A challenge has been made to create a Boot Hill style Braunstein in the format of Appendix D in Boot Hill. Here you go. For a fictional treatment of this period see the novel The Spoilers by Rex Beach and the 1942 John Wayne movie of the same name.

Boot Hill Scenario – Nome City (Historical), July 1900

Nome City (also called Anvil City) was one of the major centers of the Alaskan Gold Rush. A first-class ticket on a steamer from Seattle costs $100, second-class $75, small price to pay to go make a fortune. The stampede begin in earnest 1899 and by the summer of 1900 the population had ballooned to 20,000 and was, at the time, the most populous place in Alaska. The rush started when the “Three Lucky Swedes” found gold Sept. 22, 1898, at Anvil Creek. By 1900 the rush is near its peak. The town is two blocks wide by five miles long. Most prospectors mine the beach with sluices for nuggets and then blow their earnings in one of 100 saloons. Typhoid, dysentery, and pneumonia are rampant. The local Eskimos (Inupiaq) are vastly outnumbered and suffer both from reduction of game (moose and caribou) but also liquor imports and rocketing prices, and legal inability to make gold claims. There is no harbor, all goods and passengers must by lightered by boat from steamers offshore. The miners mine the gold, the saloons mine the miners, and the politicians scheme to profit from it all.

Non-Player Characters – Special (Historical)

Wyatt Earp (Age 62) – former lawman, gambler, now Saloon owner (Dexter Saloon, “the only second-class saloon in Alaska”

Josephine Sarah (Sadie) Marcus Earp – Wyatt’s wife.

John Clum (Age 48) — Postal Inspector, formerly Indian Agent who captured Geronimo, Arizona newsman in Tombstone

Swiftwater Bill (Charles H. Gates, Age 46) – flamboyant frontiersman & fortune hunter.

Jack London (Age 24) – Newsman, Socialist, and Fiction Writer

Wilson Mizner (Age 24) – Playwright, conman (badger games), boxing manager, robbed a restaurant for chocolate (“Your chocolate or your life!”) for his girlfriend Nellie the Pig

Nellie “the Pig” Lamore – Wilson Mizner’s Girlfriend, chocolate lover.

Tex Rickard (Age 30) – Boxing Promoter, partner in the Northern Saloon, friend of Wyatt Earp

William H. Gates (Age 42) – furniture store owner & prospector, not related to Swiftwater Bill.

Alexander McKenzie (Age 50) – North Dakotan political Boss, claim jumper. In cahoots with Judge Noyes to steal gold claims

Arthur H. Noyes (Age 47) – Federal Judge, drunk. Used by McKenzie to steal rich claims.

C.D. Lane – president of Wild Goose Mining & Trading, whose claims are the target of McKenzie

Charles P. Braslan (Age 39) – Successful Miner, target of McKenzie, willing to opposite McKenzie, up to and including dueling.

Thomas D. Cashel – Mayor of Nome, prospector

Jafet Lindeberg (Age 25) – one of the three lucky Swedes, co-owner Pioneer Mining Company, in business since Sept 22, 1898. Claims the target of McKenzie. Originally a reindeer herder.

John Brynteson (Age 18) – one of the three lucky Swedes, co-owner Pioneer Mining Company, in business since Sept 22, 1898. Claims the target of McKenzie.

Erik Lindblom (Age 43) – one of the three lucky Swedes, co-owner Pioneer Mining Company, in business since Sept 22, 1898. Claims the target of McKenzie.

Cornelius Lansing Vawter (Age 48) – Federal Marshal. Former Manager of Elkhorn Mining Company in Montana. Probably in cahoots with McKenzie and Noyes.