Mecha Western Setting Riff

A Game Idea I'm Not Using (Right Now)

So, this is about mixing the tropes of the Western genre with mecha. I make no claims to this particular mashup. The idea's been floating around for awhile.

Ever get an idea for something completely different from the project that's sitting right in front of you? I should be finishing my notes on B4 The Lost City for my Old School Essentials "Nostalgia Tour" campaign. On the other hand, this is one of those ideas that will bother me until I jot something down. Feel free to borrow what you like and let me know how it goes.

Mecha keeping an eye out for bug rustlers.

Related Concepts

The mecha western draws from Westerns, space operas, and space westerns plus the whole giant robot thing.

"Space opera" is derived from "soap opera" and "horse opera" - the latter being a term for Western films and television series. Replace the horse with a spaceship, revolvers with rayguns, and the Wild West with the Final Frontier. Star Trek's "wagon train to the stars" is a well known example.

The space western is a space opera that invokes the themes and trappings of the Western. In many ways, it simply draws the existing relationship between the two genres closer together. For example, the Mandalorian places greater emphasis on the Western elements that have always been a part of Star Wars.

The mecha western is a different kind of space western. Spaceships are still around, but their role is more akin to a train or stagecoach than a horse. They are ways of crossing the frontier that the protagonists don't own or control. The Western's horse is instead swapped out with piloted robotic vehicles. This idea isn't exactly unprecedented - anime like Outlaw Star are inspirations.


Drilling Deeper

Placing mecha in space opera isn't enough - that's a significant portion of anime and video games. Mixing mecha and Westerns involves recycling classic Western plots and tropes with a sci-fi spin that includes giant robots. There is plenty of commentary on the Western genre - TV Tropes has a whole page - and I'm not going to be doing a deep dive here. I want to discuss how everything reacts after being combined.

A frontier is mandatory. The action has to take place far enough from settled areas for things to get out of hand. The conflict between those who employ the violence necessary to destroy threats to order and those who wish to build and live in that order is alive here. There is also the fact that explosive weapons and anti-authoritarian attitudes don't mix with artificial environments maintained by fragile life support systems. The tension between hired mecha jocks and those that pay them could be a valuable source of role playing drama.

Space westerns - such as Firefly - often feature a mix of technologies. This could be the result of a recent interstellar war. The effects of the conflict still disrupt trade, but left plenty of salvage around. Or it could be the simple fact that high tech gets less common and more crude the further out a place is from the centers of industry. In any event, there is a mix of technological aesthetics - steampunk, dieselpunk, cyberpunk, cassette future, rocketpunk, and glossy high tech. What is available depends on the sources that can be accessed, the means at hand, and what can be jury-rigged to fit to a purpose.

What to Call These Yahoos?

Space Cowboys? Taken.
Mecha Jockeys? Mech Jocks? Kinda also taken.
Hired Guns? Buckaroos? Gunslingers? Straight outta Westerns, not enough mecha.
Mecha Busters? Mecha Wranglers? Hmmm...

I'll workshop it later.


Adventure Ideas

"High Noon Mecha Showdown"
Chronometers count down to local noon, when the regular interplanetary transport arrives with a band of mecha equipped enforcers assigned to kill those getting too close in their investigation of the corrupt corporate government. The player characters need to make sure that all their mecha systems are nominal when the time comes.

Inspirations: "High Noon" (1952) and "Outland" (1981).

"The Great Brain Robbery"
A valuable corporate shipment is on the move, but that's just the cover story. Something even more valuable is hidden in one of the regular cargo modules - an AI core that corporate wants to stay off the books. Catching up to the shipment, boarding, and defeating corporate security is just the start. Recovering the core and keeping it long enough to reach a buyer will be an even greater challenge.
Inspirations: "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) and "The Train Job" (Firefly 1x2).

"Cattle Drive"
Hired on to protect dinosaur-like megafauna and the specialized mecha that herd them to market from rustlers. They have to get the herd from their ranch to the markets near the planetary space port while under constant harassment from mecha buckaroos in the pay of competing ranches.

"Lost Treasure"
Three parties race each other for a treasure. A crashed luxury space liner that went down before the war. Salvagers picked it clean long ago, but there are rumors that something was missed. The race ends in a Mexican standoff after a long journey and many dangers. Who will make the first move and provoke a fight in the wreck of the space liner?
Inspiration: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (1966).


Conclusion

Now that I've got some notes down, I'm putting this idea away for later. Maybe I'll dust it off after my preorder of the Lancer book arrives.

Nostalgia Tour - Planning an OSE Campaign

The good news is that my idea of using Old School Essentials to revisit classic D&D and AD&D adventure modules is lurching forward. The bad news is I actually have to execute the idea. That all starts with a plan. I'm an experienced enough gamemaster to know that any plan I come up with is unlikely to survive contact with my players. Still, whatever bits of it I can salvage from the burning wreckage may provide a handy guideline.

Lost the originals in a move, but POD from DTRPG will do the job.

Narrowing Down the Options

Using classic modules greatly simplifies planning. I just have to pick out the ones I want to run. The criteria I'm using are: my group's interest in a particular module, compatibility with OSE, and the level of effort involved with running it.

My group includes veteran players who made it clear that they have no interest in another go at B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. I completely understand not wanting to return to it after playing or running it half a dozen times. The goal of the campaign is to indulge in nostalgia, not endure tedium. Tt is the only module vetoed outright by the group.

Old School Essentials is designed to be compatible with the Basic/Expert D&D rules. This makes B- and X-series modules ideal. AD&D modules require some conversion depending on content. The stats of certain monsters are similar, but not identical. Other monsters - like demons and devils - are not presented in OSE Advanced Fantasy at the time of this posting.

Running a module rarely means just giving it a skim and winging it from there. I've posted about this before - I found that studying a module and running it from my notes is best practice. It's even worse if I feel the need to rewrite aspects of a module to better fit my style or the tone of a campaign. This suggests that Jaquays-style dungeons and open world hexcrawls would work better than something relying on a baked in plot.


The List

B4 The Lost City
A classic Moldvay dungeon crawl that I never actually got to play or run back in the day. There's a strong swords and sorcery vibe that my group should appreciate. Also, it avoids an issue with early B-series modules - large areas being left blank. A key point of this campaign is me avoiding work.

X1 The Isle of Dread
Another Moldvay classic. This one is a hexcrawl inspired by the kind of "lost world" stories featuring dinosaurs and steamy jungles. It may or may not turn into fantasy 'Nam for our group due to those dinosaurs and jungles. The only issue that I have with it is the paradox of the black pearl that supposed to kick off the adventure.

G1-3 Against the Giants
D1-2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth
D3 Vault of the Drow
Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits
This is the ironic series of adventures that starts with dungeon crawling through the centers of evil giant power, drops into what would later be called the Underdark, passes through the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is a Drow city, and ends up in the extraplanar lair of a demon goddess. Nevermind all the set up about the Elder Elemental God, the real bad guy is Lolth and the real treasures are the literal treasures that the party loots along the way.


Alternates

X2 Castle Amber
The Moldvay classic dungeon crawl that I'll be running if the Moldvay classic hexcrawl that is The Isle of Dread doesn't appeal for whatever reason. Otherwise, I'll save this personal favorite for a later OSE campaign I have in mind.

C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
The recommended levels between The Isle of Dread and Against the Giants leaves a gap. I have a few modules that I could slot in to cover it. This one is the front runner due to fond memories I have of running it in grade school. I am hopeful that my older and mature current group makes it through encounter #13 much better than my group back then.

The Messinian Salinity Crisis & The Zanclean Flood in TimeWatch

"Hey! I gotta idea for a time travel adventure!"
"What hellhole are you... I mean, what hellhole is TimeWatch sending us to?"
"How about a relaxing trip to the Mediterranean?"
"How about telling us what the catch is?"


The Messinian Salinity Crisis

The historical significance of the Mediterranean Sea and the area surrounding it is undeniable, but that particular body of water wasn't always there. The Mediterranean Sea dried up a little less than 6 million years back in an event called the Messinian salinity crisis. The Straits of Gibraltar closed off the Mediterranean from the Atlantic Ocean. The hot and dry climate did the rest through evaporation, although lakes of brackish water remained.

Anybody traveling to the area during this period could encounter a deep dry basin. The dry climate and higher air pressures due to being up to 3-5km below sea level combined with summer heat to create desert like conditions. Much of the area would be covered in a layer of salt.

Why would anybody take a time machine to such a place? It makes for a good location for a temporary base. The inhospitable climate means that nobody and nothing is likely to just wander by and be a bother for a period of a few hundred thousand years. Evidence of the base's existence will be power washed away when the Mediterranean Basin becomes the Mediterranean Sea again (see below). Of course, it being such prime real estate for a time traveler in the market for a secure and isolated base location means that it might also be one of the first places for people to look.

A hydroelectric dam placed between the Mediterranean Basin and the Atlantic Ocean could be a vast source of electrical power. It could power a base or be the whole motive for going there. The idea of damming off the Mediterranean Sea came up in the 1920s as the Atlantropa proposal. Of course, methods of time or dimensional travel that use more power than such a dam would produce would make the whole venture unprofitable.


The Zanclean Flood

The Messinian salinity crisis ended about 5.33 million years ago with the Zanclean flood. The triggering event was the formation of the Straits of Gibraltar. It took anywhere between several months and two years for most of the Mediterranean Sea to refill. Signs of erosion from the massive flow of water from the Atlantic Ocean suggest that flow rates were impressive.

Given the historical significance of the Mediterranean, preventing the Zanclean flood is of interest to groups with an eye towards altering human history. However, an effort on that scale would be difficult to hide from anybody with the ability to monitor for historical changes. This might lead to such a project being used to conceal or distract from more subtle time travel shenanigans.

Going back to make sure the Zanclean flood happens on time could involve anything from being issued shovels as a punishment detail to the faster and more fun method of explosives. The Zanclean flood could be deliberately triggered to destroy a decommissioned base in the Mediterranean Basin. It could also be used to destroy an effort to make the Atlantropa proposal happen during this period.

Finally, the Zanclean flood might have been an accident. An example of collateral damage from an exchange of eldritch weapons during a time war. Or the result of teleporting a nuke into the past to stop it going off someplace worse.

Repaint or Move On?

I've heard it said that miniatures should never be stripped and repainted. "Keep them around as a reminder of your earlier work. You'll be able to see how much you've improved."

I'd like to think I've gotten better at painting. Or maybe I just got better at photographing miniatures.

On the other hand, some examples of my earlier work are subpar. I've repainted miniatures before. There are a couple of examples on this blog. For example, I painted this Reaper Chronoscope miniature way back in 2011 and repainted it in 2021 - ten years later! Why? I wanted the miniature to match the others I was using in my Five Parsecs From Home game. It seemed worth the effort in that case.

This is the before and after of the miniature in question.

I can see both sides of the issue. The miniature is already painted, likely to a "good enough for tabletop" standard. It's irritating to see the mistakes I made on a miniature, but is worthwhile in general to start over with it? The effort might be better spent on my extensive collection of unpainted miniatures.

The way to resolve the conflict between these views might be to repaint selectively. Rank and file miniatures used in groups? Tabletop standard is fine. Hero miniatures intended as centerpieces or display? It depends. Have I learned enough since then to make a difference? Is stripping off the old paint necessary? Does it just need a touch up? A little wash or highlighting?

There's a couple of particularly annoying offenders in my display cabinet. I see them every day. Revisiting them would be a chance to see how I've improved since calling them done.

Maybe after I've knocked down my pile of shame a little.

My 2024 Tabletop Gaming Plan

2023 was not my year for anything related to tabletop gaming. I don't want to get into details. I'm going to put it all behind me and start fresh with a new plan. It may not be a good plan, it might be pie in the sky, but it's a direction to go in until I come up with something better.

In early 2024, I'm going back to the place where I started gaming. I enjoy setting up terrain, measuring distances, pushing miniatures around, and cursing my poor die rolls. But wargaming isn't where the journey began for me. My gaming origins involve a purple boxed set with an Erol Otis cover, rules by Tom Moldvay, and an adventure by Gary Gygax.

So it's back to roleplaying games for awhile. I picked up the Player's Tome and Referee's Tome for Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy during Necrotic Gnome's Black Friday sale. It's looking like a good way to revisit some classic adventures without too much conversion work. After that, I have a bunch of other TTRPGs that are either sitting on the shelves or are on the way from Kickstarters or preorders. Maybe I'll alternate between fantasy and sci-fi with a modern setting thrown in here and there.

Related to all the TTRPGs sitting on the shelves is my massive backlog of books to read. Making a dent in it is an overall 2024 goal. Quite a few of those books are gaming related, so it's fair to mention it here.

Another backlog is my pile of shame. Although I'll be kicking off 2024 with TTRPGs, I'm planning on getting to know my brushes and paints again. Not every miniature and terrain piece has to be used for wargaming, after all. There's also some junk in storage for when I try my hand at scratch building and trashbashing again.

Finally, I could use a way to keep my thoughts and ideas organized in 2024. Maybe I could publish them in some format? Perhaps a blog? Or a YouTube channel? I'll have to look into it.