The "Weird West" genre is a twist on the classic US "Wild West" genre - the archetypal Western setting of cowboys, outlaws, frontier settlement, and Native American resistance spiced up with magic, bizarre steampunk technology, and strange apocalyptic monsters. The following Weird West RPGs are excellent games for players who want to portray card-shark sorcerers, demon-banishing preachers, or psychic saloon girls. Handled thoughtfully by players and GMs, these games can also be catalysts for stories that question the assumptions baked into many Wild West stories and tell stories about people and cultures most Westerns tend to overlook.
A lot of classic Wild West stories tend to romanticize and simplify what was a very complicated and messy part of American history, particularly 20th century Western films which glossed over the genocidal acts of government agents and settlers who pushed Native Americans off their land in the name of "Manifest Destiny." Not all cowboys were steel-eyed gunslingers, most frontier towns weren't lawless hell-holes, and Plains nations like the Lakota, Comanche, or Apache were people far more complex than the rote stereotype displayed on screen.
When playing tabletop RPG campaigns set in the worlds of these Weird Western RPGs, it's important (and more interesting) for the players and their game master to go beyond the stereotypical conventions so often attached to works of Wild West fiction (lest they mimic the antics of the shallow "Guests" from the TV series Westworld). Native American protagonists can and should have roles other than "magical shaman," immigrants don't need to wait around for white heroes to save them, saloon scuffles don't have to end in "Mexican standoffs," and the pivotal events of the Wild West don't have to play out the same way they did historically.
Weird West Tabletop RPG - Deadlands
Deadlands is the ur-example of the Weird Western tabletop RPG, a game published by Pinnacle Entertainment set in an alternate version of 19th century America filled with rifts between the material world and the spirit realm, through which supernatural monsters, strange magics, and ideas for strange technologies pour. The players characters of Deadlands can be rangers, outlaws, exorcists, entrepreneurs, and muckrakers, each of them unknowing engaged in a battle over the fate of the world. One interesting touch of the Deadlands system (currently built around the mechanics of the Savage World game engine) is its use of poker chips and 52-cards decks to keep track of initiative, drama points, and the outcomes of spell-casting rituals.
Weird West Tabletop RPG - Through the Breach
Through The Breach, published by Wyrd Games, is fantasy RPG that blends themes of steampunk, traditional fantasy, and wild west tropes into an eclectic whole. The setting of this game is the world of Malifaux, a parallel world of magic adjacent to Earth thank to a huge dimensional rift called "the Breach." The player characters of Through The Breach, fated heroes with abilities themed around personal Pursuits, chase after their dreams and desires in a world where mercantile guilds and trade unions fused magical ores with industrial technology. Like Deadlands, players of Through The Breach uses decks of playing cards during game sessions, drawing and arranging hands of cards to see how well their characters resolve certain actions.
Weird West Tabletop RPG - Coyote And Crow
Coyote And Crow, recently funded on Kickstarter, is an upcoming science-fantasy RPG designed by Native-American creators for native and non-native gamers alike. The game's setting is an alternate America called "Makasing," never colonized by settlers from Europe and half-recovered from the environmental devastation caused by an asteroid impact. As the climate stabilizes and the glaciers recede, factions like the Haudenosaunee and the Dine Republic reclaim the world around them using advanced technology coupled with the supernatural abilities of humans, plants, and animals branded by the purple mark known as the "Adahnehdi."
The protagonists of Coyote And Crow are heroes who hail from the prosperous city of Cahokia, venturing out into the Free Lands at the heart of Makasing (the game's closest equivalent to the wild frontier seen in Western films) to discover the truth behind rumors of supernatural creatures, spirits, and ancient legends re-awakening.
Source: Kickstarter, Wyrd Games, Pinnacle Entertainment