It's a solid advancement of the idea, Adamantrue. I'd recommend developing the "It interacts with the minds of people, taking forms from their beliefs" much more concretely with the actual mythology and fantasy of the people of the day, versus the standard fantasy rpg tropes, but that's a stylistic element. In this over-arching concept, I see the potential for some truly original gameplay, and moving directly into dragons and vampires and undead is recasting the pre-existing paradigm in a slightly divergent setting. Not to harsh on that idea, it's just a stated preference of mine.

I'd similarly warn you off of the whole "paleface" thing. It makes me wince as a caricature of Native perception, and it may not apply at all to the setting, if the author has the native population be elven. The skin color of the respective parties hasn't yet been determined.

Those cautions expressed, the concept of the frontier being an area where the subconscious of the residents is brought to the foreground, and that situation being one that could potentially be mastered by other residents, is quite brilliant, IMO, and a really nice structure/framework for a unique view on magic for this world construct.

My father was big into John Wayne movies. To me, the whole "Pale Face" thing gives me a sort of entertaining nostalgia. I honestly prefer it to the 90s New Age "Everything Native American was Wholesome and Pure, and all things White are the works of Evil" viewpoint, as that was just a caricature in the opposite direction.

Still...injecting a little more Reality into it would likely be much more interesting. Which gets to the Mythology & Fantasy of the Day, as you put it. Wasn't that there Era of Spiritualism, where Seances were the all the rage?

What else could be thematically appropriate? Jules Verne, H G Wells? Would this be closer to Mary Shelley's time, or Bram Stoker? What about Mister Tesla, and his fantastic creations?

I think I'm going to attempt to run a game using this setting. However, I'm not yet certain what system to use to do it. Any advice? I'm currently leaning towards Savage Worlds, but if anyone could think of something better I'd certainly consider it.

Freeform, sir, Homebrew!
Tell your players to make up a character. As they do things, take notes. If they attempt something out of the ordinary, make them roll for it.

Arbitrary non-rules are the way to go until you have the thing down.

Wow, its been forever since I posted on here. Real life sort of just caught up with me and didn't leave any time for trying to come up with an roleplaying game setting. Still, I've had time to think things over, trying to get a firm grip on what I want to do and failing. I'm struggling between Alternate Fantasy History and just making a Wild West-esque Fantasy game set in its own world but featuring a similar level of technology and a similar mindset. I'm also thinking about attempting to set up a recruitment post on the forums to try and find people to run the game for that might be able to help me further flesh this whole thing out.

Of course, I need to figure out what I'm actually going to do with the setting here, if I'm going to get rid of the historical elements, before doing so.