The American Frontier

[Yggdrasil_Hugger]

White Spur, El Paso County, Texas. The year is 1853. The town is dying. In a few more years, it will be swallowed by the desert. Everybody knows it. Most of the younger folks have already moved on. Only the old, the infirm, and the unintelligent refuse to leave. It's about time y'all moved on too. I hear the next wagon train'll be the last one. Maybe y'all could head up north, to Colorado. Hear there's good work to be done in mountain country.

A'course, y'all could also head west, out to California. Find yourselves some gold. Plenty a'folks get rich out there. Find yourselves a couple of nuggets and you'll be better off than anyone here. An' speakin' of gold, don't tell anyone I said this, but there's a town a dozen miles east of here that has a Wells Fargo. I ain't sayin' nothin', but them bankers is part of what's killin' this town.

The American Frontier is a wild and varied place, full of people of all walks of life. Anything can happen out there in that great big wilderness. A person could find a stroke of luck and live in luxury for the rest of their days. They could also have a grave slip up and be claimed by whatever forces control that unpredictable backcountry.

I have an idea for a roleplay that centers around the American Frontier. Given the large amounts of history, land, and peoples living in that segment of the past, the plot would be controlled by the players, at least partially. You could become outlaws robbing stagecoaches in the desert, prospectors panning for gold in an Alaskan stream, founders of a coal-mining town in the Rockies, or all of the above. You don't even have to do any of that. You could lead simple lives on a Kansas farm if you'd like. That's the beauty of the frontier. Anything can happen.

Additionally, elements of traditional American folklore might creep in now and again. A local Native American tribe might be plagued with a Skinwalker. The Sherrif might declare the giant man with an ox to match a myth, but that doesn't explain the boot prints the size of horses. Like I said, anything can happen on the Frontier.

So do y'all have any interest in something like this?