GURPS Old West full-campaign, realistic (non “cinematic”), with some possible “subtle” supernatural elements, taking place in the standard Daniverse setting. Essentially a “revenge” story. Aces & 8s, not Deadlands. PCs are going to be part of a posse assembled to take down a dangerous gang plaguing the region, and are expected to be “martially competent” and otherwise up-to-the-task; current plan is 200/-75/-5. Each PC will need defined some form of causa vitae (“reason to live”; family, dreams, promises-made, etc.—details to follow). Other than that, for PCs, mostly-anything goes. I expect the campaign will be “tethered” to a particular location/town; location and period TBD via player poll. Naming convention: famous “Western” movie actors.

The Origin

I announced this one in mid-July 2024. Technically, this was my second campaign run of the year, which is unusual but not unheard-of. It was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment idea, borne of a late-night conversation I had with Rigil Kent (Phil), and I thought I could potentially spit this one out quickly, with minimal fuss—not unlike Redacted (whose “minimal fuss” also turned out not-so-minimal). But “no plan survives contact with the enemy”—or in TTRPGs, the players.

Due to potential spoilers, I had decided to put off the official campaign introduction here until after the first two sessions, and post-date it, which would allow me to fully explain the basis without ruining the surprise. However, after playing through session-one, I ultimately decided to “park” the campaign for later, and as such, I won’t get into those details at this time. Instead, I will explain a bit how we got here…

The Troubled Production

It won’t spoil anything to say that the overall plan was to detail a number of bad guys (“revengees”) and place them in the world, and allow the PCs to find clues and track them down in whatever order and/or manner suited them. When they get there, throw in some social engineering, and a set-piece battle or two. Easy. I just needed to establish a “need” for vengeance as the campaign kickoff, which comprised the entirety of session-one, essentially a no-win ambush by said gang. Simple enough.

I immediately proceeded to bury myself in the research and development for nearly six months, but I tend to enjoy that aspect. I started pushing for characters early on, with a session-zero, in August, to establish the particulars, and that’s where the breakdown really started.

First issue: I had an expectation that we would have a group of cold, gun-slinging killers—like Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Yul Brenner, Ed Harris in Westworld, Kilmer’s Doc Holliday—with maybe some slightly more “colorful” types mixed in. I must not have communicated this very well, because out of five PCs, I only got one actual example of the above. A couple of others were “near enough” and didn’t bother me. The rest were…well, there wasn’t anything technically wrong with the characters, and that was the problem—I couldn’t just say “no.” Maybe I should have.

Second issue: The session-zero ended a bit short, because I ran out of recorded agenda-items, but I didn’t have everything I needed in hand—that was a grave mistake. I ended up arranging a second session-zero (session-zero-point-five?) some weeks later to try to wrap it up, but I still didn’t have everything when that one was over.

Third issue: The intent for this campaign was a Sea Dogs-like setup, which meant I needed the players to communicate their intentions well ahead of time, so I could get ahead of that process. I also wanted to step up my “quality” by filling out the wiki details on all the characters and locations better than I had been. But in the course of getting the characters’ details from the players over time, I encountered a great deal of…friction. Session-zero didn’t do its job, as mentioned. Players were slow to respond to questions on Discord, frequently ignored my written and verbal suggestions and cautions, and procrastinated in getting me the information I needed to wire things into the narrative. When I tried to course-correct, the players seemed to misunderstand what I wanted, and ultimately, never actually did what I asked.

I was getting frustrated to the point of actual anger, which resulted in me pushing out the start of the campaign from its intended October launch to the end of the year, to “get myself in the right headspace” (with a two-week “no-touch” break from working on the campaign). As the new launch date approached, we started having to work around the usual end-of-year holiday absences—which was a particular problem due to the way the campaign kicks off, which requires all the PCs to be present or it doesn’t quite “work right.” An upcoming TDY assignment for one of the players would result in him missing half-or-more of the run. Another player had a family trip after the first session, and returned with an illness that out session-two again. And even two weeks after session-one, I still hadn’t gotten all the character details I wanted from the players, and I still felt I was being ignored on Discord.

That was all I could take. The return on my significant investment was just too low to continue. I was continually frustrated/angry for around six months, which I found to have additional psycho-physiological effects, aside from the “functional” effects on the campaign itself and normal GM stress. I decided this just wasn’t going to work out at this time, and regretfully pulled the plug.

The Future

I have done far too much work on this campaign—work I’m proud of—to let it go entirely. So I expect I’ll come back to it in a year or so, just as ultimately happened with Sea Dogs for similar reasons. If/when that occurs, given the nature of the session-one we played, I expect I can pick up where we left off or start over entirely without much bother. So, I’ll wait to do a “proper” introduction then, and keep things spoiler-free for now. In the meantime, I need to figure out how our communication went so wrong, while I work on this campaign’s replacement…

GM Confidence: 3.5/5. Better than “meh” but not quite “good.” Some good stuff happened—maybe more than I give it credit—but it was messy…too messy, from my perspective, at least. But some of my best efforts have gotten off to a rocky start, so it’s not necessarily a bad omen.

What Went (Mostly) Right

• I normally dislike “X Time Earlier” beginnings, but I thought it was imperative to let the players know this was a no-win-situation, because I know that, without such warning, it can be extremely frustrating for them. I feel like this achieved its purpose.
• Once again I’ve taken some lessons from Youtube screenwriting advice/critiques. I gave Constable Hunt—changed from Sheriff after some research revealed there wasn’t one in La Plata county at the time—some personality, in an effort to make him seem likeable and important, before killing him off, to give his sudden death some “impact.”
• I’m starting a new thing I’m referring to as the “Big Q.” That is: taking a deliberate break in the narrative to go to each player in turn and have them answer a question like how the character feels or perceives what’s going on, or what their immediate intentions or expectations are. The idea is to give players an opportunity to reveal what the character is thinking/feeling that might normally be overlooked or difficult to work into the narrative otherwise. This felt like it was working for me, but the next session or two will really settle it.
• Based on previous experience, I was on the lookout for what I’m now referring to as “Plot Landmines.” And I successfully spotted one during the preparations: the potential for PC(s) to decide to wander away from the church looking for threats and walk right into the trenches, starting the fight prematurely—the goal was to have them find the girl before things kicked off. I sorted that out by having the Constable give them some “flanking” instructions that would lead them toward the cellar first-thing. It turned out to not be necessary, in the end—they mostly followed the Constable inside—but I expect it would have worked. Unfortunately, the players found another Landmine when Al decided to split off on his own. I was fortunate he didn’t step on it, in that (a) he started circling in the direction away from the ambush (or near enough I could reasonably adjust to), and (b) he was looking “down” for tracks when the ambush kicked off, and (c) he decided to run back to the church when it started, rather than picking off the ambushers one-by-one at range (like I probably would have done—he could have done quite a lot of damage that way).
• The ambush itself was a bit of an experiment, and I feel like it worked pretty well. I managed to pull off a battle consisting of around 42 characters in about two hours of real-time, with minimal fuss, thumb-twiddling, or confusion (as far as I could tell). As with Redacted, “Surprise” was, once again, a relentless killer—the friendly NPCs were all gone by round two. Also like the pool-deck fight in Redacted, I completely forgot about the sniper by the time things got going. I gave the PCs Bad Luck to facilitate the deliberate TPK, but I only ended up using it once—I probably could have sped things up a little by taking a couple more opportunities I overlooked. I forgot to deal with the gunsmoke, but the fire worked out (nevermind some technical issues). My main complaint, overall, was that I didn’t have a real plan for the “pauses,” so they felt a little awkward to me. And finally, there was Manny’s-player’s idea to “narrate his own death,” which in retrospect, should have been my idea—ah, well.

What Went (Nearly) Wrong

• A really dumb mistake I made was not having some kind of scripted introduction to the overall campaign. The players were all aware (or were they?), but viewers had no idea whatsoever. So, I’m going to have to do that retroactively, to the extent it makes sense, in the next session.
• Some of the exposition regarding places and events should have been written down and read off. Passing from my mind to my mouth without some kind of guidelines usually results in garbling the intended message.
• The geography around the church, and the approach to it, really needed some visual definition. As it was, I felt like the players didn’t really understand the terrain, and weren’t sure what to do when they got there. Distances, in particular, are important when dealing with spotting and potential long-range shooting—even if there isn’t going to be any shooting at that point, the players need to think there might be. This is a situation where having a non-combat map and portrait-tokens to organize who’s going where would have been very helpful—like I commonly do when I’ve thought things through properly. 😛

Miscellaneous

• We had some weird technical issues at the beginning, which cleared as we went along, but it kinda threw me off my rhythm.
• I forgot to show the PC character pics during their introductions.
• Since I didn’t create them myself, I’m having to learn the PCs as we go. Ulysses is going to be the “tactics guy”—I had no idea what to do with that when it came up. Al is going to wander off on his own—see “Landmines” above.
• I missed a couple of dumb image issues, like time-of-day lighting on the church, or the roads on the tracking shot—because the players always, always, always focus on those things. 😛
• I forgot there was a lit stove in the middle of the church; could’ve been knocked over or shot, or even somehow used by the defenders.