Avg2100-09

Homestead: Guide to Frontier Life

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$4.99
  • File Size 6.44 MB ZIP
    Publisher Avalon Games
    Stock Number AVG2100-09
  • This is a digital file.

Howdy partner, welcome to the family ranch. It ain't much, but it's home. And it ain't easy either, I'll tell you that much 'migo. Forget what you read in those back-East dime novels. Life out here isn't all about shootouts at high noon and stage coaches getting robbed. It's about moving two miles of cattle across dangerous terrain and spending two months on horseback. It's about gold rushes and sod busters, boomtowns and cattle barons. This is the way the West was won.

Homestead is a sourcebook for players and GMs who want to transport their characters into the world of classic TV Westerns. This book details the genre of dramatic Westerns set on small farms and sprawling cattle ranches. Most people envision the Old West as a place filled with gunslingers and cold-blooded killers. While the Western frontier did have a noticeably violent streak to it, most settlers and homesteaders faced a different array of problems. Some of the more popular television Westerns of old sought to capture this dramatic struggle for survival set amidst the epic background that is the Wild West.

The villains you face may be cutthroats, gamblers, and outlaws, but they may just as well be slimy politicians, scheming cattle barons, and smooth-talking con artists. Life on the open frontier means that there is always a problem to be solved and a new obstacle to overcome. The weather, wild animals, and the land itself are constant challenges.

The ties of loyalty, friendship, and family are often strained, but they never break. Dramatic Westerns often center their stories on the themes of family and working together. The frontier family making a life for itself on the wild plains is a quintessential component of the Western mythos.

This book contains everything you need to give your campaign the flavor of classic TV Westerns.

  • An introduction to the central themes of the genre.
  • How to build a dramatic Western campaign.
  • Brief historical overview of the Old West.
  • Overviews of the Western territories and famous trails.
  • Plot hooks and random encounters
  • Game rule information for tweaking the d20 rules.
  • New skills, feats, and drawbacks
  • A sample setting complete with NPCs and adventure setups.

Written by David Caffee