Any decent Wild West RPGs out there? Any reason why there hasn't been one?

Earth

Earth

Vault Senior Citizen
Title says it all. Are there any Wild West rpgs? If so, great. If not, why not? It seems like a perfect setting to me. The Western genre has everything from extreme and graphic violence, great action, interesting factions, amazing setting and plenty of character-types who would make their mark on the Wild West world. Not to mention it only has a hundred years of inspiration from films, TV, comics etc. Hell, a Western final showdown even plays like a turn-based combat game.
 
Never thought about this. Sounds great though. The closest RPG to a western I've played is fallout New vegas.
 
Earth said:
My thoughts exactly. It is a horribly underused setting. There are only ten million RPGs in fantasy settings, but you want a western? Nuffin'.
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I've always wanted an RPG set in the afterlife. (Hell) a redemption tale.
 
I just did a quick search and... nothing much. There is a surprising lack of Western themed RPGs out there. It sounds like a good setting for an RPG and with some tweaks, a lot of good Western-themed stories can be made from the ground up.

R.Graves said:
I've always wanted an RPG set in the afterlife. (Hell) a redemption tale.
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It's not a video game but there is Deadlands, a role-playing game mixing Western and Horror. Does that somewhat count?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlands
 
R.Graves said:
I've always wanted an RPG set in the afterlife. (Hell) a redemption tale.
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There's always Planescape Torment, which is fairly similar to a Hell-setting. But yeah, an RPG based on Dante's Inferno would be cool. Going between different rings of hell, meeting all the different damned souls. You could start the game from one of the seven different rings, establishing what sins you committed in your previous life and how that would affect your eternal soul.
 
Red Dead Redemption is the closest I can think of, though it's not really an RPG. This is the problem with the good RPG developers like Obsidian and InXile right now. They are all working on fantasy games. Someone make a Fallout replacement (Wasteland 3) or a space game or something. Enough of this fantasy stuff. I've got so many magic wands and mage spells I don't know what to do with them.
 
Irwin John Finster said:
Red Dead Redemption is the closest I can think of, though it's not really an RPG. This is the problem with the good RPG developers like Obsidian and InXile right now. They are all working on fantasy games. Someone make a Fallout replacement (Wasteland 3) or a space game or something. Enough of this fantasy stuff. I've got so many magic wands and mage spells I don't know what to do with them.
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Maybe it's because I've always preferred sci-fi, but I've never actually got into a fantasy RPGs all that much. Arcanum was the closest and even then...Games like Baldur's Gate just don't do it for me. (I do love Planescape though, but I always felt that game was more sci-fi than straight fantasy anyway).

Hence why I'm asking about different settings. I get that fantasy has very set roleplaying ways of playing, like "warrior" and "thief" etc. but you can totally put similar kinds of character types in westerns.

EDIT: Any fantasy fans out there, could you please explain what's so appealing about the fantasy genre? One of the worst ways to open a game for me is with the whole clichéd, "There is a great evil, or Grudge Lord Orcy McOrcface has returned, to destroy the land of good blah blah blah." I just lose all interest in games like that, even if they're RPGs.
 
Earth said:
Maybe it's because I've always preferred sci-fi, but I've never actually got into a fantasy RPGs all that much. Arcanum was the closest and even then...Games like Baldur's Gate just don't do it for me. (I do love Planescape though, but I always felt that game was more sci-fi than straight fantasy anyway).

Hence why I'm asking about different settings. I get that fantasy has very set roleplaying ways of playing, like "warrior" and "thief" etc. but you can totally put similar kinds of character types in westerns.

EDIT: Any fantasy fans out there, could you please explain what's so appealing about the fantasy genre? One of the worst ways to open a game for me is with the whole clichéd, "There is a great evil, or Grudge Lord Orcy McOrcface has returned, to destroy the land of good blah blah blah." I just lose all interest in games like that, even if they're RPGs.
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Fantasy is ok but currently it's way overdone. We need space RPGs, post-apocalyptic RPGs, anything else.

Fantasy has its appeal - its magical, has interesting characters and races, and the ambience of it all is quite relaxing. There's just too much of it right now and not enough of the other stuff.

For me, Fallout 4 was such a major disaster and disappointment that I am looking for a post-apocalyptic RPG to replace that niche. I've already done Wasteland 2 twice and it was great, and I want Wasteland 3 and more games. Underrail was also decent.

Space RPGs get no love right now. Mass Effect if you count that, and that is about it. We need more.
 
Now @Earth I do enjoy me some fantasy role-playing games and I don't quite understand The appeal either. I'd like more role-playing games set in tolkien's legendarium.

Or Post apocalyptic
Or the afterlife.
Or sci-fi
Or space.
Or horror themed rpgs.

And now thanks to @Earth and this thread I want a western rpg as well.
 
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If you try asking the Codex about fantasy setting, hell, even quite a lot of them had enough of it. And then, there's the factor of publishers who can't leave the comfort zones, and when faced with an option to either take risks or stay, they would ask, "Orcs and Elves sells, right? There's no need to deviate from that formula."

For genre other than fantasy, there's already Copper Dreams, Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones*, Consortium Series, Krai Mira, InSomnia, and many more.

Planescape: Torment, while appearing like Fantasy, actually had its own charm and just felt so out of place when compared to other fantasy RPGs. I don't know, I'm not sure. PS:T stands out and that's probably one of the many other reason why it's THE Best Written RPG, if not THE Best RPG of All Time. While it seemed inXile is working on fantasy games, Torment: Tides of Numenera is supposedly a successor to PS:T, and from the looks of it, it already evoked that feeling of being out of place in fantasy genre, so expect to get hooked to it like you were to PS:T :nod: though it seems they would continue down to Bard's Tale IV after T:TON, so we gotta wait for some more time before they reveal their plans for the trademarked Van Buren and Meantime.

As for Wild West RPG..... hmm, it's too bad there wasn't much going on in that setting.

*still on Kickstarter crowdfunding process. 10 days to go.
 
Irwin John Finster said:
Fantasy is ok but currently it's way overdone. We need space RPGs, post-apocalyptic RPGs, anything else.

Fantasy has its appeal - its magical, has interesting characters and races, and the ambience of it all is quite relaxing. There's just too much of it right now and not enough of the other stuff.

For me, Fallout 4 was such a major disaster and disappointment that I am looking for a post-apocalyptic RPG to replace that niche. I've already done Wasteland 2 twice and it was great, and I want Wasteland 3 and more games. Underrail was also decent.

Space RPGs get no love right now. Mass Effect if you count that, and that is about it. We need more.
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high fantasy is saturated. yes, but a grimdark one is not.

that's why i welcome the setting of dishonored and tyranny, its somewhat rarely done before
 
Earth said:
EDIT: Any fantasy fans out there, could you please explain what's so appealing about the fantasy genre? One of the worst ways to open a game for me is with the whole clichéd, "There is a great evil, or Grudge Lord Orcy McOrcface has returned, to destroy the land of good blah blah blah." I just lose all interest in games like that, even if they're RPGs.
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That premise is hardly unique to the fantasy rpg genre, most games are about defeating some great evil (and so are all fallout games).

As for the setting, i care more about the quality of writing and gameplay than about a particular setting.
 
R.Graves said:
Yes! But come on you gotta admit that the rpg genre could certainly use some variety setting wise.
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Oh for sure, i just don't see it as a problem as long as i'm getting my fix of good rpg games regardless of the setting.
 
black and white setting is not a cliche, its a trope; plot device that hold neutral stance in writing term. it could be bad or good depend on the writer who use it.

ussually black and white setting is bad when your character fixed into a certain faction or point of view. meaning no choice and freedom to choose how you gonna approach the conflict. to me that is not always be bad thing, if we potray the strugleness aspect rather than the freedom of our character. this kind of writing is very abundant in lot of JRPG or Eastern Games and it works, also for some other reason.
 
I know there's always "good vs evil" in most games. What I'm meaning specifically is the "intro", where the game starts with a LOTR-style opening about how, "Orcy McOrcface tried to take power before, but then he was cast into blah-de-blah for a thousand years. Now he has RETURNED etc etc."

Fantasy is...fine, but I'd love to see other settings for RPGs.
 
Earth said:
I know there's always "good vs evil" in most games. What I'm meaning specifically is the "intro", where the game starts with a LOTR-style opening about how, "Orcy McOrcface tried to take power before, but then he was cast into blah-de-blah for a thousand years. Now he has RETURNED etc etc."
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Do you have any games in mind? The only one that comes to my mind, off the bat, is Baldur's Gate.
 
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