All the information in italics has been taken directly from my 'Game Project Proposal Document', the living, breathing design document which informs almost all of the game design for Last Chance Saloon.
The characters are the very heart and soul of the game. Therefore, the preface underneath is extremely important in understanding why the characters are designed the way they are and why their backstories are so important and have been written so. Every characters design and backstory has been either meticulously designed or written with the utmost research and attention to detail.
It is extremely important to bear the following information in mind when reading the character's backstories on this blog, and before doing so, read the following information thoroughly.
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"My characters, their strikingly different designs and their unique backstories are the core and heart of ‘Last Chance Saloon’.
It is their motivation, different ways of life and hardened nature which ‘drive’ the game aspect forward.
Essentially, all six are archetypes of the American frontier, ranging from Western legends to those people considered iconic of the time. Over my many years of studying the genre, it has become easy for me to create many of these archetypes by first considering who would typically be found in a Western frontier town, and then choosing the most ‘interesting’ of these. The sheriff is a given, for example, since people mostly associate the time period with that profession or how law and order slowly gained its place in a country stuck in violent turmoil. Sadly, I had to change him as a playable character in order to add an interesting game mechanic.
However, one thing that I personally find that people forget when studying this time is that the people of the American frontier were always formed by their environments, which were always hostile. They had to scrape together a living, often with their bare hands, from the barren deserts of Western America, and face mortal peril from day to day.
People wanted stability; they wanted a safe lifestyle in which to prosper and raise their children for the future.
From their suffering, they became hardened. And that is what my characters are; hardened by their harsh environments.
“A harsh land breeds a harsh people”
Some archetypes more romanticised than others, but as I mentioned before in the ‘Tone’ section of this document, my choice to use the Modern Western subgenre minimises romanticism as much as possible without making the game ‘boring’.
So that my players get a sense of identity when playing as these people, their designs need to be very distinguishable from each other.
In ‘Last Chance Saloon’, my characters need to have five things in common. They need to:
…be distinguishable and strikingly varied
…have two goals in the game, one related to the saloon and one to another character (altered slightly in later versions)
…have developed and interesting backstories
…have something they don’t want to let go of (as befits the idea of them being part of a time that’s fading away around them)
…be defined by their harsh environments
The big six:
By using my American frontier character classes list, I have chosen my six main characters that players will assume the roles of.
I have chosen these people specifically for either their status as an ‘exciting’ legend in the Wild West or their iconography of the time. I also believe that they are the most interesting out of the whole list, and their personalities could either be good or evil, with no real duties tying them down:
1. A corrupt sheriff which changed to a Shoshone Native American
2. A resentful and unforgiving gunslinger
3. A rough and brawling cowgirl
4. An alcoholic and disillusioned Cavalry sergeant
5. A restless prospector
A spiteful gambler"