I watched Appaloosa last night, staring Ed Harris,Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger, and Jeremy Irons. Instead of offering a review I’ll link a review I agree with and move on to movie’s usefulness as RPG inspiration.

The protagonists, Virgil and Everett, are traveling professional lawmen. When a town goes to hell, as they are wont to do in Western movies, the town council hires gunmen slightly more trustworthy than those terrorizing the town. Virgil and Everett are those gunmen.

Wandering Freelance Lawmen
With a small group, say 2-3 players, you could definitely run with this concept. The players are wandering good guys going from town to town and keeping the west clean. Now that I say that , it sounds an awful lot like some of the fantasy “sand-box” campaigns I’ve played in. The advantage of this set-up is that it has definite story-arcs. Enter town, exciting and dangerous stuff happens, leave town. Repeat. [That sounds like a 10 word description of Dogs in the Vineyard.]

On the negative side, the Wandering Freelance Lawmen model can present some challenges. It requires the GM to create a interesting town/situation and NPCs every time the heroes move on. Repetition would be a serious danger. One way to avoid this would have enemies that were humiliated and left alive lining up to exact revenge. Travel becomes dangerous as any cowhand in a saloon might be a vengeful victim of the heroes “marshalling.”

This model seems best suited to a short game that involves a few towns all connected by the villain. Perhaps the iconic (or even cliched) evil wealthy capitalist is trying to buy up the land in three towns along a future railroad line (or near mineral deposits). Each town has it’s own gang whose real job is to make life hell and reduce the property values.

One other more thing. There’s a scene in Appaloosa where violence is avoided because a character is familiar with Apache ways. There’s a lesson for GMs in that. If your player has some quirky skill, let him use it. Find a way to let him shine with his Apache Traditions Knowledge.