Welcome to the Deadlands Armory!

A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
—Frederick Douglass

Here you will find all manner of nineteenth-century firearms, with descriptions, background histories, and gaming statistics. Although this section was written for the Deadlands role-playing game, with a little tweaking, it can serve for any number of historical role-playing games, from Call of Cthulhu to Space 1889.

Deadlands Firearm Innovations

Introduction & Rules
An overview of firearms used in Deadlands 1876, with explanation of terms, damage tables, and several minor rule changes.

Deadlands Innovations
This section details a few Deadlands innovations to the world of firearms, such as ghost-steel alloys, Loveless-Howell blue powder, Tartarus rounds, Mondschein rounds, and the “Nashville” rifling technique.

Fictional Guns
Because Deadlands 1876 is a game of alternate history, a few decidedly non-historical guns have made their way into the Armory. Although each one of these firearms is detailed in the appropriate section below, this page collects all of my fictional firearms in one place for easy reference.

Long Arms: Muskets & Rifles

Muzzle-Loading Rifles
This section details muzzle-loading muskets and rifles. For players unfamiliar with nineteenth-century firearm terminology, background is provided for understanding flintlocks, caplocks,  percussion caps, rifling, and Minié balls. The Armory itself features nearly a dozen muzzle-loaders, including the Charleville and Brown Bess smoothbore muskets, the Nock Volley Gun, the Kentucky rifle, the Baker Rifle, the Hawken rifle, the Brunswick rifle, the Model 1841 “Mississippi” rifle, the Pattern 53 Enfield, the Lorenz rifle, the Whitworth sniper rifle, the Remington “Zouave,” and several models of Springfield and their Confederate knock-offs.

Breech-Loading Rifles
The largest section of the Armory explores single-shot breech-loading muskets and rifles, metal cartridges, and “Creedmoor” and “Schuetzen” events. The Armory itself profiles the break-action flintlock, the Revolutionary-period Ferguson rifle, the Model 1819 Hall rifle, several “Trapdoor” Springfields, the Snider-Enfield, the Werndl, the Martini-Henry, and a dozen-odd Civil War carbines. Sporting rifles from Frank Wesson, Marlin-Ballard, Ethan Allen, Westley Richards, and Gibbs-Farquharson are profiled, and Sharps rifles and Remington “rolling block” rifles are detailed extensively. It also introduces the fictional “Nauvoo Springfield” from the New Canaan Armory, the Pattern 1867 “Dixie” from New Macon Armory, and the Remington Model 1874 “Gotham” carbine.

Revolving Rifles
This section offers a brief history of movable magazines, focusing on the Colt and Rollin White patents. The Armory itself profiles dozens of revolving rifles, turret guns, chain guns, and harmonica guns; from the Collier revolving flintlock to the Smith & Wesson 320. Highlights include Jonathan Browning’s Harmonica Rifle, the Colt Model 1855 Revolving Rifle, the LeMat carbine, the Treeby chain gun, and the Porter turret rifle. A few fictional firearms are detailed as well, including the Marsh Spring-Wound “Communard Crossbow,” the Vacherie LeMat, the New Macon Pattern 1874 “Manassas” Rifle, the Mershon & Hollingsworth Automatic “Caliban” Carbine, and the fearsome Locke & Becker “Tartarus Gun.”

Lever-Action Repeaters
A history of the lever-action repeater told in a dozen guns, including Kalthoff and Cookson repeaters, Walter Hunt’s “Volition” rifle, the Jennings rifle, the Smith-Jennings repeater, the Volcanic repeater, the Henry rifle, the Spencer repeater, the Triplett & Scott, the Winchester “Yellow Boy,” the Winchester 1873, the Evans repeater, and the Winchester Centennial. Also includes the fictional Vision 1871 Nauvoo “Hammer” and Palmetto Armory’s Winchester copies, the “Golden Boy” and the “White Ghost.”

Bolt-Action Rifles
This section outlines the history of early bolt-action rifles, and details Dreyse’s Prussian Needle Rifle, the Greene Breechloading Rifle, the Calisher & Terry carbine, the Palmer carbine, the Chassepot 1866, the Vetterli Repetiergewehr, the Springfield Ward-Burton, the Gewehr 71, the Früwirth Carbine, and the Fusil Gras modèle 1874. It also profiles three fictional firearms: the Vision 75 Nauvoo Prophet, the Lee-Whitworth “Engine Rifle,” and the Fusil Vieille modèle 1878.

Handguns: Pistols & Revolvers

Muzzle-Loading Pistols
This section details muzzle-loading flintlocks and caplocks, including dragoon pistols, dueling pistols, Highland pistols, sword pistols, double-barreled pistols, underhammer “bootleg” pistols, and volley guns such as the “duckfoot” pistol.

Breech-Loading Pistols
This section details single-shot breech-loaded pistols and “pocket rifles,” including the Queen Anne flintlock, the Sharps, the Marston, the Perry, the Rollin White, the Frank Wesson tip-up, the Westley Richards “monkey-tail,” the Remington Rolling Block, the Stevens“Bicycle Rifle,” and the rare Winchester pistol. It also profiles the fictional Locke & Valentine “Hesselius” and LeMat’s “Vacherie” Single-Shot Pistol.

Pepperbox Pistols
This section details the pepperbox pistol, the forefather of the revolver. [TBD]

Revolvers
From the Colt Paterson to the fictional New Macon “Salkehatchie,” this section details the Wild West’s most iconic weapon: the revolver.  [TBD]

Derringers
For discerning gamblers, well-dressed ladies of the night, and cowardly assassins: a host of derringers and muff pistols.  [TBD]

Magazine Pistols
This section details pistols featuring internal magazines, from the Volcanic repeater to the fictional Pluto & Locke Repeating Pistol. [TBD]

Shotguns

Shotguns & Scatterguns
From sixteenth-century fowling pieces to the Roper Revolving shotgun, from backwoods sawed-offs to shotgun/rifle “drilling guns,” this section offers a world of buckshot. [TBD]

Artillery

Introduction & Rules
An overview of artillery used in Deadlands 1876, with explanation of terms and several minor rule changes. [TBD]

Artillery
Bring out the big guns! From Parrot rifles to Gatling Guns, this section details the heavy weapons you want to be on the “right” side of when the shooting starts. [TBD]

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
—Lyndon B. Johnson