Interview: Shane Lacy Hensley

Gaming Outpost's Graveyard Greg asked Shane Lacy Hensley, creator of Deadlands: The Weird West, how he came up with the Weird West RPG. Here's his reply: The deal is, I was at GenCon doing the freelancing thing. I had just completed work on Thunderscape for SSI and was working on some new TSR projects. One of the many cool things I saw at GenCon was a picture of an undead Confederate by Brom (it became the cover to Vampire's Necropolis Atlanta). That image stuck with me during the long 14 hour drive home through the night. I frequently have neat ideas during this long trip after being surrounded by so much creativity at GC, but this one just wouldn't die (literally!). A few months later, I kit-bashed a system and ran a "historical" Civil War game. Or so my friends thought. At the end of the second session, I had them all caught and hung. They awoke in 1876 in the desert, in what eventually became the adventure from Book o' the Dead. Everybody loved the game and Charles Ryan of Chameleon Eclectic wanted me to publish it through him as I had Fields of Honor and the Last Crusade. I knew this would be a full-time gig if I did, though, and set about the arduous task of making Pinnacle a full-time company. I then flew Greg Gorden and Matt Forbeck down to help me put things together, and they decided they wanted to be part of the company as well. Greg was having personal problems at the time and bowed out, but came up with several key concepts before leaving (Fate Chips were one of Greg's insights). He also hooked me up with Allan Nunis, who did a quick comic book page showing a gambler throwing cards as he cast spells. That became the huckster. As for the system, I had the idea that I wanted the Trait to tell you what type of die to roll, and the skill would tell you how many. It just went from there. The cards were used for initiative because we wanted a system that let most characters act once or twice in a round, but a gunslinger could get off several shots. But how do you do that without the gunslinger going first and killing everyone first? Our system lets you break down a combat into tiny fragments of time and simulates the fast action of a Spaghetti Western without making everyone else sit around and watch the gunslingers all night. Fate Chips: I wanted a tangible reward for roleplaying and solving the adventure. Greg Gorden figured out how to make it work. From there it was a trip to GAMA in Atlantic City, and then the debut of Deadlands at GenCon '96. Shane Lacy Hensley started freelancing for West End Games, TSR, White Wolf, FASA, SSI, and every other major game company in the industry in 1992. He's written 3 novels, over 50 game products, several card games, scripted two computer games, and of course, created the hit Deadlands. He's a long-time resident of Blacksburg, VA, with his wife Michelle, and their incredible son, Caden Lacy.