The Shotgun Gospel

THE WILD WEST

• WILDER THAN ITS EVER BEEN

  

  "Hey there, sweetie. You look lost. You are lost, aren't you? Rode a little too hard and a little too far and now you can't tell your ass from Adam. That's alright, though. Got plenty of strangers blowin' through these parts these days, what with work bein' as hard to come by as it is. You'll fit right in. How about you buy a drink? Sit a spell, take a load off. If there's any questions you have I'll try an' fill in the blanks as best as I can.
  
  Oh, well. This is New Alexandria, of course. Some of the old timers call it 'God's Forsaken Land' on account of it bein' little more than miles and miles of sunbaked desert but don't you pay them no mind. Sure, the ground's too arid or too dry for farming and the wilderness is close to bursting with bandits and thieves and, yes, the men sworn to protect the people are usually no better than the outlaws themselves, but.. where was I? Oh, right. New Alexandria has CHARACTER. I mean, we've got legendry lawmen, legendry outlaws, legendry.. legends! This is a land rife with stories, as my daddy used to say before he lost his fight with consumption. And let me tell you, stranger: stories are as good as gold here.
  
  What's that? Oh. Those rumors. Yeah, there are some.. oddities, I'd wager, about New Alexandria. There are some.. eccentric religious folk who ain't quite playin' with a full deck, if ya catch my drift.. the reverend calls them 'pagans' but I've heard tell they ain't quite as nice as that.. but the rest? Urban legends. Tall tales. People love to talk about how New Alexandria is a 'cursed land!' full of demons and goblins and ghosts. I blame the miners. They gotta talk about somethin' to pass the time, don't they? Probably just concoctin' these stories to scare travelers. Don't pay it no mind.
  
  Tell ya what, honey. Drink's on the house. You take care of yourself, alright? This is a hard land, I will say that. You gotta be just a bit harder.

  "
• The Narrator wrote:

  The Shotgun Gospel is intended as a love letter to the western genre. I was raised on Old West flicks (mostly those featuring Sam Elliott) and have always enjoyed the simplistic nature of them as well as the gritty realism of life on the frontier. TSG has gone through several incarnations since its conception but at its core, the concept remains generally the same: a genre-busting, ultraviolent world featuring stories that focus on style, flawed characters and disjointed narratives.
  
  Inspiration comes from all over. The films of Sergio Leone and Quentin Tarantino; video games like Red Dead Redemption and Call of Juarez; the written works of Louis L'Amour, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and Clive Barker; the comics of Mike Mignola; the list goes on. The Shotgun Gospel features a grand menagerie of influences, not all of them westerns, which has resulted in the setting being rife with facets of other genres: noir, fantasy and horror, especially of the cosmic variety.
  
  Where do YOU fit in? Well, wherever you want. Think of the Shotgun Gospel as an open world RPG. I certainly do. Make your character (or alter one to better fit the setting), tell me what sorts of stories you'd like to act through and outcomes you'd like to occur, and let's build something compelling. Along the way, I'll be your dutiful Narrator, describing the world around you and concocting encounters to keep you engaged.