I've mentioned how much I'm into movies, and westerns are no exception. There are some damn good westerns out there, but it's not a genre I was deeply into as a kid. I wasn't really interested in John Wayne movies growing up, and I wasn't quite old enough for the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns. It was a genre that kind of passed me by.

Not to say I didn't enjoy a good western now and then, but the first one that stands out to me is Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer. I remember seeing it at the Varsity Theater in Lawrence, Kansas before it closed up and became a clothing store.

I was 13 when it came out, and it was 1993, a great year for blockbuster movies. Tombstone looked cool and it was the first western I remember that looked cool.  Now, I remember the Young Guns movies, but I don't think I watched those until after I saw Tombstone, though they did come before in 1988 and 1990, respectively.

Tombstone is still one of the best, most re-watchable movies out there. I have memories of watching this movie multiple days in a row with my roommate, just because we were in a Tombstone mood, and it sounded like a good thing to watch at the time.

Gaming-wise, I didn't stray into westerns too much. In video games, there was Outlaws, by LucasArts, but it didn't come out until 1997.

No, the thing that got me to track down and watch westerns was Deadlands, a setting by Shane Hensley and the fine folks at Pinnacle Entertainment first published in 1996..

I think my brother first showed the game to me, and the Brom cover was so enthralling - an undead gunslinger standing in the desert wind, two six-shooters in his hands and a glint in his undead eyes. It was mesmerizing.

It was also the first time I was introduced to alternate history settings.

In Deadlands, at least originally, history was much as it was until a bad guy named Raven, for reasons I won't get much into here, went and stirred up something called the "Reckoning" on none other than July 3, 1863 during the final day of the battle of Gettysburg. Things were much as history remembers ... except that some of those dead soldiers got back up and started fighting all over again, and that made things a bit ... different.

Deadlands was a game that advertised itself as a, "Spaghetti Western ... with Meat!" Believe it or not, that made me go out and seek these "Spaghetti Westerns" and I discovered A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and High Plains Drifter - no not, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as you might guess - all three movies starring Clint Eastwood.

They were amazing movies, with High Plains Drifter being the most atmospheric and "supernatural" as a western could get.

Now, I didn't get down to running Deadlands for a couple of years after it came out, but it really struck a chord with me, and I tried running a campaign with friends in what I want to say was 1998, my senior-year of high school. It may have been a few years after that, but I think I'm getting two different campaigns mixed together. It went okay, but there were issues here and there.

I was going through some stuff back then that didn't make it conducive to running a nuanced game like Deadlands. So the game went on the back-burner and I picked it back up a few years later and started a campaign out with my friends at the time. I did something I truly am proud of - I started all the characters off on a train with no memory of who they were.

The train went to a place called Abaddon, which was essentially purgatory, sort of. The game then went on for several years, taking a break in the middle, and revolved around a mystery heist of cursed Mayan gold and the lord of the Mayan underworld.

It was epic and one of my favorite campaigns ever.

I'm running Deadlands now, and have been for four years. It's a slow-going game and we use it to get together with friends and spend some (hopefully) fun times together.

Deadlands just released its latest edition, and it's available now. I highly recommend you pick it up.

If westerns aren't your thing, they made settings for Deadlands in different time periods to appeal to different genres - Deadlands Noir takes the setting to 1920's New Orleans, Hell on Earth takes the setting to the near post-apocalyptic future where the bad guys won, and there's Lost Colony, which takes it into the space opera genre a little bit.  They've announced a Deadlands Dark Ages, set to take place in ... well, the Dark Ages, and that'll be the first pre-Reckoning Deadlands game that they come out with.

I'm on board for it all, partner!