Old West Sourcebooks?

[Dunadin777]

Originally Posted by Xplo

If there's not going to be any magic, or at least none that the PCs will be using on a regular basis, you don't really need Thaumatology for anything. You certainly don't need it to invent zombies, rituals, or magic McGuffins.

OTOH, I strongly recommend High-Tech if you don't already have it for TL5-6 guns and equipment.

Well, Thaumatology is one of those books I keep hearing about anyway, so I might snag it at some point just for the heck of it. But yeah, in terms of this game's content, the only weird element will be the zombies, who are essentially there to make it a solid halloween experience. And yes, I do have High-Tech, and I'm starting to catalog which weapons from there will fit the setting.

[Daigoro]

For Weird West inspiration, you could also have a look at some Joe R. Lansdale stuff, particularly his Jonah Hex comics and graphic novels. Two Gun Mojo, for example, features a zombie Wild Bill Hickok.

[cybermancer2k1]

GURPS Old West is very well done and extremely useful. For background color and inspiration, I recommend the Time-Life Old West series of books. If your local library doesn't have them, you can find them on Amazon.

[sjard]

And for myself it doesn't hurt to live within an hours drive from the Robber's Roost area in one direction, and about the same distance from where Butch Cassidy was born in another.

[Fred Brackin]

[QUOTE=Dunadin777;1130602 I know there's a GURPS Old West book for 3e, but I'm wondering how useful that will be for making a campaign in 4e--whether it retains its value as a guide for creating a setting in the current edition, and so on.

.[/QUOTE]

Use the setting info as you choose but be quite careful of the firearms info in G:Old West. Some of it was dubious for 3e and will be even worse for 4e. Do not let PCs buy the ACC 6 Buntline Colt pistol as just one example.

There's a double action "Peacemaker" in Old West that requires some handwaving too.

I would find the new HT quite adequate for my firearms needs.

[Dunadin777]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

For Weird West inspiration, you could also have a look at some Joe R. Lansdale stuff, particularly his Jonah Hex comics and graphic novels. Two Gun Mojo, for example, features a zombie Wild Bill Hickok.

That sounds like fun reading if nothing else. Actually, my current Old West kick got started up when I watched the Jonah Hex cartoon short, with Thomas Jane and Linda Hamilton doing the voice acting. It captures a great feel without being too far-fetched in cinematic license, and I keep watching it about once a week now. There's a lot of the genre compressed into that 20 minute short.

Originally Posted by cybermancer2k1

GURPS Old West is very well done and extremely useful. For background color and inspiration, I recommend the Time-Life Old West series of books. If your local library doesn't have them, you can find them on Amazon.

Good suggestion. Time-Life used to make some great reference series. I haven't seen any for some time now, but growing up I used to devour my father's set of the Time-Life history of naval warfare series. If I can find them, I'm sure they'll help, especially in fleshing out antebellum Gettysburg.

Originally Posted by sjard

And for myself it doesn't hurt to live within an hours drive from the Robber's Roost area in one direction, and about the same distance from where Butch Cassidy was born in another.

That's great. I live about a half mile from the Midwest Civil War Museum, which actually finished being built the summer my wife and I moved into the area(no coincidence there), so I have a pretty handy resource nearby, too.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Use the setting info as you choose but be quite careful of the firearms info in G:Old West. Some of it was dubious for 3e and will be even worse for 4e. Do not let PCs buy the ACC 6 Buntline Colt pistol as just one example.

There's a double action "Peacemaker" in Old West that requires some handwaving too.

I would find the new HT quite adequate for my firearms needs.

Yeah, I anticipated that any of the hardware stuff would be useless, based on my experience with 3e Traveller, Myth, WWII, and Hellboy books. But if it has a good enough helping of character and setting development, it'll be worth my time. Having HT, I plan on being able to have all the guns' stats covered from the start anyways.

[Trachmyr]

As a related question, what are good resources for pre-civil war era... specificly from 1811 to 1846, especially 1841 to 1846 in Oregon Territory?

[hal]

If you're willing to invest a little bit of cash, you can always pick up a copy of ACES & EIGHTS role playing game. It has a fair bit of material in it that you can crib for use in a GURPS campaign - such as a working list of "goods and services" for the time period. In addition, there is a nice work up for moving cattle from one location to another for those who might be interested in trying their hand at ranching. There is also a set of rules worth cribbing for use with GURPS as far as "trials" (not trails, but trials) that you might find fun for your players.

Although it doesn't count as a "sourcebook", you may want to take a look at WHITEWASH CITY. It is a PDF collection of buildings for use with miniatures that you can print on thicker paper stock, and assemble buildings for towns and the like. If you have a fair hand at assembling your own buildings using say, basswood or balsa wood, or even scrap lumber - you may want to try building those whitewash buildings first in paper, and then in wood as they make nice models ;)

Although their prices have gone up a fair bit since I last purchased figures from them, Foundry does have a nice line of western figures worth looking at for your games. Their website can be found HERE. At $193 for 60 figures, that works out to $3.21 per figure. I purchased mine when they were only $125 for a set of 60.

In any event, I wish you well with your campaign. Oh, almost forgot! ACES & EIGHTS from KENZERCO also has some mild support with their magazines - two of them have rules for pricing a town lot in a beginning town. A&E has rules for gold prospecting, horse chases (although THAT would be a wee bit difficult to port over to GURPS), ranching, and other such tasks - it also has a fair bit of "alternate worlds" flavor to it in the form of "The South never lost the Civil War". As an Alternate Western history, you may find it fun to spring on your players.

[Dunadin777]

@Hal: Those are all great suggestions. So great, I've looked at them already ;D

The Aces & Eights stuff is painfully awesome. I got a major case of the gottahaveums when I saw their leather-bound version of the campaign book. Unfortunately, it's out of print, and I'm not dropping $200 or more on an RPG book.

The Aces & Eights targeting system actually has me wanting to completely re-do the GURPS hit location system to be something more visually based, allowing for realistic scatter.

I've grabbed a few of White-wash city's sample pdf's in the past, and so when I get around to demo-ing this, I might use their stuff. I'm a very visual GM, so if I feel like something doesn't compromise the story or mechanics and it looks cool, I want to do it.

I haven't got anything from Foundry in a long time, but about six years ago I picked up a number of their models for my Serenity campaign. They are very nice quality for the pricing and variety.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I'll be getting the Knuckleduster books in the next week, and then see what other books I need to fill in the rest of the gaps.

@Trachmyr: Precis Intermedia has a Colonial expansion for their western series. I don't know what it has first-hand, but they bill it as being useful for role-playing anything from the Revolutionary War era to the War of 1812 and immediately after. It might be worth checking out, and they do pdf downloads, so it's not too large of a risk.