Building the Old West

Our western town needs a couple of specific narrative elements. The Sheriff’s office and the gallows tick off a few right there. A saloon and hotel fulfills another because what’s a western without a place to drink and fight?

We definitely need a telegraph and post office because without the possibility of an outside world to communicate, how can we summon aid or learn a new gunslinger is on the way for a showdown?

The general store is pretty obvious as our citizens need goods and supplies and probably are in debt to the proprietor as money is always tight. Probably a few fights started there.

But we need a reason for our town to exist. Most towns existed for fairly mundane reasons. Access to water being a major factor for a lot of places. With water you can grow food, graze and water livestock, maybe even have trade with other towns. But water also is a resource for trains. Regular water stops for steam locomotives often dictated where tracks got laid and that water stop could be the reason a town sprang up. Water features could be a good objective to fight over in the range and water wars but that’s not something we could easily incorporate into a town. Though of course we could put up water towers for the train stations.

But I’m thinking we need some gold. Gold and silver rushes lead to boom and bust towns with lots of story opportunities. Gold theft and claim jumping are more story opportunities for the game but would probably need there own board. But an assayers office might serve a similar narrative for our town. Our miners have to get their gold assessed and sold and claims are often bought and sold so and you do need lawyers to look over those deeds and contracts. And we do have a jail so the lawyer can serve in criminal trials too.

So, next building is an assayers/lawyers office, then a telegraph/post office and finally a saloon. I’ll add more buildings later but I’m going to try and come up with narrative reasons to add them.