A group of free grazers, trying to escape their pasts, are driving cattle and living off the land on the open range- a place where nature makes the only laws.


Several scenes bring the group together...fighting indians, horse theives, a raging storm, fool's gold and the ruthless evil rancher that tries to run them out of town.

I have often thought of this concept. I love the old Spaghetti Westerns. Yeah, they're sure don't accurately describe native people but they're still pretty cool. Clint was the best! (He still is). We'll talk about this some more and see what we can develop.

Writing some Louis Lamour classics would be fun. I am also very partial to John Wayne.

This does sound interesting. I might be up for this. Love John, Louis, Palance, Boone, & Clint. Love those John Ford films too. Yes this could be fun ( must practice my quick draw and clean up my Peace Keeper.) Kevin Costner was the best Wyatt Earp. William Boyd as Hop A Long Casssidy.
Have Gun Will Travel was great too. Oh yea and we cannot forget Gabby Hayes.

Yeah Kostner was awesome as Earp, but Kilmer was the best Doc Holliday. Dennis Quaid paled by comparison.

I would have to say though that it is a story line that demands people to be in the know. I don't think its story for everyone. Someone who is not familiar with the Western Genre would very quickly ruin the story. Not to say that participants have to be avid fans, but one's view on the genre should be broad. I specifically mean that if one's view of the story is going emulate one particular movie... let's say the movie 'Bad Girls' (I shudder just thinking about it) then I think the person may have a difficult time adding believability to the story. However, I do believe that Sharon Stone's performance in the 'Quick and the Dead' was a very good portrayal of a the romantic version of the 'female cowboy character'. She retrained femininity without becoming completely unbelievable like the women in 'Bad Girls'.

Just my opinion. Before stories begin I like to try and scope out the pitfalls so that they can be patched or avoided.

As we all know a good story requires an antagonist and this goes without saying in a Western story, so this would have to be established from the beginning. It's not often that gunslingers get together for a tea party but that being said every moment isn't a shoot out either. I feel, however, that the three of us right now, share the same romantic ideas of the story. 'Riding out into the sunset', 'out-drawing the bad guy'... that sort of stuff.

A good thing to do is hash out some parameters...

Where will the story begin?
What is the general atmosphere of the area?
How real should we be? Should we try and be historically accurate or should we stick to the romantic notions?

Of course we don't want to make a mockery of the Western genre, but on the other hand trying to be historically accurate is probably too challenging for some light writing. After all, how many people are actually historians of that era? I personally like the romantic style, where while a woman gunslinger is rare, they are not unheard of, and they don't have to look like KD Lang.

I love westerns!!!

I like playing the pain in the keister Indian types.

LOL

I loved 'Worm' in the Charles Bronson movie the White Buffalo.

That presents another thing to address. I LOVED the tv series Kung Fu, but if we suddenly have Chinese Shoalin monks popping up at every turn the 'Western' theme would get a little twisted. While one doesn't want to discriminate we would have to establish some ground rules about the types of characters one can play. If someone's Chinese and wants to play a Chinese character, we all have to consider what is was like for the Chinese people back in those days. We don't have to adhere to the ignorant bigotry but we also can't turn a blind eye to as well. The amount of chopsaki characters would definitely have to limited, since we don't want every character dodging bullets, tossing bamboo sticks and kung-fuing their opponents while others are trying to emulate a classic Western theme.

I'm up for it. I love the romantic westerns and I especially would enjoy playing the half-breed wanderer, female of course. She would have her feminity, of course, but able to handle weapons as well.

So I propose we name the story line. Spurs and Six Guns.

We'll still have to hash out some ground rules and establish the basic outline.

This is a concept I have had on the back burner for a while, and I have learned Lac has also toyed with the idea for some time. Now that it has been brought up by Sir Easy, we're willing to give it a shot (no pun intended). We don't want to implement too many rules since that tends to take all the fun out it but as always we stress that writers stay true to the theme.

As previously stated, while we do not want in anyway to condone racism, we are emulating a time where it did exist. We do not want the overall theme to be dominated by bigoted commentary, but those who play the roles of minorities, such as Native Americans, Mexicans, Chinese and African Americans should write in accordance to the segregation that was generated at the time. Simply put I think an obvious tolerance should exist for realism but it should not dominate the story. A character that constantly whines about the injustices of the time or is constantly getting persecuted gets really annoying. Realistically someone who is full blooded native isn't going to wander into a saloon with war paint on their face with no other motives but to buy a drink. If something so silly occurs they will simply be shot, end of story.

Site moderators and admin will control the law. Whatever the setting, local law enforcement will be created and will be used to keep chaos to a minimum and provide some opposition for those writers who choose to create outlaws.

I'll stop blabbing now and let others chime in. I think we should set our ground rules before starting anything. I'll create a character topic and call it Spurs & Six Guns, and if another name is chose we'll change it later.

So I was doing a little research on American History and it seems that a good time to set the story in would be 1870. Its five years after the Civil war and animosity would still exist between the North and South but slavery is abolished and people are striking out west to the sparsely populated West to make their fortunes.

I am thinking, that any towns and settlements we use should just be fictitious so we can avoid the trappings of historical inaccuracies. We can use a town like Tombstone or Deadwood as models, just change the names.

I like it, count me in as well. I will be submiting my char within a couple of days. I do think we should keep certain things as historically correct as possible. As in weapons, modes of transpotation, modes of communication, ect.

I agree 100%.

We are both Story tellers and Writers. What's the difference? Research.

I spend quite a bit of time researching in order to be accurate, but I enjoy it. I am not saying that 100% accuracy is mandatory, but I feel everyone should at least try and stay true to the period that they are writing in. If you don't know something, Google it and find out, its that easy.

One thing that is very important in a 'gunslinging' adventure (as we have learned from No More Dreams) is researching accurate ranges. I was very surprised how short they were. When people are riding away from the gun fire of old western six shooters and they're not getting hit, that's actually a pretty accurate account. Except everyone once in a while the horses did get hit, which the movies tend not to show. Not that we should dwell on that either since we are writing in a more romantic style.

If you want a play a Native American you may have to wait a while until we determine the area we are going to start. I think that some information on their tribe should be listed in the bio, nothing too heavy, it would just be nice to know their language, their region and who their natural enemies are. This is for the cases that we have more than one native character and it would be good to know ahead of time if their tribes are friendly, neutral or enemies toward one another.

I did some research on Saint Cloud, Minnesota for my character and I think I am going to add that information into the bio now that I have thought about it. The more historical information we have from the start the easier the writing will be.

That's the thing about 'period' pieces. You just can't make stuff up. Twisting the truth is alright, but you have to know the truth to start with.

Easy and I were discussing that as well, Lac and agree that weaponary, modes of transportation, etc. should all be historically accurate. We also agree on the concept of setting up towns based on the original ones i.e Tombstone but use a different name. Also, the same with characters. Like, set up one based on Billy the Kidd but use a different name and character history. What does everyone think about having it set in Colorado, close to the mountains or in Wyoming?

Tiph, I need some help. I am going to get my character started and have been looking for a picture for her but am coming up empty handed. I know what I want, it's just finding it that is difficult. So, can you help me out? She will look like Megan Fox, lives on a ranch with her father and was raised to be a ranching girl. I will go ahead and get her character started to give you more info if you don't mind doing this. She's usually in men's jeans or a split skirt, carries a rifle and sidearm and can ride as well as any man.

I'll see what I can do... and actually quite often Women ride better than Men, or at least have the potential to do so.

I think, legends like Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday should exist, they just won't physically enter our stories... at least never when we are in a fictitious town of our making. I, however, don't want to dismiss someone hearing rumours or reading about, say the exploits of Wyatt Earp. Might be a nice thing to throw in once in a while.

Technically, the American Old West, is anything west of the Mississippi and beyond the Appalachians, so that's our range for the story. I kind of had my heart set on Arizona, which is the classic setting for most Western movies and literature but where ever we start out we'll probably end up moving around anyway. Outlaws tend not to hang around the same town for very long.

Picking a setting a long the Rockies would work too. There were several mining towns that sprang up over night throughout the West and then vanished along with the precious metals. We can create a town named Quartzville or Panhandler, something like that.

(This is a really hard scenario for a Canadian by the way. )