Tala, Your Favorite Indian Outlaw Vampire! Darkwatch Concept Art

 

Brokeback Slash Fiction Presents: Arthur / Charles

 

If Arthur did take the Brokeback Trail, it always seemed like Charles would be his natural compadre.  Glad it's not just me.  

Josiah Trelawny- the Dapper Studmuffin of Red Dead

Always liked this guy, felt a little like the rapscallion Victorian detectives I enjoy.  In my headcannon he runs away with Margaret, Mistress of Fucking Danger from "Of course, he's British".

Cowpoke Pinup of October & Welcome to Weird West Month!

 

Here at Slap Bookleather the posse is eager to round up a bunch of weird western content for the spooky month of Halloween.  We'll kick things off with this pinup from the Western Horror game Darkwatch, reviewed way back in the first year of the blog!

A long, long pause in Red Dead Redemption II

 

It’s getting on nearly a year since I last picked up Red Dead Redemption II for more than just a few minutes.  It’s not that I don’t like the game.  In fact it’s one of the greatest games I’ve ever played, and I think about it and the narrative all the time.  The problem is that I know where it’s going.  Arthur, that beastly rapscallion who grows a heart despite his thuggish past, was deep into decline with tuberculosis the last time that I played.  I’ve read enough about the game to know that, much like John Marsten in RDR, Arthur does not make it to the end of the game.  Maintaining the illusion of a vital Arthur so far is worth the delayed gratification of seeing the game through to the end.

10 First Impressions of Red Dead Redemption 2

 

 

I’m midway through Chapter 3, here’s the impressions so far:

1. It’s almost like being in Westworld, but instead of $40k/day I bought it on sale for $30.  
2. Customizable Arthur is tons of fun.
3. Although set 12 years earlier, it captures the “end of the frontier” feeling better than the original.  
4. A lot of it plays like a frontier simulator rather than a strict RPG or action game, which I’ve really enjoyed.
5. I haven’t been this attached to characters since the Mass Effect series. 
6. Constantly torn between growing a massive mountain-man beard and shaving it down to a cool yet massive mustache.  In the mean time most of my money has gone to hair tonics.
7. This is probably the best written game I’ve ever played.  
8. One weak point in the writing so far is Dutch; he’s a little less fleshed out than in the original, but then again he was the most engaging character in the original and that’s a hard bar to hit.
9. I still like the early game style of redeye better than the later versions that you learn. 
10. Looks like it’s possible to have an animal hat, buckskin clothes, a mysterious medicine bag, a giant beard, a LeMat and a rolling block Sharpes, and a bandolier of massive bullets, all while riding a giant horse, which means I’ll eventually make Arthur Morgan a twin of Mad Amos Malone.
    

Gay Cowboys of Fallout: New Vegas

The days are getting longer, the temperature warmer, and the snow is less than three feet deep.  It’s almost spring time here in New England, and that means my mind and gaming habits turn towards raucous outdoor adventure.  I recently fired up Fallout: New Vegas, a game as much about surviving in the wilderness as it is about blasting mutants, and was greeted by the mustachioed face of my smiling, badass, gay cowboy.

Yes, you read that right.  Fallout: New Vegas is a game that rewards you for playing a friendly gay cowboy (mustache optional) in a world where cowboys and rangers are fighting Imperial Rome over the Las Vegas strip (yup, that’s more or less the whole plot).  Here’s how you do it:

First, be Good Natured.  Taking this perk at first level deducts points from all of your combat skills while increasing many of the important non-combat skills like First Aid, Speech, and Barter.  Sounds bad for a gunslinging cowboy, but you are only going to want the cowboy-oriented combat skills (guns & melee) so it’s easy to move points around to get all the wild west wasteland shootin’ and stabbin’ skills you need.

  

Second, you should be into dudes.  Serious.  By second level, if you are male, you can take the perk Confirmed Bachelor which rewards you for your intimate familiarity with the male body to give you +10% damage to the same sex (and a good chunk of your enemies are men), plus the chance to flirt with an occasional wasteland wanderer.

Third, make sure to get good at shootin’ and stabbin’, because by level eight with 45 points in guns & melee you can take the Cowboy perk, giving you +25% damage done by dynamite, hatchets, knives, revolvers, and lever-action guns.  

 

From there you can add in perks like quick draw, gunslinger, and a host of other gunfighter & survivalist perks to round out your cowpoke.  By building a gay cowboy step by step, you get a whopping +35% damage to some of the best some of the coolest weapons on your most common enemies.  Certainly this was a crafty plan of the writers, and I love them for it.

Slap Gone Missing and the Best of Crazy A. Crocket

Good old Slap Bookleather seems to be taking a break from blogging for a while, the reason which will become evident when I eventually get around to writing Part 5 of Who Put a Cowboy in My Dungeons and Dragons Game? In the mean time, let me leave you with a couple of quotes from my favorite character in Boomtown, the Facebook western game.  Crazy A. Crockett is one of the villains, with the look of Davy Crockett mixed with the attitude of Mike Fink.  He says the craziest shit when you fight, for example:

Yer face or yer ass, what’s the difference?

How’s that whoopass tasting?

I’m about to open up a can of whoopass!

Happy trails to me!

Here I go, laughing and scratching!  Say Goodnight!

That first line gives me the willies.  He may be talking about where he's going to open up the can of whoopass.  He may be talking romance.  Maybe "Whoopass" is his name for his long gun?

Some of the lines are in the very fun promotional video below, although weirdly Mr. Crockett himself doesn't make an appearance.  

Hmm... maybe Crazy A Crockett would make a good druid in my next D&D game?  Via con Dios!

Colt's Revolving Rifle; or, the Viagra of Longarms

I’ve been surprised recently at how often the Colt Revolving Rifle pops up in fiction.  One appears in the hands of former mountain man Jim Beckwourth in Robert F. Jones’ Deadville, another in Mike Long’s No Good Like It Is, and in the movie Barquero, and finally as one of the better guns in the Facebook game Boomtown.  I’m surprised because it is one of the worst guns ever invented.

Colt’s Revolving rifle worked like a big revolver, but with a long barrel and a stock.  It was made in the days before cartridges, so each chamber was loaded with powder and shot, with a percussion cap nested on the back of the chamber.  Pull the trigger, drop the hammer, and BANG!, your shot was away.

The problem was that sometimes your shot would ignite stray powder, and all of the chambers would fire at once.  That is, down the front of the gun and into the arm that you are using to hold up the barrel.  This kind of misfire was so notorious that the rifle went from being one of the most sought after longarms of the Civil War to one of the most despised.  Officers eventually asked their soldiers to load only one chamber at a time, defeating the purpose of the weapon entirely.  One regiment was completely outfitted in 1863 with Colt Revolving Rifles at the cost of $42 per weapon; they sold them two years later for 44 cents each.

Why do these weapons keep popping up in fiction?  Because they look cool, and whole notion of a rapid fire longarm in the 1850’s and in the Civil War gives western writers substantial wood.  Much like a Viagra commercial, however, it is fake wood, and doesn’t last much past a couple of bangs. 

Dress Up in Boomtown

Earlier in the year I mentioned playing a Facebook game called Boomtown.  One of the fun things about the game is the ability to reshape your character’s look however you like.  Here are a few versions of my gunslinger that I’ve made so far.

Lou Prophet

Louisa Bonaventure, aka "The Vengeance Queen"

Rawhide Kid

Tallulah Black

Gangs of Boomtown Brings Westerns to Facebook Games

I have to confess that I have been a fan of the giant time suck known as Facebook games since the day I first made my profile.  Not to the point of laying down money, but I am perfectly willing to provide marketing information in return for a few minutes of fun a few times a week.  I have played sci-fi, gangster, fantasy, and super hero games, but now there is a new western game in beta called Gangs of Boomtown.  What’s it about?  It’s about clicking a bunch of buttons and dressing up your avatar, like they all are, but this time it’s with western duds and western music.  They even have a cool blog.  Check it out!

Assassins Stalk the Mohawk Valley

The long running Assassin’s Creed video game series has jumped across centuries with each new game.  I tried my hand at one of the games set in 15^th century Italy, but couldn’t get into it.  There was a whole mechanic around how to move stealthily through a crowd by hiding in a group of prostitutes.  That just seemed like way too much to remember.  Now, however, the series is moving to the 18^th century American frontier, specifically the Mohawk Valley during the Revolution.  Time to live out your fantasies of being Mel Gibson with a tomahawk from The Patriot.  I look forward to scalping some Redcoats.

Lone Ranger Video Game

It looks like this came out in 1991, and was based on the 1981 Legend of the Lone Ranger movie.  Anyone remember playing it?