Hello!
New to Savage Worlds, but am excited to start GMing a game. Specifically I want to run a realistic Wild West game. No magic and no undead, just the good, bad, and ugly.

I want to use the most recent version, which I believe is Savage Worlds Adventure Game 2019. I would like a gear list appropriate to the late 19th century. I want to give the players a thorough list of guns to choose from.

Is there an officially-published source that would meet my needs?

Regards,

LordIce

Even old Deadlands:Reloaded books will have gear lists, and I'm pretty sure there are some free expansions hanging about the internet - just excise the Mad Science stuff and away you go.

Yep, that and/or The Sixth Gun should have everything you need. Savage Worlds Adventure Edition isn't much different than Deluxe Edition in terms of weapons, so there aren't going to be a lot of meaningful differences, weapon stat wise.

I second using the Deadlands equipment list and then supplement with a little research or a whole lot of research, because this is a rabbit hole that goes as deep as you care to dig.

The thing about this is that there's really not going to be a lot of different weapons from a mechanical perspective; is the Richards Mason Conversion really going to be meaningfully different from Smith and Wesson Model 3?  Certainly they are in real life but Savage Worlds isn't simulationist enough to reflect such subtleties.  You could for example figure out which stat block fits both a Colt Paterson and a Walker and just give each "block" of stats like 6 different examples.  There might be some minor mechanical differences (like I think the Paterson was only a 5 shot cylinder), but you'll have to decide how picky you want to be.

In any event I wouldn't just wholesale copy the Deadlands weapon table if you want to be historical (I personally explain away its inaccuracies with the game's tagline, "but the history is not our own"), I'd verify each of their examples is correct.  Also a lot of the accessories in Deadlands do not make a lick of sense mechanically or historically. Probably adjust their costs too, firearms were all hand fitted and hand made back then so most households were likely to only have one, they were very expensive and they were far more likely to have a long gun than a handgun, but even that varies a lot depending on the year you pick because in the 1870s and 1880s a lot of guns were retired from service and sold as surplus (this is part of the reason the Single Action Army is so iconic).  The 1866 firearms market is going to be very different from 1886.

It's also worth noting that a lot of designs from the 19th century weren't safe to carry with the hammer down on a loaded chamber.  Deadlands also ignores several versions of the Sharp's rifle/carbine and Remington 1875 and barely acknowledges the existence of a lot of common calibers of the time like the .44-40.

It's going to be a bit tricky until you set down a specific year, for example in 1896 you will have the 32 S&W Long and the .32-20, in 1886 you would have only the .32-20, and in 1876 you would have neither.  There's going to be a lot of different calibers and it's going to vary a lot.  It's not like today where we're still using a 118 year old cartridge in most common handguns.

You could also just say sod the whole thing, there's The Single Action Revolver, The Double Action Revolver, The Double Barreled Shotgun, etc. and just stat it that way, then if the player wants they can research the exact model themselves.

There might be some non-weapon items to add that Deadlands ignores depending on how realistic do you really want to be (for example woolly chaps versus shotgun chaps).  A Victorian setting equipment list might help.

GURPS Old West goes into a bit of detail with weapons, equipment and tropes usually including the years they were made or commonly available (if ever).

Yep, and the stats are pretty easy to convert. I've done it quite a bit myself with the stuff out of GURPS High-Tech.

As drewalt said, Savage Worlds isn't going to give you a lot of mechanical difference between similar weapons, but I wouldn't suggest taking them off the table or "genericizing" them to Single Action Revolver, Double-Action Revolver, etc.

I feel that, especially in a game where there aren't going to be supernatural or sci-fi elements to differentiate characters with, even mechanically-meaningless differences in equipment choices will be meaningful from a character-building perspective. If you leave differentiating weapons as an exercise in "fluff" for the players, it tends to take away a bit from the experience. At least, it has at my table.

Aces & Eights offered a very detailed look at all types of Wild West gear. The game was terrible, but the lore they gathered there was extraordinary.

Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWAdE) is the latest version. If you're new to SW, I'd honestly stick to Rules As Written (RAW) until you get the hang of the game system and it's complexities.

To be honest, sometimes things you look at and think are minor changes could have HUGE impacts to your game, and could leave you with a bad taste in your mouth for the system itself, even if the system isn't at fault.

That being said, there's a ton of free resources out there for SW from a number of people. There's a Facebook group for SW (https://www.facebook.com/group...fficialSavageWorlds/  - I know it says Unofficial, but not too long ago it was changed to the actual official one by Pinnacle (PEG) themselves) which you can pop questions to and get answers from a host of veteran players, as well as the creators from PEG themselves, as well as a host of Aces (companies officially given licences to make SW game material).

You don't even really need Deadlands to do it if you just want to get rid of the "Weird West" vibes. The core book can handle it pretty well with you providing the flavor.

Good luck with your game!

-Jeff, Atomic Ninja Studios

How does everyone do Initiative in Savage Worlds on Play-By-Post?

There are ways to do a draw on RPoL, but it's kind of a pain in my opinion, so I just do a draw using real cards and set aside a deck for the game.