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Howdy ya’ll! (is that too cringey to start with? Oh well)
please read my main thread, here and linked my sig, for my writing information before contacting me!
With that brief overview out of the way, here are more details about what I have in mind for a potential story:
Time Period
I’m most interested in doing something set between the mid and late 1800s, I could be convinced to do something in the early 1900s with the right story and characters however
Locations
The entire western frontier is open really, from the prairies of the Midwest, the deserts of the Southwest, up in the forests of the Rocky Mountains, and even into the Eastern edges of the Cascade mountains and the High Desert (I actually lived near here for a while, not far from where they filmed Paint Your Wagon). There’s also the Yukon in the far north, see more about that at the very end of this post however. I will admit that I have a personal preference for the forests and mountains but the prairie is another strong contender, with the desert being probably my least favorite. However, we can also have our characters travel, meeting in place and going to another for some reason or another, the open trail is a setting in and of itself in this time period. Our characters could always have to go on the run!
There are plenty of potential places to work with of course, from gold or silver boom towns to remote outposts or forts or even more remote ranches, farms, and homesteads, or just out in the wilderness, and again, there could be movement between these kinds of locations. I think each offers its own potential for stories and characters
I’m open to original locations we come up with or real world ones, even historically famous ones if we’re inclined
Stories
There’s obviously a lot that can be done here, so don’t consider the following the only things I’m interested in and feel free to suggest your own ideas if you have any. Also, I am not against the inclusion of historical figures, preferably more as cameos, but I could be convinced to do something featuring a historical figure as a main character
*means I'm particularly craving an idea
I have two ideas that have a similar premise but come at it from very different angles, one a more classic western approach and the second a little more modern:
The Widow Willow
A young widow of the last (or maybe first) name Willow is struggling to survive alone (though she could have a young child, or not) on the homestead that she had started with her husband after his recent death. On top of this, she’s been dealing with harassment from a local gang of thugs and/or bigwig, or both if the gang works for the bigwig, who want to drive her off her land for whatever reason suits our needs. The husband could have possibly been killed by them, or by some illness or disease instead, there’s plenty of ways to die in the West. Either way, she’s trying to survive and it isn’t made easier with the pressure for her to sell her land and move away. That would certainly be easier, but she feels strong ties to the land and the home she built with her husband.
Something of a damsel in distress, but a pretty tough and capable one I think, just facing very harsh odds. She likely knows the basics of farming and tending livestock and how to handle a gun (if not being from a farming family herself and being very experienced with it all), and probably gets a little help from the few locals who are sympathetic to her situation, but it’s a losing battle. In comes your character to help, he could either be a stranger or perhaps he’s her brother-in-law, maybe he wants to help or he’s more begrudging. Maybe he’s a man with a checkered past finding some redemption in helping a person in need, or maybe at first he thinks there’s something in it for him. Or something else. Regardless, I see them falling in love eventually, the widow would likely be cold and distant right at first, and probably feel like she was betraying her husband’s memory. If YC is her brother in law he could have conflicted feelings of his own, or for some other reason. Or something else entirely?
*Trouble with a Side of Ranch (do people from outside the US get the joke in this title or are Americans uniquely weird in how common it is to eat ranch dressing with everything?)
This setup has some similarities with the one above for sure but like I said, a very different angle. Instead of a young widow we have a young "heiress" (though not a rich one) who has inherited her family’s horse ranch after her father’s death (if we need to get around the legality issues of the time, it could technically now be owned by an uncle who lives out east and has no interest in running the place himself so leaves it up to her as long as she’s keeping the place going). And like before, a local bigwig is causing trouble, a rancher with more land and money though he wouldn’t mind having hers too, but is mostly focused on her family’s horses. He’s been sending his men over to raid the ranch and steal horses for some time, probably since before the father died but now since he’s gone (and the big rancher could have had something to do with that or not) and it’s just his daughter running the place they’ve gotten even bolder.
So she’s decided to hire some men of her own to protect the place and help her steal the horses back, cue your character, along with several others who he could already know and be working with as their own little group, or they could all be strangers. He’d need to be some kind of cowboy or outlaw or both (plenty of outlaws became cowboys) that’s willing to basically also be a bit of a mercenary, but his background is completely up to you. Go as classic as you like or get creative with it. I have several possible backgrounds in mind for my ranch heiress but either way, her personality will be pretty spit fire and assertive, this is her ranch and her horses. Your character could find that off putting at first having to call a woman ‘boss’ or maybe he doesn’t really care as long as he’s getting paid, either way I definitely see some good tension starting to build quickly between them and a romance starting as they deal with the situation between the ranches.
TAKEN
*The Bounty - I recently finished the series Godless on Netflix (pretty good! I recommend it) and a particular idea struck me as having good potential and I wanted to add it in here. It would center around a hired agent (such as the Pinkertons) who falls in love with the wife of a man who's hired him/the agency he works for to find her and bring her back. I think this has the potential to be folded in with the A Strange Horse concept (now below) where she's living in disguise as a young man when he finds her, either way when he finds her/realizes who she is he snatches her up and tries to take her back. Unlike in the show I think she should hate/dislike one another at first and then fall in love as he's trying to take her back, how and when that happens exactly I'm not sure, she'd probably try to escape several times and I'm sure there'd be plenty of other forms of drama and trouble to have happen on the way there. Maybe they decide to try and run off together, with the agent now being the one being pursued, though his experience hunting people would no doubt come in handy. Maybe he gets her back to her husband and then regrets it, the two of them starting an affair and then possibly trying to run away afterwards. Whether or not they're successful, who knows? This would be a good story for traveling to different locations across the West and possibly even out east a little
A Fish out of Water - this definitely isn't an original idea, but it's a trope I love, the smart but sheltered city girl who ends up out on the frontier and getting the biggest dose of culture shock she's ever experienced in her life. It could either be a situation where her family has moved out to some small town to buy or invest in whatever industry it has going on (mining, logging, cattle, etc) or maybe she's moved out there on her own to become the local school teacher/marm. Maybe she's excited to be there and has romanticized the West and gets a rude awakening or maybe she's unhappy about the situation and has to learn to like the place.
Either way, I was definitely thinking of pairing her up with someone local for sure, there's a long list of possibilities so if you have something else in mind let me know because I'm definitely not limited to these but was leaning more towards your classic cowboy, possibly some kind of outlaw, maybe a man from one of the native tribes, or perhaps a local lawman. Someone who is very much her opposite in many ways, and who would likely not be a suitable choice according to her family (whether they're in town or not). Maybe they immediately dislike one another but find that that turns into irresistible attraction, or maybe it's an immediate attraction they know they shouldn't indulge in, which makes it all the more tempting. I think there should be a larger story going on but I'm not sure what, it really depends on the time and place we pick.
TAKEN
Mail Order Matrimony - again more of a concept than a hard, thought out idea. This could be set about any time or place in the West, since the practice of 'mail order brides' was pretty common throughout, as men were common out West than women. So it was pretty standard practice for a single man who wanted to settle down and start a family to place a personal ad in papers out east, advertising himself as a person and whatever he had to offer while making it clear what he was looking for as well. There'd be a long distance courtship followed by the woman traveling out West by wagon (or train if later in the 1800s or early 1900s) and after making sure everything was on the up and up, they'd get married. I'd like to basically do something with this! There's obviously plenty of potential for dramatic or humorous miscommunications (I'd like to avoid outright lies, but maybe omissions of truth or just not thinking to tell one another certain things or misunderstanding something the other wrote, etc), or maybe everything between the couple is right and things go wrong in an entirely different way. If I come up with a more detailed character or idea I'll add it but there's so much that could be done here that it's pretty wide open, I wanted to get it in here though!
Alternatively: there's potential to combine the previous idea with this one and have the woman who the trail boss falls in love with be on her way out West to marry another man, but the two of them fall in love before she gets there. With the rest to be decided! Does she run off with the trail boss? Does she get to her destination but isn't able to go through with the marriage? Does she get married anyway and regret it, starting an affair with the trail boss while married to another man??
Traveling Rodeo - would have to be set in at least the very late 1800s but has a lot of potential for very interesting mix of very interesting characters and a who’s-who of western archetypes, perhaps a mix of shows and competitions (part rodeo part western circus), I think playing an Annie Oakley sharpshooter type character would be a lot of fun here or perhaps a horse diver, I do love the movie Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken (though that’s not a western). I don’t have any firm ideas in mind here as there’s just so much that could be done, but it keeps coming back to my mind. There’s so much that could be done here that it’s hard to know where to possibly start so let me know if you’d like to talk this one over!
A semi-related longshot:
Adjacent to this genre, I also grew up on Yukon stories, especially the brief sled dog movie era like Call of the Wild, White Fang, Balto, and Iron Will. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone ever want to do a Yukon rp on any site but maybe someone would be interested if I piggy-back off this one considering the Yukon gold rush could be considered the most northern part of the western frontier of the time. There’s a slight overlap with the time period being set mostly in the late 1800s and very early 1900s, I think that some of the ideas and characters from the western genre would still work up here and I wouldn’t be against that but I think I’d like to do something more unique to the region and period if I ever do something with this. I haven’t put a great deal of thought into what yet since this is such a long shot, but something with the gold rush and/or dogsledding perhaps.
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