Deadlands: Hell on Earth
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| Deadlands: Hell on Earth | |
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 Deadlands: Hell on Earth cover |
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| Designer(s) | Shane Lacy Hensley |
| Publisher(s) | Pinnacle Entertainment Group |
| Publication date | 1998 |
| Genre(s) | Alternate history, post-apocalyptic, horror, Western, magitech |
| System | Custom |
Deadlands: Hell on Earth is a genre-mixing alternate history roleplaying game which combines the post-apocalyptic and horror genres. Western tropes and magitech elements are also prominent. It was written by Shane Lacy Hensley and originally published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. As part of the original marketing campaign in August 1998, the game had a green leatherbound hardcover edition run, limited to about 750 copies.
As the name implies, Deadlands: Hell on Earth is set in the same universe as the original Deadlands roleplaying game. Specifically, it is set in a post-apocalyptic future of the original "Weird West" setting of Deadlands, also known as the "Wasted West."
Through a series of machinations, the Reckoners from the original Deadlands setting contrive to spark a nuclear war between the United States and the still-existent Confederate States, in which the weapons are not only powered by nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, but are also powered by a supernatural element known as "Ghost Rock." The combination of multi-megaton explosives, radiation, and supernatural devastation serves to turn large portions of the United States into hellish wastelands filled with radiation and deadly supernatural monsters.
The formation of these large "deadlands" allows the Reckoners to enter the realm of Earth, where they are revealed to be the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They ravage across the globe, destroying civilization and turning most of the Earth into a wasted landscape of nightmares and death. Then they mysteriously vanish.
Thirteen years have passed since the Reckoners appeared, and civilization is once more attempting to assert itself in small, isolated pockets. Players take on the roles of characters struggling to survive the nightmarish wasteland that the Reckoners left behind. A variety of mundane and arcane archetypes are available, including Sykers (characters with deadly psychic powers), Doomsayers (magical priests of radiation), Templars (members of a martial organization patterned after the Knights Templar), Junkers (humans with the supernatural ability to create working devices from the scavenged debris of pre-apocalypse civilization), and even just plain-old everyday humans, surviving by their wits and their guns.
