Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Weird West: The Alien Hideaway

​A pulp cowboy adventure by Orion, level 3
Written for Shadowdark*
*with tons of rules for turning it Western
  A major genre that has been woefully underserved in TTRPGs is the Western. Arguably the largest influence in the baseline D&D set of assumptions, where a group of violent drifters wander into each town looking for gold and bad hombres to kill, the plot structure is there but the aesthetic and the trappings aren’t. It’s a strange oversight. Before someone says Boot Hill, that’s more of a gunfight simulator that a full RPG system. I guess by consensus we’ve all agreed the biggest desire is “Weird West”, with alchemy or magic or steampunk tech or whatever added to the mix. I also enjoyed Brisco County Jr, sure. Anyway, this is eight pages, abandoned mine is nine keys, you know the drill by now, but we’ve also got to stat out rifles and revolvers and dynamite.
  This sucker’s got ‘em all. Cowboys and Aliens plus ghost stories plus the no-foolin’ Harry Houdini except he’s a real magician. Hooks are you’re all either time-lost medieval guys, wandering Clint Eastwoods, and/or paranormal investigators wandering into town which is being troubled by ghosts (holographic projections) and a moon cult both caused by weird lost aliens trapped rather pitifully in an abandoned mine. The mine has a toxic atmosphere only breathable by the aliens or with a gas mask, which…I guess is on the standard Shadowdark equipment list? Because it sure isn’t mentioned here. A big roster of townsfolk is randomly rolled on to determine who’s the cult leader and then who gets kidnapped by the aliens down to the mine. The mine is pretty simple, because there’s also stuff about a ghostly gunslinger and his magic gun and Houdini’s ongoing investigation and the cult leader hiding daily mutations and it’s all a bit of a mess. I guess you end by killing the aliens and freeing the abduction victims?

​   In case it wasn’t clear, what I like is the Western setting. I also like the famously skeptical Houdini as the historical figure touchstone (sucks if you roll him being the cult leader though). I like the gun duel quick minigame.
  Everything else falls into what can be improved I’m sorry to say. It’s just…not nearly complete for the kind of investigatory adventure that it wants to be. Couple that with the fact that it’s been written for a D&D dungeon crawler system and yet you’re trying to run Call of Cthulhu along hyper-gonzo lines, it’s a fundamental mismatch. Investigations need more than “the bad guy is 1d20 of these people”, there needs to be a mystery with concrete clues. Also, the guns and dynamite is fine, but you need a lot more to patch Shadowdark into something that can be a Western. This is coming from a guy who’s played in hacked Pathfinder for a Western game for Pete’s sake.
  I reckon the best use case for this is to have a Western one-shot, ignoring the rough patches or sanding them smooth as best you can. While the minigame and the bits of gear are fine, I wouldn’t grab this just for the parts, you have the knowledge instinctively for how to do this yourself, and you might also add more 1800’s gear while you’re at it.
  Final Rating? */***** with a lot of disappointment, as someone who loves both pulps and Westerns this was an easy sell but unfortunately it needed to be a good ten pages longer to really support what it is trying to do.

Durn thang shore is purty, tho.