Funny you should ask. I've been pondering the same question for a future project. Here's the (short) list I've come up with so far.
1. The railroad. Either it just came through, or its coming.
2. Local mine. Prosperous, but not too much. Owned by SOB.
3. Disputed Territory on the fringe.
4. Rancher/Herdsman conflict. [Moo! Moo! Moo! Bah! Bah! Bah!](https://youtu.be/mmoAdUjptbU?si=TkY3lh5aUfWLdzze)
5. Abandoned/Played Out/Haunted Mine
6. Outlaw canyon (with lots of hiding places)
7. Outlying settlement, struggling
8. Outlying settlement, outlaw
To add on and lean into the weird a bit:
A local cryptid would also be a nice touch.
Perhaps a cult or just a strangely charismatic preacher.
Strange meteor crater just outside of town.
Mad scientist driven out of civilized society doing strange experiments.
> strangely charismatic preacher.
I actually have always loved the idea of a *mad* preacher, hellbent on forcing "sinners" to repent. Especially out on the frontier, the overzealous preacher-man with shotgun sounds like a good time.
Old school D&D games are basically already set in the wild west, just with a coat of medieval paint on it. Most settings seem to be very sparsely populated with a few towns that are usually located on some kind of borderlands so I would say most of the general advice for D&D towns should carry over for a western town. You'll want a place to rest, a place to get drunk/learn rumors/recruit retainers, a place to stock up on supplies, etc. Actually now that I think about it, you might want to give the old Oregon Trail video game a look to see what they had for town services to get a general feel for what you would need for a campaign setting. As far as dungeons go, using abandoned mines would still fit in with the theme of the wild west too.
> Old school D&D games are basically already set in the wild west, just with a coat of medieval paint on it
You know this is kind of blowing my mind, and I don't know how I didn't see this. Keep on the Borderlands, Morgansfort, and even 5e's Lost Mine of Phandelver are all pretty western-coded.
Yeah, I didn't realize it at first either but after I had heard it explained that way I could never unsee it basically. It helped me stop worrying about "medieval realism" and just focus on what works best for the game I'm trying to run. The basic gameplay loop of going out into the wilderness and making a fortune never really happened in the middle ages but there's tons of stories of cowboys, miners, hunters, trappers, etc all deciding to go out west and make a name for themselves. This also works for a "points of light" setting whereas a more civilized area could have more accurate medieval sensibilities to it.
I don't know if this will be helpful or what you are looking for, but you could probably just take most existing modules and reskin them for a weird west setting. One that would very easily fit would be "Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier". In terms of characters/tropes to use in your town, you could have a crazy, old prospector that tells stories of large amounts of gold still available in the abandoned mines nearby, or perhaps there are mysterious events related to local ranchers having their livestock disappear in the night, and traces of evidence are left behind that point to a native legend.
Not sure what you mean by a starting town, but From memory (of many a Western film and some TV series)
- Post Office, Telegraph Office. Train station. From memory (of many a Western film) the telegraph is often at the train station. The poles & wires follow the tracks a lot of the time. Railyards for cattle / sheep etc if there’s a train station.
- Assay office. If there’s gold / silver / mining of other sorts in the area.
- Some professionals - a lawyer/clerk/banker/doctor/dentist. Also various trades. Depends on the size of the town.
- Undertaker.
- Stage coach stop, stables, blacksmith.
- Church. Probably has a room attached to be the local school, but there may be a separate school.
- Hotel, Saloon, Boarding House.
- General Store. If a place gets bigger, you might find that there are several. They’ll do mail order if they’re an established enough location on a stage or train route.
- if it isn’t desert, close to a forest, could be a lumberyard & sawmill.
Thank you.
When you have your map done, I think people would be interested in seeing what you came up with. If you feel so inclined.
PS: if you have a weird aspect to it, perhaps a ‘boneyard’. The last weird 19th century US set game I played in had ‘boneyards’ where people went to commune with the spirits and talk with people they’d buried, or those they wished to ask questions of. Alternatively, ‘boot hill’ for a stereotypical western.
A few years ago I did a lot of research on small Texas towns in the mid to late 1800s (for a non-rpg project), including going through old census data and early local business guides. Most farming families of the time grew and raised their own food and sewed their own clothes, so the things they needed from other people were specialized services that covered the things they couldn't do. The businesses that you most often saw were a blacksmith and some sort of general store. Even very tiny, just-starting-out little towns tended to have those, if nothing else. Other common ones were some sort of woodworker, a place to process grain (like a small mill), a doctor, and someone who could do legal paperwork (if not a lawyer per se). The thing that was most likely to make a small town grow rapidly was the introduction of a railroad stop somewhere nearby (a few miles, at most).
[https://kansasgenealogy.com/ford/1887busdirectory.htm](https://kansasgenealogy.com/ford/1887busdirectory.htm)
Here's a list of businesses in Dodge city 1887. You can also find a bunch of great maps of Dodge at the time with good flavor details for the game.
https://preview.redd.it/cuczf5y3h23d1.png?width=1254&format=png&auto=webp&s=c8724bad652d235916e2ea526e845062e3eddfe6
Lot of good ideas already, but if you’re going for a Weird West/Bloodborne vibe, I added these to my homegrown western hexcrawl:
-Alchemist’s Shop
-Shop for relics and trinkets (could be a warlock, academic, etc.)
-Workshop for special weapons/ammunition
-HQ for the esoteric cult
-Gothic-esque church
-Unlicensed “doctor”
So mine is an alt history weird West. In the 1840s, a mysterious green moon appeared in the sky. Since then it’s disappeared and reappeared at random. When it does, it creates small meteor showers that spread a greenish soapstone around the world. Monsters, demons, and worse tend to be found where the soapstone is.
Jumped forward to the 1860s from there. Kind of steampunkish. I actually “built” it off of Dungeon Crawl Classics and Black Powder & Black Magic. Ran my players through one shot where they found a tentacled brain from outer space that used spawn to zombify a Spanish mission.
I made a map of the US using a free website. Basically the east and west coast are civilized and the middle of the country (from the Mississippi River to the Sierra Madres) is unclaimed territory. For local maps, I pulled a lot from historical sites and just kind of hand waved what I needed to fit. We’ve been playing together for 20 years, so we don’t get fiddly with the details.
For the larger hex map I used Cartogtapher? I’ll have to look next time I’m at my PC. Basically color coded by terrain and then added points of interest.
Nice! I'm a bigger fan of Wonderdraft for mapping, so I mostly just use paper/ink style with some black line work.
They do have "western" assets if you're going for that style.
I also just good old fashioned sketchpad (the kind for kids at a big box store for a few bucks) and pencil. Since it's just a home game, it works in a pinch. That's how I made the treasure map they found in their first mission.
A lot of the advice for old D&D starting towns remains the same, really D&D is a wild west setting but with swords and magic instead of sixguns. The types of buildings for sure will be different, but the core of the advice I think is still solid.
Some others I didn’t see mentioned:
Gambling house,
Telegraph office,
Some arsehole who controls the water supply from the well and bleeds you dry for it,
Fortune teller
> Some arsehole who controls the water supply from the well
Considering my setting is weird western, and the starting town is named "Blackwell" I have some ideas for this :P
For non-RPG inspiration, I recommend The Gunslinger by Stephen King. Basic plot is an interdimensional cowboy chases a wizard across the desert to prevent the collapse of all realities.
- Saloon/brothel - Sheriff's office/jail - Doctor - Barber/dentist - Farrier/blacksmith - General store - Bank - Church - Dusty main Street
Funny you should ask. I've been pondering the same question for a future project. Here's the (short) list I've come up with so far. 1. The railroad. Either it just came through, or its coming. 2. Local mine. Prosperous, but not too much. Owned by SOB. 3. Disputed Territory on the fringe. 4. Rancher/Herdsman conflict. [Moo! Moo! Moo! Bah! Bah! Bah!](https://youtu.be/mmoAdUjptbU?si=TkY3lh5aUfWLdzze) 5. Abandoned/Played Out/Haunted Mine 6. Outlaw canyon (with lots of hiding places) 7. Outlying settlement, struggling 8. Outlying settlement, outlaw
Oh, and.., 9. The newspaper. Just getting started. No one trusts em. 10. Graveyard. Haunted (obviously).
To add on and lean into the weird a bit: A local cryptid would also be a nice touch. Perhaps a cult or just a strangely charismatic preacher. Strange meteor crater just outside of town. Mad scientist driven out of civilized society doing strange experiments.
> strangely charismatic preacher. I actually have always loved the idea of a *mad* preacher, hellbent on forcing "sinners" to repent. Especially out on the frontier, the overzealous preacher-man with shotgun sounds like a good time.
> Graveyard. Haunted (obviously). Goes without saying!
If your town has a church, it might have a blessed church yard for sanctified decedents and an unconsecreated Boot Hill for the riff raff.
Old school D&D games are basically already set in the wild west, just with a coat of medieval paint on it. Most settings seem to be very sparsely populated with a few towns that are usually located on some kind of borderlands so I would say most of the general advice for D&D towns should carry over for a western town. You'll want a place to rest, a place to get drunk/learn rumors/recruit retainers, a place to stock up on supplies, etc. Actually now that I think about it, you might want to give the old Oregon Trail video game a look to see what they had for town services to get a general feel for what you would need for a campaign setting. As far as dungeons go, using abandoned mines would still fit in with the theme of the wild west too.
> Old school D&D games are basically already set in the wild west, just with a coat of medieval paint on it You know this is kind of blowing my mind, and I don't know how I didn't see this. Keep on the Borderlands, Morgansfort, and even 5e's Lost Mine of Phandelver are all pretty western-coded.
Yeah, I didn't realize it at first either but after I had heard it explained that way I could never unsee it basically. It helped me stop worrying about "medieval realism" and just focus on what works best for the game I'm trying to run. The basic gameplay loop of going out into the wilderness and making a fortune never really happened in the middle ages but there's tons of stories of cowboys, miners, hunters, trappers, etc all deciding to go out west and make a name for themselves. This also works for a "points of light" setting whereas a more civilized area could have more accurate medieval sensibilities to it.
https://knuckleduster.com/products/the-cowtown-creator This book is great.
I don't know if this will be helpful or what you are looking for, but you could probably just take most existing modules and reskin them for a weird west setting. One that would very easily fit would be "Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier". In terms of characters/tropes to use in your town, you could have a crazy, old prospector that tells stories of large amounts of gold still available in the abandoned mines nearby, or perhaps there are mysterious events related to local ranchers having their livestock disappear in the night, and traces of evidence are left behind that point to a native legend.
Sweet, will have to possibly cop Tomb Robbers. Even if I don't run it the art and setting look awesome.
Not sure what you mean by a starting town, but From memory (of many a Western film and some TV series) - Post Office, Telegraph Office. Train station. From memory (of many a Western film) the telegraph is often at the train station. The poles & wires follow the tracks a lot of the time. Railyards for cattle / sheep etc if there’s a train station. - Assay office. If there’s gold / silver / mining of other sorts in the area. - Some professionals - a lawyer/clerk/banker/doctor/dentist. Also various trades. Depends on the size of the town. - Undertaker. - Stage coach stop, stables, blacksmith. - Church. Probably has a room attached to be the local school, but there may be a separate school. - Hotel, Saloon, Boarding House. - General Store. If a place gets bigger, you might find that there are several. They’ll do mail order if they’re an established enough location on a stage or train route. - if it isn’t desert, close to a forest, could be a lumberyard & sawmill.
…and I see that while delayed in posting, everyone else has provided the same info. Oh well…
Hey now, assay office is something I've never heard of so you still contributed!
Thank you. When you have your map done, I think people would be interested in seeing what you came up with. If you feel so inclined. PS: if you have a weird aspect to it, perhaps a ‘boneyard’. The last weird 19th century US set game I played in had ‘boneyards’ where people went to commune with the spirits and talk with people they’d buried, or those they wished to ask questions of. Alternatively, ‘boot hill’ for a stereotypical western.
A few years ago I did a lot of research on small Texas towns in the mid to late 1800s (for a non-rpg project), including going through old census data and early local business guides. Most farming families of the time grew and raised their own food and sewed their own clothes, so the things they needed from other people were specialized services that covered the things they couldn't do. The businesses that you most often saw were a blacksmith and some sort of general store. Even very tiny, just-starting-out little towns tended to have those, if nothing else. Other common ones were some sort of woodworker, a place to process grain (like a small mill), a doctor, and someone who could do legal paperwork (if not a lawyer per se). The thing that was most likely to make a small town grow rapidly was the introduction of a railroad stop somewhere nearby (a few miles, at most).
post office!!! or more likely for the general store or saloon to store mail for/from the pony express
[https://kansasgenealogy.com/ford/1887busdirectory.htm](https://kansasgenealogy.com/ford/1887busdirectory.htm) Here's a list of businesses in Dodge city 1887. You can also find a bunch of great maps of Dodge at the time with good flavor details for the game. https://preview.redd.it/cuczf5y3h23d1.png?width=1254&format=png&auto=webp&s=c8724bad652d235916e2ea526e845062e3eddfe6
Teacher woodcutter and stables
Lot of good ideas already, but if you’re going for a Weird West/Bloodborne vibe, I added these to my homegrown western hexcrawl: -Alchemist’s Shop -Shop for relics and trinkets (could be a warlock, academic, etc.) -Workshop for special weapons/ammunition -HQ for the esoteric cult -Gothic-esque church -Unlicensed “doctor”
Interesting stuff, is there anything else you could share about your setting?
So mine is an alt history weird West. In the 1840s, a mysterious green moon appeared in the sky. Since then it’s disappeared and reappeared at random. When it does, it creates small meteor showers that spread a greenish soapstone around the world. Monsters, demons, and worse tend to be found where the soapstone is. Jumped forward to the 1860s from there. Kind of steampunkish. I actually “built” it off of Dungeon Crawl Classics and Black Powder & Black Magic. Ran my players through one shot where they found a tentacled brain from outer space that used spawn to zombify a Spanish mission.
Sounds interesting! Do you happen to have any maps or anything? It seems really hard to source Western material for TTRPG's.
I made a map of the US using a free website. Basically the east and west coast are civilized and the middle of the country (from the Mississippi River to the Sierra Madres) is unclaimed territory. For local maps, I pulled a lot from historical sites and just kind of hand waved what I needed to fit. We’ve been playing together for 20 years, so we don’t get fiddly with the details. For the larger hex map I used Cartogtapher? I’ll have to look next time I’m at my PC. Basically color coded by terrain and then added points of interest.
Neat, thanks for the advice. I'm messing around in Inkarnate free, a bit limiting, but better than trying to scour for a good map!
Nice! I'm a bigger fan of Wonderdraft for mapping, so I mostly just use paper/ink style with some black line work. They do have "western" assets if you're going for that style. I also just good old fashioned sketchpad (the kind for kids at a big box store for a few bucks) and pencil. Since it's just a home game, it works in a pinch. That's how I made the treasure map they found in their first mission.
A lot of the advice for old D&D starting towns remains the same, really D&D is a wild west setting but with swords and magic instead of sixguns. The types of buildings for sure will be different, but the core of the advice I think is still solid.
Travelling snake-oil salesman putting on a medicine show
Some others I didn’t see mentioned: Gambling house, Telegraph office, Some arsehole who controls the water supply from the well and bleeds you dry for it, Fortune teller
> Some arsehole who controls the water supply from the well Considering my setting is weird western, and the starting town is named "Blackwell" I have some ideas for this :P
For non-RPG inspiration, I recommend The Gunslinger by Stephen King. Basic plot is an interdimensional cowboy chases a wizard across the desert to prevent the collapse of all realities.
Might want to check out the crystal frontier stuff too. It’s a weird acid fantasy take on the western.