However, it's geographically improbable
this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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"So you're saying there's a chance"
Actually there are several pretty good settings in the 1860s-80s, California, New York, London, Hong Kong, and Egypt (Suez Canal constructed 1859-1869). The more I looked into it the richer it got.
Eh, pirate sails around the world, picks up disgraced samurai who needs to leave Japan. Afterwards they'll sail to England at some point or another, and the thief is looking for passage to America (as a thief he needs to get abroad for a while). They sail over the Atlantic, where they meet the cowboy who's driven cattle from the West to sell at a better price on the East coast.
A call to adventure on top, aaand campaign is a go.
You wouldn't need anything that extravagant, you could reasonably find all these people in California in the late 1800's. The earliest Japanese immigrants to California happened in the 1860's. After the gold rush people from all over the world flocked to Cali.
Would make more sense if the thief was bound for Australia as a convict with the privateer,then some shit happened and they ended up in Japan, then sailed for the west coast of the US.
I like the suggestion, but had to do a bit of research for it.
As with sailing, traveling routes are not as simple as with flying.
So I began to wonder how common it would've been to sail from Japan to the US during that time. Which is why I did my route as I did. The Atlantic was more common to use, at least during a certain part of history.
Here's the common route too Australia
But, I ended reading that whole reply more or less. https://www.quora.com/During-the-age-of-sail-how-would-crossing-the-Pacific-Ocean-have-compared-to-crossing-the-Atlantic-Ocean
And I guess yours is plausible and might make for a better story, actually. But pretty much just barely timing wise, as the scenario takes place in the 1860's right? The Treaty of Kanagawa was signed on March 31, 1854, ending Japan's 220-year-old policy of national seclusion (sakoku).
Gunslinger comes across the samurai who has escaped to America and is hiding as a railroad worker. Some kind of fuckery happens and they escape and go to San Francisco. They meet the English dandy and they get into some more fuckery and the privateer gets them back out to sea.
San Fransisco 1880 would be a plausible setting. The only one that would kinda be out there would be the Samurai and even that's not too far of a stretch.
It's actually pretty plausible, the first wave of Japanese people to immigrate to California and Hawaii was in the 1860s. By the 1900 census there were nearly 25k Japanese people living on the West Coast.
And I guess since the Meiji Restoration was bad news for the samurai class, it makes sense that they would want to emigrate.
(I looked it up because often it isn't the upper classes that are motivated to leave a society, but in this case it checks out.)
This was my thinking for the Samurai, we are basically looking at embassy staff and exiles that managed to retain their weapons.
The first Japanese embassy to America even landed in San Francisco in 1860
Not with a sailor in the mix, it's not!
Yeah, the pirate could easily be the lynchpin that brought them together.
That's basically One Piece
God damn, you're right.
And the fax machine was invented in 1843. So do with that what you want.
Coca-Cola was invented in 1886, and Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a playing card company.
The samurai duels on the roof of the train while the gunslinger is forced to take their place in a complex tea ceremony being used as a distraction for the thief to steal an artifact. At the end, they escape by disconnecting the rest of the cars from the locomotive, which has been pirated.
which has been pirated.
You wouldn't download a locomotive...
Pretty much Jack Shaftoe's storyline in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle
Wait, I know about that author and the Shaftoes from Cryptonomicon. You're saying there's more?!
Oh you’re in for a treat! The Baroque Cycle takes place much earlier, but has family ties to Cryptonomicon.
Sooo much more. The Baroque Cycle is like Cryptonomicon squared.
But privateering ended 1830 and Meiji started 1868?
Hence why she's elderly.
Texas would be the perfect setting. The privateer settled by n Louisiana to enjoy retirement at her plantation. An English minor lord wants to partner with her for an expansion into the new fields west of the river (now Texas) and they hire a ronin that just arrived at the port of New Orleans. It once in Texas, they encounter the gunslinger.
Brisco County Jr.
I wish I'd paid attention to that show when I was a kid. Weird west + Bruce Campbell sounds pretty cool. I just never gave it a shot because I was distracted by the stupid name (who names a person "county‽").
But yes, I agree: weird west sounds like the perfect setting for this.
So Lupin the third with extra people.
Just make Fujiko a pirate and you're there.
If any writers are reading this, and don't act on it... what are you even doing!?
Holy shit I think all of them could reasonably be POC too. History is wild.
Where’s Buckaroo Banzai?
8th dimension, obv.
I made an adventure for this based on the Tiny D6 Pirates system. They were in 1820s or so San Francisco so we've got robber barons, Emperor Norton, and all sorts of weird stuff thrown in. You can also have fun with cholera epidemics and floods and gold rushes.
Dibs on the gunslinger character!
Deadlands party in a Great Maze adventure.