Dropping a small Wild West town into a Dungeon Fantasy setting

[Michael Thayne]

I'm currently working on planning a big Dungeon Fantasy hexcrawl with key locations represented by maps from 0one Games. It occurred to me to try to incorporate their Wild West maps, because hey, why not. The idea would be that the town and its surroundings would have been dropped into the Dungeon Fantasy world by a Banestorm-like event. But I need to figure out some details of who and what can be found in the town's various structures. Notably, the map features a train station, a small fort (barely big enough to house a platoon), and a Native American encampment.

The Platonic ideal of a Western seems to be set in the late 1870s, halfway between the end of the Civil War and the Census Bureau's announcement of the closing of the American frontier. But dropping late 1870s weaponry—particularly rifles—into a Dungeon Fantasy setting could potentially make that weaponry the focus of the entire campaign. So there is the question of the last possible date at which it would be plausible that the soldiers in the fort would still be using muzzle-loading caplocks. From the research I've done thus far, this definitely seems like a possibility in 1866, but I might be able to push things a bit later, I'm not sure. The exact date would affect what weapons the other people in the town might be carrying.

Once I figure out how people are armed, there's the question of how much ammo they have—crucial because things like Minié balls and percussion caps could not have been manufactured without specialized equipment unavailable in the average town. I have found a lot of sources online for how much ammo Civil War era soldiers carried while on march, but less on how much might be stockpiled at a fort. I suspect the answer is a smallish multiple of the amount they would have carried while marching, but I don't really know. I suspect civilians would have tended not to carry much extra ammo at all, but I'm not really sure of that either. It might be interesting to issue some of the non-U.S. Army locals (including possibly some of the natives) with rifles that were in some sense "better" than what the soldiers have, but with very limited ammo. ("Better" rifles might mean repeating rifles, or converted to fire metallic cartridges.) I have no idea what's realistic though in terms of ammo supplies, and if someone knowledgeable about the era can give input, I'd be appreciative.

Then there is the question of what non-weapon gear I should be prepared to have PCs potentially get their hands on. Introducing TL5 photography to the campaign might might change much in the dungeon, but it could be amusing to have NPCs treat photographs as if they were artistic masterpieces. TL5 optics are a bit better—but not overwhelmingly so—than what's in Adventurers. The town bank will of course have a small safe that may befuddle the party thief—or be an excellent place to keep the party's valuables safe. TL5 medicine is mostly unimpressive, but morphine and smelling salts would be new to people in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting. That's about all I can think of—so much of the really impressive high-tech stuff isn't available until TL6 or later. But I'm open to other suggestions.