Shane Lacy Hensley

Shane Lacy Hensley was from Clintwood, Virginia, and began playing Dungeons & Dragons after he discovered the game through a series of comic-strip ads that were running in comic books in the 1980s.[1]^: 325 Hensley later sent West End Games an unsolicited Torg adventure he had written, which was soon published as The Temple of Rec Stalek (1992).[1]^: 325 Hensley did more work for FASA, TSR, and West End over the next few years.[1]^: 325

Hensley created the game company Pinnacle Entertainment Group in 1994.[1]^: 325 Hensley wanted to create a 19th-century miniatures game and contacted local company Chameleon Eclectic about publishing it, which resulted in Fields of Honor: The American War for Independence (1994); ownership of the game remained with Pinnacle, but it was published in conjunction with Chameleon Eclectic.[1]^: 325 Hensley had the idea for a new game centering on cowboys and zombies as he was setting Pinnacle up, when he saw the Brom painting of a Confederate vampire on the cover of White Wolf's then-unreleased Necropolis: Atlanta; he thus began writing what would eventually become Deadlands. After completing a first draft, Henlsey flew in two friends and game designers, Greg Gorden and Matt Forbeck; both liked what they saw and asked to buy into Pinnacle, although Gorden soon left for personal reasons.[1]^: 325 Hensley did some computer game design work for SSI.[2] Forbeck left Pinnacle a few years later, leaving Hensley as the sole owner.[1]^: 326

On September 13, 2000, it was announced that Pinnacle had been sold to a company called Cybergames.com.[1]^{: 326–327} Cybergames used acquisitions' income to buy other companies – harming the individual companies' cashflow and ruining production schedules – and Hensley announced on January 12, 2001 that the acquisition had been "undone", but not before considerable damage had been done to Pinnacle, leaving it with just a few employees.[1]^: 327 Hensley became part of the new d20 boom, kicking off a new d20-based Weird Wars campaign with Blood on the Rhine (2001).[1]^: 327 In 2003, Hensley formed a new company, Great White Games and transferred all of Pinnacle's IP to it, as well as publishing the new game Savage Worlds (2003).[1]^: 327 Hensley joined Cryptic Studios in 2004.[1]^: 328 With senior developer David "Zeb" Cook, Hensley was the senior writer on City of Villains (2005).[1]^: 153 Hensley designed the role-playing game Army of Darkness (2005) for Eden Studios.[1]^: 342

Hensley also worked with Superstition Studios, which was working on a Deadlands MMORPG that never appeared.[1]^: 326 Hensley headed Dust Devil Studios where he brought Zombie Pirates (2010) to market.[1]^: 326 He later returned to Cryptic Studios and became Executive Producer.[1]^: 326

Hensley has written several novels and designed a variety of games including miniatures wargames, tabletop wargames, and role-playing games, as well as substantial freelance work writing modules for game systems. He has also scripted at least one computer game. Hensley has been a Guest of Honor at a number of major conventions and has garnered several game industry honors and awards.[3]

He left Cryptic to make a Deadlands MMO in 2007, but the parent company went bankrupt. Hensley briefly returned to Cryptic in 2010 as Executive Producer on Neverwinter, then on to Petroglyph Games to work on the End of Nations MMORTS (published by Trion Worlds).

• Profile on Pinnacle Entertainment homepage
• "Interview at GamersInfo.net". Archived from the original on February 4, 2013.
• Publications at Amazon.com
• "Shane Lacy Hensley :: Pen & Paper RPG Database". Archived from the original on 2006-12-09.