Haunted West Corebook (Digital)
Haunted West Corebook (Digital)
2022 Silver ENnie Award for Best Rules
2022 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming Nominee
The Old West—The Wild West, The American Frontier—is one of the world’s most familiar modern myths. The time was draped in ruggedness; there was an idealized dream of freedom, and a notion that just one person could shape the world. That myth belongs to all of us. Yet so many stories of truth, justice, and the American Way have been stolen, erased, and never recorded. Haunted West is a game about hope through struggle. It is a game that pieces together the stories of the largely forgotten people of the Old West, the people who have been whitewashed by history. Discover the American experience in the Weird West.
Grab your rifle, jet pack, and spurs to battle traitorous rebels in the defense of freedom, join the fight against temporally displaced dinosaurs, rustle cattle to make ends meet, and hijack a train full of illicit Confederate gold!
“I didn’t expect an independent company to produce an eight-hundred-page masterpiece of history, setting and game mechanics that marshal so many people’s talents.” - Game Industry News
By Chris Spivey and Crew
Published by Darker Hue Studios, 2021
800 pages
Press release
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
—Frederick Douglass, 1857
HISTORY BELONGS TO ALL OF US.
This corebook has everything you need to explore the Old West, including:
An extensive historical account from prehistoric times through the last stagecoach robbery
The Ouroboros System, a modular three-tiered system powering your adventures using d100, degrees of success, and a unique Jacks mechanic
Haunted West: Reconstruction, an imaginative alternate history
Robust Weird West content including magicks, creatures, mechanics, and more
The Night of the Aerostat, a thrilling adventure set in the Weird West
An in-depth city-building process for creating the setting you want
Lifepath character creation to build characters firmly entrenched in the world
Twelve Paragon categories enabling you to create any type of player character you choose
Haunted West World, a Powered by the Apocalypse hack
WEIRD, WEIRDER, OR WEIRDEST?
Make your West as Weird as you want the way you want (if you want). Plug in magic, the Mythos, steam tech, mad science, dinosaurs, or even aliens and flying saucers. Haunted West gives you the tools you need to make your definition of "Weird West" a reality.
Battle traitorous rebels as a Black gadgeteer with your rifle and jetpack, rustle cattle as a Chinese drover while keeping the dinosaurs at bay, combat a legion of undead monsters as an Indigenous gunslinger, or traverse the Oregon trail as a Jewish homesteader while being haunted by the specters of those who perished along the way. You have the power to tell your story; you have the power to tell the American story.
Sample of Paragons (character categories)
Sample of Weird Creatures