Weird Frontiers RPG

Weird Frontiers is the TTRPG for groups who love Dungeon Crawl Classics and want it in a haunted Old West: zero-level posses dying in droves, cosmic horrors in the canyons, wild spell results, and gunfights decided partly by a deck of playing cards. It suits tables that enjoy lethal, gonzo old-school play, a Judge who likes big random tables, and a setting where a luchador can suplex a tentacled horror through a saloon window.

It is a weaker fit for groups that want a grounded historical Western, quick character building, or a slim rulebook. The complete game runs to 908 pages, each of its twelve classes has several pages of features, and the tone mixes Lovecraftian horror with pulp comedy rather than sustained, sober dread.

What the game is

Weird Frontiers is a standalone Weird West TTRPG by David E. Baity, published by his company Stiff Whiskers Press. Its rules are based on and compatible with Dungeon Crawl Classics from Goodman Games, and the book includes everything needed to play, so you do not need the DCC rulebook. Baity came to it from DCC adventure writing: his first module, Carnival of the Damned, was published by Purple Sorcerer Games in 2016.

The setting is an alternate America at the end of the Civil War. A cult armed with the Necronomicon tried to free the Elder Gods with a ritual called the Seven Days of Night in the Mexican desert. Texas Rangers and a modern order of Knights Templar stopped it, but not cleanly: a corrupting force called the Taint and many abominations slipped through. In response the Earth woke its ley lines, and magic returned. The player characters are frontier folk touched by that power, and every class is supernatural to some degree. The Judge (the game's name for the GM) runs a West full of Mythos creatures, monsters drawn from world folklore, and the scattered pages of the Necronomicon.

Publication history and editions

The game was crowdfunded on Kickstarter as the Dark Trails RPG, which ran from May 17 to June 16, 2019 and raised $59,172 from 882 backers against a $12,000 goal. The campaign page says Joseph Goodman gave permission to include a modified version of the DCC rules, which made it a complete third-party game rather than a supplement. Before release, Chaosium raised concerns that the name could be confused with its Call of Cthulhu Western book Down Darker Trails, and the two companies agreed on a rename to Weird Frontiers, as Geek Native reported.

Backers received the PDF in early 2021, and the 908-page PDF went on general sale on DriveThruRPG on July 24, 2021. The original Kickstarter hardcover was a single 900-page volume. Because that book was so large, Stiff Whiskers Press later split the print edition into two hardcovers: a 492-page Core Book with the rules and character creation, and a 416-page Magic Tome with the spells, contraptions, miracles and formulae. Both went up for print-on-demand on DriveThruRPG in January 2023, and Goodman Games began selling the two-book bundle in its own store in May 2024. The PDF is still sold as one book.

What you need to play

The Weird Frontiers PDF is all you need for rules. As checked on October 28, 2026, DriveThruRPG listed it at $15, down from a $30 list price. Print buyers need both hardcovers, since the Core Book alone does not hold the spells. Print stock has moved between the publisher's own store, the Goodman Games store and DriveThruRPG print-on-demand, so check the current listing before you buy.

At the table you need a full set of DCC-style dice (the "Zocchi" dice that add d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, d24 and d30 to the usual set), a standard deck of playing cards with jokers for each player who carries a gun, and optionally poker chips. Stiff Whiskers Press sells a form-fillable character sheet on a pay-what-you-want basis with a separate zero-level funnel sheet, and print character-sheet pads. The game stays compatible with DCC and Mutant Crawl Classics, so a Judge can borrow monsters, spells and adventures from those lines.

Adventures and supplements

The core book includes two ready-to-run adventures. Death Crawls West, by Peter C. Spahn and Brandon Goeringer, is a zero-level funnel about a very doomed wagon train heading west. Lost Souls Canyon, by Steve Bean, gives a new posse its next job. Later releases from Stiff Whiskers Press include Last Stop, Perdition!, funded on Kickstarter in spring 2024 by 369 backers, and a 2025 BackerKit campaign that funded an 80-plus-page Weird Frontiers Reference Guide along with the adventure Gold Fever Comes to Owl Creek by Daniel J. Bishop. The Reference Guide collects the rules and tables that Judges otherwise keep flipping through the big book to find.

Other publishers support the game too. Dragon Peak Publishing sells two double-feature adventure books: The Brimstone Cradle with The Hills That Hunger (the second works as a funnel), and Big Trouble for a Little Blood with The Sinister Secret of the Slugmen.

Digital tools and VTT support

There is no official Weird Frontiers module for a virtual tabletop. Groups on Foundry VTT usually run it with the community Dungeon Crawl Classics system, which provides rollable DCC character sheets but no Weird Frontiers content, and can add class fields with the third-party DCC RPG Character Sheet Customizer, whose own documentation uses a Weird Frontiers panel as its example. Expect to enter class abilities, spells and monsters by hand.

Core rules and play structure

The core loop is DCC's. You roll a d20 and add modifiers to meet a target number or a foe's Armor Class; a natural 20 is a critical hit and a natural 1 is a fumble, each with its own table. Characters roll six ability scores, and Luck is a resource you can burn for bonuses. Many abilities move a roll up or down the dice chain, so a strong effect might mean rolling a d24 instead of a d20.

A campaign usually begins with a funnel. Each player makes several zero-level frontier townsfolk, the group survives (or doesn't) a first horror, and the survivors pick classes. Weird Frontiers replaces DCC's birth augur and occupation tables with Western versions, and suggests a simple start: a frontier town is attacked one night, and the people who live through it wake up with strange gifts.

Characters and classes

The twelve classes are the Bedlamite (a mad inventor of contraptions), Calavera (who deals with the spirit world), Gambler, Gunslinger, Hellbilly (a moonshiner whose fey-touched liquor grants power), Luchador (with wrestling moves), Mountebank (a con artist who brews elixirs), Mystic Monk, Occultist, Revelator (who calls on miracles), Sin-Eater and Tommyknocker. The Sin-Eater and Tommyknocker are optional ways to bring back a character who died, as an agent sent to ferry souls or as a revenant with dark powers.

Each class has its own crit and fumble dice, and most features are available from first level. At first level every character also picks two signature weapons; other weapons take a penalty to attack and initiative. Characters choose a moral Path, Righteous or Damned, that some classes restrict, and earn nicknames that become a legendary title by sixth level. Supernatural abilities are paid for with temporary Personality points, which return after a night's rest.

Signature mechanics

• The gun deck: each player who shoots keeps a deck of playing cards and flips a card with every firearm attack. A face card adds a bonus to hit and damage, an ace or an eight means a fumble, and jokers count as critical hits or misses that override the dice. You reshuffle by cleaning your guns during downtime, so a long fight makes six-guns less reliable. It applies only to firearms, not melee.
• Grit: before a fight, the Judge can call for Grit checks when something terrifying appears. Characters who fail can lose their first action, so horror shows up in the initiative order.
• Madness: a dedicated system tracks characters losing their grip as they face the armies of the night.
• The Spirit World: dead characters can carry on as restless ghosts in a spectral landscape warped by the Elder Gods, giving players a second way to keep playing after Boot Hill.
• Elder God influence: a random table lets the Judge twist any monster's write-up with the influence of the Elder Gods, so even familiar creatures, including ones borrowed from other DCC books, can surprise players.

What play feels like

Sessions feel like a late-night double feature: a posse rides into a dying boomtown, the Gambler bluffs a stranger, the Bedlamite's invention misfires, and the night ends in a shootout where a joker from the gun deck turns a desperate shot into a kill. The funnel is cheerfully brutal, with players running several zero-level characters and losing most of them, and the dice chain and big crit tables keep results swingy. Reviewers describe the tone as gonzo horror more than history: EN World's reviewer compared it to a 2 AM movie you are not sure was real.

Running the game

The Judge carries the heaviest load. The book offers advice for new and experienced Judges, tables for building towns, destinations and frontier folk, and a large bestiary of Mythos creatures and monsters from Old West and Native American legend. The challenge is the size of the book: reviewers repeatedly say rules are hard to find in 900 pages, which is why the two-volume print edition and the 2025 Reference Guide exist. Prep looks like a typical DCC game: pick or write an adventure, prepare a few horrors, and lean on the random tables during play. Because players can bring back dead characters as Sin-Eaters, Tommyknockers or ghosts, decide early how often you will allow that.

Campaign fit

Weird Frontiers handles both one-shots and campaigns. A funnel such as Death Crawls West works as a self-contained convention game where nobody minds losing characters. For a campaign, the survivors pick classes and ride on into the included first-level adventure and the published modules; nicknames and titles mark their growth into legends of the frontier. The setting is open rather than built around a metaplot, so a Judge can run a traveling posse, a town under siege or a hunt for scattered Necronomicon pages.

Reception and awards

Weird Frontiers has no major award that we could verify. Its reputation comes from strong buyer ratings and reviews from DCC fans. As of October 28, 2026, the DriveThruRPG listing showed 45 ratings averaging 5.0 (44 five-star and one three-star), 17 written reviews and a platinum Best Seller badge. Rob Wieland's EN World review (December 2021) singled out the gun deck as the mechanic he would most like to steal for DCC, praised classes such as the Hellbilly and Calavera, and warned that the class options add complexity. The Gaming Gang (May 2022) praised the black-and-white horror art and the setting but found the length tedious to read. DriveThruRPG reviewers and r/dccrpg posters make similar points: the bestiary is a highlight, and the size of the book and the number of class abilities are the main complaints.

Where it is strongest

• A complete DCC-based game that brings funnels, the dice chain and wild spell results to a Weird West setting
• The gun deck, which makes firearms feel distinct from swords and gives every shot some tension
• Twelve flavorful supernatural classes, from the Hellbilly to the Luchador
• A huge bestiary plus a rule for twisting any monster with Elder God influence
• Compatibility with the DCC and Mutant Crawl Classics catalog, and continuing adventure support

Where it can frustrate groups

• At 908 pages it is hard to learn from and slow to look things up in
• Classes have many features from first level, which can overwhelm players who prefer simple builds
• The funnel and DCC's lethality can frustrate players who get attached to characters early
• Groups wanting historical accuracy or a sober Western will find it too gonzo
• There is no official VTT module, so online play takes manual setup

Content and safety notes

Expect cosmic horror, gore, madness, cannibals in some published adventures, and a backstory rooted in the end of the Civil War. The bestiary draws on Native American legends, and classes such as the Calavera and Luchador draw on Mexican culture, so talk at session zero about how your table wants to handle those sources. If your group is tired of Lovecraft, EN World's reviewer noted that the Cthulhu backstory is the least essential part of the game and can be swapped for demons or other threats.

Best starting path

Pick up the Weird Frontiers PDF on DriveThruRPG and read the character creation and Judge chapters first, along with the free form-fillable character sheet with its funnel sheet. Run Death Crawls West as a zero-level funnel with three or four characters per player, then try Lost Souls Canyon with the survivors. If you enjoy the game, add the Reference Guide for faster lookups, and the two hardcovers if you want print.

Research notes

Last checked October 28, 2026. Sources:

• Weird Frontiers official site (Stiff Whiskers Press)
• Weird Frontiers RPG on DriveThruRPG (908 pages, price, ratings and publisher FAQ)
• Weird Frontiers RPG Core Book 1 (print) on DriveThruRPG
• Weird Frontiers RPG Book 2: Magic Tome (print) on DriveThruRPG
• Goodman Games: New Weird Frontiers Core Rulebooks in the Online Store (May 2024)
• Dark Trails RPG / Weird Frontiers Kickstarter (2019)
• Geek Native: Dark Trails rebrands as Weird Frontiers
• Last Stop, Perdition! Kickstarter (2024)
• Weird Frontiers Reference Guide on BackerKit (2025)
• Dragon Peak Publishing Weird Frontiers adventures
• EN World review by Rob Wieland (December 2021)
• The Gaming Gang review (May 2022)
• Dice Adventurer: Weird Frontiers introduction (March 2021)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics system for Foundry VTT and DCC RPG Character Sheet Customizer