Welcome to
WILD FRONTIERS
Wild Frontiers is a western inspired tabletop roleplaying game.
What's Included
Apart from the core rules, this setting contains the following unique elements, which help expand on the themes and tropes found in western adventures and stories:
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SKILLS AND FEATURES: customised skills and features specific to the setting.
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POWERFUL RITUALS: over a hundred magical rituals to let you customise and tailor your character’s connection to the spirit world.
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MODIFICATIONS: customise and modify your weapons and armour, giving your equipment special and unique properties.
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GAMBLING: buy a deck of cards and hit the tables as you take your chances, gambling your way to fame and fortune.
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REPUTATION: forge your own fame, or infamy, using the bespoke reputation system.
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SPIRIT JOURNEYS: unique mechanics for travelling through and exploring the mysterious parallel spirit world.
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WESTERN LIFE: additional special rules for duelling and prospecting.
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UNIQUE CREATURES: creature creation rules and hundreds of creature templates for quick use in your adventures. Creature types include: angelic, beast, construct, demonic, elemental, fey, humanoid, monstrosity, plant, and undead.
The Setting
The western setting is based in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a time of expansion, wealth, heroism, and violence; a new world forged through war and industry in what was otherwise a place of utter desolation. It embodies legends of the post-war lives of lethal gunfighters; gold-rich, but vast and empty, landscapes; pilgrimages and resettling; hostile inhabitants resistant to invasion of their homeland; and frontier towns or burgeoning cities filled with opportunity and death. But somewhere between the hope and promise the darkness looms as lethal criminals, tyrannical tycoons, cutthroat gangs and desperate wayfarers all try to take their share off the backs of the decent and hardworking.
Western stories often stress the harshness of the wilderness and are frequently set in arid, desolate landscapes such as deserts and mountains. The remote landscape plays an important role in presenting the mythical quality of the period. The newly established safety and security of urbanisation, primarily localised to small settlements and cites, is usually dwarfed by the vast scale of the wilderness and all its potential threats and dangers. It is always out there, serving as a reminder that it is ever-ready to take a severe toll upon the unprepared.
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In stark contrast to the wilderness, the frontier towns and cities offer community, companionship, entertainment, knowledge, pleasure and wealth; all of which are usually hard to come by when travelling across the barren isolation of an undeveloped landscape. Cities commonly attract wealth, which naturally brings with it an inherent criminal element. Desperados, wanderers and former soldiers without industry turn their sights to more bloodthirsty work, earning a living as guns for hire, mercenaries, gang members and thieves. Others use their wealth and position of influence to arm themselves with these deadly individuals, overthrowing and subjugate the weak, and dispensing their own brand of fear and tyranny.
With an ill-established social order, brave citizens and honourable folk occasionally step into the role of law bringers, marshals and vigilantes, hoping to get rid of these nefarious elements before they erode the peace, with the resulting conflicts usually ending in bloodshed.
FEATURES
Forge A Name
Usually, in the Old West, choices aren’t the problem: it’s living with the decision that can prove to be more challenging. When confronted with difficult choices, will you do what is honourable and just? Or will you throw away your morals and take what you want? This setting continuously presents you with difficult choices as you face situations that call for someone to step in and lend a hand, or leave you so battered and desperate you consider performing unlawful acts just to survive.
This book will provide you with ways to build a reputation from the ground up. Each time you lend a hand or push someone down will have a long-lasting consequence on how your character is viewed by others. Will you head towards becoming a virtuous paragon or dastardly notorious? The choice is up to you.
Deadly Duels
In a fight, being the first to draw your weapon can mean the difference between life and death. Whether it’s at a gaming table when a fight is about to break out, or during an ominously predetermined duel, the draw is as much a mind game as it is about who is the fastest.
Duels add a tension to the game that can be either spontaneous or prolonged as the looming threat of potential death pushes characters out of their comfort zones and heightens any situation. This book will provide you with rules for initiating and carrying out deadly duels with two or more creatures.
Mystical Rituals
Rituals represents your ability to manipulate and shape the raw and untamed forces of the spirit and natural world. Practitioners perform sacred ceremonies and offer worship or tributes to the ancient gods, who in return grant them supernatural abilities.
Others are students of the old ways, having learnt the ancient traditions from their ancestors on how to command the natural world to act on their will.
This book will provide you with hundreds of sacred rituals that you can learn and master. Each ritual is tied to one of five sacred totems, which are thematic groupings representing a natural aspect of the world.
The Spirit World
The spirit world is a place that exists between the natural world and the afterlife. It is a realm that is primarily inhabited by the spiritual forms of other creatures, both benevolent and malevolent, who have died and yet are unable to pass into the next life for some reason.
Many of these creatures may have existed there for millennia, ancient beings who have gathered wisdom, mystical objects, and knowledge, or have become too corrupted and merely haunt the sacred places found within the spirit world.
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This book will provide you with ways to navigate the Spirit World, using it to heal the sick and wounded, grant you mystical blessings and powers, search for ancient knowledge, or quickly reaching far away places by ghost walking.