Wild Wild West Wednesday: The Night of the Whirring Death

Let this re-posting of a Christmas-ish episode of Wild Wild West serve is a reminder that Jim and I are reviewing the series here on his blog...

 

"The Night of the Whirring Death" 

Written by Jackson Gillis
Directed by Mark Rydell
Synopsis (from IMDB): Jim and Artie are collect money from millionaires buying bonds to save California from bankruptcy. The problem is, Dr. Loveless is back and blowing up the would-be benefactors with booby-trapped toys to steal the money.

Trey: This is the closest WWW came to a Christmas episode. It isn't stated in the episode to be Christmas, but the winter weather, focus on toys, and other story elements give they vibe. It aired, however, in February of 1966.

Jim: It starts off with a nice tip of the hat to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with Jeremiah Ratch taking the place of  Scrooge. Ratch is played by Norman Fell, aka Mr. Roper from Three’s Company. Fell’s comedy chops come in handy as he hams it up with the Ratch character for the short time he’s on the screen.

Trey: This is Dr. Loveless' third appearance and the first not written by his creator. It sticks pretty close to the established Loveless schtick though: he's still trying to carve his own kingdom out of part of California. Voltaire (Richard Kiel) and Antionette (Phoebe Dorin) are back, as well.

Jim: I believe this is the one and only time Loveless is ever shown smoking. It’s mostly for comical effect, admittedly, after he's revealed as the “child” who gifted Ratch toy soldiers.

Trey: Voltaire speaks for the first time, too. It's note as being a change within the episode. One Loveless related conundrum: Why does the brilliant doctor continue to employ lovely female assistants in his plans, who he knows by now are only going to fall for West's charms?

Jim: He tries to maneuver Priscilla away from it, but to no avail! She is the most wide-eyed innocent of the group, so far.

Trey: Unbelievably naïve is the better descriptor! I wonder if her toy maker grandfather raised her with no contact with the outside world?

Jim: A funny bit is the look of cynical disbelief on lovely Antionette’s face when Priscilla is convinced by Loveless that the exploding toy train is a perfectly fine toy.

Just putting this out there: with the naivete Priscilla displays, I think a nice plot twist for the episode would’ve been to have her be revealed as a human sized animatronic created by Loveless. 

Trey: I could buy that.

Jim: In general, I think the level of technology in this episode seems a bit advanced. We see electric trains and phonographs.

Trey: The phonograph was an anachronism noted in Loveless's first appearance. The electric train is similarly just a bit ahead, having been invented in the 1890s. Incidentally, this episode actually gives us an onscreen place and time: "San Francisco, 1874."

Jim: One of the unintentionally funny bits to me: After West is ground zero at the explosion in Ratch’s shop, Gordon proclaims that he's fine and just needs some rest. Supporting him in this dubious claim is a city cop who says, “He’s right lady. Working this beat, I’ve seen enough to know he’ll be fine.” Just how violent is this neighborhood?

Trey: Thinks are hard in California in this alternate 1874, apparently. I mean, the governor's plan here is explicitly laundering money for rich people with shady, possibly criminal, business practices to keep his state solvent. 

Jim: Vote Loveless! How could it be worse?

Wild Wild West Revisited Wednesday

Instead of watching some parade on Thanksgiving, you can sit back and read the installments you've missed of "Revisiting the Wild Wild West" a rewatch and commentary on selected episodes by Jim "Flashback Universe" Shelley and myself.

Revisiting the Wild Wild West Continues

Since last I mentioned it here, there have been two more posts in our Wild Wild West series rewatch over at the Flashback Universe Blog.

See James West battle a house cat!

Revisiting the Wild Wild West

Here's a periodic reminder that Jim Shelley and I are continuing our selective re-watch of the Wild Wild West weekly on the Flashback Universe Blog.

You can catch up on installments here.

Revisiting the Wild Wild West

 

Just a reminder that my and Jim "Flashback Universe" Shelley's rewatch and commentary on the 60s TV show Wild Wild West continues over on Jim's blog. 

Wild Wild West Wednesday

My friend Jim and I have embarked on a review of the tv series Wild Wild West to be published on Jim's blog Flashback Universe. Head over there to check out the first installment.

Wednesday Comics: Wild, Wild West

The 60s spy-fi Western Wild, Wild West has had a couple of comic book adaptations. Gold Key Comics published 7 issues from 1966-69 (the span of tv series). The most recent series was in 1990 from Millennium Comics.

I've never read the Millennium series, but several issues of the Gold Key run are available on the Internet Archive. Check them out.

Weird Revisited: Wild Wild West

Robert Conrad died yesterday at the age of 84. This post from 2015 is a tribute to what I think was his best role...

Wild Wild West was conceived as "James Bond on horseback." That was a just-about perfect genre combo for the 1965, and a damn good one for today. The actual show was even cooler, particularly when it went color; it was the Old West filtered through 60s spy-fi style with Jules Verne science fiction thrown in. It's practically begging for an rpg.

The show's James Bond of the 1870s was James West, Secret Service agent, who rode around in a private train with his partner, gadgeteer and master of disguise Artemus Gordon. Bruce Lansbury, producer of the show, described it thusly (as quoted in Susan Kesler's book):

"Jim's world was one of two-faced villainy, male and female, countless 'Mickey Finns,' and needle-tipped baroque pinkie rings that put him to sleep even as he embraced their dispensers. There were inevitable trap doors, hotel walls that ground their victims to dust or revolved into lush Aubrey Beardsley settings next door, lethal chairs that tossed occupants skyward or alternatively dumped them into dank sewers that subterraneously crisscrossed countless cow towns of the period. And then there was that old Dutch sea captain, leaning in the corner of the swill-hole of a bar, who inexplicably winked at Jim as he entered … Artemus, of course, in one of his thousand disguises."

Some highlights: a super-speed formula made from diamonds; an elaborate house full of traps made by a deranged puppeteer; a ground of assassins masquerading as a circus troupe; and of course, the genius dwarf, Miguelito Loveless.

(No doubt some of you remember the 1999 film of the same name. It's fine, in the way the 1998 Godzilla is fine.)

Anyway, in gaming Wild Wild West, a lot of folks would suggest Steampunk games first--but the Steampunk aesthetic is pretty much missing from the show, despite the superficial similarities in thumbnail description. Any Western rpg (or generic one) would work, I suppose--so long as it would support the Victorian super-science. The Western element is mostly cosmetic, though, Stripped of its trappings, it more resembles The Man from UNCLE at its core than say Wagon Train. I think a Western adaptation of the old James Bond game would be interesting with the spy-fi genre stuff it has built in. GUMSHOE might also be a good way to do it.

Weird Revisited: Hyades Plains Drifter

This 2015 post is a bit recent for revisit, but playing with Hero Forge over the weekend and designing Tex Hex from Bravestarr brought it back to mind...

Take McKinney's Carcosa, remove whatever homology to Masters of the Universe is there, replacing it instead with echoes of Bravestarr. For the more literary minded: take out some of the Lovecraft and replace it with elements of King's Dark Tower series. Now you've got a weird western on an alien world.

A Bone Man, probably

Drop those sorcerous rituals that upset some people and replace them with drugs. Now you've got an acid weird western on an alien world. That ought to be enough for any game, but you're a jaded bunch with a decadent palate so don't let the alien thing keep you from borrowing from Forteana related to the America West: tombs of giants, tiny mummies, underground lizard (or snake) men. Thunderbirds. Season to taste with Shaver mystery.

Saddle up, cowboy. Lost Carcosa awaits.

On the Western

What follows are some observations on media in the Western genre (mostly film and tv, but comics and even novels are probably not exempt) brought on by a discussion of Westworld. These may be relevant to Old West gaming--if you want to evoke the feel of media rather than historic simulation.

Westerns are Fantasies, not in the sense of genre fantasy, but as in taking place in a fictionalized milieu. This is obscured by historical fictions in Western garb, numerous Westerns loosely based on real events (My Darling Clementine and Doc are both about the OK Corral but just about all they have in common are the names of some historical personages), and the fact that even the most ahistorical Westerns use elements of real history like locations or Native American groups.

But beyond the disregard for strict historical accuracy (a World War II machine gun in the Civil War setting of Fist Full of Dollars or The Wild Bunch's fuzzy placement during the Mexican Civil War) common to films, we have the almost ritual performance of emerging statehood in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence the mystery play of  civilization arriving with the railroad in Once Upon A Time in the West, or the alt-history Tombstone of Forty Guns.All these films have in common a heavy use of the tropes and elements of "the Old West" without any specific historical references.

Scenery is More than Location. John Ford put the striking vistas of Monument Valley in a number of films and in doing so placed it all over the West--maybe even actually in Utah at some point! When Sergio Leone gets to make a Western in the U.S. he shoots there, too. I can't think of a single grim slaughter or dramatic shootout in a film in the shadow of say West Mitten Butte. That isn't the portion of the Matter of the West that is performed in that sort of place. Men tend to die in narrow canyons or scrub desert plains in California or maybe Spain. The enactment of the mythology does not respect distance or realistic topography. A perfect encapsulation of this is Once Upon A Time in the West (it's title suggesting its mythic narrative): The town of Sweetwater and the rail station are in Spain, but Monument Valley lies between the two. Frank and his gang hole up somewhere in the vicinity of Mesa Verde. The generic West must contain all this disparate real estate in days ride or so.

One gaming thought related to the above: Would a Western work devoid of much of those real world references (no matter how thin)? Could you set a Western in some Ruritania-esque fictional state or territory? Probably going to completely fictional stand-in for North America would go to far (without magic to signify genre fantasy), but maybe not.

Hyades Plains Drifter

Take McKinney's Carcosa, remove whatever homology to Masters of the Universe is there, replacing it instead with echoes of Bravestarr. For the more literary minded: take out some of the Lovecraft and replace it with elements of King's Dark Tower series. Now you've got a weird western on an alien world.

A Bone Man, probably

Drop those sorcerous rituals that upset some people and replace them with drugs. Now you've got an acid weird western on an alien world. That ought to be enough for any game, but you're a jaded bunch with a decadent palate so don't let the alien thing keep you from borrowing from Forteana related to the America West: tombs of giants, tiny mummies, underground lizard (or snake) men. Thunderbirds. Season to taste with Shaver mystery.

Saddle up, cowboy. Lost Carcosa awaits.

Wild Wild West

Wild Wild West was conceived as "James Bond on horseback." That was a just-about perfect genre combo for the 1965, and a damn good one for today. The actual show was even cooler, particularly when it went color; it was the Old West filtered through 60s spy-fi style with Jules Verne science fiction thrown in. It's practically begging for an rpg.

The show's James Bond of the 1870s was James West, Secret Service agent, who rode around in a private train with his partner, gadgeteer and master of disguise Artemus Gordon. Bruce Lansbury, producer of the show, described it thusly (as quoted in Susan Kesler's book):

"Jim's world was one of two-faced villainy, male and female, countless 'Mickey Finns,' and needle-tipped baroque pinkie rings that put him to sleep even as he embraced their dispensers. There were inevitable trap doors, hotel walls that ground their victims to dust or revolved into lush Aubrey Beardsley settings next door, lethal chairs that tossed occupants skyward or alternatively dumped them into dank sewers that subterraneously crisscrossed countless cow towns of the period. And then there was that old Dutch sea captain, leaning in the corner of the swill-hole of a bar, who inexplicably winked at Jim as he entered … Artemus, of course, in one of his thousand disguises."

Some highlights: a super-speed formula made from diamonds; an elaborate house full of traps made by a deranged puppeteer; a ground of assassins masquerading as a circus troupe; and of course, the genius dwarf, Miguelito Loveless.

(No doubt some of you remember the 1999 film of the same way. It's fine, sort of in the way the 1998 Godzilla is fine. If you're a fan of the original show, though, it's rather like a breezy remake of Star Trek with Will Smith is Kirk and also the performer of the theme song.)

Anyway, in gaming Wild Wild West, a lot of folks would suggest Steampunk games first--but the Steampunk aesthetic is pretty much missing from the show, despite the superficial similarities in thumbnail description. Any Western rpg (or generic one) would work, I suppose--so long as it would support the Victorian super-science. The Western element is mostly cosmetic, though, Stripped of its trappings, it more resembles The Man from UNCLE at its core than say Wagon Train. I think a Western adaptation of the old James Bond game would be interesting with the spy-fi genre stuff it has built in. GUMSHOE might also be a good way to do it.

Points of the Interest in a Lost World

I'm working on map of the lost world I mentioned previously--and enlisting the help of the Metal Earth's cartographer in the final draft. Anyway, here are few of the points of interest I've thought of so far:

Valley of the Ants
Lair of the Swamp Witch
Wreck of the Zephyrus
Mesa of the Sky-Vikings
Brontosaur Burial Grounds
The City of the Golden Man
Forest of the Amazons
The Temple of the Skull
Castle of the Necromancer
Tomb of the Giant Kings

Oh, and here's a map of the Savage Land to tide you over:

Guns of the Lost World

This painting by Sanjulian packs a lot into one image! It suggests (to me, at least) a cross-genre campaign setting: a lost world like Ka-Zar's Savage Land, Turok's Lost Valley, or Warlord's Skartaris, where dinosaurs still roam and lots of Edgar Rice Burroughs-esque lost cultures are to be found.

Maybe this place is found in a hidden valley in the Sierra Madres, or maybe its an underground world accessible from the Superstition Mountains (where Apaches say (supposedly) that there is an entrance to the underworld) or the Grand Canyon (we've already had reports of strange artifacts). Where ever it is, here's what I think the picture suggests you'll find:

Dinosaurs: From all shorts of eras, cheek and jowl with prehistoric mammals and humans.

Conquistadors: Several groups of Spanish explorers found their way into the lost world. Some are undead thralls, toiling in the castle of an alchemist. Others are immortals zealously guarding a fountain of youth that just might be an alien artifact.

Primitive tribes: Descendants of Native Americans, a Lost Tribe of Israel, Phoenicians, Vikings, and maybe even ancient Romans. Most have reverted to paleolithic levels and are at the mercy of the monsters in their world. A few do interesting things like tame pteranodons for mounts or sacrifice captives in the name of some cargo cult.

Giants: Remains of giants used to be found in tombs all over the U.S. These primitives (Nephilim descendants, probably) are mostly more belligerent that the regular sized primitives, and the one in the picture at least has a sword. They may often be solitary and have unusual powers like the ability to call lightning or command a pack of wolves (or hyenadons).

Humanoids: Some of the human tribes degenerated so much they because something other than human. Maybe its simple degeneration, or maybe is exposure to weird radiations from a long-buried alien spaceship, or maybe it's worshiping dark gods? Or maybe all three? Whichever, they're almost universally hostile and creepy. Some of them are probably Dero.

Books That Put the Weird in the West

Here's two book recommendations that bring a little bit of the fantastic into an Old West (or old west type) setting:

I've recommended some of Cherie Priest's work in this vein before--both the Steampunkian Boneshaker and the more horrific historical Those Who Went Remain There Still. Dreadful Skin reminds me more of the latter, though what it reminds me of most is Lansdale's Dead in the West or Collins'  Dead Mans Hand. It's a set of linked short-stories about a former nun pursuing a supernatural menace across Post-Civil War America. It's episodic and none of the stories builds to a climax in quite the way I would have liked, but it's a quick and entertaining read with some nice set pieces: the first story is a cat and mouse game with a werewolf aboard a steamboat trapped by a storm mid-river.

Felix Gilman's "Lightbringers and Rainmakers" is a a free story at Tor.com set in the Western-ish secondary world of his novel The Half-Made World (which I recommended here) and the upcoming sequel The Rise of Ransom City. In brief, a frontier is being made from the more malleable reality of the wilderness, and humanity is caught between two opposing forces: the technologically more advanced, oppressive order of the Line and the violent chaos represented by the Gun. The short story weaves an epistolary tale of frontier towns and confidence hucksters in the rich world Gilman has built.

Railroading All Gamers Can Enjoy

Hell on Wheels on AMC tells the story of a mobile camp accompanying the construction of the first intercontinental railroad. It has the usual assortment of characters and professions one would expect in any boomtown, plus individuals looking to actively escape civilization for reasons of there own.

The series (which just completed its first season) would obviously be good inspiration for a Western or Steampunk game, but I think it has something to offer fantasy gaming, as well. Non-traditional fantasy would be the most obvious (Mieville has a railroad being built in Iron Council and Eberron has got trains) but a good old fashion wilderness hexcrawl might be informed by the series, too.

All that’s really needed is a reason for a raucous camp of adventurers and hangers-on to be travelling through the wilderness. Perhaps they're doing something as mundane as cutting a new road (like Daniel Boone and his men in Cherie Priest’s Those Who Went Remain There Still) or maybe they’re doing something more exotic, like riding a giant monster so they can mine stuff from its body. Whatever. They just need to be travelling across the wilderness and dragging a bit of civilization with them.

One of Hell on Wheels’s promo posters proclaims: “Blood will be spilled. Lives will be lost. Men will be ruined.” Sounds like a call to adventure to me.

Which Way to the O.K. Corral?

Over Thanksgiving I found a street map of Tombstone, Arizona, I got on a visit several years ago.  I had the thought of scanning it, but its too large for my scanner.  I did find this decent stand-in online and a map of Old West Deadwood as well.  Next time a black hat in a Wild West game tells a PC "this town ain't big enough for the both of us" these ought to be helpful in determining the veracity of that statement.  They might have a use in other settings, as well.

Tombstone was a silver mining town, though it is, of course, most famous as the site of the O.K. Corral where the gunfight took place in 1881.  Much of historic Tombstone remains to this day, though wikipedia notes the National Park Service as taken the town to task for having a lax approach to historic preservation.

Deadwood, South Dakota, also trades on its historic past.  That and gambling seem to be the town's primary sources of revenue.  Thanks to several fires over the decades, less of Old West Deadwood remains than of Tombstone.  The graves of Wild Bill Hickok, "Calamity" Jane, and Seth Bullock can still be found in the cemetery on Mt. Moriah, however.

Tombstone:

Deadwood:

I'd Play That Game

I think this would make a great incident in a weird (or just slightly quirky) Western game.  Note that ol' "Rail Splitter" Abe seems to have chosen to take on Scalphunter in the oval office--meaning he's wrestling in an official capacity.

A Fist Full of Nonfiction

Here are some nonfiction recommendations I’ve rustled up from my collection with an eye toward the Western genre. Given the broad influence of Western tropes, though, there’s some ammunition here for your post-apocalyptic, space opera and even traditional fantasy games, too.

The Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns lets loose with both barrels on that very genre-blending tendency. It catalogs instances of science fiction and fantasy elements showing up in Westerns in all media--and vice versa. This means it terms “Western” pretty broadly, so the rational for including some of the entries is tenuous at best. The other downside is it is the entries are pretty short; it’s a catalog not an in-depth discussion. Still, having all this esoterica in one place makes for easy idea mining.

Staying on the encyclopedia trail, around the next bend we find another McFarland & Co. offering, Spaghetti Westerns: the Good, the Bad And the Violent. This bills itself as a “comprehensive filmography”--though some Amazon reviews have noted it to be plagued by quite a few errors. Still, for the casual browser (particularly one looking for game inspiration) its brief descriptions and discussions of a whole lot of films--including lists of series characters like Django and Sartana--is pretty cool.

Once all the hard riding’s done, we can sit at the saloon and let director (and spaghetti western enthusiast) Alex Cox regal us with 10,000 Ways to Die--which is not only a cool title, but an interesting work of criticism on the genre. Cox gives his insights and research on several films, some of which are on the more obscure side. He also offers up a lot of criticism of Clint Eastwood, and some grousing about Sergio Leone, but that’s the sort of thing one get when you get one (rather opinionated) guy’s take on things.

In a similar vein, Christopher Frayling’s Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone, is another interesting overview, but its even more “film class” in style and so probably less useful as inspiration. Frayling’s axes ground are different than Cox’s--he’s got little good to say about American Westerns inspired by Spaghetti Westerns, and a whole lot of good things to say about Segio Leone.

Time Gone By

I took in the Coen Brothers’ rendition of True Grit on Christmas day. My short review: It’s very good. It also got me to thinking about an element of Westerns and other historical genres that often seems neglected in fantasy and science fiction role-playing games.

An exchange between Texas Ranger LeBoeuf and Rooster Cogburn about where they served in the Civil War sets the events of True Grit in a specific time, or at least, a specific era. This is pretty common in Westerns, though there are, of course, ones that take place in the vague “Old West.” It seems to me, there are roughly five eras in the the Western genre:

• frontier era of buckskin clad mountain men and the wild places.
• Civil War and the Indian wars with blue versus gray as backdrop.
• The post-Civil War Indian warfare
• The classic gunfighter era of a mostly Indian-free West with range wars and gunfights in corrals
• The Dying West of aging heroes and outlaws whose time has past

Now, no one comment (please) to tell me this list is historically inaccurate!  I'm well aware that, in real history, these eras aren’t distinct and overlapped quite a bit.  I think this rough, somewhat fictionalized progression suits my purposes here. These eras aren't always important to what the heroes in Westerns are doing, but they define the world in which their exploits take place. The world of the 1840s frontier is very different from 1881 Tombstone, and even moreso from 1913 Mexico.

So I wonder how many people have exploited the march of history as backdrop in their fantasy games. True, Medieval sorts of societies changed quickly less than that of the nineteenth century, but they did change--and fantasy worlds maybe even more so. Is the adventuring experience for characters in one decade the same as the next? Has there been a revolution, or a new dynasty come to power? Maybe a plague, even collapse of a mighty empire?

Is history something happening in your games, or it only something that once happened in the remote past? Do progressive campaigns reflect the passage of time, or do they tend to all take place in a nebulous “now”?