Whether it is the high-stakes tension of a standoff at noon or managing the risks that a barren region presents, the Western has been a constant source of story and adventure for an assortment of individuals in the 20th century. RPGs have tried to capture that energy, from the card-inspired Deadlands to the more supernaturally inclined Weird West video game.
The latest addition to provide a platform for a western adventure is Huckleberry, an independent TTRPG in early access published by new TTRPG author Steven Alexander in partnership with the Adventures in Lollygagging Actual-Play network. The game brings a “dark and weird” flavor to the Western by drawing on the occultic legends of yore and basing it in an alternate timeline.
Alexander agreed to sit down with The Fandomentals to discuss his game, its origins and his efforts to evade the cultural traps that the western genre is plagued with.
What is Huckleberry RPG?
Alexander: The way I like to describe it is Hellboy in Tombstone. If you’ve ever seen tombstone, you know that it’s over the top drama, it’s corny at times. But it also has the serious moments and pacing. Hellboy, in contrast, has the strong character arcs. It’s got the folklore aspect, and I really just tried to merge those two worlds together. Huckleberry is very much a western setting but it’s not based on Earth. This setting is one where most people have never seen monsters or used magic. But the players themselves are unique and powerful. And then they fight strange, monstrous creatures.
What do you mean by “not based on Earth?”
Alexander: So in this setting, Earth has basically ended. There’s this concept in Central American and North American mythology about the concept of four or five worlds and their beliefs that the fourth world is the one that we’re in and it’s going to And we’re eventually going to migrate to what is called the “Fifth World.” This is the premise of the setting.
That means that there is no more U.S. government. There is no Mexico government. It’s just people in it. It’s created a utopia and a dystopia, where there’s a lot of freedom. But there’s also that several companies that have grown incredibly powerful, and they have no laws or any sort of oversight that stops them from doing horrible things. So there are a lot of the drama and friction that’s created and Huckleberry.
There’s also the concept of the weird, which is a sort of like magical radiation that corrupts everything in the world. You can’t escape it, you can’t cure it, the best you can do is mitigate it and try to minimize the effects. The players are “Mavericks,” whose job is to specifically hunt down corruptions of the Weird. So if there’s a grizzly bear that’s affected by this magical radiation in mutates into a man hunting beast, then the Mavericks would be the ones who take on a bounty to hunt down that creature.
What does gameplay look like?
I’d describe the concept as “mid-crunch” when it comes to mechanics. You have attributes and skills. Players will have access to four specific attributes; specifically Quick, Grit, Reckon and Spirit. They’ll also have skills like survival or handguns or athletics. The better they are at a task, the bigger the dice they roll.
To perform a task, the players’ll roll the two appropriately sized dice connected to the attributes and skills. The goal is to get a 10 or higher. The higher the roll, the more “Aces” they get. Ace is a sort of meta-currency that players can use to get additional effects on a success.
At the end of the day, I wanted to avoid complicating the game with too much math. That’s why I made 10 a flat rate of success. But if you wanna do cool things like shoot a bad guy’s head off, you’ll likely need to spend aces to do so.
What does Huckleberry provide that other Western RPGs don’t?
There were two things that I wanted to push for with Huckleberry. One was that I wanted a game that plays fast in cinematic form. That’s why the gameplay is simple and focuses on if you can get just a 10. The design takes a lot of steps out of the conversation between GM and player.
The other thing is that there’s a lot of baggage with the Western setting. Native Americans are often represented horribly in the media. Too often they’re always two dimensional villains, or they’re represented as like mystical shamans. And African Americans are often erased from the setting as well, despite historically African Americans representing up to or more than 25% of all cowboys, that was a very common occupation for them. And when you think of a Western setting, you don’t really see that many African Americans in there. So that was something that I really wanted to address from the foundation of the game. It’s why appearances are entirely nonmechanical and why we tried to strip away the baggage that clings to 19th century history.
Huckleberry isn’t the first TTRPG to do this. Others like Deadlands have taken other approaches. There’s no shade toward them, as well. I love them because it’s all part of the collective approach. They just handle the history differently than I do. Setting it in an alternate world also takes away the burden of player learning the complex history of the West and allows them to provide a safe and inclusive table for everyone.
The early access version of the Huckleberry RPG is available on DrivethruRPG now.
Images via Steven Alexander and Adventures in Lollygagging
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