Editing Weird Western (section)

=Fantasy Americana=
The next step up from the Mystery Meat Spaghetti Western, Fantasy Americana is still set in the real world USA, but has gone full-fledged Alternate History by openly incorporating unearthly elements into the lore. [[Cattlepunk]] is often a sci-fi subgenre to this, but not always, since mad scientists wielding steampunk tech who somehow fail to change the course of history is a classic part of the Mystery Meat Spaghetti Western. Basically, if it's supposed to be the real America, but society has been changed by the introduction of magic or advanced technology, it's this. Fantasy Americana settings usually focus on fantasy (hence the name), and tend to draw heavily from American folklore and stories - Tall Tale folk heroes, Bigfoot, Mothman, cryptids, stuff like that. 

This is less common than "Classic" Weird Westerns, but still common enough - it even gets its own trope on [[TVTropes]].

/tg/ relevant examples of this type of Weird Western include:

[[Deadlands]]: Hell on Earth is set in the post-apocalyptic future of Deadlands Classic/Weird West, so the masquerade is gone and everybody knows that the world is full of mutants and monsters. Then there's the Lost Colony spin-off, which is Deadlands meets [[Space Western]].

'''Dracula's America''' is a skirmish minatures game set in America after Dracula migrated here and openly took over Washington DC.

'''Ghost Mountain''' is a setting for the [[Index Card RPG]] that consists of playing the inhabitants of Western mountain communities whose mountain was sucked out of reality and is now stuck hovering over Purgatory.

[[RIFTS]] has [[splatbook]]s for the American West, Mexico and Canada, and since RIFTS is literally about piling Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Post-Apocalyptica onto "real" Earth, it naturally fits here. In the Wasted West, you got cyborg prospectors, dinosaurs, lowlife banditos, cactus men, red skinned desert spirits... Then there's the [[vampire]] empire down in Mexico... And up in Canda, you got such problems as the Xiticix hivelands, the Calgary Rift and Monster Kingdom, and of course, Wendigo.

'''Colonial Gothic''' involves the dark and dreary weirdness that roams the woods of Colonial America and threatens (in many ways) to influence The American Revolution for the worse. One of the expansion booklets for the game is even rules in how to add the Headless Horseman and Sleepy Hollow into a campaign.

Kenneth Hite's Suppressed Transmission column in Pyramid magazine had a recurring bit where he'd describe an aspect of American folklore — usually a Folk Hero — in game terms, and also as a counterpart to something in Classical Mythology. These included "American Hercules: John Henry", "American Phaëthon: Casey Jones", "American Dionysus: Johnny Appleseed" and "American Arcadia: The Big Rock-Candy Mountain". He also wrote columns on Fantasy Americana that didn't tie into this theme, including Paul Bunyan and John the Conqueror.

[[Shadowrun]] is literally supposed to be a [[Cyberpunk]] America after magic came back and restored monsters and [[demihuman]]s to the world. America has plenty of folklore critters running around, as well as several breakaway nations of Native Americans they used sorcery to acquire and defend.

[[Castle Falkenstein]] is set in a world shaped by the sudden arrival of the [[fey]] and [[dragon]]s into mainstream society, introducing [[steampunk]] and [[magic]] to further change the mix. America, thusly, has been ''really'' shaken up, to the point that the official map of the place goes thus: the United States of America (from the east coast to the Mississippi), the Republic of Texas, the Bear Flag Empire of California (ruled by Emperor Norton!), the Twenty Nations Confederation, and the Unorganized Territories.