deadEarth – We eat lightning and piss napalm.
I have an obsession with this most horrible of RPGs, a complete Turducken of Stupid, the most realistic post-apocalyptic RPG in the world!!!1One!!
The horror. deadEarth was one hell of a strange post apocalyptic RPG. For a few weeks I found myself completely obsessed over the game – a process begun because I tried to make a sample character for it – but the sample character died during character creation. Then the second character died. And the third, while he didn’t die, was rendered basically useless. In the end I rolled up 5 characters for the game, dug up a pile of old products for it, and even wrote a “Top 5″ list for it. All of this is available below:
- Top 5 Reasons you should be playing deadEarth!
- Character 1: Rikki the dead beautiful eunuch butler
- Character 2: Headless Fred, the sneaky surrender-monkey
- Character 3: Last Chance Jones
- Character 4: Ian Jackson – The crotch-fungus GOD of deadEarth
- Character 5: Stumpy McStump – Fastest businessmidget on deadEarth
Yes, deadEarth is possibly one of the worst RPGs ever. But don’t take my word for it. You should try it out yourself and see what I’m talking about.
“But Dyson” I hear the cries, “the game is long out of print and even the website is gone now, how will I try out the most realistic and flexible post-apocalyptic RPG of all time for myself?“
Before shutting down deadEarth, the publisher made the magnanimous gesture of making the game free and freely republishable on a non-commercial basis, and I’ve added new material too!
The Player’s Handbook
- deadEarth PHB – Illustrated 2nd Edition – Everything you never wanted to play the game
- deadEarth PHB – Non-Illustrated 2nd Edition – Same book, smaller size
- 1st Edition Firearms Chart – Because the chart in the 2nd edition book is missing a crucial column (damage? who needs damage?)
- 1st Edition Covers – The front and back covers from the 1e book, missing from the 2nd edition
- 1st Edition Chart C1 – the chart you need to determine your character’s weight based on his height, also missing from the 2nd edition.
Additional Official Documents
- deadEarth Game Master’s Handbook – creatures, new radiation manipulations, rules for skill training & skill specializations and more
- deadEarth Radiation Table Supplement 1 – 100 more Radiation Manipulations
- deadEarth Radiation Table Supplement 2 – 100 more Radiation Manipulations
- deadEarth Wilderness Encounters – basically a big Wandering Monster table
- deadEarth Equipment Supplement – toys
- deadEarth Character Sheet – the only place where the hit points are actually shown
Unofficial Additional Documents
- deadEarth Unauthorized – Expanded Height & Weight Tables – for exceptionally tall or short or big-as-all-hell characters
- deadEarth Unauthorized – Book 1 – Radiation Manipulation Tables – rebuilds the radiation manipulation tables so characters won’t explode during chargen
- deadEarth Skill Prerequisite Table – vital for chargen
- ATTITUDES 1.1 – 200 new Radiation Manipulations
- Character Creation Helper Spreadsheet – a nice tool to help you create a character, provided by GreyICE.
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
For some reason ”figure C1” is not showing up for me in either of the versions of the players handbook… How am I supposed to roll up characters if I can’t figure out how much they weigh?
Someone graciously included it in the Character Creation Helper Spreadsheet in the links above, but here it is:
Result Weight (multiple of height in inches)
5-6 Weight = Height
7-17 Weight = Height x 2
18-24 Weight = Height x 3
25-28 Weight = Height x 4
29-30 Weight = Height x5
Know that I’ll be rolling a character in my blog for spanish speaking dudes who know nothing of the horror that is deadEarth, thanks for the inspiration 😉
thankyou for posting these, my frieny Tony did all the artwork. He died a long time ago, but the last time I saw him he was thrilled about his artwork being published..
i havr been looking for a copy for a very long time now so i could see it for myself, thanks for the trip down memory lane with Tony.
RIP Squidhead, didn’t know him well but we chatted a few times
FYI, the illustrated version of the 2E Players Guide has been removed from Scribd due to copyright violations. After reading yours, I have a perverse need to roll up some deadEarth characters.
weird, it is released under the GNU license…
Bummer. Most of the Scribd links are dead and the ones that do work take you to the “Korean Dictionary”. Which is and of itself a bit apocalyptic, I guess.