Reviving Dead Man's Hand

[Prak]

I could Thread Necro, but I want to start fresh, discussion wise, as I'm going to be tightening focus here, and going a slightly different direction.

Dead Man's Hand
Dead Man's Hand is a fantasy western-esque setting, somewhere between Weird West and Urban Fantasy. It mimics the setting of the Western Genre, typically the western frontier of the North American continent between the years 1843, the year the Oregon Trail was completed, to 1890, the year the US Census Bureau declared the frontier to be officially closed. It is not a true western, however, because it is meant to take place in a fictional setting. This could be an entire world which closely mimics Earth's Geopolitical landscape, or it can be Great Wheel Cosmology style plane, where the Frontier is simply "Over There" and possibly infinite. At the moment, it doesn't much matter.

In the original thread, Frank talked about using a new system, which eventually became his basis for AS's core system. His points, such as the robustness of D&D PCs, are very valid, but at the same time, DMH wants to be, at least, a Mid-Fantasy setting, if not High Fantasy. While he talks about the fact that D&D has it's roots in Homeric legend, the west had it's own version of epic legend, Tall Tales. Odysseus sailed on wind released from a bag, and blinded a cyclops. Pecos Bill roped a tornado, and wrestled the Bear Lake Monster. Together with the fact that the game will be about necromancers with undead posses, and paladins having shoot outs with demon gunslingers, means that, actual system problems aside, D20 could work decently well.

Dead Man's Hand draws on song, movie, and story, as well as other games, to create a setting that contains Magitek, Steampunk, Shootouts and Sorcery.
Influences Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Amazing Screw On Head (for the Steampunk and supernatural elements) Cowboy Bebop, Cowboys and Aliens, Darkwatch, Dark City (for it's noir and weird world elements), Firefly/Serenity (replace ships with magic and mysterious ironically named shadow corp Blue Sun with Biomancer Cabals), From Dusk Till Dawn, Ghostriders on the Sky (pretty much any version you care to name, though Die Apokalyptischen Reiter's cover deserves special mention), Jonah Hex (Both comic and movie count), League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Magnificent Seven, Rifts, Six String Samurai (Come on, Death wears a drover's coat), Trigun, True Grit, Way of the Warrior, Wild Wild West (Both show and movie) and so on. And, of course, Dungeons and Dragons.
Wow, that' s a lot of influences. I stuck only to the things with which I'm at least vaguely familiar, but there's a lot more that can be drawn on. It really boils down to Dungeons and Dragons in a Steampunk Weird West setting with Magitech.

System
If we're working on a western setting, there are certain things that characters are expected to do:

• Ride Horses
• Animal Husbandry
• Sneak
• Doctor
• Shoot Guns
• Make Zombies
• Make Steam Punk Devices
• Make Spell Engines
• Make Potions
• Make normal Stuff
• Hit People with Axes
• Steal and Cheat at Cards
• Intimidate and Lead
• Bargain
• Track Across the Plains
• Climb, Jump, and Swim
• Sabotage

At the same time, there are certain things we really want to encourage:

• Have shootouts
• Have a Showdown at High Noon
• Commit train robberies
• Prevent train robberies
• Drive cattle
• Steal from cattle drives
• Commit bank robberies
• Stop bank robberies
• Rope tornadoes
• Ride unridable horses
• Outdrive steel driving machines
• Save mine crews by holding up cracking timbers

So, another huge list. Two, actually. The first mostly involves skills, with a few "the magic/crafting rules need to support this" points. The skill ones are pretty easy, they're "Is there a horse riding skill? Is there a sneaking skill?" stuff. Hit People with Axes speaks to a need for melee to stay competitive with ranged combat. This is possibly a bit more difficult thing, as gunslingers will have everything from derringers, to revolvers, to rifles to shotguns, and on to spell rounds, but the axe guy is pretty much expected to be swinging a tomahawk or hatchet 90% of the time (not many battle axes in the Wild West, though I'm totally in for double headed hatchets). The second is more about theme, and a lot of the points are opposite sides of a coin. Shootouts and showdowns are diametrically opposed uses of guns in the system. In a shootout, you want the Named Characters to get missed a lot, but the mooks to be taken down in only a couple shots. In a showdown, you only have two combatants, and you want at least one of them to at least generally hit in one shot, and you want the one that gets hit to go down. Not necessarily die, but definitely go down. It's ok for the showdown to turn into a two person shootout, and possibly be joined by each combatant's posses and turn into the full thing. Regardless, you want rules which handle extended, multi-person combats and quick, two participant duels equally well. The next six speak to setting more than system, but kind of talk about both. Horses need to be able to catch up to trains. Given that these kind of things actually happened in real life, so far as I know, then this really, really should be possible in the game. Bank robberies are about player motivation and npc reaction. Cattle drives ditto, but if nothing else, the rules should, somewhere, talk about catching up to a cattle drive, cutting cows off from the herd, and rounding them up, all things that people are going to expect to be possible if you're going to make this an adventure. Roping tornadoes, riding un-ridable horses, beating steel driving machines, and holding up sagging, cracked mine timbers all speak to "doing the impossible." These are all going to be flat out expected in a game you describe as "Dungeons and Dragons in the Wild West." All we need to do is do them better than D&D does.

(wip)

[Chamomile]

Normally I hate hate HATE the d20 system, but this setting makes me so happy I will probably try to put together a test run of this for you if you can make something playable.

EDIT: Although it occurs to me that while having most of the legwork done for you is really helpful and all, isn't After Sundown already a thing? Why not steal that, rather than d20?

[Prak]

Because AS is predicated on the idea that everyone is a supernatural, and DMH wants people that aren't throwing lightning and turning into werewolves. Gunslinger as an archetype in a western game is as unworkable as Fighter in a fantasy game, every character will be expected to sling guns, but at the same time, I'm not sure were to start in deconstructing AS's power system in such a way that if someone wants to play a Human Outlaw, who gets by on gunplay, he isn't overshadowed by the Dhampir Drifter or Ifrit Medicine Man, which will both have racial and job magic.

[Prak]

System Cont'd.

• So, shootouts. These require plot armour, that's all, because the less important you are, the quicker you go down. The wounds system described by Frank in the old thread, and in AS is actually less than ideal for this, because, save for a variant were soak goes up proportional to "level," it's actually too lethal. However, going straight HP like in d20 makes our next bullet point, showdowns, less viable. I ran an idea up the flagpole in another thread about using HD as a second wound track that would interact with specific attacks, while others damage hp. Grit Die and Grittiness would replace Hit Die and Hit Points for flavour reasons. Most weapon attacks would damage Grittiness, but crits, and possibly called shots, could hit your Grit Die, and if they reach 0, you go down. Coup de Graces could likewise go straight to Grit Die, to allow you to kill people in their sleep with a hat pin.
• Cattle Rustling and Train Jobs. You need a mechanic for chases. These will, probably, come up a lot in the game, so it should be good. You need a mechanic for jumping onto a moving platform, and it could just be a modifier to your jump DC. You need a way to break up a cattle drive, which includes both a variant of the chase mechanic, as you split off cattle simply by chasing them, and the use of intimidate with modifiers for things like firing guns, striking the target, and so on. We need a mechanic for rounding the cattle back up once you've broken them off from the herd or shot the rustlers, which is just a separate use of the rules for splitting them off. Driving the herd can probably be abstracted to a skill check, and an animal trick (for the dogs). Splitting off and rounding up cattle needs to be more interactive, and needs to have a "sweet spot" of number of rolls. We're going to want balance DCs for keeping your footing on the top of a moving train, but not so high that the iconic scene is de-incentivised.
• Bank Jobs need to be referenced in the setting fluff. That's all, really.
• Roping Tornadoes needs "Tornado" as an entry on the difficulty chart for the Lasso skill, or whatever it becomes. Riding un-ridable horses is a legendary use of the Animal Husbandry skill, and possibly the Wild Empathy trait. Beating Steel Driving Machines needs a way to determine how fast one can drive steel, which means some kind of rule for number of times you can do simple tasks in a round. Right now I'm thinking something like "By every X your modifier exceeds the DC-10, a simple (non-legendary, non-opposed, whatever) action drops a type." So because John Henry was a strength of 30, and driving a rail spike takes a full round at DC 15, he can drive the spike as a standard action. The machine takes a full a round to drive a spike, and they can each take a five foot step. The only problem then is that he's not moving faster enough to actually win, so perhaps a rule that you can trade Con points in game for extra actions (maybe only for actions you can take ten on). So basically what we're looking at here is Drive Rail Spike= Str DC 15, Full Round Action, Can take 10. +5 DC, Standard Action. Take 1 Con damage, perform a Standard Action you can take 10 on as a move action. Holding up a sagging mining timber is a basically a DC 40 strength check, being Large (or having Powerful Build) gives you +4, and you can do it a number of rounds equal to your Con Mod. Each round after you take damage. It could be Grit, Grittiness, or Strength, I'm not sure what to make it.

Ok, so now we know something else. Otherwise human characters should be able to get Powerful Build at character creation. There needs to either be a Giantkin race, or a feat that grants it.

[Chamomile]

Yeah, but that's not inherent to the system, that's seriously just its fluff. Fluff all the core disciplines as being the result of being a really gritty gunslinger (or, where appropriate, an exceptionally enticing prostitute who's handy with both varieties of gun). Since the core disciplines are pretty much "mortal stuff but more" already, you probably won't even need to shuffle around many of the mechanics. I'm pretty sure "all core disciplines all the time" is a playable archetype in After Sundown. There's no reason "really awesome at shooting people" can't be a power instead of just a bunch of points in Combat. In fact, if you're going to have this game fulfill its design objectives, you're already committing to that. Refluffing Wizard-level powers as being mundane using d20 is the same thing as refluffing supernatural powers as mundane in AS.

EDIT: Also, you need a showdown at high noon mechanic that relies on multiple non-combat rolls that all give bonuses to a single opposed combat roll of some kind. It also needs to be possible to survive losing one of these, and it needs to be over in just a few rolls, since only one party member can be in a showdown.

[Prak]

I'm not sure I'll be refluffing wizard powers as mundane, but people will totally be swinging around Magic Colt Revolvers, and firing spell rounds. Wizards will actually see almost the whole of evocation removed from the "Cast during combat" paradigm and placed into magic items. A good bit of necromancy will as well, and I'm thinking that a lot of iconic magic is going to come from items rather than your own two hands. That said, the fact that we're going to want people to have knacks like "Trackless Step" and "Eagle Eye" as well as "Shoot the wings off a fly. In Mexico. From Canada." does mean that perhaps I do have a direction to go with AS. However, I do point out that shootouts in AS would actually be too lethal, unless everyone sucks at aiming, or is really good at dodging, in my second system post.

On Showdown at High Noon, I'm not sure what kind of non-combat rolls you're thinking of. On the actual shooting, ideally it should be three rolls: a roll for quickness of draw, a roll for accuracy of shot, and a roll for damage. Ideally, a called shot won't be an auto-kill, it should be capable of doing enough damage that it will drop a character in one hit, but also enough that he may not die, or even actually go down. It's up to the party and the enemy posse what to do once one or the other participant doesn't fall after being shot (or both participants miss).

[Chamomile]

I didn't say Wizard powers specifically, I said Wizard-level powers, as in one way or another your Gunslinger (or whatever you call that class) needs to compete with Wizards.

How lethal or not the AS health system is seems to depend mostly on how much damage guns do and how much downtime you're expected to have between fights. If you want some function of level that determines how much health you have, just either throw together a leveling system for AS (not too hard, I could probably put together a workable leveling system for AS itself by this time tomorrow) and add new health boxes in those.

[Prak]

Ah, true. Well, it's 4:30am here, and I should probably bring the cat in and go to bed. I'll mull things over as I try to sleep and work some more tomorrow.

[deaddmwalking]

If we're working on a western setting, there are certain things that characters are expected to do:

• Ride Horses
• Animal Husbandry
• Sneak
• Doctor
• Shoot Guns
• Make Zombies
• Make Steam Punk Devices
• Make Spell Engines
• Make Potions
• Make normal Stuff
• Hit People with Axes
• Steal and Cheat at Cards
• Intimidate and Lead
• Bargain
• Track Across the Plains
• Climb, Jump, and Swim
• Sabotage

At the same time, there are certain things we really want to encourage:

• Have shootouts
• Have a Showdown at High Noon
• Commit train robberies
• Prevent train robberies
• Drive cattle
• Steal from cattle drives
• Commit bank robberies
• Stop bank robberies
• Rope tornadoes
• Ride unridable horses
• Outdrive steel driving machines
• Save mine crews by holding up cracking timbers

If you want everyone to do some of these things, having them as 'skills' may be unnecessary. Specifically, Ride should probably just be an easy Agility check in most cases. Ie, DC 0 to ride a trained horse with proper gear. DC 10 to ride bareback. If someone wants to 'Trick Ride' those could be higher DCs, and you may make a Feat that offers an actual significant bonus (like +10 or +15). Everyone will be able to ride a horse - some people will be exceptional.

Likewise, Track, Climb, Jump and Swim can just be ability checks.

3.5 Skill checks are very much pass/fail, so there are definitely advantages to a system where beating the DC offers an additional benefit. For example, normally you might move half speed while swimming. For every 1 point by which you beat the DC, you might move an extra 5' (to your maximum movement). So if the DC is 10, and you make a 15, you actually swim nearly as fast as you walk/run.

[Username17]

d20 features:

• A relatively robust tactical positioning system for sword fights, with a ranged combat system that by-and-large only bothers to track whether people are inside explosion radii or not.
• A skill system which really only works reasonably well with people at the bottom of the level scale while they are performing fairly mundane tasks. Otherwise, they are fucked.
• A feature that characters have little or nothing to fear from the weapon attacks of low level enemies.

You are proposing a game based around gun fights, which are supposed to be tactical experiences where it is entirely possible that every character on both sides has a ranged attack and everyone is supposed to be afraid of scorned bar wenches who have grabbed a pistol. That is a scenario that is basically impossible in d20 because high level characters just don't give a fuck about armed civilians, and boring to even try because without areas of effect and zones of control, d20 combat is shit on toast.

Furthermore, you're suggesting a skill setup where characters upgrade their skills to epic uses on a regular basis - and that shit doesn't work at all in d20. Because d20 has a flat fucking RNG and unlocking super human actions requires a +20 bonus every time you unlock a new level of superhumanity. Unlocking an epic diplomacy option puts you the entire RNG passed any of the non-epic diplomacy options, which means you succeed without rolling and the whole point of having numbers on your character sheet is lost.

d20 remains about the worst major system you could use as a base to try to get a Western going. Whether you want to add magic and superheroics or not.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

Now that I think about it, I'm surprised Deadlands wasn't listed as a source of inspiration. The original version was an Origins Award winner, and I really did enjoy playing it. I haven't played the d20 version, but if you decided to run that, as you say, the heavy lifting is already done.

Since I have only been a player, not the GM (Marshall), I'm not sure whether the GM mixed traditional Deadlands with 'Hell on Earth', which is more or less a 'modern' version of the Weird West.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlands

[Username17]

Deadlands is frankly fairly worthless. I don't know that there is anything positive to learn from it. On the system end, it has basically three systems (the shitty original, the shitty Savage Worlds port, and the shitty d20 port), and none of them are particularly good for what it supposedly wants to do. The original is the worst of course, being an essentially random pile of die mechanics, but the other systems are frankly not good for the task. On the porting end, character types aren't even especially close to balanced even within the context of the different systems being used. What advantages the various systems can boast are not taken advantage of, even to the extent they could be. And on the setting end, it's actually really stupid and more than a little bit offensive when you get down into the nitty gritty of it.

The idea of Weird West is pretty cool. And there have been a number of quite nice stories set in a Weird West environment. But I can't think of a single game that actually adds more to that than being a book on the table that prompts people to think about Weird West stories. Werewolf Wild West is dreadful, but the fact that it exists prompts people to think about Westerns. About the only game I think actually brings anything to the genre is Feng Shui - and that's mostly a game about John Wu action heroes shooting it out with Cyborg Xenomorphs in the future. That it does one-shot Weird West adventures passably well is pretty much an afterthought.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

A mistake it appears many denizens of the Den make is dismissing a game outright because the rules are stupid or unfair. Even a BAD game can be a FUN game. I suppose it depends on who you play with and what expectations you come in with.

But I have no doubt the OP could 'scratch that itch' without putting in the effort of building a new game system. And if he's looking to just adapt something already existing, why not start with something that's actually built around the setting he wants?

Mechancially, Deadlands is quirky. A number of features are fun. In learning the system and setting I think you can easily have 10+ sessions that are enjoyable. If you're looking for a 'forever game', you could probably do better (and it makes sense to build that baby up), but if someone wants to play in a setting that allows catching up to trains, robbing banks, and having shoot outs, Deadlands works.

There are other Western RPGs available as well. I've played a demo of Aces and Eights at a convention - personally, I found it unsatisfying (and extremely deadly), but that could also work.

I guess my suggestion is try other systems before putting in a lot of work for an uncertain pay-off.

[Username17]

The fact that you can have a Good Time playing a Bad Game doesn't mean you should recommend bad games. Hell, you can play really awful games and have fun ironically, and that still doesn't mean that you should recommend them. It isn't just that Deadlands comes with a Neapolitan of shitty game systems, it's that the setting is bad. White washing the Confederacy makes you a bad person. The people who wrote Deadlands are bad people. Supporting them is also bad.

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

d20 features:

• A relatively robust tactical positioning system for sword fights, with a ranged combat system that by-and-large only bothers to track whether people are inside explosion radii or not.
• A skill system which really only works reasonably well with people at the bottom of the level scale while they are performing fairly mundane tasks. Otherwise, they are fucked.
• A feature that characters have little or nothing to fear from the weapon attacks of low level enemies.

You left out the most important one:

[*]Massive Playerbase. If you have a radical genre shift in game setting it's a much easier sell to players if it usthes mechanics they are already familiar with.

I'm sure you could do weird west in Feng Shui (straight out of the box 1850s juncture, although guns characters miss out on many of their assumed weapons); but if I was going to hack a system to handle it, D20 would be one of my top choices for that reason alone.

Heck I might just run straight up "This is 3e / Tome D&D, but in the Weird West, so

• firearms are like a lot better than usual. (more damage and/or better crits and/or touch attacks)
• consequentially this makes armor a lot worse than usual
• the major colonial powers are banks and railroads,
• who are unsettling the native powers of tribal leaders and disturbing the tenuous peace established a generation ago between the tribes and the pioneering catopblepas ranchers
• this conflict is played out in a religious conflict between a hierarchical, if frequently schismatic monotheistic church and tribal shamanistic worship of nature spirits
• recently a bunch of veterans of The War Back East came out here to escape from and/or forget about their past. So there are many nameless drifters who are highly capable warriors and spellslingers, but try to remain anonymous so that nobody realizes the prices they have on their heads
• also, someone just discovered gold in them thar hills.
• with all that in mind, only the following races/classes are allowed: blahblahblahblah

[erik]

I never felt the white-washing of Confeds, but generally all my Deadlands adventures were out west and never dealt with North-South schtuff.

Anywho, I almost always really enjoyed each time I played Deadlands, and the only times I did not, the system mechanics was completely to blame. A Western setting is great fun since the setting is familiar enough that people know a lot about it, but distant enough that you can fudge a lot and get away with it. Plenty of factions, plenty of wilderness, and a pleasing amount of lawlessness.

I think Deadlands is at least worth going over for ideas and information. It will not all be to your fancy, but there's a wealth of things that can be used for inspiration.

And yes, others have said it, but it bears repeating. D20 is not a good mechanic for something where you want guns to remain dangerous and for skills I think a dice pool system would work better.

I'd rather use D6 TN5 engine or even a D2 engine for a western setting. Dice pools let things remain dangerous without being all-together deadly, and I like them a lot more for skill resolution where you aren't wanting to push people completely off the RNG but also want to restrict higher difficulty checks to the exceptionally skilled characters.

[virgil]

In regards to d20's tactical positioning system, can you tweak the base to accommodate gunslinging without making the system unrecognizable?

Very rough idea: guns threaten from 5' to 30' or something (cover prevents AoOs) or some other rules-lite zone of control mechanic is added, tactical option to allow for auto-crit or ranged CdG without immediately doing so (for hostage situations & showdowns), etc.

Another thing to try to keep the numbers on d20 leased. Make it E6 or something, and higher levels give ONLY epic feats like tornado lassos and giant size.

Addendum: Has it not been suggested that Fate might be a good core to use for Westerns?

[Username17]

The "and then the south freed the slaves so they could help fight the north, the war continued indefinitely and racism miraculously disappeared" thing was harder to believe than California breaking up into an archipelago, the dead walking, the ghost dance being effective, and horrible monsters roaming the world.

Said it better than I could. They chose to set their game in the 1870s with a still intact Confederacy. But miraculously they ended slavery and gave up on racism against Black people. What the fuck is that? It's like writing an alt history where the Nazis still control Central Europe in 1959, but now they are totally cool with Jews and have a vibrant democracy.

Putting Johnny Reb in the game and whitewashing away all his demonstrable and hideous crimes against humanity is neo-Confederate propaganda. No better, or different from neo-Nazi propaganda. Slavery denialism is every single bit as bad as holocaust denialism, and motivated by the same revolting prejudices.

Massive Playerbase. If you have a radical genre shift in game setting it's a much easier sell to players if it usthes mechanics they are already familiar with.

I'm sure you could do weird west in Feng Shui (straight out of the box 1850s juncture, although guns characters miss out on many of their assumed weapons); but if I was going to hack a system to handle it, D20 would be one of my top choices for that reason alone.

This is a terrible argument. I mean, it's true, in that you can get people to play a d20 port of almost anything, because people know the system. But basically you're making the argument that we should be using d20 Modern to play supernatural horror, and that is demonstrably false.

d20 is so incredibly bad at handling gun combat that you would actually do better with no system at all.

-Username17

[Grek]

Re: Showdowns vs. Shootouts:
This says to me that, by default guns are very, very lethal but not very accurate, but, if you know about a fight ahead of time, you can take a number of actions to give yourself large one-off bonuses against a single target for a single fight. The After Sundown wounds system works just fine and is right around the proper level of deadliness as long as we bump up the accurary TNs some. I'd propose a level based bonus to the threshold to hit you, so that important people are harder to hit in shootouts than weaklings.

Re: Base Mechanic:
Gotta recomend a dicepool system here. Preferably on with d6s. There's a reason why most good games with guns use dicepools. You do have options here, though:
After Sundown Style: You have a fixed TN for whatever it is you're trying to do, and if you match it, you do it. Getting above it means net hits, and in turn means that you do whatever you're trying to do better. This is well tested, mechanically balanced and will make Frank happy but has the downside of scaling linearly unless you write in a table for every power that translates linear increase in to net hits into exponential increases in effect.
Variable Hit Treshold: This is the one I'm personally recomending. You've three flavours of hit, a success (4, 5 or 6), a hit (5 or 6) and an ace (6) that you compare to a fixed TN. If you beat the TN with aces, you get a Tall Tales effect. If you beat the TN with hits, you get a impressive but non-mythical effect. If you beat the TN with successes, you just succeed normally. It has the advantage of scaling properly without needing to write up ass-tons of tables, but has the disadvantage of being more complicated and making Frank complain about the variable hit thresholds.

[Prak]

Now that I think about it, I'm surprised Deadlands wasn't listed as a source of inspiration. The original version was an Origins Award winner, and I really did enjoy playing it. I haven't played the d20 version, but if you decided to run that, as you say, the heavy lifting is already done.

Deadlands isn't listed because my only familiarity with it is seeing it on the shelf in gaming stores. I listed only things I had some familiarity with. But, as I said, there is a lot more, and I expect people to draw on their own familiarities if they're going to help with this.

But I have no doubt the OP could 'scratch that itch' without putting in the effort of building a new game system. And if he's looking to just adapt something already existing, why not start with something that's actually built around the setting he wants?

Part of that effort I don't want to put in is convincing people to try a new system. That's one of the other reasons I was thinking about using d20. Just about every gamer I know already knows d20 to some extent. More than that, I really want to transplant the archetypes that D&D has, and while the crafting system isn't exactly good, it is at least robust. If someone wants to make a bunch of Fireball rounds, basically they make a 50 charge potion.

However, Frank is absolutely right that the numbers get wonky. However, with the Grit variant of wound points and vitality points that I'm talking about in that thread, assuming I got that working, at least lethality should be about right.

On that note... (and as I said, I'd consider using AS's engine for DMH. Is it Creative Commons, Frank? Because that would definitely be a point in it's favour if I ever decided to sell this...)

Grek: AS already has a "simple success," "impressive success," "legendary success" setup, it counts your number of net hits.

Archetypes
This is just a few notes on the archetypes I have in mind so far. Even if I used AS, I'd want some way of doing Prestige Class style "you can switch to this track if you meet the requirements" archetypes.
Basically, all the D&D archetypes need to be brought over, except for DMF. VAH can come along, but he needs to be made with actual vanilla beans, not that crappy, cheap vanilla extract.
There are a bunch of renames of D&D archetypes:

• Frontiersman- this is our barbarian character. Basically, proficiency with ancient weapons, wilderness scouting abilities, and combat power up like rage. Maybe he gets drunk, maybe he actually has a rage ability. I don't know.
• Gambler- takes the bard slot. Not so much the bardic music thing, but they're the pretty boy face skill monkey. Could be rolled together with the Outlaw below.
• Preacher- Yahweh don't exist on the frontier, but Pelor does, and his preachers walk the frontier with pistols loaded with Scorching Ray shells, protecting the homesteaders, and fighting off undead outlaws. (Cleric, obviously)
• Mountain Man- A man so at home in the wild, he has trouble adjusting back to civilization. He knows how to sneak through brush at a run and leave no trace, he has a trusty dire mountain lion pet, and you could swear that he just turned into a fucking bear (Druid)
• Brawler- When you brought your family over to the new world, there wasn't a lot of work for you. No one wanted a "red headed bastard" like you working for them. So you started fighting. It was hard, and your wife hated it, but you learned things in that ring that was more composed of people than wood, and you won enough to move out west. Now you can cold cock a bear and drop it. (Monk. Irish and other scorned immigrant flavour rather than asian)
• Drifter- All you want is a quiet life, doing an honest job, for decent pay. But, the railroad barons of Hextor keep trying to drive people out of their homes to annex their land, or undead bandits ride through town, or some stupid thing, and you have to buckle on your symbol of Heironeous, and grab your Holy Avenger six shooters, and put the dog down. Then you move on, because everyone knows what you can do, and they'll keep asking for every little thing. And in the back of your head, you know another town needs you more. (Paladin)
• Hunter- Whether the wilderness, or the city, there are always things to hunt. Game and wildlife for meat or fur, criminals for justice, they all take the same skills, and you have those skills (Ranger)
• Outlaw- You fight dirty, you cheat at cards, sleep with whores, and steal from people. You're not a nice man, but you have certain skills that can make you very dangerous, or very useful. (Rogue)
• Medicine Man- You know the signs, the chants, the motions, the chiminage, all of it. Maybe you were born into native culture and trained by another medicine man after the spirits spoke to you. Maybe you learned it from the spirits themselves. Whatever it is, you know magic, and can use the charms of the spirits without a book between you and them. (Sorcerer)
• Snake Oil Man- When you roll into town, with your brightly coloured wagon proclaiming cure-alls and time saving devices, followed by freak shows and animal trainers, all the townsfolk come out, because, hey, free entertainment. You make a few sales, and if they bought enough, maybe you'll come back next year. All the best stuff you make, though, you make for yourself, or your private clients. Thaumecycles, Golem Steeds, Spell Engines, all kinds of things, plus your own personal, long studied ability to cast spells. (wizard)

Outlaw and Gambler would probably reference a trick shot system, Necromancers would be a variant of Snake Oil Men who get something like "Raise Undead Posse" that gives some normal int, level appropriate undead. If d20, there'd be a Hanging Judge necromantic PrC, that gave you a close range death attack where you summon a noose around someone's neck. Then you can raise them.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Where do the First Nations People fit into this whole thing? All of your classes except sorcerer seem to be stereotypically Euro-American.

Clearly it's possible to re-flavor the classes to roles in various First Nations, but re-flavoring is not something that a character from one of the First Nations should have to do.

[Ice9]

I'm not so sure about dice pools in this context. Maybe for combat, but it seems like the wrong direction for skills.

This is a game where you want people to lasso a tornado, or swim up a waterfall, or do other crazy off the chart stuff. Which means that often they should be straight off the RNG. The guy who can lasso a tornado shouldn't even have to roll to lasso a normal horse. Conversely, you don't really want "bring a mob of random people, hope one of them gets lucky" as a tornado-lassoing solution.

The main characteristic of dice pools that I've seen is they produce very flat results. The difference between 6 dice and 21 dice (which is an awkwardly large amount to roll) is five hits. So you need to map your results to a chart, not apply them linearly, if you want to support a wide range of skill with less than a bucketful of dice. And then, a lucky roll will put you well above your weight class, so the "bring a mob, one of them will roll high" thing comes back.

[erik]

Now, there's "archtypes" and there's "classes". Perhaps my deadlands lurve is showing, but I think you are better off not making "classes" but instead relying upon a skill-based system. A lot of the archtypes are not necessarily exclusive.

Or if you must, the only real "class-defining" aspect might be what sort of mutually-exclusive magic you use if any.

• Nature Spirit (Medicine Man, Brave, War Chief, Scout, Spirit Avatar)
• Occult (Occultist-a very broad stroke to paint anyone who knows a few incantations, Gun-Mage)
• Tech (Mad Scientist, Hi-tech Gun Slinger, Alchemist)
• Holy (Monk, True Believer)
• Demonic (mostly bad guys, Witch, Demon Scion, Skinwalker)

That oughta do 'er.

Stuff like Gambler, Hunter, Drifter, Brawler, Preacher, Outlaw and Snake Oil Salesman are mostly just skill sets (if even that), in some cases very limited skill sets which are not mutually exclusive. Any of whom could be gunslingers and almost any combination of those.

[CatharzGodfoot]

It sounded like the reason for the classes is being able to say 'Oh, a [some class from D&D] is just called a [some class in DMHD20], with a one-to-one correspondence.

[Prak]

I'm inclined to reply with "Lol, don't care, this is fantasy frontier with guns, not American Frontier with elves" but.... y'know, then I'd be accused of white privilege and neo-racist shit and all that.

Ok, raise your hand if your first response to "Let's play D&D with a western skin!" is "I wanna play an indian!" For all the three people who want to because of Dances With Wolves, Last of the Mohicans or Brotherhood of the Wolf, what you want is Frontiersman, Mountain Man or Hunter. Granted, the first two are anglo-centric terms, but they refer to "guys who live in the woods and can kill you with a tomahawk."

But... ok, first, where do you get the idea that there will be "First Nations" people? Did Trigun have Native Americans? (no, really, I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure it didn't). Were Native Americans a big plot point in Wild Wild West? Did I miss something about elves and orcs running around loin clothes in the pre-colonial era? I know that I'm being really dickishly dismissive, and that, yes, to a certain extent a lot of western tropes deal with NA/FN/Injuns one way or another, but not every single western story does.