A grounded but not grim adventure in a fictionalized version of the Old West. The Old West is a land of brigands, outlaws, grifters, entrepreneurs, prospectors, homesteaders, and more - in other words, the folks who through blood and sweat forged Civilization and all that the capital letter entails from the essence primordial.

The strings of fate that bind the wanderers of this world have drawn tight. Perhaps a few of you met in a crowded stage crossing the dusty plains, exhaustion and terror of bandits crowding every step of your journey in equal measure. Perhaps it was in the saloon or later in the "drunk tank" in the sheriffs office, or perhaps something different still. But there is work to be done, and you are men and women to do it.

Three IC posts a week. I don't expect poetry or essays, but I do expect you to match that posting rate. It is more often than you think - if I post on Tuesday, you pretty have to either post same day or Wednesday.

I may post more often but I will not hold you to a higher rate - I said I expect three posts a week, I will not start demanding 5+ posts.

Life happens. I don't need to know specifics and honestly would rather you not pour your heart out in an OOC thread, so if you are busy or preoccupied just say so and I will respect that. I may ask you to take a hiatus from the game depending on how long you are out of action, and the game will keep moving if others are still active, but life comes before game.

IC posts should push the story forward, either by doing something ("I knock on the door of the haberdashery and ask for the proprietor") or by proposing a course of action for the party. Don't stand there passively in the scene thinking to yourself.

Don't overwhelm me with an ornate posting template. A character image (no anime or fantastical images please) is about the limit to things beyond the basic text of a post that I want. I will also ask for dice rolls unless what is needed is blantantly obvious (e.g. in combat).

Each of you has arrived in the dusty and backwater town of Arcadia recently, no more than a month ago. Last night, a man, beaten and bloodied to within an inch of his life, scorched by a long day's and chilled by a longer night's ride on a bareback mare (or so the rumor put it, and indeed on what besides rumors is the Old West built on?) arrived in Flenderson's ranch, raving nonsense, and Flenderson the younger duly deposited him in the care of Dr. Archibald Pendrick, the local sawbones. Curiosity has gotten the better of you, and you have sought out rumor or maybe the man himself. Something is not right, but there can be profit in wrongness and in ridding the world of it.

I especially enjoy spaghetti Westerns such as the Dollars Trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West, Il Grande Silencio, and The Magnificent Seven (itself plagiarized from Seven Samurai) and other classic Westerns such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance , High Noon , Gunfight at the OK Corral and yes Blazing Saddles.

The "modern" genre is also one I find interesting such as Hell or High Water, True Grit, Quigley Down Under, Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Tombstone.

In other mediums, I am also enamored of Cormac McCarthy's work, in particular Blood Meridian and No Country For Old Men (also an outstanding movie) in print and the Red Dead Redemption games.

You don't need to have watched or read many or really even any of these works but hopefully this will provide some context regarding where I am coming from in running this game. The conflict between man and wilderness, the allure of opportunity on the open plains, and the balance between "savagery" and "civilization" are what make the genre interesting for me.

See character creation post: https://www.myth-weavers.com/index.php?/topic/9506-character-creation-how-to/

I am looking for 4-5 players. If you have run a game for me on here in the past (you know who you are, I'm not going to tag everyone har), I will give preference to you but I doubt this will be overly selective.

Soft deadline is 9/12 and I will start doing rolling acceptance on that date. I will not close up applications earlier than that (out of fairness) but may extend the deadline depending on how things stand

Let's give GURPS Lite (4th edition) a shot here. I want a relatively lightweight system with the traditional gameplay loop of "player makes action, GM asks for roll if appropriate, then after the roll GM describes the outcome of the action."

Why not GURPS with x plugin/module? A first simple reason is money - it's hard to make an argument to throw cash at a system when the sad reality is that most PBP games have a short life. I hope this one will last until completion, but it's a more than fair concern. A second reason is that I want the focus to be on the story/conflict more than the raw crunch of the game. As this is PBP and PBP tends to be sluggish by nature, I want to move as quickly as possible through scenes while still doing tension, character stuff, etc. and simpler systems lend well to that. The emphasis should be on executing a character vision - are you a smooth-talking cowpoke dripping with bravado? A young woman looking for the freedom of the frontier? A prospecter looking for a good strike of gold to put old debts and poverty behind? and I think that's what GURPS does well anyways.

Link to GURPS 4e Lite:

https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/