Interview: Chris Spivey - Haunted West

​As a dude with a history degree, one of my pet peeves is people taking pop history and the way history has been presented through media at face value. Vikings didn’t wear badass leather biker outfits like you see on TV. Spartans had armor and didn’t fight with their abs bared for all to see. And not all cowboys were white dudes. That peeve is one that seems to be shared by Chris Spivey of Darker Hue Studios. Chris recently launched a Kickstarter for his new game Haunted West, a weird west setting with a focus on bringing to life Western stories we don’t typically hear about, weird or otherwise, and sat down to answer a few questions.
 
Where does the history of Haunted West diverge from our own?
 
As the Kickstarter has officially launched, I can say that it happens a few years into the Reconstruction and immediately after the Civil War. Haunted West: Reconstruction creates a timeline in which, in addition to taking out Lincoln, Booth's plot also eliminates Johnson, who is from the South and a former owner of enslaved people, as he had originally intended. 
 
Lafayette Foster becomes President, and without presidential opposition, the Southern confederates are not allowed back in congress. The land is divided and given to the enslaved people as was actually planned in our known history, changing the power dynamic of America, with black landowners battling against traitors who are terrorizing them and trying to steal their legally-owned land.
 
We are creating an ongoing narrative of how that one moment changes the world as we know it.
 
What sets Haunted West apart from other Weird West settings like Deadlands and Wild Wild West?
 
That is kind of like asking what sets Star Wars apart from Star Trek or DC Heroes from Marvel Super Heroes. The games are different in approach, setting, tone, and have different teams behind them.
 
Haunted West is doing something no other current Western RPG has done, to my knowledge. We are telling the true history of America while highlighting many of the people whose voices have been forgotten, providing an entirely new and unexplored timeline, and including a three-tiered modular system. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
 
You’ve developed a new system for Haunted West. Is it based on an established system, or is it something we’ve never seen before?
 
The Ouroboros System is unique in its approach to modular play and has a number of easy-to-apply rules. The core mechanic is a 1D100 roll under system with degrees of success and failure that have different impacts. Skilled Paragons are able to invest a portion of their successes into ‘The River’ and use that portion for a later challenge when the chips are down. Each skill is associated with 1 of 7 different attributes that confer a starting percentage in the skill.
 
You’re best known for your work in the Cthulhu Mythos, and at first glance, it doesn’t have much in common with Haunted West. What led you to work on a Weird West setting?
 
The Mythos and I (trademarked!) may be the first musical I write in a few years. One of the stretch goals is actually to introduce the Mythos into the Weird West. I am hoping we hit that one.
 
Part of the reason I chose the Weird West was my love of Westerns that came from watching them with my grandmother every Saturday morning growing up. Watching those paragons of the west making the world better became our ritual. But it always bothered me that no one looked like me unless they were cast as the villain or, sometimes, the butt of the joke. Haunted West aims to change that.
 
It lets me add my knowledge and interest in the supernatural, history, science fiction, and cinema. The Weird West is such a large and expansive genre encapsulating so many different things--the skies the limit.
 
What kind of tools will you have in place for developing frontier towns and settlements?
 
I am known for my love of random chart generations, ranging from scenarios to encounters. You can fully expect charts, directions on how a town should be built, and the tools a Narrator (how we refer to Game Moderator in Haunted West) will need.
 
With your work for Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu Confidential, Chaosium’s new sci-fi game that you’re heading up, you’re a pretty busy guy. How much support do you plan to have for Haunted West post-launch, and what plans do you have in store for Darker Hue Studios moving forward?
 
That’s a great question. I actually have quite a bit of time and fully intend to use it for Darker Hue Studios. I am finishing up Masks of the Mythos, The Mythos in Scion, for Onyx Path and have turned in my work for City of Mist by Son of Oak, Doctor Who for Cubicle 7, and my superhero book to Chaosium months ago.  
 
At the moment, Chaosium, with the recent acquisition of a few new game lines (Pendragon and 7th Sea), has put the science fiction game on hold. Pelgrane Press has my last Langston Wright adventure for Cthulhu Confidential, and now I have something that I have not had in years: time.

So, I can fully support Haunted West and maybe even turn my hand to writing a novel. I have this burning idea for a science fiction piece and now I have the time to do it.
 
​
“Don't mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me.” 
 - Al Capone
 
Check out Haunted West on Kickstarter here.

Phil Pepin is a grimdark-loving, beater extraordinaire. You can send him new heavy metal tunes, kayak carnage videos and grimdark RPGs on Twitter: @philippepin.