Pinnacle launches DEADLANDS 30th Anniversary Kickstarter

Pinnacle Entertainment has launched the Kickstarter for the 30th Anniversary celebration of their seminal tabletop roleplaying game Deadlands.

Originally launched in late 1996, Deadlands used a novel rules system built for fast, six-shootin' action mixed in with magic and weird science. The game combined different die types with cards for greater randomisation and a whole magic system built around deck-building (this was streamline later on). The game was notable for its setting, which mixed Wild West action, Lovecraftian horror, steampunk science and black comedy. Think of Army of Darkness meets Unforgiven meets The Difference Engine with zombies and you're most of the way there. It's not for nothing that the legendary Bruce Campbell himself provided the introduction for the revised edition of the game in 1999.

The game had a revised edition in 1999, two sequel TTRPG games (Deadlands: Hell on Earth and Deadlands: Lost Colony) and a spin-off miniatures game using a simplified version of the rules, The Great Rail Wars, but an attempt to pivot to the d20 rules system (derived from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition) in 2002 backfired spectacularly and nearly drove the company out of business. Regrouping, the company used The Great Rail Wars rules as the basis for a new, universal rules system, Savage Worlds. The company released new versions of Deadlands for Savage Worlds, namely Deadlands Reloaded in 2006 and Deadlands: The Weird West in 2020. Both have been successful.

For the upcoming 30th Anniversary, Pinnacle decided not to re-release the original game. A 20th Anniversary reissue of the revised edition was released in 2017, and was recently reprinted and should be (for now, anyway) widely available. Instead, they've decided to look to the past of the game but focus on revised material for the current edition of the game.

First up in the Kickstarter package is Deadlands: 30 Years of Games, Grit, & Ghost Rock. This is a history and behind-the-scenes account of the making of the game over three decades, with exclusive new information on various movie and TV adaptations of the property that never quite took off, as well as multiple video games that were in development at one time or another but were cancelled. The book also acts as an art book, collecting most of the cover art for all of Deadlands' various editions and sourcebooks over the three decades. The book also includes the introductions to previous editions by Joe Lansdale, Mike Stackpole and Bruce Campbell, and an account of the time Campbell played the game.

As well as the requisite coins, cards and special dice, the set includes a new rulebook for playing the game. Deadlands: Core Rules combines the Savage Worlds Adventurer's Edition rulebook and the Deadlands: The Weird West corebook into one integrated edition, with irrelevant material from Savage Worlds (i.e. lasers and spaceships) removed and some material from the Deadlands: Weird West Companion added. This creates an all-new starting point for the game which is easier on both the wallet and the brain whilst trying to look up rules and not being able to remember which book they're in. This rule book will be available in a regular edition and a leatherbound special edition.

An additional new book is Deadlands: Rascals, Varmints, & Relics, a combined bestiary and item book collating previous material and adding new information on monsters and items.

The set also includes the Deadlands Accessories Box, which includes a GM's Screen, action deck, ammo tracker, poster map, dice and reference cards, and the Deadlands Starter Set, which includes a simplified "showcase" set of the rules for new players, an adventure called The Cursed Caverns, maps, tokens, pawns, another Action Deck, templates, archetype cards and so forth. 

Available as various add-ons are the extant material for the current edition of the game, including the adventure/campaign books Hell on the High Plains, The Abominable Northwest, Horror at Headstone Hill, Carnage in the Cascades and Night Train, and various map packs and archetype card sets (customisable pregen character cards, basically).

The Kickstarter will be running until 14 March and, predictably, has already been fully funded.

Pinnacle Entertainment launches DEADLANDS: THE DARK AGES Kickstarter

Veteran roleplaying company Pinnacle Entertainment has launched its Kickstarter campaign for Deadlands: The Dark Ages, the latest spin-off from its popular Deadlands roleplaying game.

Deadlands, a horror-steampunk-Western, was created by Shane Hensley and released through Pinnacle Entertainment way back in 1996. The original version of the game, which expanded over thirty sourcebooks, a mild revised edition in 1999 and spin-off miniatures game The Great Rail Wars, was hugely successful, popular and critically-acclaimed. In 2001 the company pivoted with Deadlands d20, a version of the game using the same rules as Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. This was monstrously unpopular, and the commercial failure of the game almost drove Pinnacle out of business.

They made a comeback several years later by using the streamlined version of the Deadlands rules from Great Rail Wars to launch Savage Worlds, a generic or universal rules set that could be applied to any kind of setting, from space opera to epic fantasy to steampunk to historical. The game was a big success and in 2006 they released Deadlands Reloaded, a revised version of the game acting as a setting for Savage Worlds. This was also highly successful. In 2018 they released the revised Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) and in 2021 released Deadlands: The Weird West, the current version of the setting.

Deadlands postulates a break from established history during the American Civil War. At the Battle of Gettysburg, the hordes of dead soldiers come back to life and start spreading across the country. Shortly thereafter, a huge earthquake destroys most of California. In the ruins prospectors find "ghost rock," an unusual substance that triggers both a "ghost rock rush" and huge leaps forward in technology, particularly for the way it supercharges steam technology. Supernatural creatures start appearing across the continent (and, it's at least hinted, the world). Magic suddenly becomes real. The result is a setting that resembles the real Wild West, but one in which magic and steampunk technology also coexists. The setting can be described as a Western meets Lovecraft meets The Difference Engine. The setting is noted for its huge tonal variation (it can move from adventure to horror to comedy) and its well-described array of factions and personalities.

The original game spawned several spin-offs. Deadlands: Hell on Earth is set in the post-apocalyptic future, asking what happens if the forces of evil win and reduce the Earth to a "deadland," a world of fear and despair. The vibe here is more Mad Max. Deadlands: Lost Colony is set in space, on a colony planet settled before the Reckoning took place on Earth. Deadlands Noir is set in an alternate, possible 1930s where the focus is more on gumshoe detectives in the back-alleys of places like Chicago and New York, and the forces of evil have to be much quieter and more subtle.

Deadlands: The Dark Ages is both a prequel and sequel to Deadlands, set in 877 on the island of Britain. Morgan le Fay has been retroactively resurrected thanks to events in the mainline Deadlands setting, a thousand years further in the future. Her return changes history (which may or may not result in ramifications in the extant Deadlands settings), but it also spawns opposition, namely the return of Merlin with the goal of stopping her schemes. He recruits bold adventurers to help take down Morgan and return history to the right path (more or less), whilst they also have to fend with issues such as Danish invaders and civil insurrection.

The Dark Ages range will launch with a core rulebook, a graphic novel called Merlin's Champions, the Accessories Box including dice, bennies, tokens, archetype cards, action cards, maps and some 3D terrain. The Cursed Village set adds more terrain, enough to build a full village (cannily, the 3D terrain can be repurposed easily for other roleplaying games). Optional accessories include metal dice and item cards. There are an array of options for physical products and PDFs (and both).

The Dark Ages Kickstarter has already hit its goal, with additional stretch goals expected. The campaign will run until 4 October.