Tabletop roleplaying games are currently back in vogue. Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition continues to be the biggest fish in the pond, with a revised edition released in 2024, whilst games like Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk RED, Mothership, Mork Borg and Dragonbane continue to do well. But another venerable RPG recently (ish) returned with a new edition (with a minor new revision arriving soon). What is Deadlands? What is it about? We have you covered with a Franchise Familiariser course!
The Basics
Deadlands is a horror-steampunk-alternate history
franchise that debuted in October 1996 as a tabletop roleplaying game. Since then, it
has spun off novels, comics and multiple editions of the tabletop game, but no
live-action or video game adaptations as yet (despite interest and attempts).
The game was developed by RPG writer Shane Lacey Hensley,
inspired by a painting by the artist Brom depicting a Confederate vampire from
the World of Darkness line. Hensley set up a new company, PinnacleEntertainment Group, to publish the game. Two industry veteran friends of his,
Greg Gorden and Matt Forbeck, come on board early on to act as writers, editors
and even investors in his company.
Launching in October 1996, the game was an unexpected smash
hit success, given the poor state of the tabletop industry at the time (Dungeons
& Dragons was just starting to undergo the convulsions leading to the
collapse of TSR and its buy-out by Wizards of the Coast several years later),
and won an Origins Award. Deadlands sold well enough to warrant no less
than forty-nine sourcebooks and a revised edition (launched in 1999), as well
as spin-off roleplaying games Deadlands: Hell on Earth (1998) and Deadlands:
Lost Colony (2002). A collectible card game, Doomtown, was launched
in 1998 and ran until 2001. The roleplaying game also generated an accompanying
miniatures line and its own focused wargame, Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars,
which began in 1997.
In 2001 Deadlands was relaunched as Deadlands d20.
It abandoned the use of the original, popular rules system and switched to the
d20 rules system popularised by Dungeons & Dragons 3rd
Edition, under the Open Game Licence. Although new companies had found
financial success with d20 games, established companies were fiercely
criticised by long-term fans for making such a move to chase dollars at the
expense of existing fans (who saw no reason to move to a whole new rules system
and spend more money when the existing rules were still fine). The move was
also of arguably limited utility: many D&D fans who came on board
with 3rd Edition showed a reluctance to move to a new game, even one
using compatible rules. As a result, Deadlands lost many of its
established fans and failed to pick up many new ones.
The financial losses stemming from the d20 experiment were
substantial and Pinnacle almost went under; the company was refounded as Great
White Games to alleviate these issues.
In 2003, the Deadlands rules, specifically the
simplified set used in Great Rail Wars, were revamped and republished as
Savage Worlds, a generic rules system with no established setting. Like
earlier generic games like GURPS, the idea with Savage Worlds was
to have one central rules system and players could then pick up a number of
different optional settings and games to slot into the core system. Savage Worlds
was warmly-received, with a number of different games and settings released for
it in the first few years.
By 2006 Great White Games was able to revert to the Pinnacle
Entertainment moniker. In that year Pinnacle released Deadlands: Reloaded,
effectively a second edition of the game using the Savage Worlds fork of
the rules system. Numerous supplements and expansions followed. Hell on
Earth was also relaunched, and in 2012 was joined by a new spin-off game, Deadlands:
Noir. In 2020 the game was relaunched as Deadlands: The Weird West,
aka “Deadlands for Savage Worlds Adventurer Edition” (SWADE),
compatible with the latest edition of Savage Worlds. This is the current
version of the game being supported, with additional adventures and sourcebooks
following.
The Canon
The Deadlands canon consists of four roleplaying
games (with a fifth in development) broadly sharing the same timeline. Time
travel and parallel universes exist in the setting, allowing for retcons and
lore changes between versions of the games without getting too caught up in
minutiae, an in-universe phenomenon known as “the Mandela Effect.” Each
roleplaying game exists in multiple editions, broadly speaking the original
(now dubbed “Classic”), the Reloaded edition that used the first version
of the Savage Worlds rules system, and the modern editions that use the Savage
Worlds Adventure Edition rules system (SWADE).
The five roleplaying games in the setting are Deadlands
(sometimes called The Weird West to differentiate it from the others), Hell
on Earth, Lost Colony, Deadlands Noir and the forthcoming Dark
Ages.
Deadlands
Classic Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: The Weird West
Roleplaying Game (1996) • Deadlands: Weird West Player’s Guide
(1999) • Deadlands: Marshal’s Handbook (1999) • Deadlands
Classic: 20th Anniversary Edition Core Rulebook (2017)
Classic Sourcebooks: The Quick and the Dead
(1997) •
Book o’ the Dead (1997) • Smith & Robards (1997) • Hucksters
& Hexes (1997) • Rascals, Varmints & Critters (1997) • Twisted
Tales (1997) • The Great Maze (boxed set) (1997) • Marshal
Law (1996) • Ghost Dancers (1998) • Fire & Brimstone
(1998)
• City O’ Gloom (boxed set) (1998) • Law Dogs (1998) • Devil’s
Tower 1: The Road to Hell (1998) • Devil’s Tower 2: Heart O’
Darkness (1998) • Devil’s Tower 3: Fortress of Fear (1998) • Tales
o’ Terror: 1877 (1998) • Lost Angels (1998) • River
O’ Blood (boxed set) (1998) • Boomtowns (boxed set) (1999) • Marshall’s
Log (1999) • Doomtown or Bust! (1999) • Bloody Ol’ Muddy
(1999)
• Back East: The North (1999) • Back East: The South
(1999)
• South O’ The Border (1999) • Canyon O’ Doom (1999) • Rascals,
Varmints and Critters II (2000) • The Agency – The Men in Black
Dusters (2000) • Ghost Busters (2000) • Hexarcana (2000) • The
Collegium (2000) • Rain O’ Terror (2000) • The Great Weird North
(2000)
• The Black Circle – Unholy Alliance (2000) • Dead
Presidents (2000) • Lone Stars – The Texas Rangers (2001) • Epitaph
#1 (2000) • Epitaph #2 (2000) • Epitaph #3 (2000) • Epitaph
#4 (2001)
Dime Novel Adventures: Perdition’s Daughter (1996) • Independence
Day (1996) • Night Train (1997) • Under a Harrowed Moon Part 1:
Strange Bedfellows (1997) • Under a Harrowed Moon Part 2: Savage Passage
(1998) • Under a Harrowed Moon Part 3: Ground Zero (1998) • The
Forbidden God (1998) • Adios, A-Mi-Go! (1998) • Skinners
(1999) • Worms! (1999)
d20 Core Rulebook: Deadlands: d20 (2001)
d20 Sourcebooks: Horrors o’ the Weird West
(2001) •
The Way of the Brave (2001) • The Way of the Dead (2001) • The
Way of the Gun (2001) • The Way of the Huckster (2001) • The Way
of the New Science (2001) • The Way of the Righteous (2001)
GURPS Deadlands Core Rulebook: GURPS
Deadlands: Weird West (2001)
GURPS Expansions: Dime Novel 1 – Aces and Eights (2001) • Dime
Novel 2 – Wanted: Undead or Alive (2001) • Hexes (2002) • Varmints
(2003)
Reloaded Core Rulebooks: Deadlands Reloaded (2006)
• Deadlands
Reloaded Player’s Guide (2006) • Deadlands Reloaded Marshal’s Handbook (2006)
Reloaded Sourcebooks: Marshal’s Screen (2009) • Trail
Guide: The Great Northwest (2010) • Trail Guide: South o’ the Border
(2010) • Trail Guide: Weird White North (2011) • 1880 Smith &
Robards Catalog (2011) • Ghost Towns (2012)
Reloaded Adventures: Coffin Rock (2008) • Don’t
Drink the Water (2009) • Doomtown: A Fight They’ll Never Forget
(2009) • The Flood (2009) • Murder on the Hellstromme Express
(2009) • Night Train 2: For Whom the Whistle Blows (2010) • Saddle
Sore (2010) • Devil’s Night (2011) • Blood Drive 1: Bad Times on
the Goodnight (2012) • Blood Drive 2: High Plains Drovers (2012) • Guess
Whose Coming to Dinner (2012) • The Last Sons (2012) • Return to
Manitou Bluff (2012) • Blood
Drive 3: Range War! (2012) • The Inheritors (2013) • Stone and a
Hard Place (2015) • Dead Men Walkin’ (2015) • The Tombstone Seven
(2015) • All the Purty Little Horses (2016) • The Twilight Protocol (2016)
• The Land Beyond the Busted Doorway (2016) • Sawed ‘em in Gomorra (2016)
• Paradise Lost (2017) • Good Intentions (2017) • Knights with
No Armor (2017) • A Tale of Two Killers (2020)
Reloaded Dime Novel Adventures: Beast of Fire
(2005) •
Deadshot (2006) • Frostbite (2006)
SWADE Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: The Weird West
Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (2021)
SWADE Sourcebooks: Hell on the High Plains (2023)
• The
Abominable Northwest (2025) • The Mysterious Maze (2026)
SWADE Adventures: Showdown at Sundown (2021) • Blood
Drive (2021) • Crater Lake Chronicles (2021) • Horror at
Headstone Hill (2021) • Night Train (2024) • Carnage in the
Cascades (2025) • Curse of the Maze Queen (2026) • Red Tide (2026)
Short Story Collections: A Fistful O’ Dead Guys (1999)
• For
a Few Dead Guys More (1999) • The Good, the Bad and the Dead (1999)
• Wendigo Tales: Savage Stories of the Weird West (2025)
Novels: Deluge: A Novel of the Flood (John
Goff, 2008) • Ghostwalkers (Jonathan Maberry, 2015) • Thunder Moon
Rising (Jeffrey Mariotte, 2016) • Boneyard (Seanan McGuire, 2017)
Graphic Novels: The Cackler (2016) • Rise
of the Black Circle (2025)
Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars
Core Rulebook: Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars
(boxed set) (1997) • Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars Revised (2001)
Expansions: Reinforcements (1997) • Derailed
(1998) • A Fist Full of Ghost Rock (1998) • Dogs o’ War (1998) • Cry
Havoc (1998) • High Noon (2000) • Raid on Roswell (2001)
Deadlands: Hell on Earth
Hell on Earth Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: Hell on
Earth (1998) • The Wasted West (1998)
Hell on Earth Sourcebooks: Brainburners (1998)
• The
Last Crusaders (1998) • Children o’ the Atom (1998) • Road
Warriors (1998) • Toxic Tales (1998) • Radiation Screen
(1998) • Cyborgs (1999) • The Junkman Cometh (1999) • Shattered
Coast (1999) • Iron Oasis (1999) • Monsters, Muties ‘n’ Misfits (1999)
• Waste Warriors (2000) • Spirit Warriors (2000) • Denver
(2001) • City O’ Sin (2001)
Hell on Earth Adventures: Hell or High Water (1998)
• Something
About a Sword (1999) • Urban Renewal (2000) • The Boise Horror
(2000) • The Unity (2002)
Hell on Earth Dime Novels: Leftovers (1998) • Killer
Clowns (1999) • Infestations (1999)
Hell on Earth d20 Core Rulebook: Hell on Earth d20
(2002)
Hell on Earth d20 Sourcebooks: Horrors of the
Wasted West (2002)
Hell on Earth Reloaded Core Rulebooks: Hell on
Earth Reloaded (2012) • Hell on Earth Player’s Guide (2012)
Hell on Earth Reloaded Sourcebooks: Hell on Earth
Companion (2014)
Hell on Earth Reloaded Adventures: The Worms’ Turn
(2014)
Deadlands: Lost Colony
Classic Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: Lost Colony (2002)
Classic Sourcebooks: Lost Colony Companion (2002)
SWADE Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: Lost Colony for
Savage Worlds Adventurer’s Edition (2020)
SWADE Adventures: A Billion Miles from Home (2019)
• Widowmaker
(2020) • Hellstromme Triumphant (2020) • Maw of Oblivion
(2024) •
Mad World (2025)
Lost Colony Novels: Banshee Screams (2002)
Deadlands: Noir
Core Rulebooks: Deadlands Noir (2012) • Deadlands
Noir Player’s Guide (2012)
Adventures: The Old Absinthe House Blues (2013) • The
Case of the Jumbo Shrimp (2013)
Dime Novels: Tenement Men (2012) • Blood &
Roses (2013) • Memories of Yesterday (2013)
Deadlands: Dark Ages
SWADE Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: Dark Ages Core
Rulebook (forthcoming)
SWADE Adventures: Sins of the Father (2023)
Graphic Novels: Merlin’s Champions
(forthcoming)
Backstory
In 1863, the American Civil War peaked with the Battle of
Gettysburg, a decisive confrontation between the United States of America and
the rebel Confederacy. But on the day of the battle, a mystical ritual ruptured
the walls between this dimension and one beyond, the Hunting Grounds, the home
of incredibly powerful entities known as the Reckoners. The Reckoners were able
touch our world, unleashing chaos, evil and darkness. The dead began to rise,
strange creatures appeared and an uncanny sense of fear began to spread across
North America. The greater the cumulative level of fear in the world, the more
powerful the Reckoners became.
Shortly after this event, a massive earthquake tore
California apart, dropping most of the coast into the ocean and forming a
shattered landscape of ravines, whirlpools and canyons: the Great Maze. In the
walls of the Maze, explorers found an incredible source of energy and power,
ghost rock. Capable of burning far hotter than coal and for far longer, ghost
rock opened amazing new avenues for scientific research and engineering. New
technology appeared, including steam-powered gatling guns, gyrocopters and steam
tanks. Stories of “strange happenings” around ghost rock were dismissed, or
even accepted as the price of harnessing this new power. The Civil War raged
on, far longer than anyone expected, before the North finally gained the upper
hand and defeated the South in 1871 (although many swear blind to having
memories where the Civil War continued into the early 1880s).
Deadlands chronicles the “classic” Weird West, the
original incarnation of the setting. The original edition of the game was set
in 1876, the very mild revised edition in 1877, the Reloaded edition was
set in 1879 and the current SWADE edition updates things to 1884.
Deadlands: Hell on Earth is a sequel to the original
game. Set in 2094, Hell on Earth postulates that the Reckoners finally
succeeded in entering the world in 2081, triggering the Last War, a cataclysmic
conflict that devasted the world. Hell on Earth is set in the Wasted
West, a post-apocalyptic North America where magic and technology have become
intermingled. The world has largely been laid waste but, curiously, having
entered our world the Reckoners soon after vanished, and a key part of the
metaplot ties into finding out what happened to them, as well as traditional
post-apocalyptic concerns.
Deadlands: Lost Colony runs simultaneously alongside Hell
on Earth and is also set in 2094. However, the setting is another planet
altogether, known only as Banshee. Using a mixture of ghost rock and magic, an
expedition was sent via wormhole to this planet. Discovering it to be rich in
ghost rock, humanity began colonising and exploiting the planet, leading to
conflict with the native species, the Anouks. More than three million humans
were on Banshee when the Last War took place, sealing the wormhole and leaving
them trapped. The game depicts more of a classic science fiction setting, with
some spaceships, laser weapons and more advanced technology, mixed with magic.
The game’s metaplot kicks in when it is revealed that the Reckoners were
banished from Earth shortly after the Last War…but they were banished to
Banshee, and their arrival obviously is not good news for the inhabitants of
the planet. Fortunately, since Banshee is in a much better state than Earth and
has a smaller population (depriving the Reckoners of the vast quantities of
fear they feed on), there is also the possibility that they might be finally
vulnerable on Banshee. The SWADE edition of the game updates the timeline to
2096 and hints of a final way of defeating the Reckoners.
Deadlands Noir is a limited-run RPG that updates the
setting to the early 20th Century, and is thus an interquel, set
between the original Deadlands and Hell on Earth. The rulebook
provides information on running games from the 1910s to the 1950s, and is a
moody, noir-infused game where intrigue and investigation is favoured over
combat. Elements such as Prohibition, World War I, gangsters and jazz music
feature.
Deadlands: Dark Ages is a forthcoming game that acts
as a prequel to the entire Deadlands saga. It is set in Dark Ages
England in 877, a thousand years or more before the original game, and taps
into Arthurian legends. Morgana le Fey will be a major character in this game.
Despite being a prequel, time travel (which canonically exists in the setting)
allows for events in Dark Ages to impact on the other time periods and
vice versa, and possibly allows characters from one game to travel to another.
Setting
The primary Deadlands setting is the continent of
North America in the latter half of the 19th Century, specifically
the area known as the Wild West, approximately an area extending from the
Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean incorporating the Great Plains, the
south-western deserts, the Rocky Mountains and the coastal regions of
California and the Pacific North-West.
The geography is more or less identical to that of the real
world, with several notable exceptions. A massive earthquake destroyed the
coast of California in 1868, obliterating most coastal cities and settlements.
What was left behind was a maze of water canyons, bays, inlets, towering sea
stacks and vast seams of ghost rock. The resulting terrain became known as the
Great Maze. Fear of a recurrence was offset by the immense wealth to be gained
by mining ghost rock, resulting in a crazed rush reminiscent of earlier gold
rushes. The City of Lost Angels became the dominant settlement of the region,
benefitting from the resulting westwards rush.
In terms of geopolitics, the United States remains the
dominant force on the continent, especially after defeating the Confederate
States in 1871. However, control of the western states is somewhat tenuous, and
Native American tribes have regained autonomous control of two regions: the
Sioux Nations, which expand across western Dakota, most of Nebraska, eastern
Wyoming and south-eastern Montana; and the Coyote Confederation, in eastern
Oklahoma and south-eastern Kansas. In 1866 Utah declared itself the independent
nation of Deseret, a religious nation under Mormon leadership.
As well as political entities, there are also powerful factions within those entities to contend with, such as the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the Texas Rangers (both now oriented towards supernatural threats more than mundane ones), and various newspapers and do-gooders determined to expose what's "really happening" out west, though the folks back east are still distracted by reconstruction and other issues.
With the Civil War over, the Great Rail Wars have begun:
several major and numerous minor rail companies were established with a
competitive goal: to drive railheads all the way from the Mississippi to the
Pacific, allowing for fast cross-continental travel and delivery of ghost rock,
gold and trading goods back east. The Rail Barons would turn out to be utterly
ruthless, competitive to the point of lunacy and almost untouchable in their
power, using means both mundane and supernatural to ensure they would come out
on top. The rail companies include Bayou Vermillion (noted for their use of zombie labour), Black River, Union Blue and Iron Dragon.
The Deadlands world also features significant
differences to our own when it comes to technology. Ghost rock, a supercharged
(and, some say, supernatural) form of coal, has allowed for the creation of
advanced steam technology, including steam wagons, faster steam trains,
steam-powered gatling guns and even steam-enhanced gyrocopters. Alongside the
standard six-shooters and horse-drawn wagons, more exotic, weird technology is
starting to appear in the West.
More concerning are the Reckoners: enigmatic beings of supreme power, the Reckoners were sealed away from our world but that seal was broken in 1863 during the Battle of Gettysburg, when their influence was able to seep into and touch our world once more. Since then, supernatural events have become more commonplace. Magic, though unpredictable, works through strange rituals and processes. The dead – the Harrowed – can rise again to torment the living. Wendigos, jackalopes, wallcrawlers, ghouls, sasquatches, maze dragons, gremlins, pox walkers and Texas skeeters, among many others, have become increasingly common and unnerving threats.
To overcome these threats, the various groups of the Weird West have a powerful resource to call upon: you. Or rather, any number of well-meaning adventurers, heroes, antiheroes, cowboys, cowgirls, huxsters, hexslingers or mad scientists who are ready to heed the call to adventure and take on the forces of evil armed with noting but their wits and guts, and maybe a gatling-cannon-armed steam gyrocopter.
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