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Deadlands: Hell On Earth
This core rulebook includes everything you need to get your posse wandering the irradiated plains in the much-anticipated sequel to the award-winning The Weird West. Besides all the normal stuff on making characters and blowing stuff up, there's also juicy information on Doomsayers, junkers, sykers, Templars, and-of course-the Harrowed.
225 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
About the author
Shane Lacy Hensley
178 books22 followersShane Lacy Hensley is an author, game designer, and CEO of Pinnacle Entertainment Group.
(source: Wikipedia)
(source: Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 29, 2026
The foundational RPG book for the Deadlands setting
An alternate-history “Weird West” where the south won the civil war and then there was a supernatural apocolypse. You have cowboys, Civil War fallout, Native spiritualism, undead gunslingers, mad scientists, gambling wizards (“Hucksters”), monsters, and cosmic horror collide. The game mixes Western, horror, steampunk, pulp action, and dark fantasy.
Mechanically it introduced distinctive mechanics using poker cards, poker chips (“Fate Chips”), and exploding dice (“Aces”) to create a cinematic, swingy feel with plenty of pulp horror as you form a posse to fight the monster of the week.
3/5 a fun mashup with evocative setting that uses cards, chips, and poker mechanics to immerse the players, I can see why it won multiple awards. Best used with more experienced players, otherwise having so many genres at once can feel clunky and cumbersome.
That said, the swingy dice mechanics can occasionally produce absurd outcomes, personally (legendary shots or catastrophic failures), personally one of my favorites but not every group enjoys it.
(Why play a game with someone who wants everything to go as they expected? but still better to mind it).
An alternate-history “Weird West” where the south won the civil war and then there was a supernatural apocolypse. You have cowboys, Civil War fallout, Native spiritualism, undead gunslingers, mad scientists, gambling wizards (“Hucksters”), monsters, and cosmic horror collide. The game mixes Western, horror, steampunk, pulp action, and dark fantasy.
Mechanically it introduced distinctive mechanics using poker cards, poker chips (“Fate Chips”), and exploding dice (“Aces”) to create a cinematic, swingy feel with plenty of pulp horror as you form a posse to fight the monster of the week.
3/5 a fun mashup with evocative setting that uses cards, chips, and poker mechanics to immerse the players, I can see why it won multiple awards. Best used with more experienced players, otherwise having so many genres at once can feel clunky and cumbersome.
That said, the swingy dice mechanics can occasionally produce absurd outcomes, personally (legendary shots or catastrophic failures), personally one of my favorites but not every group enjoys it.
(Why play a game with someone who wants everything to go as they expected? but still better to mind it).
January 19, 2010
To be honest, I mostly skimmed through this book, as I'm more a fan of the Weird West than the Wasted West. That said, they build pretty well on the original setting, with a few minor tweaks for the futuristic slant, and I'm quite looking forward to playing this now.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews