Nice video. Opinions on Horn among historians and aficionados of the American West do seem to be rather divided on the self-described range detective. I’ll readily admit to having personally given more weight to the darker interpretations of Horn’s character, though there is clearly a lot of room for debate. Sitting on my “to read” list is Larry Ball’s book
Tom Horn in Life and Legend. My impression from reviews is that the book has been extensively researched and strives to provide a balanced view of a rather complex individual.
The movie
Tom Horn, in which Steve McQueen portrays the the title character, is worth watching. Good performances. The film has a haunting, almost elegiac quality to it. The filmmakers clearly favored a more benign view of Horn’s actions.
It honestly makes me happy that there are content providers on YouTube that are using the platform to discuss the history of the Old West. It’s been a source of lifelong fascination for me.
I have posted a map of the current combat situation. I wanted to include a few clarifications about it, in hopes of addressing some of the questions that might arise.
- What you’re looking at, in essence, is a narrow view of the mountainside, that area that lies between the posse and Murphy. It is constructed this way deliberately, based on the presumption that that the group’s primary focus is on bringing Murphy down.
- To broaden the picture: With Murphy positioned to the group’s north, the areas immediately east, west, and south of the area that is depicted on the map are occupied by significant numbers of the reanimated dead.
- You’ll note that the only NPCs shown alongside the posse are Bauer, Garrett, and Billy the Kid. The remainder of the NPCs that are accompanying the posse will be actively working to hold off the advancing dead from the other quadrants of the map. Behind the scenes, I’ll be adjudicating the NPCs’ efforts using the Mass Battles rules, but will provide ongoing narrative feedback on
how many of the NPCs have died how the NPCs are faring. - Please understand that the reason behind my handling the fight in this manner is twofold. First, if I had to roll individual results for every NPC and walking corpse, getting through this last chapter would be unwieldy and time consuming. Second, the narrative focus here needs to be on the posse’s confrontation with Murphy. They’ve worked hard to reach this point and that’s honestly where the spotlight should rest.
Of course, if you look things over and still have questions, please feel free to ask.
Savage Worlds can be surprisingly crunchy when it comes to some aspects of combat, so know that I’ll do my best to address any questions that may arise.
