Gonzo cowboys

People occasionally ask on fora like r/osr “what is gonzo?” and my new answer is the 1935 Gene Autry serial Phantom Empire. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube. It is totally bananas. It has singing cowboys, kid investigators, gangsters, an evil scientist, and a subterranean lost civilization. When I told a friend about it he replied “I love this country. I didn’t even know this show existed but I’ll fight and die for what it represents.” I also think it has the potential to inspire good game material.

OK, so as in real life, Gene Autry is a singing cowboy performer. In the serial, he performs from Radio Ranch every day at 2pm and failure to do so would void his network contract and cause the ranch to close. Unbeknownst to him, beneath the ranch is a) valuable radium deposits and b) the subterranean space opera civilization of Murania. A group of crooks led by an evil scientist wants the ranch abandoned so they can get the radium. The Muranians want the ranch abandoned so nobody will notice the portal to their realm. Both of them repeatedly scheme to make Gene Autry late for his radio show (thereby bankrupting the ranch), including by framing him for the murder of his business partner. Meanwhile, there is a coup brewing against the brutal but clueless queen of Murania. And here is the best part, it enters public domain in 2031 so in a few years you can make $150,000 on Kickstarter for a box set campaign setting with singing cowboy and Murania minis or whatever.

I can see two ways to go about adapting it to a game scenario: Trail of Cthulhu or a DCC funnel.

Trail of Cthulhu version

Trail of Cthulhu, especially the pending 2nd edition, would be a good fit as it matches the 1930s America threatened by the supernatural setting. Moreover Trail 2e will have relevant character classes like cowboy and gangster. And much of the plot consists of solving mysteries.

One big difference would be the tone. Nobody in the serial ever rolls sanity. At one point a man in murdered and his own teen son is sad for about four seconds before they resolve to figure out who framed Gene Autry for the murder in order to have him put in jail, where he would be unable to sing on the radio.

Another potential difference is that whereas in the serial the teen fan club has the most agency and Gene Autry’s performances are a MacGuffin, a game adaptation could make the player characters adults and make singing an interpersonal investigative ability.

DCC/Shadowdark funnel version

In this version, either the backup band / ranch hands or the teen fan club are 0 level adventurers who first deal with the evil scientist and then head into the Muranian underworld to rescue the kidnapped Gene Autry. PCs who survive the funnel could then graduate to a sword and planet setting, such as the recently republished Purple Planet, in which the Muranians are only one faction.