Discussion Warhammer Wild West as an alternative setting? Brainstorming

I like your map and appreciate the effort. I especially like the letter system for ease of reference.

That said I think we are probably going to need make a 2.0 and a 3.0 as we flesh out more details. That's a lot of non humans controlling R, T, U, and V. I haven't posted it yet, but your RTUV stuff directly contradicts some backstory history I am currently working on which assumes that the Old World humans will colonize the Carribean

I certainly like the continental stuff, but I would like to give Estalia a slightly bigger piece of the pie, like S or maybe a big chunk of land south of where you map ends in South Hammerica.

I very much like this. With the Rangos, Apisi Beastmen, and some Savage Orcs and Goblins that should round out the Native New Worlders pretty nicely.

I would appreciate it if you could break your piece down with some more paragraph spacing. Block of text hurts the eyes.

I'm thinking they would advance enough to become the dominant New World power before the Old Worlder's arrive. They can be horrible bullies like the Aztecs were to the other Native Americans, and....

what he said!

You sold me. We can have Dwarfs around as a minority. A respected and valued minority.

Skin tone is a dicey topic but I'm going to touch on it anyway. Warhammer does not really have to have evolution like we think of it. They have magic and Chaos. Humans (or anyone else) can magically evolve to fit with their new environments much faster than normal biology would accomplish.

We have another option. Without magical evolution we can also rewrite history to retroactively change the skin tones of various groups in Warhammer.

Essentially we would be undoing the original Warhammer's schtick that everyone on the planet except Cathay and Ind look like white people and Cathay and Ind never really do much.

A world with verisimilitude should have their dead cultures be at least moderately well fleshed out. But Albion doesn't have to be dead. I was thinking the Conquistadors would break their power base but they wouldn't enact a genocidal purge of ever single Albion man, woman and child. The Albions would still exist as a faction they would just be one of the relatively weaker ones.

They could also be a sub faction. The vast majority of many Latin American countries is descended from mixed race pairing. Albions and Estalians would both influence New Estalian culture which would create a new group of sorts.


I will post my next installment on different options for including slavery in this setting shortly.

 

On some level in a Warhammer world everyone is more primitive and barbaric than their real world counterparts which is why the Albion might resemble the Picts, but I do not think that was the intent of GW writers (not I give them much credit for for brilliant intent).

My guess is the savage orcs are the closest direct stand-in to the Picts. Their traditional warpaint always looked a bit Pictish to me especially because official GW sources usually made it blue.

 

Reasonable points. But I wrote this already, so I'm posting it anyway

One of the things that ended the practice of indentured servants was the advent of slavery. I don't see why it wouldn't be around in some form. And it would probably be a fairly crappy system because it's still a Warhammer world.

On the plus side, I guess a lot of indentured servants would be likely to head out West when their term of service is done.

The Slavery Question

It is not required to have slavery in this setting. Slavery is a sensitive subject, and a reasonable case can be made that it would be better to not cover it all.

I am going to include it. Warhammer settings are crapsack worlds. Slavery, especially the especially brutal and dehumanizing Atlantic slavery that occurred roughly between the 1400s and 1800s, is one of the worst atrocities every enacted in the real world. It would be weird if a crapsack world was missing something awful the real world had. It might even be offensive in some circles to omit it.

So if we want to include slavery in this setting we can either lift it from real world history by putting a bunch of humans in the Southlands to play the role of the Africans, or we can make something up.

Spoiler: Brief Recap of the Real World Atlantic Slave Trade that most of you all can skip

In the real world, the New World was first colonized largely for cash crops: sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton among others. These crops were very labor intensive. Europe’s relatively low population and tough sea journey made bringing workers from Europe expensive. Most of the Native Americans that could have worked on these plantations either died from European diseases or actively resisted European dominance.

To man their plantations, the colonial powers turned to Africa. We have a popular conception of Europeans sneaking into the Africa and kidnapping men and women by force (like the Dark Elves in Warhammer Fantasy got their slaves). Most of the African slaves were supplied to European rulers by African rulers. Before colonization, they made slavery the punishment for some crimes. After colonization, slavery became the punishment for almost every crime as demand for slaves increased.

This set up the Trade Triangle between Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Europe provided manufactured goods to Africa which provided slaves to the Caribbean which provided cash crops to Europe.

The Atlantic slave trade evolved into one of the cruelest manifestations of slavery in human history because it was based along racial lines enforced by bigoted rationales which dehumanized the slaves more than previous forms of slavery. Slave status passed to children, so it was inescapable.

Option One (historically inspired fiction)

Create a group of humans in the Southlands and basically use real world history of the Atlantic slave trade in this setting.


Option Two (historically inspired fiction merged with Warhammer Fantasy Lore)

Real world Atlantic slavery was driven by demand for labor intensive cash crops, mainly sugar, tobacco and coffee. I don’t see why the denizens of the Warhammer world wouldn’t want to consume sugar, tobacco, and coffee. We can invent a few new crops that are more fantasy or sci-fi. Maybe there is a Lustrian plant that provides a temporary increase to a wizard’s power. Maybe there is some kind of miracle cure-all plant. Maybe the Warhammer Old Worlders really like tequila (I do).

Let us rewind to when the Dark Elves and High Elves reunited in Naggaroth now renamed New Ulthuan. For well over a thousand years, the Dark Elves built their economy on slavery. When the High Elves that took over Naggaroth many immediately wanted to free all their slaves, but the High Elves in charge opted not to. They needed the former Dark Elves cooperation and the Dark Elves were already plotting coups, so the High Elves decided not to upend the Dark Elves economic system overnight. The High Elf rulers figured they could always free the (predominantly human) slaves a few centuries later when things calmed down a bit.

In the time before, a vast majority of the Dark Elves slaves were literally worked to death, so the Dark Elves constantly had to launch raids around the world to capture more slaves. The High Elves kept human slavery legal as a concession to their new brethren. The Dark Elves for their part, made a concession to their new brethren as well by treating their slaves slightly less brutally. Now their slaves were living long enough to have children, and even more impressively, these children were surviving long enough to make it to adulthood. The slave population grew.

The Dark Elves were warriors and avoided labor, that’s why they started their slave trade. The High Elves were mostly farmers and craftsmen that held jobs and served as soldiers part time. Overtime, as the constant warfare declined, more and of the descendants of the Dark Elves assimilated to the High Elf customs and abandoned their swords for artisans’ tools.

New Ulthuan had more human slaves than they ever had before and they had less need for the labor of slaves than ever before. New Ulthuan’s land was not very fertile and they were in danger of running out of food. Some of the elves of New Ulthuan wanted to reinstitute gladiatorial games to thin the herd but too many elves were offended by this notion. Some of the elves of New Ulthuan wanted to set all the slaves free but too many elves were offended by that notion too.

New Ulthuan had more slaves than they knew what to do with. The growing human colonies had a labor shortage.

One that could reduce the discrepancies between real world history and Westhammer history is by moving Naggaroth from its canon position in not-Canada to moving it to notWest Africa butting Naggaroth against the Nehekhara and the jungles around Zlatan.

Option Three (We turn Warhammer Fantasy lore on its head)

The hard part is I think most Dark Elves would choose death before they would choose enslavement, but this scenario isn’t impossible.

Let us rewind to when the Dark Elves and High Elves reunited in Naggaroth now renamed New Ulthuan. They didn’t reunite the Elf race. They High Elves brutally conquered the Dark Elves. For well over a thousand years, the Dark Elves built their economy on slavery. When the High Elves that took over Naggaroth many immediately wanted to free all their slaves, so they did. Then out of a sense of poetic justice, the High Elves proceeded to enslave the surviving Dark Elves.

Much like options one and two, slavery becomes an economic necessity for the farming and processing of sugar, coffee, tobacco, cotton, and cocoa, so the elves of New Ulthuan end up selling their elf slaves to the human colonies so the elf saves gradually end up serving humans instead of serving elves.

Option Four

Do not have widespread systemic slavery at all. In Warhammer Fantasy the Empire and Brettonian had no problem having peasants do lots of hard labor for little pay. Who needs slavery when you have wage slavery and/or serfdom? Or indentured servants I guess...

Option Five, Six, Seven…

Something clever the rest of you come up with.


Slavery and the Trade Triangle

The real world Atlantic Trade triangle involved Africa shipping slaves to the Americas, the New World colonies shipping cash crops to the Europe, and Europe sending steel tools and weapons along with other manufactured goods to Africa.

Besides slavery, this trade triangle created something else. The European powers declared wars for control of this new lucrative trade and this lead to an age of privateers. When the European powers agreed amongst themselves to end privateers, many ex-privateers became pirates creating the Golden Age of Piracy.

I am 100% supportive of having Warhammer Wild West have piracy in their background and I would be open to reading people write about the Golden Age of Piracy with Warhammer characters. That being said, I like Wild West stories more than I like pirate stories, so I’m not going to dive deep into this subsettng.


Racially Motivated Slavery

Slavery has existed since at least the dawn of civilization, and there are sadly parts of the world where slavery still exists. What made the Atlantic slave trade of the 1400s through 1800s so especially vile was the racial component. This made slavery easier to rationalize. There was a lot of truly abhorrent treatises explaining that the practice of the Atlantic slave trade was morally justified because of innate racial superiority.

Slave status was hereditary, so one’s children and grandchildren could not escape it. Because the descendants of slaves looked noticeably different that means that if a slave found freedom they would still be treated like crap because they couldn’t perfectly assimilate into free culture.

Warhammer Fantasy was a bit racist in another way. Everyone looks caucasion. Albion, Norsca, Kislev, Kurgan lands, Ulthuan, Naggaroth, Averlorn, Dwarf lands, Chaos Dwarfs, Tilea, Estalia, Araby, etc. If the New World slaves come from one of these groups, slavery would probably be implemented in a less evil fashion and slavery would be easier to escape.

But here’s a thing. If we retconned in dark skinned humans or demihumans into Warhammer and then immediately enslaved them that could easily be seen as horribly offensive.

Emancipation

If we decide not to have New World slavery be a thing, emancipation is not something necessary to cover at all.

Warhammer settings are usually pretty bleak and miserable. One could easily say that in Warhammer Wild West, slavery could have never been stamped out. Firefly is a western setting and they still have slavery though it's not ubiquitous.

If Warhammer Wild West does have slavery, they probably wouldn’t have a lot of it in the West. I guess there will always be menial tasks that those in power want to pass on to a lower class of people, but the climate and environment of the Wild West support self-sufficiency of sorts. Without giant plantations in a rich environment, there is less economic incentive for slavery, so mass scale slavery would be something that exists "back East".

It’s not required, but I would prefer that Warhammer Wild West has a history of slavery and has a relatively recent emancipation. I like the idea of newly freed men heading out West hoping to create a new life for themselves.

I also like the idea of Civil War veterans from both sides heading out West to create a new life for themselves but we can have a Hammerican Civil War without having emancipation and we can have emancipation without a Hammerican Civil War. Before we figure out how the slaves were emancipated first we have to figure who the slaves were, who the slavers were, and what slavery was used for.

Whatever form Emancipation takes, I would want the former slaves to have a hand in their own freedom. While there was not a mass scale slave revolt during the the American Civil War, Black Americans proudly joined the Union army.

Segue time!

The Civil War

Old World Civil Wars

My initial thought is that the shattering of the Empire was more akin to the Fall of the Roman Empire than a Civil War. Maybe a dash of the Black Plague because the catalyzing event for the Fall of the Empire of Man was 90% of the population dying in the Chaos War and the small “c” chaos that followed bringing plagues and famines and social unrest.

I think it’s easier to base a sea war off the Age of Privateers and Piracy in the Caribbean. There is no rule that you can only have one Civil War. This is Madness. This is WARHAMMER!

Kicks Pendrake into pit. Scalenex misses with his kick and falls in. Already dead so we are good.

That said, I shouldn’t dismiss your ideas out of hand. We could make the dissolving of the Empire of the Man more Civil War-like and a lot longer lasting that would establish a lot of the same basic framework and cultural divisions.

Copying the American Civil War

Pendrake Map 2.0 would need to have a dotted line to serve as the equivalent of the Mason Dixie Line. Maybe connecting the two lakes at point N and L.

Real world history. From the very moment slavery was instituted in the New World there were people who decried it as amoral and there were slavery apologists that made up elaborate rationales for why slavery was not just justified but morally right.

Before the Civil War the driving force between slavery being well thought of in the antebellum south and slavery being poorly thought of (and eventually outlawed) in the North was economics. The climate, predominant agriculture crops, and burgeoning industrialization made slavery unprofitable in the North. Slavery was profitable in the South. Money.

In this case if we wanted to copy this, economics would drive a similar wedge between the North and South in UCA. Over time the Yankees and Dixies would grow culturally apart. The Yankees would eventually outnumber the Dixies to the point where a UCA president could be elected without a single Dixie Vote. We will call him Karl Franz Lincoln. So the southern groups are afraid of losing their slaves, their way of life, and all that under the tyrannical rule of KF Lincoln. They try to secede. They lose because the North has more people, more food, more factories, and more railroads. KF Lincoln frees the slaves.

Resentment follows. KF Lincoln is killed by a bitter secessionist though some rumors swirl that Skaven and/or Chaos cultists killed him.


War of Northern Aggression (Very much stolen from Firefly)

The UCA was a very loose confederacy initially. The UCA states allied together strategically against Chaos, Skaven, Old World aggression etc, but each UCA state basically tended to themselves outside of warfare. Live and let live was the policy.

Eventually, one or more powerful people in the most populous and riches UCA states thought the UCA should not be a confederation but be a unified nation with a unified government. Maybe based on the Empire of Man from ancient history.

So the Pro-Unification Alliance marches in and destroys the Independent Browncoats and unifies the UCA under a new government. A lot of the Browncoats head to the frontier in hope of re-capturing a portion of their former freedom, but of course a hard core faction of the Alliance wants to pacify and tame the West.

Some rumors swirl that Skaven and/or Chaos cultists actually fanned the flames of this war and poisoned the minds of Alliance leaders. Some in the Alliance say that Chaos cultists provided under the table help to the Browncoats. Resentment follows.

In this case, slavery would not really factor into it much. Either slavery would never have ended, or emancipation will have come from some other source (mass scale revolt, social movement, supernatural event, etc)


Another Option

One of the forumites comes up with something clever and original for a pre-Wild West Civil War.


With that, I'm pretty much out of lengthy threads positing grand ideas on the setting. All that's left for me is to politely and respectfully discuss and debate details relating to implementation.

Factions, filling the roster

Note, I'm sure we'll come up with more factions as we flesh out the history and the map more. Mostly focusing on humans. They will probably be the most diverse. Factions could come from all sorts of places.

Ethnic Lines

Ethnic lines would include Brettonians, Kislevites, Norse, Westlanders, Tileans, Estalians, Landlockians, and the former slaves of Ulthuan, former indentured servants.


National Lines

Presuming the wild west setting is an analog to the Western United States there would be a bunch of divides.

-The United States of Hammerica versus New Estalia.
-Old World immigrants versus humans born on the Hammerican Continent.
-Yankees versus Dixies (assuming there was Hammerican Civil War).

Religion

Well the Imperial Church of Sigmar was the dominant religious faction in the Old World. They would need to be included in this setting somewhere. The Imperial Church is certainly big enough that it would have a reformist faction and an orthodox faction.

We could create an analog to Protestantism.

We could create a religion worshiping the Lady of the Lake or we could say it never existed or the Imperial Church squashed it long ago.

We could have worship of Gork and/or Mork or the greenskins faith could have easily changed into something else.

There is not a whole lot of official fluff on religions in Tilea and Estalia, so I’m not sure their obscure cults should be brought up, I’d rather make them the Protestant analogs.

The Rangos would probably still worship the Old Ones. If the Rangos are divided they could have differing views on Old One worship. Old One worship, or at least aspects of it might spread to other races, especially if the Native New World population includes non-lizards.

Even if the Chaos gods are dead, there would probably be a few anti-social wackos that would worship the Old gods. If there are Wild West Chaos gods, there should be a few humans to serve them. They probably shouldn’t strap on dark Chaos armor. If there are multiple Chaos gods, then there would probably be competing factions for each of the Chaos gods. There would also be a split between public Chaos worshippers and closet Chaos worshippers. Warhammer Wild West probably wants both types.

Pragmatism or Random Chance.

Here’s a thought I had. If you are writing Wild West fluff stories ethnicity, religion, nationality, and everything else would be extremely important elements of characterizations and plot line.

If we were creating a Wild West miniatures game, ethnicity would matter very little. They might dress a bit different, but a Kislevite gunslinger with Ballistic Skill 4 is going to play the same on the tabletop as a Brettonian gunslinger with Ballistic Skill 4.

I figure we would have models for different nationalities but crunch wise, I would support not making a lot game rules for nationality and ethnicity.

Human unit options could be: Gunslinger, Sneak, Tinkerer, Priest, Strongman, Cowboy/Cavalryman, Hunter, Wizard, and maybe some kind of Jack of All Trades.

I think having the option of mixing and matching units would be really cool thematically and if I were writing fluff pieces I would certainly be happy to make the protagonist group an unlikely team up including a couple humans, an elf, Halfling, and Orc, but if this was a game line I’m not sure I’d want that.

Even if you put a ton of effort into game balance, there is going to be a combination of characters that is objectively better than anything else. That cannot be helped.

Team A includes: An Elf sharp shooter, a Rango wizard, a Halfling sneak, a Dwarf tinkerer, and an Orc Strongman.

Team B includes: An Elf sharp shooter, a Rango wizard, a Halfling sneak, a Dwarf tinkerer, and an Orc Strongman.

It’s not unique if everyone chooses the same unique combination of units. It might be better to limit choices to a specific team.


What would the teams be?

Here’s some things I thought of.


Order of the Silver Hammer (aka the Imperial Inquisition): The Order of the Silver Hammer supported witch hunters who kept the Empire safe from internal corruption for centuries, but they did it brutally. They’d rather burn a village of innocents than let a single tainted person go free.

After the Great Chaos war, the Chaos daemons were seemingly banished, the Skaven were seemingly eradicated, the Beastmen were seemingly eradicated, and the surviving vampires went into hiding. The Order of the Silver Hammer had a lot fewer enemies to fight. When the danger of Chaos seemed a lot less pressing the Imperial Inquisitors excesses were not nearly as tolerated. They also became puppets and catspaws of amoral political leaders who turned the Inquisitors on their political enemies.

Eventually these excesses came to a head and the Order had to essentially go underground in the Old World, but there are rumors of dark forces stirring in the New World. A lot of Inquisitor cells went out west where they had more enemies to fight and less oversight from governmental bodies.

Melee Specialist: Swordman
Shooting Specialist: Rifleman
Stealth Specialist: Assassin
Magic User: Priest Likely group leader
Generalist: Witch Hunter
Oddball: Flagellant


Goldmann’s Bull Squad (aka the Imperial Inquisition): Vardad Ironhed the lowly labor dwarf immigrated out west and took work for a railroad. Through hard work, savvy economic sense, and a number of surprise accidents that befell his former superiors and rivals, Vardad became very rich and gave himself the new name Lorddroid Goldman. Goldmann felt crowded in the more populous coastal region of the UCA (where he was one of many such Robber Barons). He sold his holdings and invested in the west’s burgeoning railroad and mining industries.

His goal is to own the West and he will bribe, bully, or cheat any who stand in his way to crush all who stand against them, be they independent minded homesteader, government officials, greenskin bandits, Rango natives, or Chaos worshippers.

Melee Specialist: Either human bruisers or Dwarfs with big pickaxes or hammers.
Shooting Specialist: Mercenary sharpshooter
Stealth Specialist: Mercenary Halfling sneak
Magic User: Mercenary wizard
Generalist: Pit boss, could be dwarf or human Likely group leader
Oddball: Steam punk engineers or demolition experts


Folk of the Land: There is no centralized for the Folk of the Land, but there enough similarities across ethnic and geographical divides that they can be grouped into one category. The communites may differ, but local ties are strong. Outside groups, be they Rangos, Chaos, the army, greenskin bandits, or Goldmann’s goon squads are to be distrusted and resisted.

A Kislevite farming community, independent prospector camp, and a Brettonian logging camp would all field remarkable similar looking units in their defense against invaders.

Melee Specialist: Local strongman. Miner, rail worker, or lumberjack.
Shooting Specialist: Local Marksmen.
Stealth Specialist: Ranger/trapper
Magic User: Medicine woman.
Generalist: Local sheriff Likely group leader
Oddball: transplant from non-human group. Elf peddler, Dwarf tinkerer, Halfling sneak


Outlaw Faction: Not every independent collective of humans on the frontier is made up of noble good people. Some turn to theft and banditry to survive or they simply view the lifestyle as easier.

They probably have a gimmick (all wear red bandanas) or something but no matter how they try to differentiate themselves, the different outlaw groups operate more or less the same.

Melee Specialist: Human Bruiser
Shooting Specialist: Outlaw gunslinger
Stealth Specialist: Human or Halfling sneak
Magic User: Mercenary Wizard
Generalist: Bandit Lord Likely group leader
Oddball: transplant from non-human group. orc, goblin, elf Rango, etc


Rango Faction: The Rangos remember when the Slann’s will was the only Law in the West and the Old Ones were the only gods. Now some fight to restore the old ways, others simply to survive.

Melee Specialist: Saurus Warrior or maybe Kroxigor
Shooting Specialist: Skink bowmen/gunslinger
Stealth Specialist: Skink hunter
Magic User: Skink Shaman Likely group leader
Generalist: Saurus Hunter
Oddball: Beastmaster Skink and/or dinosaurs


This is not exhaustive or final of course, and groups would not be required to take a melee specialist, shooting specialist, stealth specialist, magic user, generalist, or oddball.

 

I am pretty much out of ideas that require several pages of MS Word to outlay. About the only thing left is to figure out is whether I would want to approach the topic of Wild West prostitutes with a ten foot pole. I really don't. But this Youtube video covers the topic in a fairly holistic, tasteful, and reasonable fashion.

I was hoping to see what others came up with. And we still have two contests running, so our L-O have other things they can be working on, so the delay doesn't really bother me. That and I've been binge watching a lot of stuff on DC Universe.

I liked your descriptions, but I think I would prefer that the Orcs and Goblins be one group. My original draft looked like this. I noticed a lot of my teams were looking similar so I didn't include them all.

Melee Specialist: Orc Bruiser
Shooting Specialist: Goblin Gunslinger
Stealth Specialist: Goblin Sneak
Magic User: Orc or Goblin Shaman
Generalist: Orc Gunslinger
Oddball: Goblin Tinker

I think the Albions might work better as an assimilated part of the Estalians allegorical to the Meso Americans than as a Great Plains Native American allegory.

Maybe it's a little premature to figure out what teams would like.

Apart from @pendrake, few have weighed in on what they think the government should look like. @Y'ttar Scaletail gave his two cents on Skaven but no one else did. No one has addressed the slavery issued beyond Pendrake suggesting we avoid it. The most important thing setting wise is hashing out what the state of the Chaos realm. This will impact whatever the Wild West equivalents of Daemons are and whatever the equivalent of Warriors of Chaos would be. It will also help us narrow down questions about the Beastmen.

I'm happy to read anything someone contributes, but what I was really hoping for was ideas and input on adapting Chaos to the Wild West, or if Chaos is really gone, creating a new Bigger Bad to take the place of Chaos.

 

A new reply, huzzah!

Agreed. In fact it didn't even cross my mind mind to put Chaos in the arctic until you reminded me that's where they used to be. I just assumed Chaos would be in another dimension and not tied to geography very strongly.

I do like the idea of Chaos not needing polar gates. They should be able to pop up anywhere. Maybe link the probability of Chaos incursions to inauspicious times rather than cursed places.

Like Hollow Earth? I think the concept of Hollow Earth is too cool to make it for Chaos only.

Agreed that Daemons don't need a complex backstory. Disagree that Dwarfs have to be the one trading in all the silver. Once it's pulled out of the ground, it doesn't matter who mined it.

I agree. The UCA claims a lot of land that they don't really control. That's kind of where the "Wild" in Wild West comes from

Nomenclature. A Big Bad is a villain character who drives major plots. You got to have those. Bigger Bads are malevolent forces that stay off camera.

The Joker is a Big Bad. Gotham City itself is the Bigger Bad.
Palpatine is a Big Bad. The Dark Side of the Force is the Bigger Bad. (What about Vader? He's a Dragon).

I already soft pitched Lorddred Goldmann as a Big Bad. I certainly want to come up with a compelling undead Big Bad of some sort eventually. Probably want a lot of outlaw kings to serve as lesser Big Bads too. It's very hard to tell any story without a Big Bad.

Many fine stories exist without Bigger Bads. In my opinion, Warhammer world should have a Bigger Bad to qualify as a Warhammer world.