavy Metal or Epic magazine. Star Wars informed less by Alex Raymond derring-do, than by Jim Starlin psychedelia. Something more like Dreadstar, Metamorphosis Odyssey, or European imports like The Incal, or Metabarons.
8 comments:
Judge Dredd - the Cursed Earth stories.
Muties, weird environments, dinosaurs, killer hillbillys, and all the western clichés you can eat.
Esp. relevant: The Dead Man storyline (Dredd travels the Cursed Earth as an amnesiac Man With No Name).
A friend of mine took a stab at a "Once Upon A Time In The West" like campaign and it was awesome while we played it. I'll *always* jump at the chance at playing similar games and may take a stab at it myself someday (Silverlode was the historical west with fantasy added). But isn't this sort of what your doing with (at least parts of) your hard-boiled fantasy sandbox?
Also love the idea of trippy space opera. :)
In 3E, Devil Dino would be a t-rex monk. I don't know if that's wonderful or terrible. Or wonderfully terrible.
@Chris - Judge Dredd is good, though still a little futuristic for what I had in mind. Still, having not read any Cursed Earth, you've certainly encouraged me to give it a try.
@Risus - A little, though of course, the time is period is 60 or so years later. I'm trying to wrestle a little more with the fantasy "Matter of America" which a fantasy western certainly could do, but needn't necessarily (King doesn't for instance), if any of that makes any sense to anyone but me. :)
I can almost see a space opera game with Starlin art in my mind's eye.
@Matt - That's a tough call. I'm willing to go 60-40. ;)
Grimjack.
For the fantasy old-west setting, check out Robertson Games' Weird West game, inspired principally by Muse's Knights of Cydonia music video: http://robertsongames.com/
@NetherWorks - Grimjack is cool, and a cool setting, but its not really an example of any of the settingsI mentioned, is it?
@Dan - Oh, yeah! I've seen that before in ym browsing, but had forgotten. Thanks for the reminder!
I read that as "Stalin" art, not "Starlin" the first time through. *That* would be a whole other sort of game. Soviets in space along the lines of the Red Star.
But I am ashamed that I had never heard of Starlin before you dropped his name. The images that come up on the Google really do capture a fantastically trippy sci-fi vibe.
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