Savage West Follow-up

To follow-up on the post of the other day, I am designing the Savage West to scratch several of my (current) itches:

- The Western-genre flavour of D&D-style adventuring: PCs ride into a borderlands town that seeks help, PCs deal with the villain of the day, spend their gold on ale and carousing and ride off into the sunset.

- The genre of flintlock fantasy, where muskets and pistols are the weapon of choice and conflicts carry more meaning than the latest land-grab by corrupt nobility.

- This ties into my third itch, I have started collecting Napoleonic 28mm miniatures. Yes, to simulate and play historical battles (and if you allow me a personal note, as a historian, I find the events and impact of Napoleon's 1813 German campaign, culminating in the Battle of Leipzig, also known as the Battle of the Nations, far more interesting than the desperate Battle of Waterloo, at the tail end of the Empire - the Battle of Nations has every element of climactic fantasy battles contained in a frenzied five-day action-packed epic). But also to use in D&D home games. And I have long longed to emulate the roleplaying-wargame-domain game spectrum of the early days of the hobby where dungeon adventures eventually resulted into claiming strongholds and domains and commanding miniature armies across the tabletop.

- To continue this line, I take a note from Dark Sun which was meant to be partnered with the 2e Battlesystem ruleset to allow PCs to command city-state armies, rebellious slave tribe or warlike desert nomads. I am designing the Savage West to accomodate that degree of freedom as well, allowing armies from the nascent Kingdoms or warbands operating out of the wilderness.

- These wilderness warbands, consequently, have far less resources and couldn't hope to contend with the bloodstone-rich armies of the Kingdoms, yet are master and commander of the Wildlands and wastelands. 

- Another secret project I am considering is to collect miniature equivalents of Greyhawk's armies and replay battles of the Flanaess, starting with the Battle of Emridy Meadows. Collecting fantasy miniatures and not using them in a D&D game is a sin, hence the wilderness warbands.

- The Chainmail miniatures revival of 2002 was also set in Western Oerik. I am deliberately lifting elements from that line (like the death of the war god Stratis, albeit a bit different) to incorporate in the Savage West.

- I like the deep lore of the Sunset Realms that me and my homegroup have developed over the past decade. Sure, some of the backstory and mythology is going to get ditched in the transition to the Savage West, but the basics (an age of glory, a draconic empire, [demi-]gods wandering the land, the Tarrasque as harbinger of destruction and tragic hero at the same time) and some names (Aurora) will remain the same.

- I wanted to create more than "just" Western Oerik - even though it's a vast landscape many times the size of Greyhawk's Flanaess. Hence the addition of the Utter West across the Agitoric Sea. I'm flavoring these lands to be oriental in flavour, as in accordance with established Greyhawk lore. But I'm also inspired by Sarlona from the Eberron setting - a totalitarian nightmare ruled by invading telepathic aliens controlling the people through their dreams. Here, I'm going with the more pedestrian - and everybody's favorite tiger-headed - rakshasa.

I'm energized and inspired to throw all these elements into a new mix (and to return to this blog).