Need help for a post-nuclear war setting

[Nightmaster]

Hi guys I need help with an idea of mine about a game set in a post-nuclear war setting.

I need references and books to read that deal with the theme and also I wish to know if there is any book from the GURPS series that deal in the same theme.

[johndallman]

What sort of post-nuclear setting? Set next year, or at some point in the past or future? What sort of nuclear war? Where will the campaign be set?

GURPS Atomic Horror would be valuable for some kinds of campaign, but not some others.

[Anaraxes]

I'll go with the classic "Alas, Babylon" from 1959.

[Joseph Paul]

Search for apocalypse/apocalyptic fiction. You will want to make some decisions about the campaign's distance in time from the actual event.

Right after the event you can look for current info on disaster preparedness, preppers and survivalism.

Jerry Pournelle points out that there is a difference between surviving just to live as a savage and rebuilding civilization. A campaign set far enough down the time stream from the event will have more of rebuilding going on. Several alternate histories have been written that you can use to compare and contrast different ideas with as a spur to your own.

[Running Wolf]

Having watched the movie The Postman, and thinking it lack luster, I heard the book was better. So far it is.

The first 4 or 5 chapters I have read so far have been good. Think it is 16 years about the wars. It did have some nukes going off but it was a limited nuke war with some biological agents thrown in and the general stupidity of people causing society to break down.

Not after a nuke war but The Road is also good (film is good, the book is a lot more depressing). The book doesn't say what happened, but basically all the plants and animals died. The character from The Postman, and the man (in The Road) are both trying to stay above the cannibalism and barbarity around them.

Not a GURPS product but it might inspire some thought would be the Twilight 2000 (think GDW published it).

I think it is on DVD (should be on net flix or amazon) "The Day After" would be good for a close time, semi-realistic view of what it would be like within the few months after the bombs falling..... I am not talking about the day after tomorrow (I wish I had the time back I wasted seeing that drek).

[Agent]

I recommend anthologies of short stories for ideas. Such as the excellent Wastelands compiled by John Joseph Adams.

[DAT]

For a 4th Edition GURPS product, there is Pyramid 3-3 Venturing Into the Badlands - Post-Apocalypse.

Articles include:
DEATHBALL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
by Peter Dell’Orto and Sean Punch
INFINITE CROSSROADS: SURVIVOR’S MOON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
by Paul Drye
ZIPPEMART . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
by Matt Riggsby
NAME THAT APOCALYPSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
by Nicholas Lovell
SIGNS OF THE TIMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
THE DAY THE WORLD BROKE . . . . . . . . . 26
by J. Edward Tremlett
OMNISCIENT EYE: DOES MY NUCLEAR ARSENAL HAVE AN EXPIRATION DATE? . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
by Roger Burton West and John Dallman
OMNISCIENT EYE: ARE HUMANS A RENEWABLE RESOURCE? . . . . . . . . . 33
by Geoffrey Brent
RECOMMENDED READING: SO THIS IS IT. WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
by Matthew Pook

[tshiggins]

In cinema, my favorite post-apocalyptic stories are the "Mad Max" trilogy of movies. The novella, "Damnation Alley," by Zelazny, is good, but the movie isn't that great.

I also liked "The Book of Eli," although I considered it somewhat exasperating that the setting assumes all morality comes from a single source, and without that ethical behavior becomes unknown. Sorry. The Greeks did a much better job of presenting a workable system of ethics.

I liked Dean Ing's Ted Quantril trilogy (starts with Systemic Shock), and the "Hiero" books by Sterling Lanier if you want over-the-top fun.

More recently, I've enjoyed the "Dies the Fire" books by Stirling, but those don't really qualify as post-nuclear-holocaust fiction. Still, you might glean some ideas from the first two or three.

[hal]

If you want some "support" material for helping to run a campaign set after the ruin of civilization - you may want to look at the granddaddy of them all...

AFTERMATH

The product is still in print oddly enough - having been reissued as a single paperback book (used to be a boxed set of three books). For what it is worth, back in the day before GURPS HIGH TECH first edition came out, I used the gun building rules in AFTERMATH to fill in for weapons that were not in the original GURPS second edition rules. That is where I used the M-16 baseline in both GURPS and AFTERMATH to try to correlate what the damage ratings should be for the various calibers.

In any event, there is a fair amount of "minable" ideas in AFTERMATH that can utilized with modification in a GURPS campaign. For the $24 that it costs, I would suggest that you may want to take a peek at it. I've picked up not one copy, but two copies of PRIVATEERS AND GENTLEMEN from FGU along with two copies of HEART OF OAK, and FLASHING BLADES - without problem.

The AFTERMATH details are HERE if you're interested...

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by hal

If you want some "support" material for helping to run a campaign set after the ruin of civilization - you may want to look at the granddaddy of them all...

AFTERMATH

The product is still in print oddly enough - having been reissued as a single paperback book (used to be a boxed set of three books). For what it is worth, back in the day before GURPS HIGH TECH first edition came out, I used the gun building rules in AFTERMATH to fill in for weapons that were not in the original GURPS second edition rules. That is where I used the M-16 baseline in both GURPS and AFTERMATH to try to correlate what the damage ratings should be for the various calibers.

In any event, there is a fair amount of "minable" ideas in AFTERMATH that can utilized with modification in a GURPS campaign. For the $24 that it costs, I would suggest that you may want to take a peek at it. I've picked up not one copy, but two copies of PRIVATEERS AND GENTLEMEN from FGU along with two copies of HEART OF OAK, and FLASHING BLADES - without problem.

The AFTERMATH details are HERE if you're interested...

It's also available in PDF.