“Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him”
-Rev 6:8
-Johnny Ringo, translating the Mexican Priest.

Tombstone (1993) is the mythological retellling of the conflict between the Cowboys and The Earps. It is a great movie, with many quoteable lines. While it is based on actual events it is takes a number of liberties with mistress truth. (Check out the Clanton side of the story.) Like any good legend or myth, it’s historical accuracy should not matter.

Recently I re-watched Tombstone with an eye toward idea mining for RPGs and here’s what I came up with.

Shattering the Peace.
While the movie starts with a scene of violent cruelty, after that the first act is a peaceful and optimistic. While foreshadowing of the coming conflicts occurs in small doses, everything seems to be going well for the Earps. Even when the Cowboys cajole the Earps, everyone ends up laughing it off.

In order to shatter the peace, you, as GM, must first establish the peace. Give your players a reason to care about the town and its people. Let them make important investments. Let them sink roots. You can foreshadow coming conflict, but be careful to account for overzealous players who make be looking for a fight.

Drug Use
Mattie Earp, Curly Bill Brocius, Cowboys in the Opium Den. The use of opium is a strong element in Tombstone. The event that set the tinder to flame, Curly Bill’s shooting of Marshal White, was largely due to Curly Bill being high. This is an example of where Tombstone gets broad history, right, even while fudging the specific. “Between 150,000 and 200,000 opiate addicts lived in the United States in the late 19th century and between two-thirds and three-quarters of these addicts were women.” (from Wikipedia, citing Women and Addition in the United States–1850 to 1920, pdf).
When putting together the pieces for you Old West town, don’t forget that there’s money to be made supplying and dealing opium. And where there’s money to be made (and lost), men shall do battle.

Consider the Tone
In Tombstone the lines are pretty strictly drawn between good and evil. Even Wyatt’s flirtaions with Josie are justified by Mattie’s descent into drug addiction. Almost no mention is made of the Earp women all being former (and sometimes still practicing) prostitutes (why Ike repeatedly calls the Earps pimps).

One exception, and a valuable one to consider for an RPGs is “Texas” Jack Vermillion, “Turkey Creek” Jack Johnson, and Sherman McMasters, repent and join Wyatt. When the bad guys cross a line having some of their followers switch sides could make for a nice twist.

In reality the feud between the Earps and the Clantons was complicated. Sometimes Wyatt Earp appears as a heroic lawman, other times a thug. Ike Clanton had legitimate claims against the Earps, and was not the cowardly, dirty, illiterate, buffoon portrayed in the movie.

So, tone. Black and White, or shades of gray. Either one can be fun.

You also need to consider the realism of violence in the game. Tombstone, like so many Western movies, is rather cinematic. You get shot, you die. My poking around suggests this is not the case. Most gunfights ended with opponents winged, or out of ammo. But cinematic violence can be more fun.

There’s a strange irony that in many ways the “cinematic” qualifier in this case means a game would be more deadly.

Hit ‘em where it hurts.
As I mentioned in the first section, the violent conflict is all the more shocking if you’ve established a peaceful backdrop. This is doubly true if you have the villains hit the heroes where it hurts. This is a trope of Western villains (and villains in general). Kill the family, burn the house, injure the friends. They don’t seem to realize this only incites the hero to grim, fatalistic, determination!

Music and RPGs is a topic with stubborn opinions pro and con. Some like playing background music and sounds, others play a particular track during fights or a certain scene, still others detest it, claiming to be a GM, not a DJ.

I prefer music and some SFX in my games. Depending on the genre and tone of the game, I may loop a playlist in the background, or just highlight certain scenes with some background music.

In my recent Deadlands game I always played three songs from the Deadwood soundtrack as we sat down to play: “Theme From Deadwood,” “Arriving in Deadwood,” and “Iguazu.” These set the scene, as it were.

Recently I used Marco Beltrami’s excellent score for the 3:10 to Yuma remake. It is dark and subtle (for the most part) and perfect for looping quietly in the background.

Of course movie scores often get mentioned when music and RPGs comes up, and there are quite a few good Western scores out there. (Personally I found Morricone soundtracks distracting, they were too familiar and hence distracting.)

This topic comes up from time to time at the Pinnacle forum for Deadlands. Here a compiled list of music Deadlands players have used.

But what about sound effects? Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an easy way to have a gunshot or galloping horse or rambling saloon piano to a scene?

There is.

A little program called Soundstokey allows you to map sound files to your keyboard, making your laptop a sound board. It’s a snap to use.

During one game (it wasn’t a western game) I was playing a thunderstorm in the background and background music and using Soundstokey for specific sound effects. It was very easy to do with my laptop and Soundstokey.

If you don’t have any sounds for your game, try http://www.freesound.org/index.php.

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.