Pinnacle Entertainment Group is a publisher of

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal ac ...

s and

wargames ''WarGames'' is a 1983 American science fiction techno-thriller film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film, which stars Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, and Ally Sheedy, follow ...

History

When

Shane Lacy Hensley Shane Lacy Hensley is an author, game designer, and CEO of Pinnacle Entertainment Group and is a resident of Gilbert, Arizona. Career Shane Lacy Hensley was from Clintwood, Virginia, and began playing ''Dungeons & Dragons'' after he discovered t ...

decided to create a 19th-century miniatures game he contacted Charles Ryan's company Chameleon Eclectic about publishing it. The result was '' Fields of Honor: The American War for Independence'' (1994), published in conjunction with Chameleon Eclectic, who dealt with distribution and other things that Hensley was not ready for, but ownership of the game remained with a new company that Hensley had created called Pinnacle Entertainment Group. The next year, Pinnacle and Chameleon Eclectic published '' The Last Crusade'' (1995), John Hopler's World War II CCG, the last product produced jointly between the two companies. When he completed the first draft of the game ''

Deadlands ''Deadlands'' is a genre-mixing alternate history role-playing game which combines the Western and horror genres, with some steampunk elements. The original game was written by Shane Lacy Hensley and published by Pinnacle Entertainment Grou ...

'', Hensley flew in two friends and game designers,

Greg Gorden Greg Gorden is an American game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games. Career Greg Gorden has worked for several gaming companies: * For Victory Games he participated, during the early 1980s, in the design of the ''James Bond ...

and

Matt Forbeck Matt Forbeck (born August 4, 1968) is an American author and game designer from Beloit, Wisconsin. Biography Forbeck first became interested in role-playing games at age 13 when he started playing ''Dungeons & Dragons''. He earned a degree in crea ...

, who liked what they saw and asked to buy into the company; although Gordon later had to leave for personal reasons, Forbeck moved to

Blacksburg, Virginia Blacksburg is an incorporated town in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States, with a population of 44,826 at the 2020 census. Blacksburg, as well as the surrounding county, is dominated economically and demographically by the presence of ...

to help Pinnacle get going. ''Deadlands: The Weird West'' (1996) was shortly thereafter published as Pinnacle's first RPG and its first independent publication.

Description

Pinnacle Entertainment Group is owned and operated by

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 ''

'',HENSLEY Shane Lacy, ''Deadlands: The Weird West Roleplaying Game'', Pinnacle Entertainment Group, August 1996, 224 p. soft cov., {{ISBN, 1-889546-00-3 a

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 ''Brave New World'' is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hiera ...

'', a

dystopian A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...

superhero role-playing game that used a simplified version of the ''Deadlands'' rules. A second major line was introduced in 2001 called ''

Weird Wars ''Weird Wars'' is a series of horror role-playing games set during past and future wars and published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. The original release, ''Weird War II: Blood on the Rhine'' was set during World War II, and utilized the D20 S ...

'' and features horror elements combined with 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 The Open Game License (OGL) is a public copyright license by Wizards of the Coast that may be used by tabletop role-playing game developers to grant permission to modify, copy, and redistribute some of the content designed for their games, not ...

from

Wizards of the Coast Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. It is currently a subsidia ...

. 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 ''Savage Worlds'' is a role-playing game written by Shane Lacy Hensley and published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. The game emphasizes speed of play and reduced preparation over realism or detail. The game received the 2003 Origin Gamers' Choi ...

'', a game designed to be both a role-playing game and a

miniatures game Miniatures games are a form of tabletop game which prominently features the use of miniature models or figures. War games One of the oldest and most popular miniatures game genres is that of war games, where figures are arranged into competing ...

. 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 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.

References

External links

Pinnacle Entertainment Group homepage

DriveThruRPG
Companies established in 1994 Role-playing game publishing companies