Spellslinger is a Fantasy Americana campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition created by Fantasy Flight Games as part of their "Horizon" line, a set of five "mini-settings" that also includes the Darker and Edgier fairy-tales setting Grimm, the Transformers based Mechamorphosis, the Mad Max-inspired post-apocalyptic Redline, and the Tron-based Virtual.
Sporting the tagline "Shootouts and Sorcery on the Wild Frontier", Spellslinger takes place on a Standard Fantasy Setting where the sudden and mysterious dwindling of magic resulted in an industrial revolution. This in turn led to expeditions beyond "the old world", which led to the discovery of "The Territories" - the North America analogue where the setting is based. Tens of thousands have been drawn to the Territories in pursuit of gold, land and freedom, battling each other and the natives, a race of humanoid wolves called the gray runners. Currently, the frontier of settler territory is in the foothills of the deadly but mineral-rich Gray Hills, and the distance between old world and new has resulted in a power vacuum that is giving rise to small city-states in the Territories.
As the brief setting introduction concludes, in the Territories, there is freedom from the old world. Freedom to defend the old ways, or destroy them. Freedom to live, and freedom to die.
This setting includes examples of:
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Moral ambiguity is the name of the game in Spellslinger, where the use of in-universe Character Alignment is explicitly forbidden. There is a general air of cynicism to the setting, drawing from its Western roots, but there's a difference between everyday jerks and true monsters.
- Can't Argue with Elves: Ironically, this trope is actually given to the Grey Runners, who have largely taken up the elves' traditional hat of "the race that reveres nature and talks down to other races for not treating nature with equal reverence". They even call out the elves as part of this, accusing them of feigning respect for nature whilst secretly considering themselves its master.
- Fantasy Americana: The core principle of the setting is "what would you get if you had a Dungeons & Dragons-based Standard Fantasy Setting go through its own version of founding the Wild West?"
- Fantastic Racism: It can be quite succinctly stated that nobody in the Territories really likes each other much. The settlers and the gray runners aren't openly at war now, but they have clashed bitterly since the settlers arrived. The settlers have brought over all manner of racial enmities with them from the old world. Old-fashioned opinions about the "proper role" of women dominate, despite women who are bold enough to break the rules. Then there's the tension between the Branded and the non-Branded. Finally, the blackhand Branded and the magi Branded despise each other, and their feuding is commonplace enough that the settlers have nicknamed it "The Prairie War", which of course only alienates those who don't fall into either faction.
- Fantasy Character Classes: Spellslinger uses a unique spin on the standard 3.5 array, dropping all of the traditional Dungeons & Dragons classes for three custom ones: the Gunfighter, the Maverick and the Trailblazer. Spellcasting is handled through the use of the Brands system.
- Gunfighters are the "Fighting Man" class, specialized in offense, especially through the use of firearms.
- Mavericks are the "Thief" class, relying on their aptitude for skills relating to stealing, sneaking and manipulating others.
- Trailblazers are the "Scout" class, being the most adept at survival in the wilderness and also the most defense-focused in battle.
- Functional Magic: What magical abilities remain in Spellslinger take the form of Brands, which are Inherent Gift magical talents that manifest through the form of mystical sigils visible on the Branded individual from birth (and from whence the name stems). Mechanically, they're handled as feat trees gated behind a single level "base class" that must be taken at first level, as the Branded are marked from birth.
- Blackhand: Stigmatized with a single hand sporting glossy black skin, Blackhands are blessed (or cursed) with the gift of Anti-Magic, allowing them to negate the magic of others; even their weapons can punch through magical defenses as if they weren't there. Blackhands can also intuitively detect the presence of magic.
- Magi: Distinguished by their "evil eye", a solid milky-white orb that remains functional, magic are the closest thing left in the Territories to the wizards of old, with the ability to create, destroy and control the physical world around them at will.
- Padre: As the gods went silent and their clerics were left powerless, the padres rose to replace them as the source of all healing magic. This makes them generally welcome wherever they go, and so most padres flaunt their stigma — a flame-shaped mark in the center of the forehead — with pride.
- Pale Rider: Sporting a ghostly white handprint on their face, pale riders represent the last lingering remnants of necromancy, being able to slay others with a touch and summon ghostly steeds to bear them about their business.
- Skinwalker: Sporting a crescent moon over their forehead, skinwalkers are masters of Voluntary Shapeshifting.
- Steelheart: A hammer-shaped mark on the chest hints at the steelheart's ability to physically reshape metal with just a touch, making them the premier crafters of the Territories.
- Hobbits: Halflings in the Territories are largely characterized as greedy and opportunistic; they have a reputation as thieves and con artists, but are also heavily inclined to showing up as tavern owners, barkeeps and general store managers.
- Humans Are Bastards: Humanity's hat in Spellslinger is largely "the guys nobody likes". Ambitious, greedy and territorial, their own racial writeup states that most races prefer to avoid human-dominant settlements, because humans tend to be trouble.
- Mage Species: The Branded, being individuals who are born with innate mystical powers and whose status can be determined from birth, are basically this.
- The Magic Goes Away: Originally, the races of Spellslinger's old world used the standard spellcasting classes, but several hundred years ago, magic rapidly faded away and the gods stopped communing. Within a generation, the old ways of wizards, sorcerers, clerics and druids were gone. Instead, only the Branded remained. They were initially the subject of considerable social turmoil, and are still distrusted to varying degrees even today, but modern society has moved past the "kill all Branded on sight" hysteria of the past.
- Noble Savage: Gray runners draw quite obviously from old stereotypes of Native Americans being in tune with the land and religiously devoted to its preservation.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Dwarves of the Territories are stereotyped as greedy, distrustful and surly, even by the general standards of dwarfdom. They come to the Territories for gold, and refuse to let anything stand between them and it — not even the armies of undead infesting the Gray Hills. Unlike standard 3e dwarves, these ones are proficient in the use of scatterguns and are adept at fighting the undead, not orcs and goblins.
- Our Elves Are Different: Elves of the Territories are your fairly standard nature-lovers; the vast majority came to the new world to get away from the overcrowded cities of the old world. They're also characterized as the most magical race, with extremely high populations of magi, padres and skinwalkers. Their most unique traits are that they favor the use of "elven longbarrels" (rifles) over bows and the superstitious hostility they bear towards steelhearts and blackhands, for their association with industrialization and Anti-Magic respectively.
- Half-elves are the only race who commonly manifest the blackhand and pale rider Brands, resulting in great distrust from those around them. They are least likely to manifest as padres or magi, in contrast to their elfin parents. They're characterized as wild, irresponsible and uncivilized, and many enjoy living down to the stereotype. Half-elves coined the phrase "if you're gonna hang anyway, you might as well shoot the sheriff before you go" — and then turned "shooting the sheriff" into slang for "drinking and carousing until dawn".
- Our Gnomes Are Weirder: They're a race of Mad Scientists who are responsible for the biggest technological booms of the new world, such as the train and the revolver, but often forget about little things like "consent" or "ethics" in their desire to experiment.
- Our Orcs Are Different: True orcs aren't mentioned at all in the Territories. Only their half-orc progeny are, and like the half-elves they have flocked to the frontiers to escape the prejudices of the old world. Not helping is that they do have explosive temperaments.
- Standard Fantasy Races: Spellslinger features all of the traditional D&D 3rd edition player races; humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves and half-orcs.
- Weaksauce Weakness: A Branded individual cannot use their magic if their stigma, the visible deformity that marks them as a Branded, is covered.
- Weird West: A "wild west" setting populated by demihumans, mages and monsters.
- Wolf Man: The gray runners, the original native inhabitants of the Territories, are a race of bipedal anthropomorphic wolves who hunt with the aid of carnivous wolf-horse creatures called "thraces". Their visual and cultural similarities to wolves is a source of prejudice amongst the more closeminded colonists.
