History TabletopGame / Deadlands

* Deadlands: The Weird West Roleplaying Game (Classic, D20, Savage Worlds)

* Deadlands: Hell on Earth (Classic & D20)

* Deadlands: Doomtown (CCG)
** Doomtown: Reloaded (CCG)

* ''TabletopGame/DeadlandsTheWeirdWest'' (Adventure Edition)

[[folder:Tropes Found in Deadlands (Classic) to Deadlands (Reloaded)]]

[[folder:Tropes Found in Hell on Earth]]
* AfterTheEnd: Ghost-rock enhanced nukes dropped on virtually every major city.
* BigBoosHaunt: The Eastern Seaboard.
* EvilDetectingDog: During the war, dogs were used to identify infiltrator cyborgs.
* GasolineLastsForever: Averted. There are survivor settlements located at the few oil fields not hit during the war. These settlements produce crude oil and refine gasoline and diesel that they export across the Wasted West. This makes them major economic powers, and their convoys are often targets for the warlords and bandits that haunt the highways.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: Hellstromme]]. Witches have also switched sides.
* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: Because it's actually the Hunting Grounds. And the [[MagiTek technology]] needed to travel through it is equally scary. The grand finale adventure for ''Hell on Earth'' culminates with the player characters hitching a ride on the totally-not-[[Film/EventHorizon Event Horizon]] with the trapped Reckoners in tow. It's not pretty.
* MotorcycleJousting: The Omega Knights are a group based in Junkyard. They ride motorcycles and battle other biker gangs with lances.
* PirateGirl: The leader of the River Rats - a gang of RuthlessModernPirates who prey on survivor settlements on the Mississippi - is a woman named Elvira.
* PossessionBurnout: Inverted, the cyborgs are actually reanimated corpses that consume the soul of the possessing demon.
* PracticalCurrency: Although the game itself uses dollar values for convenience, the rulebook mentions that most places operate on a barter system and any spare 'cash' the characters have is usually in the form of easily transportable luxury items. Also, bullets are hard currency pretty much everywhere, due to consistently high demand and low or non-existent production.
* ProHumanTranshuman: Doomsayers, wizards who worship the power of the Atom, tend to view the mutation caused by the war as a good thing. Player Doomsayers are the ones who think this means being the next evolution ComesGreatResponsibility.
* PsychoSerum: Red Rum, a rare accidental example. A seemingly innocent hooch that [[spoiler:turns you into a hulking brute]].
* RuthlessModernPirates: The River Rats are band of ruthless river pirates who prey on survivor settlements on the western banks of the Mississippi.
* ScavengerWorld: It's pretty much assumed that you'll be doing this all the time.
* SkyPirate: Sky pirates are one of the hazards.
** These particular sky pirates are decent folks. They enjoy a little raiding, but they help the war effort when Throckmorton attacks.
* SoulCuttingBlade: Junkers can create Spirit Weapons, which target the soul directly. Notably, you can build this function into any weapon, so a sufficiently well-supplied Junker can create [[MacrossMissileMassacre anti-soul missiles]]!
* SuperSoldier: Sykers (also appear in ''Lost Colony'' and the ''Noir Companion'')
* StableTimeLoop: On July 3, 2063 - the day Darius Hellstromme revealed the [[FantasticNuke Ghost Rock Missile]] to the world - the manitous stopped inspiring mad scientists, as the G-Bomb was assured to turn the entire world into a Deadland. When some of the smarter mad scientists got together and tried to ''make'' them cough up more technology, it was discovered that the manitous had been GivingRadioToTheRomans the whole time by stealing inventions from the future. And since they stopped sending them back, there was no more to steal. {{Deconstructed}} in that the past two centuries of technological civilization have been an utter waste as a result; it has reached a dead end and ''no new tech can be invented with ghost rock!''
* StealthPun: The definitive spellbook for the Witches is entitled ''"Serving Your Fellow Man"''. [[ImAHumanitarian Think about it.]]
** ''[[Series/TheTwilightZone1959 It's a cookbook!]]''
* TheBadGuyWins: The setting resulted from this due to [[spoiler: TimeTravel]].
* UnholyNuke: Actual demonic MagiTek nukes that [[AfterTheEnd destroy the world]].
* WeirdCurrency: Any "cash" is in fact small tradeable items of no particular use to the PC. There are places with more regular currencies (Junkyard prints paper money, backed by scavenged pre-war artifacts) but barter is far more common. Bullets are the closest thing to a universal currency due to limited supply, low production and high demand.
* WretchedHive: Junkyard.
* ZombieApocalypse: [[spoiler: The adventure ''Unity'', when Raven finally crosses the Mississippi River and invades the west.]]
[[/folder]]

* NewOldWest

* ''TabletopGame/DeadlandsTheWeirdWest''

In April 2020, Pinnacle hosted a crowdfunding campaign for a version of ''Deadlands'' updated for ''Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition'', which hit its funding goal within the first day of the campaign. [[TabletopGame/DeadlandsTheWeirdWest It was released in 2021 with a dramatic set of alterations.]]

Originally released in the 1990s by [[http://www.peginc.com Pinnacle Entertainment Group]], ''Deadlands: The Weird West'' was the first setting in what would become a trilogy. The brainchild of Shane Lacy Hensley, ''Deadlands'' was, at the time, praised as a breath of fresh air amidst the various ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' and ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' clones and derivative works. The rules were very detailed (to the point of being cumbersome, at times), and the setting was more so (to the point of being awesome, most generally). Since then, Pinnacle (and its affiliate, Great White Games) has begun re-releasing the settings with the much lighter (but less detailed) ''TabletopGame/SavageWorlds'' rules system. This began in 2006 with ''Deadlands: Reloaded.''

In April 2020, Pinnacle hosted a crowdfunding campaign for a version of ''Deadlands'' updated for ''Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition'', which hit its funding goal within the first day of the campaign. [[DeadlandsTheWeirdWest It was released in 2021 with a dramatic set of alterations.]]

* ''[[TabletopGame/DeadlandsTheWeirdWest Deadlands: The Weird West]]''

* ''TabletopGame/DeadlandsTheWeirdWest''

* Deadlands: The Weird West (Classic, D20, Savage Worlds)

In April 2020, Pinnacle hosted a crowdfunding campaign for a version of ''Deadlands'' updated for ''Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition'', which hit its funding goal within the first day of the campaign. ''Deadlands: The Weird West'' was released in 2021 with a dramatic set of alterations.

* Deadlands: The Weird West (Classic & D20)

In April 2020, Pinnacle hosted a crowdfunding campaign for a version of ''Deadlands'' updated for ''Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition'', which hit its funding goal within the first day of the campaign.

[[folder:Tropes Found in Deadlands]]

** This doesn't stop ''Classic'' characters from taking multiple Arcane Backgrounds, though. It's just very expensive. (''Reloaded'' characters aren't permitted to do this).

** Any huckster knowingly deals with evil spirits to do "magic". Mad scientists also deal with those same spirits, but not knowingly.

* MadScientist: Each setting has its own "techno-mage", but in ''The Weird West'', Mad Scientists are a ''type'' of player character!

** ''Lost Colony'': Dual-statted in ''Classic'' and ''D20'', with an upcoming version for ''Savage Worlds''.

The material for ''Deadlands: The Weird West'' is extensive, covering approximately 30 or so full-length sourcebooks. GM's — "Marshals", in game parlance — were widely encouraged to research actual history and folklore to color in the details of their campaign world. Don't think the game's authors were slouches, though. July 3, 1863 was the date of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War. The interference of these new malevolent forces turned that battle to the favor of the Confederacy (note: in late 2019, they announced a retcon where the CSA has fallen during the battle of Washington DC. Nothing else is known right now.), and perpetuated the war for about 15 years. The setting is filled with historical {{Shout Out}}s.

* SupernaturalMartialArts: Special training that can allow a character to become an Enlightened Martial Artist, which basically lets you tap into your chi to power various techniques, allowing you to pull off {{Wuxia}} style manuevers and even KiAttacks.

* TheRemake: The original ''Classic'' systems were re-adapted for the TabletopGame/SavageWorlds system and given an advancement of the metaplot.
** ''Deadlands Reloaded'' takes place ca. 18 months after the end of ''Classic'' with the Civil War coming to an end.
** ''Hell on Earth Reloaded'' occurs after the events of ''The Unity'', which kicked off ''Lost Colony'' and [[spoiler: took the Reckoners with them]].
** ''Lost Colony Reloaded'' in the works.

* WesternCharacters: Both in {{canon}} and as creations of the Marshal.

* EarthThatWas: So far as any humans know. They have no hope of ever getting back to Earth. Even if they wanted to leave Faraway to its native population they couldn't. So many humans in such a hopeless situation is the driving emotion of the setting.

* Nanomachines: Transmuters (or 'Mutes as people call them) have cybernetic enhancements that allow them to control tiny robots that allow them to build generally anything they can think of. [[spoiler: The Nanites are possessed by manitous and have a habit of... upgrading... their wielders.]]