Friday, May 24, 2013

Wild West Campaign: The Town of Rebel

Thinking I'd start things off small, I decided to begin play in the small town of Rebel.  It's found on the eastern portion of the Rosewood Territory campaign map.  Even a small town like this there was quite a bit going on.

Rebel is a small tough mining town on the main road west just south of Beggars Canyon  It was founded by Harlow Cox after the Civil War before he moved further west and sunk roots in the more prosperous Harlow Junction.  Cox, however, still runs the Rebel though Sheriff Slade.  Slade keeps tabs on the town for Cox.  The sheriff and his deputies help protect the tin-pans working in Beggars Canyon from Angus Young. The Mormon from Bronson has sent his band of ruffians lead by Barton Clay and are trying to run the miners out so that they can stake the claim.

The Canyon Creek Saloon is the towns main gathering place run by Boon Johnson, close friend with the Sheriff and Harlow Cox.  He's always got his ear open to the goings on in Rebel and feeds that back to Cox directly.  His 'Scarlet Ladies' help keep the clientele drunk and satisfied.  At the Canyon Creek Saloon you'll usually see a number of tin-pans celebrating their strikes or drowning their sorrows, ranchers, a few buffalo hunters and weary travelers heading west whetting their whistles.  You'll also find the hard drinking Doc Anderson always willing to deal someone's inebriated, gold heavy, pockets into his infamous poker games.



Now during this process I created a 'map' of the connections of the general folks in this town.  As you can see the connections get a little crazy but it should be enough to get started.




I'm using the concept posted on the Boot Hill OD&D boards about using the people as rooms and connections as corridors for the players to 'explore'.  There's a few love-triangles, illicit affairs, a couple of rival gangs and indebted tin-pans to keep things flowing.  And there's a few connections to the larger campaign area and the bigger power-players in the territory.  I'm hoping that the players stories should evolve fairly organically within the environment without too much instigating on my part, but we'll see.  I'll have a few nuggets to toss  in there if necessary.


4 comments:

  1. The Fiasco playset "Boomtown" can make I nice random generator for initial character relations, and details if you need an idea starter. I posted a Boot Hill background table from Dragon Magazine #46 on my blog which is real handy during character creation (npc as well as pc).

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    1. I'll have to track booth Boomtown down and the background chart on your site. Thanks, Jay!

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  2. These wild-west maps you draw are exquisite! Can you tell me what software do you use to draw them?

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    1. Thanks, Andrea. I draw the map in illustrator and then bounce it into photoshop to overlay the colors and paper texture. You can use GIMP and Inkscape, both open-source and free to download, to accomplish the same things. I'm just more fluent in the Adobe products. I have a map tutorial that I posted which uses most of the same techniques I used here. Parts 3 & 4 will cover that: http://warlockshomebrew.blogspot.com/2009/12/campaign-creation-map-making-tutorial.html

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