Bullets and Brimstone is a game about the foolish hope in the face of adversity that keeps the world moving ever forward, through sweat, blood, gritted teeth and tragedy. It’s not a game about 1800s America, or Lord of the Rings with guns. It’s goal as a game is to take those stories and tell a new one, while making the players feel the highs and lows that make both fantasy and Wild West stories so enduring over the years.

It’s a tough needle to thread. Through playing these early versions and writing them down, things have started to become clearer.

What is RIGHT, What is JUST, and what is LEGAL are not the same things.

I think this theme is pretty relevant right now in our modern world. This is what MANY western stories are about, and they never provide easy answers at the end. This doesn’t conflict with fantasy tropes; it enhances them, in my opinion. In medieval worlds, the law is often an extension of monarchial power. People don’t get the opportunity to question it without revolution, and thus, its effects on people's lives are thin.

But fantasy’s archetypal and fantastical cultures clashing make a ripe playground for these types of stories. What does an Orc think of the law? What does an Orc think of Elvish law? Do they care who’s right? I think it’s much more interesting if they DO care and disagree, rather than just hating out of malice toward what’s different.

This is where the Frontier comes in. A lot of Wild West stories are interesting because it’s WILD West. Laws, cultures, and norms are constantly evolving, people are creating their own rules, and heroes and villains are regularly breaking them. How does that change when you’re 400 years old? How does that change when you have magic that lets you see the future? All of a sudden, what is moral and right becomes far more relevant. A time of change through an ancient lens, and the tough decisions that have to be made because of that.

Humans are GOOD.

I’m tired of fantasy worlds where humans are shown as the true evil. It’s a hill I will die on for this game. We have plenty of media and literature, especially in these genres, that comment on the corruption and weakness of human nature. But that’s noir. That’s what noir is all about, and I love noir, but the things I love about westerns and fantasy are not the same as what I love about noir.

This is why Bullets and Brimstone is set in a time of hope and opportunity. It’s still hard, it’s still dangerous, and it's terrifying on an emotional as well as a physical level. But humans have always done it anyway. The other species represent different things, but in the end, they are reflections and shadows of human stories, parables against the backdrop of the dream of a new life. And for players playing them, they’re still those same human stories at a different angle and hopefully an interesting journey from a different view.

In many ways, Bullets and Brimstone isn’t a just Fistful of Dollars with fireballs. It’s Little House on the Prairie, but instead of a young boy falling down a well, he’s whisked off to a mountain by harpies. It’s Doctor Who on horseback. It’s a world that should remind you that you, human, are capable of handling more than you ever gave yourself credit for.

Nobody fought the same war.

War is a smoldering backdrop for many westerns, but a key dramatic pillar for medieval fantasy. But stories of war, especially in fantasy, usually paint one side as an evil threat to be eliminated and the other side as defending what’s good. Moreover, subversions of this usually just flip it on its head and show the decisions and struggles on the other side.

So we rarely get tales of reconciliation in fantasy, whereas that is often a big thing in a Western story. In Bullets and Bromstone, both sides have agreed “never again” and meant it, but the war solved nothing between the cultures because they weren’t fighting for the same thing. They couldn’t, because their cultures are just so vastly different, and those differences are what allowed them to prosper. Everyone lost something, someone, and no one gained what they wanted. But to say the war was pointless would be to say these losses meant nothing. So everyone carries on, in their own way.

The easy way may seem like the best option, but in the long term, it is never worth it.

In Bullets and Brimstone, the gods and dragons are dead, but the Devil is real. This theme of doing it the right way ties into everything else and is meant to add style and flavour from the stories of the time the game is emulating. Nothing comes for free, and nothing comes easy, and that’s okay. The people who tell you otherwise are villains. This shows up in the world's satanic cosmology, but is a struggle throughout all the stories. You absolutely should tell tales of obsessive revenge in Bullets and Brimstone. But what sacrifices will you make for that justice? And is it justice, or is it the easy way for you to cope with your loss at the end of a gun? When your foe lies at your feet bleeding, you will have to face this question.