written by shane hensley
published by pinnacle entertainment group
224 pages
$30

The year is 2094. Thirteen years ago, the Last War began, resulting first in the destruction of New York City by a ghost-rock bomb, then cumulating in thousands of ghost-rock bombs dropping on every city and fort on Earth, each one vanishing under skull-shaped clouds. With every bomb came the enormous, black storms full of manitous, evil spirits that serve the malevolent Reckoners. Soon, most of Earth became a Deadland, and then he Reckoners came through.

The year is 2094. Welcome to Hell On Earth.

Deadlands: Hell On Earth is the Big Secret hinted to since he release of the original Deadlands RPG. Whereas the original was in the Weird West, Hell On Earth is in the Wasted West, a post' apocalyptic setting. With Hell on the Earth comes the secrets of Ghost Rock and the identity of the Reckoners are revealed - the answers may surprise you. As for the game itself, if you are familiar with the mechanics of the original RPG, You'll be able to play a Wasted West game with very little difficulty. They still have the dice, playing cards, and poker chips.

There are new archetypes for the Wasted West as well. There's the Doornsayers: Mutants' who believe that "norms" are a lost cause; Junkers: a variation of the mad scientists for the Wasted West that scavenge what they can for their strange gizmos, and power it with, some say, infernal energies; Psykers: former soldiers who are bred to harness amazing powers of the mind; and Templars: knights who protect those that are worthy, and they've got special gifts to combat the terrors of the Wasted West. Seems the blessed, hucksters, and mad scientists are in short supply in the year 2094. Of course, there are other concepts to play, like gunslingers and tale-tellers, and there are still undead in the Wasted West...

Now for the complaint department: some people may have trouble copying the character sheets in the book, as they are fairly dark. However, I didn't have any problems with them. There's no index in the back of the rulebook either. This is evened out with a fairly comprehensive table of contents, but I would have appreciated an index (especially when I needed to find something). Fortunately, these details are (hopefully) minor, nd they do not detract from the excellent work that was put into 1 On Earth.

Take a trip into the Wasted West, and don't forget your gatling pistols.

Mutants, eradicated zones, glowing green stuff, undead, holy gunslingers, psychic freaks, scavengers, secrets, and bad guys winning... whew. Talk about busy weekends.