Franchise Familiariser: Deadlands

Tabletop roleplaying games are currently back in vogue. Dungeons & Dragons 5^th 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 3^rd 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 3^rd 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.

A small selection of the original 1st Edition Deadlands sourcebooks, courtesy of Wayne's Books.

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: 20^th 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)

Brom's original cover art for the 1996 release of Deadlands.

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 20^th 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.

A map of the Weird West by Cheyenne Wright.

Setting

The primary Deadlands setting is the continent of North America in the latter half of the 19^th 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.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content weeks before it goes live on my blogs.

Brandon Sanderson achieves another Kickstarter success

Brandon Sanderson has, once again, achieved a towering success on Kickstarter.

The latest campaign was for a tabletop roleplaying game based on his Cosmere universe, which is the setting for many of his most popular book series, including Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive. The roleplaying game includes core rulebooks and setting guides to the worlds of Scadrial (Mistborn) and Roshar (Stormlight). Later material will focus on other worlds, including those of Elantris and the White Sand graphic novel. The setting guides will also include new canonical material provided by Sanderson. There are also add-ons featuring GM screens, miniatures, dice, maps, tokens and cards. The game system uses a d20-driven system inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and will be published by Dragonsteel Entertainment.

The campaign closed this week having raised an astonishing $14,821,921 (£11,288,890) from 53,787 backers. This makes it the most successful tabletop and game-based Kickstarter campaign in the platform's history, eclipsing the $13 million raised by board game Frosthaven in 2020. In 2022 Sanderson raised $42 million in a campaign for four new novels, which remains the most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time, and then an additional $4 million for Stormlight-themed miniatures. Earlier this year he ran a $24 million campaign for leather-bound special editions of his books on Backerkit.

The Stormlight branch of the game, including the Stormlight World Guide, Stormlight Handbook and the Stonewalkers adventure, will launch in 2025. The Mistborn branch will launch in 2026.

Sanderson's next published novel will be the fifth novel in The Stormlight Archive, which will be published on 6 December this year. After that he will be writing a new Mistborn trilogy.

Classic SF RPG TRAVELLER turns 45

The classic science fiction roleplaying game Traveller has celebrated its 45th anniversary. One of the oldest and most iconic tabletop roleplaying games of all time, Traveller has inspired vast amounts of fiction and video games since its release.

Traveller was inspired by the success of Dungeons & Dragons, which had been released in 1974. Mark Miller realised there was scope for a science fiction roleplaying game with spaceships and technology and developed the Traveller game rules, with help from Frank Chadwick, John Harshman and Loren Wiseman. The game was released on 22 July 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop with a striking black cover.

It was an immediate bestseller, answering the demand for "Dungeons & Dragons but in space," as well as people who were interested in the idea of roleplaying games but not a classic fantasy setting. Traveller was also bolstered by the launch of the movie Star Wars just a few weeks earlier, which created a hunger for everything science fiction.

Traveller was originally a rules set without any setting material, but subsequent expansions introduced a far-future setting where humanity has colonised the stars with an FTL drive, but without FTL communications the various colonies and nations of humanity have splintered into small states, divided between different "strands" of humanity. Aliens exist in the setting but are mostly rare or extinct. Alternate SF settings for the game were created by fans and other creators.

An interview with Marc Miller at Dieku Games.

Traveller introduced innovations to the RPG space, including the idea of "life paths." Rather than characters being relative youngsters meeting in a bar and deciding to join forces (the standard D&D setup), Traveller characters are older and have usually had extensive training or education before deciding to become adventurers. Characters can be former soldiers, bureaucrats, medics, pilots or almost anything else the player can conceive of. Creating a character involves playing a mini-game of its own as players work out their heroes' backgrounds and their career. Infamously, it is possible for a character to die in character creation! This system also rewards extended service but also introduces penalty: the older a character is when they start the adventure, the more skills they have, but also the greater the possibility of injury or a degrading of skills due to old age.

Traveller also focused heavily on a skill system, a stalwart of every RPG apart from Dungeons & Dragons, which didn't really develop a skill system until 3rd Edition (earlier editions experimented with "proficiency" rules which tried to covers skills with a very broad brush). Most notably, this skill system allowed for a greater variety in resolving tasks and situations without combat. Traveller also emphasised its "social" skills to encourage roleplaying.

Traveller has been reissued in multiple editions since its original 1977 release: MegaTraveller (1987), Traveller: The New Era (1993), Marc Miller's Traveller (1996), GURPS Traveller (1998), Traveller d20 (2002), GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars (2006), Traveller Hero (2006), Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition (2008), Traveller 5.0 (2013), Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition (2016) and Traveller 5.10 (2019).

The game is notable for using its own rule system, which relies heavily on six-sided dice rather than the plethora of different-sized dice favoured by D&D. However, over the years the game has been "ported" to other systems, including the D&D 3rd Edition "d20" system, the universal GURPS rules set and the Hero System. Players have also created homebrew variants based on other systems.

The Traveller setting has been used as the background for sixteen novels, published sporadically from 1993 to 2015. Surprising, only two video games have been developed from the setting: MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy (1990) and MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients (1991), both from Paragon. The games were critically well-received and apparently successful, but no further video games based on the system have since appeared.

Traveller was a very forwards-thinking TTRPG when it was released and its influence on the genre remains very high. Here's hoping it carries on for many years to come.

RIVERS OF LONDON tabletop roleplaying game to be released this year

Chaosium has announced that the official Rivers of London tabletop roleplaying game, based on Ben Aaronovitch's highly successful urban fantasy novel series, is coming this year.

The game was recently showcased at last week's Chaosium Con event in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The game uses the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition rules system, modified for this setting.

The Rivers of London series comprises nine novels, the first of which, Rivers of London, was released in 2011. It has been followed by Moon Over Soho (2011), Whispers Under Ground (2012), Broken Homes (2013), Foxglove Summer (2014), The Hanging Tree (2016), Lies Sleeping (2018), False Value (2020) and the recently-released Amongst Our Weapons (2022). The series also comprises a sequence of novellas and graphic novels. The series has been a hit in both the UK and United States, hitting the Sunday Times bestseller list regularly. The series was optioned for television in 2019 by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but has not made progress since then.

Chaoisum is one of the oldest tabletop roleplaying companies in the world, founded in 1975. Their best-known game product is the Call of Cthulhu line, based on H.P. Lovecraft's mythos. They also publish RuneQuest, Pendragon and 7th Sea, among others.

DUNE tabletop roleplaying game gets a name and release window

A new Dune tabletop roleplaying game is on its way from Modiphius Entertainment for release at the tail end of 2020 (although all bets are off because of the pandemic, but hopefully etc). Announced a year or so back, the game now has a logo and a title: Dune: Adventures in the Imperium.

The game will use Modiphius's 2d20 rule set (used in its Conan the Barbarian and Star Trek RPGs, among many others), and, as the title suggests, that the game will be predominantly set before the events of the original novel Dune, in the "classic" version of the setting with the feuding houses of the Landsraad pitted against one another in intrigue with the Emperor, the Bene Gesserit, the Tleilaxu and Spacing Guild pulling the strings in the background.

The original plan seems to have been to coordinate the game's release with the Dune movie from director Denis Villeneuve, which is currently due out on 18 December (pending developments in the pandemic).

Chaosium Inc to adapt RIVERS OF LONDON as a roleplaying game

Chaosium Inc., best-known as the creators of the classic Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, has licensed Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London urban fantasy series for a new pen-and-paper RPG.

The game will use Chaosium's own rules set, customised to reflect the magic used in the books.

The game is at an early stage of development, so I'd be surprised if we saw it this side of 2021. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are also developing a TV series based on the books.

The Rivers of London series so far spans Rivers of London (2011), Moon Over Soho (2011), Whispers Under Ground (2012), Broken Homes (2013), Foxglove Summer (2014), The Hanging Tree (2016) and Lies Sleeping (2018), as well as related novellas and graphic novels.

BROKEN EARTH RPG in the works

Green Ronin are adapting N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy as a tabletop roleplaying game for release this autumn.

Green Ronin already publish licensed RPGs based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and James S.A. Corey's Expanse books, as well as tabletop version of BioWare's Dragon Age franchise.

Jemisin's Broken Earth series (comprising The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky) is one of the most critically-acclaimed fantasy series of the decade, selling over a million copies and winning an unprecedented three Hugo Awards for Best Novel. The series has also been optioned for television at TNT.