Objection. The distinction between wuxia and western is that western takes place in the "frontier" and wuxia...
Since I haven't read or watched nearly enough wuxia, I guess I'll have to take your word for it.
My point stands, though. To play historical pirates you need a shit setting, and if you remove the shit then it's no longer historical pirates, you're playing Pirates of The Caribbean.
Look, I won't cancel you for playing historical horribleness or anything. Watching I Spit On Your Grave doesn't make you a rape apologist the same way playing GTA doesn't make you a serial killer. If you like playing that, more power to you, I just won't touch it, not with a 10-foot pole.
Using that analogy, my setting is more Pirates of the Carribean than historical pirates. It takes the genre films as a starting point. Just as the pirate films start with real-world European colonies and layer fantastic elements, I'm doing something similar. And in a similar vein, a major theme of the setting could be summed up with the Jack Sparrow quote: The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do.
The setting demands that ruthless outlaws can overwhelm the feeble attempts at law and order, and even among those seeking to 'tame' the lands it is often for their own corrupt enrichment. Cattle barons, railroad tycoons and outlaw gunslingers are all rubbing elbows while oppressing settlers that risked everything for a single chance at an opportunity for a better life... But of course situating a non-existen town in a mythic west still implies European claims over territory that was already settled by Indiginous Americans.
