GotWK Campaign Part 9: An Eye For An Eye

This is an account of part 9 of my ongoing campaign set in my homebrewed wild west setting, Guns of the Western Kings.  Get caught up with the previous parts here.

When last we left our heroes, they had chased a drow raiding party down into the Sunbeam Silver Mine.  The drow had attacked the mining camp at the surface, surprising both the miners and the elven rangers who had been waging a guerrilla campaign against the mining company.  As the party descends into the mountain in pursuit of the drow, they discover the wounded leader of the elven guerillas.  Bemoaning his failure, he says that if the drow have not seized control of the evil now, they surely would soon, and he implored the adventurers to destroy the evil before the drow can use it.  He is maddeningly unclear what he means by "the evil".  Nevertheless, the party fights its way through a hostage situation, kills a giant spider, and ends up hanging in its web above a seemingly bottomless hole deep into the depths of the mountain.

And now:

The Sniper in the Dark
One single passageway breaks into the side of the bottomless pit - a square entrance large enough that two men might march abreast through it - just above the level of the giant spiderweb.  Heather, Theodore, and Rusty pull themselves free of the sticky webbing and tightrope-walk to the passage.  Gudguníis, the blinded sharpshooter, has considerably more trouble extricating himself, and by the time he makes it to the entrance he is wearing the equivalent of a new suit of clothes in tangled spider silk.  The passageway is freshly carved and climbs steeply down, spiraling roughly around the outside of the bottomless pit.  They follow it for untold hours - possibly days - in the sunless dark before it opens up into a natural cavern.  It is a long cave full of stalagmites and stalactites, obviously carved by water at some time though now it is drier than a coal miner's cough.  Brandishing the lantern, Theodore takes the lead, only to be shot right through the breastplate.

Guns of the Western Kings - What is it?

A few weeks ago I posted an account of the first play session in my new campaign setting, Guns of the Western Kings, promising that I would explain more about the setting later.  Well, later is now.  Last time, I explained that GotWK (pronounced gotwik) is not Eberron, not steampunk, and not Deadlands.  I want to expand on that a bit, just for clarity's sake:

GotWK is not Eberron.  Eberron is a campaign setting that made its debut during the age of 3rd edition D&D.  It was groundbreaking in tone, inviting players into a high-magic, high-fantasy setting heavily inspired by post-WWI pulp adventure.  Eberron took magic to great extremes, filling the world with magical robots (that you can play as), airships, and trains powered by bound elementals.  GotWK, while similarly bringing a fantasy world into a more modern setting, is not a high-magic world of airships and sentient robots.  Magic, in the world of GotWK, did not advance exponentially as technology did.  It has the same basic presence in and effect on the world as it does in an average game of D&D or Pathfinder - magic items are expensive, wizards are holed up in their towers, and magical beasts are terrifying and dangerous.  The trains in GotWK run on coal.  Speaking of coal...

GotWK is not steampunk.  The level of technology is the same as the real world American West in the 1870s-80s.  Although I wouldn't rule out coal powered automatons and airships, they certainly won't be commonplace.  Steampunk can be pretty cool when it's done right, but it is rarely done right.  Besides, if GotWK were steampunk, it wouldn't be western anymore.  There are no giant mechanical spiders in GotWK, as far as I know.

Warner Bros via Unmuseum

GotWK is not Deadlands.  Deadlands is a Western RPG set in an America where suddenly, after the Battle of Gettysburg, the dead started rising from their graves and magic was unleashed upon the world.  It has its own system of magic, its own classes, and its own rule system (although it was later adapted into d20, GURPS, and Savage Worlds).  Where Deadlands is about the real world suddenly becoming magic, GotWK is about a fantasy world that advances to the point that it has a Wild West.  It is not its own RPG, it is a campaign setting for the Pathfinder roleplaying game.

So now that we are clear on what Guns of the Western Kings is not, let's talk more about what it is.

Guns of the Western Kings - First Play Session in a Brand New Campaign Setting

I've been working on a secret project for a while now: a Wild West campaign setting for the PFRPG.  I'm calling it "Guns of the Western Kings" (formerly: "Gunslinger", but that is a little too close to some other trademarked names.  Plus Pathfinder has since come out with an ill-conceived class of the same name).  Here's a picture I drew when I first came up with the idea about 4-5 years ago, which still gives a pretty good idea of what this whole thing is about:

(No longer called Gunslinger and no longer being developed for D&D 3.5)

I thought maybe the best way to introduce you to the campaign setting was to tell you how my first playtest of it went.  But first, I feel I should clear up a few things.  This is a campaign setting for the PFRPG, not a new roleplaying game system.  It uses the same rules and has many of the same races, classes, and monsters.  It is not steampunk, it is not Eberron, and it is not Deadlands.  It is an original fantasy world, not a magicked-up version of the late 19th century American West.  The world of GotWK is one of kings and presidents, dragons and locomotives, wizards and six-shooters.

But I'll tell you more about it later.  For now, let's hear how the first play session went!