Cowboy SMP was a private, modded Minecraft multiplayer server hosted by POWCreations in collaboration with noName Ideas. It featured several prominent Minecraft YouTubers and streamers from Rats: In Paris and other adjacent series.
Our story takes place in the Dying Town of Pity, whereupon Mayor Poliver has taken upon himself to bring new blood to the town by announcing a sudden, miraculous gold rush to the place. However, mere days after the arrival of the new prospectors, a strange broadcast echoing fragments of Mayor Poliver's interview swept the town, alongside a green beam lighting up the night and pulling the population into the sky. Shortly afterwards, a green critter crash-lands on the train on the outskirts of town and the mayor is declared missing, cutting off the town's contact with the outside world and leaving the townsfolk stranded in Pity, bewildered by the new developments.
Cowboy SMP was first teased on April Fools' Day, 2025, but was officially announced on May 31st of the same year. It began on July 5th, 2025 and ended on August 8th of the same year.
Note: Unless otherwise specified, all tropes pertain to the characters, not the content creators that play them.
Due to the nature of the work, all spoilers will be unmarked for the duration of the work, and will be retrospectively marked once the series has reached its conclusion.
Cowboy SMP contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Time Period: Although the series takes place in a western setting, radio networks are common enough for Mayor Poliver to give his interview broadcast advertising Pity's supposed gold rush over the radio, yet there is also Fantasy Gun Control restricting anyone from using gunpowder-based ranged weaponry.
- Call-Back: Martyn is still instinctively suspicious of the aliens that crash-landed out of the skies, citing his experiences with Cruppy.
- Company Cross-References: On Day 1, Scott refers to both Beck and El as "outsiders" and makes comments about steering clear of "the maze" (he means corn mazes, clearly). On Day 2, Beck also mentions not being good with ropes while climbing down into the Fantastic Underworld on one.
- Criminal Found Family: Following his Dark and Troubled Past, Sausage ends up forming a new familia of fellow outlaws, only for them to be scattered to the winds after one among them ratted out their operation to law enforcement.Sausage: I went down a very dark path for a bit, but then… I found my new familia. I'll do anything for my familia! So you better not cross us, okay?
- Death Is Cheap: The SMP works on a "down system" where for PVP deaths, players fall down upon losing all their hearts, where they can be picked up or eventually revive again; they are only permanently dead if they die "again" after falling. Otherwise, for PVE deaths, their lives are unlimited.
- Deflector Shields: After the green beam swept through Pity on Day 1, the townsfolk find themselves trapped within a translucent, light blue barrier that they cannot bypass.
- Don't Ask: The first rule of Pity in general is simply "Don't ask questions."
- Dying Town: Pity is a dilapidated, rural western town ravaged by bandits and dust storms after its mines ran dry of gold years before the start of the SMP, with only a train arriving there once every month or two for contact with the outside world, and scarcely a dozen or fewer residents living there at the start of the SMP. Mayor Poliver's advertisement of a sudden gold rush in the town is what drove so many newcomers from near and far to try and strike it rich there.Ren: Nothing but dust and sadness in the town of Pity.
- Fantastic Underworld: On Day 2, the townsfolk find an lush, flooded underground cave deep beneath the surface of Pity that they call the Grotto, lit mostly with shroomlights and infested with monsters.
- Fantasy Gun Control: Subverted. Despite the Wild West setting, there are laws prohibiting gun use, resulting in the cast starting off the series with bows or crossbows for ranged weapons. And then the aliens show up and everyone starts finding "blasters" that use plasma cells as ammo.
- Flying Saucer: On Day 1, while exploring an abandoned settlement, Sausage finds a few banners of a flying saucer with a green tractor beam at the bottom of a dried well for "the Church of the Sky". The spaceship that the aliens arrive in is also highly reminiscent of a flying saucer.
- From Beyond the Fourth Wall: Some of the content creators' stream chats have been canonized in various forms; the creators may converse with them for advice but generally do not accept "stream-sniping":
- Apo and Eloise's chats are tumbleweeds.
- Martyn's chat are various townsfolk.
- Gay Cowboy: To no one's surprise, several of the cowboys almost immediately take to flirting with each other; case in point, Sausage even blatantly asks if the preacher has taken a vow of celibacy on Day 1. Gender Inverted with Beck and El, who have their fair share of flirting as well.Shep: This is basically just Brokeback Mountain: the SMP. Is it a POW SMP if the men aren't flirting?
- Hat of Authority: While several cast members wear hats, Mayor Poliver's is inexplicably tall; when Martyn takes on the position after Poliver's disappearance, he also starts wearing a tall hat.
- Mood Whiplash: Much of Day 23 is a climatic sequence of Sausage being hunted down and arrested across the outskirts of Pity, but the day's livestreams end with him writing in-universe shippy Real-Person Fic, of all things.
- Mythology Gag: Sausage's old ranch from his character teaser appears to be directly lifted from his build from SourceBlock SMP in 2019.
- Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers: Brought up on Day 23, when Graecie considers showing an imprisoned Sausage leniency, but then found out that he had recruited Pyro as his legal counsel and backtracks, thinking only criminals would pre-emptively call for legal representation.
- Outlaw: Bunny, Martyn, Sausage, and Shep are part of an outlaw gang on the run from previous operations in other towns before having to split up. After reuniting at the start of the SMP, they collectively rob Pity of various resources on Day 14 during a sermon before fleeing into the mountains and later into the Fantastic Underworld.
- Prospector: Many of the newcomers were enticed to come to Pity in response to Mayor Poliver's radio interview proclaiming that the town has struck gold again.
- Public Execution: Discussed. On Day 23, Scott brings up the reason so many of the cells were empty because law in Pity was typically handled the "old Western" way, with the punishment of banditry being execution.
- Real-Person Fic: In-Universe; Sausage writes shippy fanfiction between himself and the Preacher to pass the time while in prison.
- Summon a Ride: A server mechanism allows players to summon their horses from a distance, with a whistling sound effect to signify the mechanism in action.
- Team Mercy vs. Team Murder: On Day 23, Apo hires Cherri to track down Sausage after the latter robs Abolish's gunpowder farm again, but when they finally track him down and incapacitate him, Apo goes back on her decision, hesitant to actually kill him. Cherri ultimately respects Apo's decision as her employer and hauls Sausage off to prison, but tells him that if she had it her way, he'd be dead.
- The Un-Reveal: While there have been speculations, the identity of The Stool Pigeon for Billy and the Kids is never revealed.
- Weird West: The series kicks off with aliens crashing onto Earth on the outskirts of a rural town in the American Southwest. Things only get stranger from there.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Downplayed. The series takes place somewhere in the Southwestern United States, given the western setting, but exactly which state Pity is located in is left ambiguous.
