Deadlands

Deadlands

Deadlands 1st edition cover, featuring cover art by Gerald Brom.
Designer(s)	Shane Lacy Hensley
Publisher(s)	Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Publication date	1996 (1st edition) 1999 (2nd edition) 2006 (Deadlands: Reloaded)
Genre(s)	Alternate history, Western, Horror, Steampunk, Fantasy
System(s)	Other, d20 System, GURPS, Savage Worlds

Deadlands is a genre-mixing alternate history roleplaying game which combines the Western and horror genres, with some steampunk elements. It was written by Shane Lacy Hensley and published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group.

The eight-times Origins Award-winning setting has been converted to many other systems over the years and is available in the original Classic Rules, the revised Classic Rules, d20 System, GURPS, as well as a Savage Worlds version called Deadlands: Reloaded.

Shane Lacy Hensley had the idea for a new game centering on cowboys and zombies as he was setting up Pinnacle Entertainment Group, when he saw the Brom painting of a Confederate vampire on the cover of White Wolf's then-unreleased Necropolis: Atlanta; he thus began writing what would eventually become Deadlands. After completing a first draft, Henlsey flew in two friends and game designers, Greg Gorden and Matt Forbeck; they both liked what they saw and asked to buy into Pinnacle.

The game is set in the United States in the last quarter of the 19th century. The canonical year for the first edition of Deadlands is 1876. A later supplement, Tales o' Terror, advances the game's backstory and metaplot ahead one year, to 1877. The second edition of Deadlands uses the updated backstory of 1877 as the canonical starting point. Deadlands: Reloaded further updates the backstory and advances the canonical starting point to 1879.