Tangoing With Rango

Alright, I may be a little late to this parade, but I recently bought the DVD and have to say I absolutely loved Rango. Johnny Depp offers us another great oddball characterization among a cast of other oddballs. The presentation of a cracked version of the Wild West is as memorable as the character design and the animation in this movie.

Rango's fish out of water journey from faux hero to true grit western type is quite entertaining to watch. Familiar western tropes are handled with style and agility throughout the movie. Cameos of familiar faces or homages paid to classic movie characters are also sprinkled through the entire picture. In many ways it sort of plays like an offbeat Wind in the Willows from an American point of view.

The picture below shows many of the memorable character designs. So taken with them am I that I am tempted to try to give them the same treatment that the fellow over at Mutton Chop Miniatures did with the characters from The Wind in the Willows, transforming classic animal characters into their human counterparts.

From a gaming perspective there is a lot to borrow here. From interesting Old West characters to an inspiration for a post apocalyptic mutant animal community.

Give Rango a peep and enjoy!

-Eli

Moving My Old West Town!



Monte Cristo, WA



You may recall that a while back I envisioned an Old West town called Dust Wallow. Well, this vision never really went anywhere for various reasons but I have recently come back to it with a new angle.

In considering locations for my Old West gaming I got to thinking why not set my little corner of Helltown here in the Northwest. We've got a ton of Old West history with the logging, mining and with Washington being the jumping off point to Alaska and the gold to be found in parts north.

So, out with Dust Wallow and in with Skookum, a town where loggers and miners butt heads and rub elbows and where you'll never see a tumbleweed but you'll have mud up to your ears.

Skookum is a Chinook jargon word that has come into general use in the Pacific Northwest region of North America.

The word skookum has three meanings:

1. a word in regional English that has a variety of positive connotations;
2. a monster; similar to the sasquatch.
3. a souvenir doll once common in the United States in tourist areas.

Building Skookum should prove fun. This is a chance to really put together some stuff you don't see in most of the dusty Old West gaming tables out there. Lots of evergreen tress, rocky hills and mountain, wet ground and local natives who live in lodge houses and build totem poles.

Like a lot of Old West players I'll be using a fictional town and already have a few things planned to make Skookum unique. It'll have all the usual stuff - saloon, bank, general store, boarding house, etc, etc. right now I'm learning how to build Old West buildings without killing myself on the details so it may be a bit before I can produce any town terrain.

Stay tuned!

-Eli

Wagon Train - "The Steve Campden Story"Hidden Lost World Charm

Lately I've been on a western kick and have been watching a lot of whatever I can find on TV, including some old TV series like Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel and Wagon Train. I was pleasantly surprised to a quirky little surprise on the above mentioned episode of Wagon Train.

In this episode the characters go mountain climbing and find a cave. Exploring the cave they are stalked and attacked by a creature. This creature is later revealed to be a small white feline with saber teeth. One the characters waxes intellectual and tells us that this creature must be a species of prehistoric cat isolated in and adapted to life in the caves.

Maybe they were trying to spice up the series or something and the episode originally aired in May so it wasn't a Halloween episode. Whatever the reason, we get lost world goodness in a 1959 TV series!

Fun!

-Eli

Welcome to...

Jenn, my wife, has asked me if she and I can do some miniatures gaming. When we first got together she used to play Mordheim with me and the guys and has always been a gamer of sorts, but hadn't shown much interest in miniatures gaming for a while. Obviously, I was happy to hear this and so began a discussion of what we might like to play. I had been considering taking a foray into the realm of Old/Wild West miniatures gaming and as Jenn is fond of skirmish level games, I thought these two interests might meet nicely in the middle. I pitched the idea to her and she liked the sound of it. Jenn enjoys terrain building and she also expressed an interest in trying to build some terrain for this setting.

On the recommendation of my buddy and fellow blogger J over at Victoria's Boys in Red, I ordered up a copy of Hawgleg Publishing's Gutshot!. Jenn actually placed the order for me and got herself some zombie gunfighters and cowgirls because she's cool like that. The really cool thing is that I ended up getting my copy of Gutshot! signed by Mike from Hawgleg because I "know somebody" (thanks J). My package showed up with everything I ordered and a few extras. It's all good stuff.

So, what's with the odd name at the top of the post?

I asked Jenn to name the town for our proposed game and this is what she came up with. I like it. It has a nice Old West feel to it without resorting to some morbid or Dante-esque name or utilizing some sort of topographical feature (gulch, valley, hollow, etc) in the name. As I had already expressed an interest in placing our town in the southwest, it fit nicely. So, Dustwallow it is!

What is Dustswallow?

When I considered a setting for our Gutshot! games I envisioned a place where I could maximize my western drama potential. I wanted it all - indians, banditos, cattle men, railroad, farmers, miners, and I evne had a strange idea for throwing in a rogue Mexican warlord. I settled on New Mxico after getting some feedback from some buddies who arem uch more familiar with that region of the USA.

Dustswallow is a town at the foot of a mountain valley where farmers and ranchers in the hgihland valleys mingle with the miners in the hills and mountains around. The town is on a rail line and benefits from the influx of people and goods from parts east and west as well as having a route to export their own goods (ore, cattle, etc). There are local outlaws and bandits and there would be in any setting where wealth gathers and moves. It's just a basic framework for now and will grow as we start actually building and playing.

Look for more tales of Dustswallow in the coming months.

Take care,

-Eli