Been playing a gorilla in a cowboy game. I am only gonzo thing in setting - gritty pulp fun and fast. I am saddest ape in west because when I find a way to go straight with law and settle with nice folk they they get massacred by forces the party set off. Doomed and tragic. Trying to learn to look harmless as everybody hates me. So I take it out on people in fights and pull people off horse back and tear them in half or pop their puny skulls. People seem less impressed again! Told to dig graves for my master a funeral director Tommy Tombstone, I made post holes and stuffed corpses in by crushing them and using a mallet to speed things up. Nobody loves me or understands me.
Game on break but I tried to retire with a nice home but never happens. Was hanging with some indians killing white men till my owner Tommy killed Shamans son and we had to flee yet again. Buh puny humans! If only I could talk.
Thanks Herbie for the big time fun
What system was being used?
ReplyDeleteAlso curious does playing cowboy american west feel foreign and exotic ? Here in the U.S. playing a western game feels like playing cowboys and indians like we did as little kids but with a whole lot of extra rules.
Herbie running own action oriented simple system for last 8 month - ran cthulhu agents 1970s before that - he hopes to do game possibly with miniatures in box set
DeleteI grew up with a lone ranger doll so plenty of cowboys around growing up in 70s - even uk and russia made kids shows set in wild west and french did western comics and spaghetti westerns so was everywhere - any toys with wild west you had in states or uk we probably had here - i couldn't play with my lone ranger doll with gang at school because i didnt have horse. My mum loved westerns as did her brothers who grew up shooting roos and horse riding - Australian frontier myth and westerns have lots in common. Im surprised that any post 70s kids would be interested but the youngest see as a sub-genre of steampunk now. Bravestar i hated as kid but now i would tap it for wierd genre mash ups. Herbie has collection of western toys as used in pic and is a pulp buff. The biggest difference in westerns and Australia is nothing romantic about the genocide here and how we systematically covered up and forgot all resistance so most here unaware of it. Sense that our colonial redcoat era different too - on east coast was convict labour so slave labour was English speaking and whites and country less friendly to europeans - much less gun mad and violence historically mentioned violence probably
Australian pulps portrayed cowboy like adventure but aboriginals shown as scary cultists sacrificing maidens on american or polynesian totem poles or a cowboy shooting an old aboriginal man
Australian sbs tv history doco here very good
http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/
our current government would probably rather not let this exist and are cutting funding
Thanks for the lengthy reply. Oddly French Western comics are some of the best in the world.
DeleteMy father is a history buff and really into U.S. frontier history from the early colonial up to late 1800's so I got tons of exposure at home. There was this odd little subculture. Of Mt. Man fur trade recreationism in the 70's and early 80's my dad dragged us along. I ended up competing with shooting, knife throwingg, and tomahawk throwing. I had tons of western toys also my plastic cavalry sabre, pistol, and hat were my favorites.
We had a number of western action figures that were sized about the same as real G.I. Joes (I don't think they were called action figures all the time back then) the set had real and fictional characters and I know there were epic gun battles with. Buffalo Bill, the bionic man, star trek crew, and the planet of the apes dolls.
I live in New England where we had an eastern frontier and I ended up marrying into the Hannah Duston family line.
I've always enjoyed western games myself with BootHill being the one I played the most.
Outside of Ned Kelly, the rabbit fence, and crocodile dundee the U.S. has very little general exposure to things Australian (a big shame really).
Cheers i will blog a long winded thing this inspired me to write a long winded opinion thing about some related stuff...
ReplyDeletehttp://kriskrisis.tumblr.com/
Deletenot enough room in blog spot boxes