Pinnacle Entertainment Group is a publisher of role-playing games and wargames .
18-486: Deadlands: Reloaded is a Western horror role-playing game published by Great White Games in 2005 under their Pinnacle Entertainment Group imprint. The game is a revision of the Deadlands role-playing game published nine years earlier. The original game had a custom rule set; this revision uses the cross-genre Savage Worlds game rules. Deadlands: Reloaded is an alternate history role-playing game set in 1879 in
36-524: A role-playing game set in an alternate-history U.S. of the 1870s. Deadlands features magic and horror amidst the tropes of the Old West. Later that year they would also publish Brave New World , a dystopian superhero role-playing game that used a simplified version of the Deadlands rules. A second major line was introduced in 2001 called Weird Wars and features horror elements combined with
54-485: A 19th-century miniatures game so he contacted the company Chameleon Eclectic to get the game published. As a result Fields of Honor: The American War for Independence (1994) was published in partnership with Chameleon Eclectic, which dealt with functions such as distribution, while ownership of the game stayed with a new company that founded by Hensley named Pinnacle Entertainment Group. The next year, Pinnacle and Chameleon Eclectic published their last joint production,
72-447: A 19th-century miniatures game, which they agreed to published in conjunction with Pinnacle as Fields of Honor: The American War for Independence (1994) while Pinnacle retained ownership of the game. Hensley had the idea for a new game featuring cowboys and zombies as he was creating Pinnacle, when he saw a painting by Brom of a Confederate vampire on the cover of White Wolf Publishing 's Necropolis: Atlanta ; he thus began writing
90-509: A handful of employees. Hensley joined the d20 boom, beginning a new d20-based Weird Wars campaign with Blood on the Rhine (2001). In 2003, Hensley formed the company Great White Games and moved all of the IP from Pinnacle to Great White, as well as publishing the new game Savage Worlds (2003). Hensley joined Cryptic Studios in 2004. With senior developer David "Zeb" Cook , Hensley
108-708: A historical war setting. The first entrant in the Weird Wars line is Weird War II: Blood on the Rhine and uses the d20 System under the Open Gaming License from Wizards of the Coast . A second entry, Tour of Darkness , set during the Vietnam War, was released in 2004 using the Savage Worlds system. In 2003, as Great White Games, they produced Savage Worlds , a game designed to be both
126-478: A role-playing game and a miniatures game . A highly streamlined, generic system , it is designed to provide game play in any genre. Subsequent releases for Savage Worlds are self-contained campaigns designed to minimize the preparation time of the GM and maximize the time spent running the game with players. Savage Worlds carries the tag line "Fast! Furious! Fun!" to emphasize the streamlining and quick play inherent in
144-406: A variety of games including miniatures wargames , tabletop wargames, and role-playing games , as well as substantial freelance work writing modules for game systems. He has also scripted at least one computer game. Hensley has been a Guest of Honor at a number of major conventions and has garnered several game industry honors and awards. He left Cryptic to make a Deadlands MMO in 2007, but
162-421: The 1980s. Hensley later sent West End Games an unsolicited Torg adventure that he authored, which the company published soon after as The Temple of Rec Stalek (1992). Hensley got more work published in the next few years through FASA , TSR , and West End. Hensley created the game company Pinnacle Entertainment Group in 1994. Hensley reached out to local game company Chameleon Eclectic to publish
180-510: The 2014 book Designers & Dragons , games historian Shannon Appelcine stated that "Great White Games returned to an old setting with the publication of Deadlands: Reloaded! (2005), which updated Pinnacle's top RPG to the Savage Worlds system." Deadlands Reloaded was reviewed in the online second volume of Pyramid . At the 2007 Origins Awards , Deadlands: Reloaded was awarded "Best Roleplaying Game Supplement of 2006". Great White Games Shane Lacy Hensley wanted to create
198-620: The American West that features a mixture of the spaghetti Western , horror , steampunk , and fantasy genres. In this alternate history, the American Civil War did not end in 1865, but carried on until 1878, ending in a draw after the discovery of a spirit force emanating from "ghost rock" that begat numerous incredible yet unstable inventions, as well as a proliferation of walking dead, shamans, weird beasts and other strangeness. The book includes The original Deadlands
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#1732798168708216-430: The collectible card game The Last Crusade (1995). When he completed the first draft of the game Deadlands , Hensley flew in two of his game designer friends, Greg Gorden and Matt Forbeck , who liked his design and asked if they could buy into the company; although Gordon later left the company for personal reasons, Forbeck moved to Blacksburg, Virginia to help build Pinnacle. Deadlands: The Weird West (1996)
234-414: The game that would become Deadlands . After completing a first draft, Henlsey had two friends and game designers flown in, Greg Gorden and Matt Forbeck ; both liked his draft and bought into Pinnacle, although Gorden soon left for personal reasons. Hensley did some computer game design work for SSI . Forbeck left Pinnacle a few years later, leaving Hensley again as the sole owner. An announcement
252-583: The system. In late 2005, Shane Hensley announced that Great White Games would return to using the Pinnacle Entertainment Group moniker as its brand name for subsequent releases. Shane Lacy Hensley Shane Lacy Hensley is an author , game designer, and CEO of Pinnacle Entertainment Group and is a resident of Gilbert, Arizona . Shane Lacy Hensley is from Clintwood, Virginia , and began playing Dungeons & Dragons after seeing comic-strip ads featured in comic books in
270-406: Was made on September 13, 2000 that Pinnacle had been sold to the company Cybergames.com. Cybergames used their income from acquisitions to buy other companies - causing harm to the cashflow of their individual companies and ruining their production schedules – and Hensley announced on January 12, 2001 that the acquisition of Pinnacle had been "undone" after considerable damage left Pinnacle with only
288-1318: Was published by Great White Games under their Pinnacle Entertainment Group imprint in 1996, and spawned both a GURPS version (2001), and a d20 System version (2002). In 2005, Great White Games released an updated version, Deadlands: Reloaded , published again under the company's Pinnacle Entertainment Group label. This 256-page book was written by Shane Lacy Hensley and BD Flory, with additional material by Simon Lucas, Paul Wade-Williams, Dave Blewer, and Piotr Korys, interior art by Aaron Acevedo, Travis Anderson, Chris Appel, Tom Baxa , Melissa A. Benson, Theodor Black, Peter Bradley, Brom , Heather Burton, Paul Carrick, Jim Crabtree , Thomas Denmark, Cris Dornaus, Jason Engle , Edward Fetterman, Tom Fowler, Carl Frank , Dan Frazier , Randy Gallegos, Garem, Tim Gerstmar, Simon Gustafsson, Friedrich Haas, Paul Herbert, Llyn Hunter, Simon Ible, Charles Keegan, Mike Kimble, Lissanne Lake, April Lee , William O'Connor , Paolo Parente, Allan Pollack, Mike Raabe, Ron Spencer , Richard Thomas, Pete Venters, Brian Wackwitz, James Walters, Blake Wilkie, John Worsley, Cheyenne Wright, and cartography by John Worsley. The game uses Great White Games' generic role-playing system Savage Worlds for character generation and skill and combat resolution. In
306-421: Was published soon after as the first role-playing game and first independent publication released by Pinnacle. Pinnacle Entertainment Group is owned and operated by Shane Lacy Hensley and was founded in 1994. Some time before 2003, the company was renamed Great White Games and in 2005 returned to the original name. In 1996 the company published what would be their flagship title for several years Deadlands ,
324-450: Was the senior writer on City of Villains (2005). Hensley designed the role-playing game Army of Darkness (2005) for Eden Studios . Hensley also worked with Superstition Studios on a Deadlands MMORPG that was never published. Hensley was in charge of Dust Devil Studios and got Zombie Pirates (2010) published. He later rejoined Cryptic Studios and became Executive Producer. Hensley has written several novels and designed
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