#Weird west adventures series

It’s a welcome and refreshing reset and, to help support it, the new edition lays out a pleasing number of locations both big and small.

The larger, quite literally world-ending adventures are great and all, but to me the true beating heart of Deadlands is in the sordid mystery rocking a backwater hamlet, the fightin’ words exchanged in a small-town saloon or the unspeakable beastie waiting in the corn to devour an unsuspecting cowpoke.ĭeadlands' Weird West combines gunslingers with supernatural goings-on.

#Weird west adventures series

What this means in practical terms is that Deadlands: The Weird West has a more granular focus on storytelling, which is where the series has always been at its best. The Weird West has a more granular focus on storytelling, which is where the series has always been at its best. Indeed, the upcoming tabletop RPG’s tagline appears to have changed from “There’s hell on the high plains” to “There’s horror on the high plains” which, given the infernal nature of so much of the game’s lore, is delightfully quaint. Their chosen champions, a bunch of ne’er do wells called The Servitors, have been defeated, so they’ve gone back to square one: spreading their terrifying, corrupting influence through the small, unsuspecting towns of America as a prelude to bigger things. In Deadlands: Reloaded, they were pretty close to pulling it off but now they’re on the backfoot. As has always been the case in Deadlands, the Reckoners, a collection of evil spirits trapped in another dimension called the Hunting Grounds, are trying their best to turn Earth into a nightmare-fuelled hellscape - a dead land, if you will - so that they can cross over and live there permanently. At the same time, it provides a perfect starting point for new players. Weird West definitely iterates on Deadlands, rather than completely reinventing it, but there’s still plenty for series fans to be excited about. The first new edition in 15 years, Deadlands: The Weird West, is currently on Kickstarter and, thanks to a preview copy I’ve been poring over for a few days now, I can confidently say it’s shaping up to be a pretty special chapter in the roleplaying game’s storied history. It was the first one I ever played and for that reason it’ll always have a place in my heart, but even so there’s something about the atmosphere of Shane Lacey Hensey’s Weird West that keeps pulling me back, time and time again. Deadlands: Reloaded is my favourite tabletop RPG.