Role playing games use mythology as fuel. Deadlands, from Pinnacle Entertainment Group, uses the tall tales of the American West as a place for stories about heroes, villains, monsters and more. It’s told these stories in many ways, from tabletop role playing games to comic books, card games, novels and more.
Currently, Humble Bundle is featuring a collection of the last edition of the game that benefits the American Cancer Society. The bundle is slated to run through June 14th, 2025. I’ve selected some of my favorite titles out of the 85 available to highlight for this article.
What Is Deadlands?
Deadlands is an alternate history horror game set in an America where something supernatural awoke during the Battle of Gettysburg. This caused big changes to the timeline like a massive earthquake that turned California into a Great Maze of seawater filled canyons. It also caused smaller changes like undead gunslingers and spellcasting cardsharps wandering the small towns of the Wild West.
The most recent editions of Deadlands use Savage Worlds as the base system. Savage Worlds is something of a younger sibling to Deadlands that uses some trappings to give the game a more Western flavor. For example, initiative runs based on crd draws from a deck of playing cards.
Deadlands Core Rule Books
This bundle includes the main rule books from the last edition of the game. The Player’s Guide details how to build a character, whether its just a common cowpoke or one of the more unusual options like a huckster or blessed. The Marshall’s Handbook digs into the setting and reveals some of the secrets of why this West is the way that it is.
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Although Deadlands: The Weird West is the most recent edition, the vast majority of these titles are compatible. The main difference, setting wise, is the fact that in this version the North and South continue the Civil War for almost two decades until magic and time travel shenanigans changed that. Other smaller changes can be found on the Pinnacle website.
Deadlands Campaign Books
The big villains of the setting are the Reckoners. They each take on the role of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Death and Pestilence. Each Reckoner gets an entire campaign devoted to detailing their strengths, their influences and how the players can take them down.
Each of these books is structured in a style called Plot Points. There’s the main storyline to follow, but also several smaller adventures that can be sedded in based on character stories and where the players end up. The structure makes the game feel like a classic TV show where there’s an overall arc but also several standalone adventures to play out.
Deadlands Adventures
The bundle also includes several smaller adventures for role playing groups who don’t want to commit to an epic campaign story right out of the gate. These range from shorter campaigns like Blood Drive to one sheets that have everything the Game Master needs to run on two sides of the same paper. There are dozens of stories here that capture the spooky but deadly tone that attracted me to the game.
Blood Drive is a great example of this tone. It uses a classic Western story of driving cattle to market to give players a tour of the Weird West. Once the story is over, the players know that all those whispered campfire tales and superstitious saloon stories have a kernel of truth to them.
Deadlands Expansions
This bundle includes a lot of maps, tokens, foldouts and other expansions aimed to help players play the game. While Deadlands has a heavy horror aspect to it, there’s still plenty of room for exciting shootouts and cinematic duels. The expansions also include player options and details on different sections of the west.
The 1880 Smith & Robards Catalog continues one of my favorite traditions from the original Deadlands. It’s chock full of steampunk gadgets built by so-called mad scientists that can give players an edge against the beasts that stalk the prairie. The entries in this book can be purchased by players or serve as inspiration should one of the players decided to play a character devoted to the New Science.
Deadlands remains my favorite kitchen sink role playing game. It combines several genres together to tell unique stories featuring a variety of heroes including simple schoolmarms, tough cowboys, kung fu masters and mad scientists. This bundle is a great way to fall in love with Westerns, Weird or otherwise.
