The Weird West
In the Wild West, history is written by the survivors. The question is, can you last long enough to do it while fighting both sides of the law?
$36.00
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Wednesday - 1:00 AM UTC
Session Duration / 1–4 hours
0 / 8 Seats Filled
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About the adventure
After a particularly raucous night in a South Texas border town, you find yourself standing upright, but your vision is obscured. You feel wind move cloth against your face, sun beating down on your shoulders, and sweat drip down your back. You hear some murmuring conversation below and heavy steps approaching from behind. You're not alone. Whether or not that's a good thing will soon be revealed. This is a world where progress wears a friendly smile and power speaks softly, a handful of outcasts are drawn into the machinery of something far larger than themselves. What begins as survival turns into obligation, and obligation into choice, as they discover that doing the right thing rarely looks heroic, and is almost never rewarded. Surrounded by shifting loyalties, unseen hands, and a system that punishes decency as inefficiency, they must decide what, if anything, is worth protecting when truth is obscured and mercy is costly. This is a story about endurance rather than triumph, about the quiet weight of conscience, and about the stubborn refusal to surrender even when the world insists that giving up would be easier. This story is for people who don’t need escapism to mean comfort, but honesty. For those who have felt the exhaustion of trying to do right in a world that seems engineered to reward cruelty, apathy, or compliance, and kept going anyway. It’s for players who can sit with discomfort, who don’t flinch from moral ambiguity, and who find meaning not in victory, but in persistence. It’s for anyone who understands that hope isn’t loud or triumphant, but fragile, hard-won, and worth defending precisely because it can be crushed. While it welcomes anyone willing to engage with it, it ultimately asks for resilience, patience, and the courage to see themselves reflected in its hardest moments and not look away.
Game style
Puzzle / Mystery Focused
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Theater of the Mind
Roleplay Heavy
Meet the Game Master
Less than a year on StartPlaying
About me
How’s it going guys? I’m A.J., been DM-ing for a little while now, and I specialize with new players. Getting started with something new is tough enough in itself, and having someone beat you over the head with the rule book for a little mistake is, in my opinion, no way to cultivate a love for the game. While I follow the 5e rules and throw up the corresponding guardrails and guidelines, I’ll occasionally bend the rules a bit so everyone can learn while still having fun. I’m always happy to answer questions, work with you on your characters, and support you when needed.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
We'll have a meeting before Session 0 to create your character. You'll start at Level 1, we'll talk over the phone, Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or Discord to make your character and fine tune whatever needs fine tuning. More important than pulling from any particular resources is to have a clear picture in your mind of what you want your character to be. We might even make a couple, because when we have our Session 0, your original idea may not feel right, and I want to extend the ability to change and adapt to what feels best for you.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
If you don't have an account on Discord, Google Meet, Teams, or Zoom, it would help to get one. Other than that, all you need to do to prepare is have an idea of the kind of character you want to play and what you want to get out of the story. I'll be there to help every step of the way, from character creation to when the party is celebrating victory at the end of the campaign.
What A.J. Horner brings to the table
I try to make things as entertaining as possible for my players. I put on ambient music, do character voices, I view the rules more as guidelines than something to be rigidly adhered to no matter the circumstance. I love seeing my players in the spotlight, and am more than happy to bend the rules a little bit for a player to have an earned moment of triumph or badass-ery. Maybe more than anything, I try to be reasonable with my players, so if someone comes up with something unexpected that makes sense and doesn't break the game, that's a punch I'm happy to roll with.
Homebrew rules
Rule of Cool carries a lot of weight here
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How A.J. Horner creates a safe table
This is something else I try to cover in character creation so that I can create a smoother, more comfortable experience for my players. I try to gather their Lines & Veils as well as Stars & Wishes so I can adjust the story accordingly. To be clear, - If a player is uncomfortable with something that just serves as flavor in the story, that flavor gets removed. - If a player is uncomfortable with something that's a necessary part of the story, but doesn't necessarily need to be presented in a specific way, the way it gets presented is changed and warning is given. - If a player is uncomfortable with something that's necessary to the story that MUST be presented in a specific way, I give my player as much warning as possible and an optional way to opt out. But again, I try to mitigate as much of this as possible before things even get started. In addition to this, I check in before to prepare them as well as checking in after to make sure everyone's doing alright. This story goes to some scary places, but I try to guide everyone through it with as much stability, clarity, and support as possible.
Content warnings
Safety tools used