My Favourite Unloved Game

This morning I was reminded once again of my favourite unloved game. I should note that this is not my favourite game, nor even one of my top five. However, this is a game that I enjoyed playing a great deal but that pretty much bombed, almost nobody ever played, and rather fewer people particularly enjoyed. Oh, but I like it.

The game is "Werewolf: the Wild West".

"Werewolf: the Apocalypse" was a White Wolf game that cast the PCs as werewolves (obviously) - servants of a cosmic force called the Wyld - who were engaged in a hopeless battle against the forces of the Wyrm (the cosmic force of decay) and the Weaver (the cosmic force of order - a being that had been corrupted by the Wyrm in the modern age). I never really took to that game, though I'm not sure quite why.

"Werewolf: the Wild West" took much the same concept but transplanted the game back in time 150 years. Here, the Weaver had not yet been corrupted but was very much in the ascendance as the frontier was tamed, the railroad was built, and so on.

And, of course, the game fused the concepts of that hopeless battle with the tropes of the wild west. (This was, of course, before I realised that D&D itself was much closer to being a pseudo-WW game than anything pseudo-medieval.)

So I spent quite a lot of time watching lots of westerns and soaking in the appropriate material, quite a lot of time drawing up ideas for games, and quite a lot of time planning one-shots. And I think I played the game all of twice. It was fun, and I think the one-shots were well received... but the game never really got traction with any group I played with. It was always placed behind D&D and Vampire amongst the games that people wanted to play, and it was never quite one that I really pushed for. And so it has sat on a shelf for twenty years, unplayed but not quite unloved.

Oh, but I did so enjoy it!