I’ve wanted to run a post-apocalyptic game almost since I got into GMing. My first love with gaming are supers games, so my very first game was, of course, a Mutants & Masterminds super powered extravaganza. While I’ve never actually started a post-apocalyptic game, they’ve always been a close second on my mental list of games I want to run. There’s just something about stories of resilient, desperate people trying to survive and thrive in the skeletal remains of our modern society. Suddenly familiar places like a college campus or a downtown shopping district take on a whole new meaning.
So what’s stopping me from running one? Well, besides all the multitude of other games my group is currently rotating through, it boils down to a bit of analysis paralysis. What kind of post-apocalyptic game do I want to run? The genre is broad and deep with numerous variations that could all make for a great game.
I really do highly recommend it. It’s high octane from start to finish.
Do I go full-on Mad Max with roaring vehicles racing across the ruined landscape while they fight over precious resources?
It’s an iconic setting of the genre and an exciting one at that. Most players would get the setting without too much explanation, but whatever system I use has to be able to handle the vehicle combat in conjunction with my narrative style. I don’t do hardcore crunch particularly well. There’s also the lone-wolf problem with converting the series to an RPG. While Max himself is okay as a loner that comes and goes like the harsh, radioactive wind, that doesn’t really fly in a tabletop RPG. The game pretty much needs a degree of cooperation between the characters to work. Of course, there is something special to be said for getting away with designing a vehicle around amps and a flame throwing guitar.
Do I chuck technology out the window and create a world thrown into dark ages chaos like the one in the Emberverse series?
This is the one I keep coming back to and flirting with. I absolutely loved SM Stirling’s books (staring with Dies the Fire) and how they showed the collapse of our technologically dependent society and its rebirth in the wake of the strong people that stepped forward to save who they could and rebuild society each in their own way. The television series ‘Revolution’ had a similar taste even if it didn’t quite go exactly the same route. The question always come back to why, though. Why does technology stop working? Does the game revolve around bringing it back or is it just a hand-waved feature of the campaign? When you’ve got smart players, it’s very important to make sure you’ve done your world building properly to prevent the game from collapsing in on itself the first time a player starts poking it with a pin.
Do I push it into the future where the players have all grown up in a broken society that only partially remembers the past, much like Logan’s Run?
Dystopic might be a better term for these games, but there is definitely some overlap. Even the Hunger Games features a hint or two about the world that was. There is something to be said for exploring the crumbling remains of the world we inhabit every day with characters that have no clue what they’re experiencing. The problem, though, is that it’s actually very difficult for players to completely divorce their own knowledge from that of their characters. I’ve played games before where the GM would practically do contortions to describe perfectly mundane objects, like wall-to-wall carpeting or an elevator, in terms that didn’t come right out and call them that. Unless done absolutely perfectly, it always felt awkward and forced.
Not my show, but I know plenty who love it.
Do I have aliens invade and nearly destroy the world, forcing the survivors to fight in an alien world built on the back of the world we know?
Aliens showing up and mucking things up makes for a great explanation on why everything’s gone to hell and it gives the players a ready-made enemy to face. Of course, for your game you have to decide how bad it’s gotten and how much of an underdog the players and other survivors are. Are they trying to survive in an alien landscape that overlays what we once knew like in SciFi’s show Defiance? Or maybe they’re fighting to drive off invaders in the shattered husks of our cities like in John Ringo’s Posleen War series?
Do I put zombies in it?
I’m not even going to bother directly referencing a particular show about ambulatory corpses because I’m sure you get the drift. Zombie stories bridge the gap between horror and post-apocalyptic and deserve a place on the list even if they’re not really my cup of tea. There’s always a hopelessness to zombie stories that goes against what I really enjoy in games. Still, they make a great end of the world enemy. If zombies make an appearance in any post-apocalyptic game of mine, they’ll be a minor (if dangerous) nuisance rather than a global menace.
And there’s why I keep going around in circles about what type of post-apocalyptic game to run. I haven’t even started to touch on what system to use. Do I try and fit Apocalypse World to my needs? Do I go with something generic, like Savage Worlds or GURPS? Do I just adapt some other system I’m comfortable with and go from there? What about the games over the years that were designed to be run in the genre, like Gamma World, Aftermath!, Exodus, and so on?
Someday I’ll snap out of my indecisiveness and start a game at the end of the world, but in the meantime, let me know what type of game would appeal to you, either as a player or as a GM. What would your game be like?
I really recommend Dream Pod 9’s Tribe 8 as a post-apocalyptic setting. You can take or leave the metaplot (and the mechanics, frankly!) but the setting really suits pretty much all of the options you suggest, depending on the choices you make…
I’ll give it a look, thanks!
Rules-wise you can’t beat FATE for low crunch that handles vehicles as easily as other characters (the Bronze Rule).
Having said that, I’m currently planning an Apocalypse game using a de-crunched version of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition. It has a really lovely low powered feel that suits normal people scrabbling through the rubble of the past.
I’m using a Magical Apocalypse for exactly the analysis paralysis reasons you mention – I wanted something that neither I nor my players had seen before. The magic just crept back and broke everything slowly – not like Shadowrun where tech and magic pootle along together quite happily. Trolls and witches and things that go bump in the night just eroded things away – the world ended with a whimper…and it happened within living memory of the Oldsters.
I really need to give FATE a shot. I’ve had a couple of experiences playing it, but none of them quite lived up to expectations, so I always forget its versatility.
That sounds like it could be an interesting setting to play in. Hope the campaign goes well!
I’m laughing so hard at “Do I put zombies in it?” as the final issue to decide. (It’s a good question, but I wasn’t expecting it!)
For me, the main defining factors of a post-apocalyptic game are just how long ago the disaster was… was it fast or a slow burn cascade… and how long has it been since then, both in terms of time and in terms of how much humanity has recovered?
That all informs the relative scarcity of and desperation for resources, which to me is what makes it post-apocalyptic as opposed to “Yeah an apocalypse happened, but this is the new normal and whatever man, that’s basically history.” (see also: NS…)
Yeah, I always described Nightscape as post-apocalyptic, kinda. I don’t think we ever really dealt with the scarcity of resources since things seemed to run well enough in the city itself.
You might be interested in a simple Fudge game setting and its Savage Worlds mod called “Mutant Bikers of the Atomic Wasteland”. I would not run campaigns with it, but it is a great one shot setting to test the waters with.
https://ukrpdc.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/fudge-mbaw.pdf
http://www.savageheroes.com/conversions/Savaged%20MBAW.pdf
I also thought Mad Max Fury Road was just an amazing film all around. It was true to the original material for longtime fans like myself, but it was not held back by the previous films. It just kept ratcheting up the crazy! Loved it!
Ooh, thanks for the recommendation and the link!
I just keep going back to how awesome the movie was. I loved that it didn’t feel like the audience was too dumb to keep up. It just threw the world at you and kept moving.
The clear answer is that you have your next five games lined up! A Mad Max style anarchic survival tale [Apocalypse World], a zombie apocalypse [All things must be eaten], Dies the Fire [nWoD], Alien Resistance [Fate], and dystopia with legendary links to the modern world [anything].
Report back in 2023 when your group finishes them all. 😉
More seriously, I think your instinct is right: as cool as each of those settings would be, don’t fall in the “kitchen sink” school and try to tie it all into one world. With stretching, you probably could [Torg or Rifts], but the flavor of each is better pure than mixed.
Hahah! Considering how long my Eberron game has been dragging on… Might be more like 2035. 😉
Yeah, I definitely would want to pick and choose which elements go into the post-apocalyptic salad, so to speak. It’s just a matter of deciding which elements go into the mix.
What a lovely day! indeed. Fury Road blew me away, too.
Back in the day I ran Gamma World, then Aftermath! (a lot of it), then Twilight: 2000. These days I’m running a T2K-esque near future the-world-is-crumbling campaign. Before long I’m going to write about it in more detail, but the long story made short is that I started out using the Twilight: 2013 rules, which were inspired in many ways but just too complicated in actual use. Then we converted to Twilight: 2000 2ed, but the task resolution mechanics were unsatisfactory. So now we’re converting to my old reliable standby – Basic Roleplaying.
A few years back I actually used BRP to run a really satisfying multi-generational campaign in which zombies took over North America. The rules easily handled the modern era, the zombie weirdness, and the eventual spears v. hover tanks action that came a few generations later. I’m not saying BRP is necessarily the best fit for any sort of post-apocalypse game, but in my experience it’s got a good crunch factor, particularly with optional rules, and is well-suited to a campaign in which character death is a highly likely possibility.
As an aside, I’m reading The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch, and it’s given me so many ideas about how to frame the post-apocalyptic environment, as well as plenty of ideas for plot hooks, key characters (suddenly that annoying neighbor with the pottery wheel and kiln may be a good friend after all), and so on. It’s packed with thought-provoking information and is very well written. Highly recommended.
I met an older woman at GenCon a few years ago who had some mobility issues and used a scooter to get around the con. She was wearing a t-shirt that said “Unlikely Zombie Apocalypse Survivor”. When I asked her about the shirt, she told me that her gaming crew had gotten it for her because they’ve all told her that if the apocalypse comes, they’re all going to make sure she survives because she knows how to do all the things they’ll need to do after the world goes boom. 🙂
The book sounds really cool. I’m going to stick it on a list of ‘books to check out’.
What a great story!
Well!
It is clear to me why you have not run a game like this in the last few years. Two reasons really.
One: You needed that final kick of inspiration, that you named at the top, Mad Max: Fury Road (MM:FR?)
Two: I am not around to play in it!
Seriously, I had no idea that this type of setting was that high on your ‘list’! I have long loved some of the post-Apocalypse settings I have come across.
[Side note: In your mentioning of the aliens arrive sort of game, you did not mention Falling Skies – and it may be that you did not know of it. Now you do! Season 5 this summer (IIRC) and it will be the final season. I thought that Seasons 1-2 were the best, so far. S3-S4 – well, going in ways I am not sure I agreed with, but like many TV series, they probably felt that they needed to ratchet things up a bit, I still recommend it, and am waiting for it to start again.]
So, get to the brainstorming, but wait if ya can for me!
In all seriousness, go ahead and run it if you want. Besides, running it once, unless it totally turns you off to it in the future, would just make further games run down the road that much better!
And I am looking forward to MM:FR myself!
I actually haven’t seen Falling Skies. I’ve heard it’s pretty good, but it always falls into the background when I’m looking for something new to watch.
Hope you get to go see the movie soon. It was really good. 🙂
And when you guys get back here permanently, I promise a post-apocalyptic game! (Maybe it’s incentive to move faster 😉
2020. the last normal day on earth. that’s when the outsiders arrived, in pinnacles of shining silver descending all over the world on columns of light. but wonder quickly turned to panic and horror, as their EMP weapons destroyed our civilization and biological weapons turned us into murderous brain-dead monsters. we destroyed ourselves, mostly. a few were resistant to the virus, and survived. now, what’s left of humanity struggles to survive on the wreckage of our past. we gather food, hunt and try not to get hunted. we piece together broken technology and try to get it to work again. guns, mostly, and cars and fuel. its not safe to stay in one place for too long. there are still zombies roaming around, and rumors of hunter machines from the outsider pinnacles, which still loom tall and unassailable on our horizons.
Awesome set up! Is that your post-apoc setting?
nah, just something i wrote based on your options.
I actually had addressed the same question, right before i read this piece:
http://blackcampbell.com/2015/05/21/whither-the-apocalypse-gaming-after-the-fall/
Whatever you do, you have to have cars in the desert, leather & PVC clothing, and hair care products. No other apocalypse lives up to standard…
And my thoughts on the movie (no spoilers)
http://blackcampbell.com/2015/05/21/a-not-quick-review-mad-max-fury-road/
Great minds think alike? 🙂
I keep going back and forth between the Mad Max ideal and the ‘technology went away’ style. Someday I’ll make up my mind.
Have a shufty at Rucka’s Lazarus comic — there’s a lot to be mined there…
Breachworld from JRP is another good one. It’s built on Mini Six (so, very simple mechanically) and is loose enough that you can make it basically whatever you want. I’ve run it with a few groups and it has been well received.
It is, as one player called it, a post-post-apocalypse. Hundreds of years have passed and there is some civilization forming.
There are stranded aliens, factions, magic (of a sort), a small official area, and a steady stream of new content being written.
There is also The Mutant Epoch, which I haven’t played but really like how it looks. It has an old-school feel to it, and kind of dials up the mutant aspect of Gamma World to 11.
I am planning to mash up some elements of different settings and run them as a Fate game. This breakdown helps me to focus in on how the pieces fit together (or don’t, and need to be dropped).
I had a post apocalypse game ready to go, and had a similar set of questions. So I just said yes to everything. The narrative wasn’t entirely clear (one of the nice things about the apocalypse, you don’t need an exact history of the end of the world). But once upon a time in the world that was science produced a great many wonders. Artificial intelligence. Genetic modification. This lead to uplifted animal life and people with great powers, but also zombies. So they made a great AI mainframe called the DY-NET to help contain the outbreak. The succeeded (mostly), but then aliens invaded. The DY-NET helped save the earth, but then it rebelled. The war that followed ended it all. Or something like that. I know others have counseled against kitchen sinking it, but this made for a surprisingly fun experience. A friend of mine ran something similar. Both resembled that one Gamma World edition that no one liked (for some reason). Or maybe the Fallout games with slightly better tech and the occasional psychic power. Players in each game had fun, as there were a lot of options. And the tone of the campaign developed at the table, which was also a good time.
Good point. There is something to be said for not explaining why certain things are the way they are in a PA setting. Just say the history was lost or make up some random myths that may or may not have any level of truth to them.
I have a copy of the 2nd edition of GW and it looks like it was heavy on fun and short on realism, which is a great way to play.
BTW, one thing I’ve noticed with the Mad Max series is that there are enough inconsistencies to drive anyone crazy who wants a solid, iron-clad setting with absolute continuity. However, by being relaxed about it and letting go, makes it feel more like a myth itself. Many of the old myths don’t agree with each other, since they were hashed together from different pieces over such a long period of time. Maybe the movies aren’t 100% the way they “really” happened. But, then, maybe they’re just close enough to give you the feel of that world.
I have found that the “mythic history” approach can actually circle around to the “trying to describe it is without just saying what it is” problem Angela pointed out.
I once ran a home-brewed post apoc dark age, and we got past a lot of that issue by placing the apocalypse event in the more distant future – with the game itself taking place another 500 years after. Because the players themselves didn’t know how the “old” civilization looked, all its “mundane” relics had a sci-fi feel to begin with. So even though descriptions of things like manufactured products or industrialized architecture is always going to be awkward, they made up for it by stirring the players’ imaginations – there was always something they themselves didn’t know about these objects.
I forgot about Atomic Highway, which I’ve not played. It looks like it was designed with Mad Max-style action in mind. It’s also a free PDF.
And Colin Chapman’s a nice fellow. I have a copy of Atomic Highway and it’s set up well for the mutants and cars tropes.
You presented a bunch of interesting ideas. Thanks. In return I’ll suggest one: You totally must include zombies in your campaign world!
Think about all the ways zombies balance a game setting, especially for lower level PCs:
— “Zombies” is the common person’s answer to all the questions that begin, “Why don’t we….” Over time in a longer campaign the PCs can learn the real reasons behind things.
— Zombies keep the group inside the lines of your story. E.g., the reason for PCs to stay in town and struggle against a corrupt strongman, rather than opt out of conflict and live in the countryside, is that the outlands are full of zombies that the town defends against.
— Zombies provide any easy foil. E.g., zombie attacks against the town’s defenses have risen lately. The town needs brave adventurers to scout outside the walls at night (when zombies are stronger) to determine why. Perfect low-level adventure right there!
— Zombies are the ultimate wandering monster. They really do wander, there’s always more lurking somewhere, and a GM doesn’t need to coordinate elaborate combat tactics for them unless she wants to.
Zombies!
Good points!
One of my DMs tried doing a post-apocalyptic campaign called Ultraviolet (I believe it was based off of something he read, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you what). We were using a D&D rule set, IIRC it was 3.5. Basically, the land we were all in is mostly desert, and magic is about half as effective as it used to be. Lots of roaming bands of hooligans and large insectoids. We were moving along getting the feel for the world when we stumbled upon an ancient alien spaceship. Unfortunately, the campaign ended shortly thereafter.
However, I believe the gist was that something back in the day, possibly the aliens, affected the world and now everyone had to fight, literally, for everything they had. Flavor-wise, it seems to be a mix between Mad Max (roaming band of hooligans, but sadly no sweet, sweet rides with guitarists on them) and aliens having some role. However, there was no vast alien civilization that we had to contend with.
You could go another route similar to Vampire Hunter D, where some race (perhaps Vampires) developed awesome technology but their civilization started to wane and their knowledge along with it. They, or course, introduced all sorts of crazy creatures into the world, which they did keep at bay during their height of power, but now those creatures are running free, attacking villages left and right.
Use Shadowrun! It has magic, monsters, high and low tech. Choose what you want to include as fits your story. No adapting required.
World of Darkness would work too. Hunter: The Reckoning may be interesting.
>What would your game be like?
Tried a d20 Modern/D&D mash-up called Usa (pronounced Uzza)
Had half the PC’s as 20th century ie. d20 modern characters transported to a post-apocalyptic future were they met the other half of the PC’s as D&D characters in our world where magic has returned/invaded.
They joined a “Road Ranger” (used a stop sign as a shield) and his group of heroes living in an old apartment complex (map & inspiration stolen from a bad movie, but I loved the building and it’s inhabitants as NPC’s) in the city of SanFra (damn broken signs).
Let one player play a Savage Species monster-class Minotaur
that had a *&%$#@! swearing blue fairy sidekick (lookup the KORE comic for artwork).
This article is great. There’s also a lot to be said about including a variety of female characters into your game, much like Fury Road did. Oftentimes the archetypal roles of “wise old advisor,” “mysterious badass,” and “young tagalong” are always male and our “strong female characters” are often just… physically strong, for no reason other than our imaginations are coloured by pop culture trends.
Fury Road proved what a lot of us already knew – female characters can be strong without being masculine, that by putting thought into WHY these characters are female makes these characters MORE interesting rather than simply filling a diversity quota.
I don’t get why this is such a difficult thing. Why do most movies have just a few overdone stereotypes to pull from? Not all female characters can (or should) be strong or weak. They should come from a variety of types and molds, with a variety of motivations and backgrounds. This should hold true for more than women, of course, (I don’t want anyone of any background to always come from just a few tired cliches) but I agree that Fury Road did do a good job with the women in particular.
This is one of the things I love about how Ridley Scott handled writing and casting for the original Alien movie. The whole thing was set up so they could cast a man or a woman in any role.
(Sure, she still ends up running around in her undies, but that’s also symbolic of vulnerability as opposed to _just_ pandering…)
Well, one problem Steve Jackson (of GURPS fame) addressed in a Mad Max-ian world is: If gasoline is so scarce, why are the people who want it wasting so much by tearing around in unfeasible mega-consumption vehicles and using so much gasoline as ammunition in various awesome-looking weaponry?
It might be worth giving GURPS:Autoduel a once-over, though I never read it myself. It was developed from the insanely fun Car Wars board game, which I had lots of.
As for “what happened to the tech?”, why not defer that answer and just put the players into whatever version you like, and see what their fertile little brains come up with as they speculate during play?
I’ve found that rarely do my own ideas match in cleverness what comes out of the chaotic interactions of my players when they are on-form, and if you pick one of their ideas (or mix’n’match loads of them) the players will feel greatly invested in whatever it is you reveal as being the Reason For The Madness.
I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest that some of your options can share the same world if they are placed far enough apart. Let me vamp on the idea:
Logan’s city was just downwind of a ruined Large City in what was the USA (no spoilers). The USA is a big place and could house many different starting places, lifestyles and worldviews.
Utah and Montana might be Max Mad territory given their wide open country and Montana’s liberal views on speed limits.
A more “Gamma World-esque” starting point could be the Florida Everglades after a few hundred years of no-tech and biome rebalancing. All those pythons free to breed uncontrolled by pesky conservationalists. Add a spot of lo-budget skiffy radiation effects and Hey Viola! Dragons loose in the world again.
Either way, good luck with your campaign world.
Did GURPs ever offer a solution for why people would tear up the landscape in crazy vehicles while warring for gasoline? 🙂