Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

What are the key features (thematically speaking), you would want to see in a PA campaign? Isolation, desperation, man versus man, etc. What draws you to that setting?

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Mutants
Neobarbs fighting over the architectual and literal bones of Western Industrialised society
The lack of centralised authority
Spam as a valuable commodity
The shock of leaving a controlled enviroment (aka Fallouts "Vault") and going into an unknown and unmapped wilderness.
Really big insects
Psionics

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

ROAD WARRIOR... 'nuf said.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I can't give a simple answer because there are so many ways to play a post-apocalptic campaign and different styles appeal for different reasons. Something gonzo like Gamma World can be more about the infinite resiliance of life than the tragedy of self-destruction.

I do think that to draw me, a post-apocalyptic game has to mix the familiar and the dangerous in some way that makes internal sense. I also think that, unlike a lot of the best post-apocalyptic fiction, there has to be a sense of hope or it won't work as a game.

That's a bit vague. Oh well. I'm going to bed.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

A sense of desolate isolation. Sitting on a ridgeline and seeing nothing but wilderness as far as the eye can see.

Depending on the time after the apocalypse, a sense of what's been lost. Wandering along streets made of broken asphalt, with plants pushing through the cracks. Crumpled skyscrapers soaring into the sky, windows filled with broken glass. If it's nuclear, clearing the edge of a crater in the middle of a city, the ground dropping away, with a sheet of glass in the center.

Muskets. Muskets can be manufactured at very low tech levels. Same with powder and shot. Unless the apocalypse threw us back into scattered groups of stone-age tribes, muskets should be around.

People trying to rebuild. Some society would arise. Roving bands of maniacs riding bikes and cars a la mad max wouldn't be sustainable for long.

Just a partial list. If it's cinematic, I agree with the mutants and giant insects and animals and stuff.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

But you gave a good one. Hope and desolation.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I've run a postapocalyptic campaign, at least by certain definitions: It took place in the world of Atlas Shrugged, starting ten years after the first scene in the novel, which portrayed the total economic and political collapse of American society.

I didn't go for any wild pseudoscientific stuff like mutants. The exotic scientific phenomena were all based on things in the novel itself: A structural metal with half the cost and three times the strength of steel, a power source that was a perpetual motion machine of the second kind, and a circular area of Iowa that had been totally demolished by a sonic disintegration attack. The struggle wasn't to survive but to rebuild economically, by building a new bridge over the Mississippi to make possible the laying of eastbound track. On the other hand, there were a lot of lawless areas and North America had been balkanized (functioning political units were the United States—from California to Kansas—the Confederacy, Texas, West Virginia, the New England Confederacy, Quebec, the Yukon, the gangster-run city-state of Chicago, and the kingdom of Hawaii). The main theme emerged as the role of violence in the creation and preservation of a free society.

I always wanted to run an Aftermath campaign. But I never actually tried anything during a Mad Max type of wasteland or an Andre Norton radioactive postholocaust desert. Building campaigns interest me more than campaigns about struggling to survive, or the war of all against all.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Couldnt agree more. There should be some reflection on mans former greatness, its what gives the theme weight.

Buildings, bridges and Monuments are great visual representations. Who can forget seeing the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes? More interesting still is how is that feeling similar to seeing some of the Ruins of Ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt or other historically great civilization?

The little things that make our life easier do well also. Anything electric and niche works as a nice curio, but dont forget some of the other odd, self indulgent tech we have like reclining chairs. (What society is so lazy it invents a special chair to increase its comfort during laziness?)

Other trivialities that I think could make neat cameos in PostApoc

Magic 8-Ball
Rubiks Cube
Sleep Bindfolds
Back Scratchers
Loufa(sp?) sponges
Disco Mirror balls

Nymdok

p.s.
One of my earliest exposures to Far history PostApoc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_the_Waters_of_Babylon

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

When I saw that Pyramid was doing a Post-Apocalypse issue, I tried to put together an article about what a typical community might be like. I never got past the early stages, but I think you'd see a lot of communities on the big rivers. Most Post-Apocalypse stories seem to emphasize big cities (in ruins) or the desert, but, as they did in early times, rivers offer enormous opportunities for societies knocked out of their comfort zone by some war, cataclysm, etc.--fresh water, energy for mills, fish, a "highway" for trade with other communities, etc.

Places that need a lot of high tech support, pipelines, etc. like Phoenix are likely to be in trouble. Places like Little Rock or Omaha, right on a big river, are going to have some significant advantages because it will be easier to get low tech access to fresh water, power, etc. That will keep the city going long enough, one hopes, for people to rebuild.

Mark

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I've always seen this as simply a matter of scale. An empire or a log cabin? The struggle for both can be epic, personal, and very important to the world's outcome -- whether that world is continent or a valley in the Ozarks.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

That's a very astute observation. The railroad upset the precedence for large cities only on the river.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I wouldn't consider "scale" to be the critical question. Rather, it's the difference between focus on immediate survival, and having the option of longer-term planning.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

1. The apocalypse must be plausible. If the world nearly ends but did not, who survived and why should make some sense when the backstory is understood. PCs may not know all the details, but it's important that the parts of the world that survived are well chosen by the GM.

2. The former greatness of man and how far society has fallen needs to be shown. Technology should be less available, but it doesn't have to all be in ruins. The creepiness of Will Smith going to closed video stores and other venues in the film I Am Legend is more disturbing than the biker gang dystopias of Mad Max and Water World.

3. A sense of isolation is important (that's in point 2 as well). The PCs are trying to survive in a world where they have few friends, if any. Civilization isn't there to lift people up and there are very few safe havens, so the PCs feel like the world is hostile.

4. Humanity fighting humanity. People are people and if a post-apocalyptic setting was a true utopia, it would be boring. Of course, a false utopia where most people don't fight could be interesting. . .

5. Man against nature. Nature could be changed by man's stupidity and become more hostile, or man could, having lost his technology, have difficulty since he is so far from nature and must readjust.

I'd also prefer a post-apocalpytic society with hope for rebuilding. That may be unrealistic, but a game where the PCs have a very limited shot to win isn't particularly fun to run or play in. Again, the log cabin or empire question is a matter of scale on that question. Rebuilding a small area is more gritty and realistic while the empire seems more high fantasy or cinematic.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I like all of your ideas. I think where I gave wrong before is in making things too bleak. It's easy to get carried away with destruction, however vicarious it may be.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Thing is, I personally feel that any chance of long term survival rests solely on rebuilding a society. It's a strong enough personal prejudice that any character I play is probably gonna feel that way as well. I'm going to seek out survivors and try to rebuild. I mean, if there's enough people for a group of PCs, I assume that there's other survivors. And if there aren't and we're the last ones left? Thats depressing as hell and I probably wouldn't want to play in a game like that.

I think a post-apoc game is ripe for a focused location game, where the players are going out from a central "home" location to find resources. You can have a consistent cast of NPCs that the players can care about and have a stake in the survival of. I'd take advantage of that opportunity, if I was running it.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Another big consideration is time - How long has it been since the apocalypse?

The most obvious choices I see are
1) Not that long ago, all characters are fully familiar with life before, and
the new society is just beginning to develop.
2) Twenty years or so before - players can choose adult characters who have grown up since the apocalypse or characters who grew up before the apocalypse, but are not yet too old to adventure.
3) Fifty years or so ago - all player characters, and most of their parents, have grown up since the apocalypse, but a few elderly tribe members still remember life before.
4) A century or more ago. No one remembers life before, but objects from that era are still available, and a few still function.
5) A thousand years or more ago. At this point your game is barely a post-apocalyptic game because, baring improbable technology, very few remnants of the time before will still exist. Instead you've got a historical setting with odd bits of plastic.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

If it's more than a few hundred years in the future, I'd have problems with SoD if we were still relying on leftover tech instead of rapidly rebuilding society, unless everyone got knocked back to the stone age, somehow.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

That would likely be a reason to play such a campaign, but a number of important side issues could come up just as common RPG tropes. Rescue a PC's sister (fair maiden) or recover a hidden cache (buried treasure) or kill a nasty roving gang (orcs), etc. This is likely to have all of the elements of a "normal" rpg as any other setting, with the added element of rebuilding a once lost civilization.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

GURPS Y2K has some interetsing ideas for a post-apocalyptic game and how the apo came a along, be it war, plague or a world wide computer failure.

Also, note that the apocalypse doesn't have to happen to our modern world, a post-apocalyptic game in a fantasy or science-fiction world could also be interesting, even historical settings offer possibilities (the Dark Age of Europe after the Fall of Rome for example).

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

What caused the apocalypse and how can we keep it from happening again?

If you want meta-plot, that is.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Or, to spin it up a notch, what caused the apocalypse and how can we make it happen again?

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Sure, I'm just saying that if it was billed to me as a small group of PCs totally alone, struggling to survive, thats not the type of campaign I'd want to play in. Like has been mentioned before, there has to be hope, and if it's just the 4-6 of us PCs, unless I was assured that we would have the opportunity to contact others in the game, I probably wouldn't sign on for the campaign. Isolation is good, but only in contrast to the comfort of "home," whatever that may be. It's a candle in the darkness, all that is left of the glorious light that was human civilization.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I usually go for the whole Last (wo)man on Earth type feeling, but I also really enjoy some sort of transitive element. Say with what you have up there a campaign that begins with some who got isolated during the EVENT* survives for a while on his own but then learns that their are other survivors who are trying to rebuilding society or just a place to live.

Some things that if I would include were I writing a campaign up:

1) Barter/trade rules...what good is paper money gonna do? This would require tinkering with the wealth rules a lot, but I think would be worth it in the end if you can get it functional.
2) Some expanded scourging guidelines, say something like a margin of success chart. You rolled 1 under your skill, you didn't find that semi-new carburetor you were looking for but...you did find one, it needs work. You rolled 5 under your skill...the carburetor is still in the box, lucky you! Maybe techniques for scourging specific things, or in specific places.
3) Set down guidelines for making things: this one ALWAYS comes up no matter what game I run/play in. Somebody always wants to build something, the rules presented in 3ed Low-tech work well enough.
4) Conflict: whether its the nuclear winter you are trying to outlast or mutant space wolves from Saturn. When playing in a post-apocalyptic setting you should feel you are just barely surviving (at least at first ^_^), barely making due, barely able to keep enough food in your belly if not your knapsack.
5) Lastly, if your the GM, listen to what you players want, give them a survey, or just ask them. One man's PA could be alien overlords, anther's zombies, and a third Hell on Earth, The Rapture, and Hallelujah! Praise Jesus. Heck one could ask for all three, know what scares/excites your players, know what they each want and try to tailor it to them. Nothing sucks worse than a Apocalyptic future than just doesn't do it for you.

Hope it helped you some,

Ghostdancer


*in this context meaning what ever world-ending life shattering incident that had happened.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I enjoy Gamma World or Twilight:2000 kinds of post-apocalypse games. They seem to be two extremes:

Gamma World has mutants, blasters, mutagenic radiation, and super-science fiction bubbled cities. There isn't much of a theme of "there is no hope, everyone is going to die." You get to play with cool tech, but it's often dangerous and it's not easily replaced. You can build up civilization or just wander around trying to find that Black Ray Pistol you know is out there somewhere.

T2K is more realistic. You can use cool military tech, but you have to worry about radiation and marauders and keeping your ammo supply up. You get less Gun Bunny issues than a modern game - your corporal can't have a totally tricked out custom-made handgun with tactical whatevers and a grip made out of some special material he just read about in Handgunner magazine, because he can't get it and he can't have an unlimited supply of match-grade ammo. You get less mutants, but your concerns can vary the same way - just try to get home or try to set up a base and work local issues.

In both I like the scarcity of resources - you don't have the issue of PCs getting lethal high-tech weaponry with unlimited access to ammo (if they've got the money and connections). You can use a cool technical item, even a damaged one, like "treasure." But it'll all run out unless the GM gives you replacements, so it's worth conserving until you need it. It can be loads of fun running a guy with a .357 magnum pistol and broadsword and a shield made out of a stop sign and some wood, facing off with equally motley-armed fellows.

I think I dislike the "hopelessness and fear" aspect you see in some games...I enjoy the occasional zombie apocalypse, but it's got to be a one-shot or short-term game. I just can't get into civilization crumbling, people dying horribly everywhere, there's-nowhere-to-run gaming for more than a few sessions. After that, really, I just want to shoot mutants with my Mark VII Blaster Rifle or collect brass for my 5.56mm rounds after shooting it up with a band of marauders, not deal with the dying of humanity.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I tend to like the (just under) over the top stuff... a cross between Fallout and Gamma World.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

This is just huge . . . way more important than anything in the thread so far. Everything else depends on the answer to this question. From experience:

This works the best by far. Few players like settings where the most important events are in the past and they get to see them only in "vignettes" and "cut scenes," if at all. Most players like to be there when the fit hits the shan, and want to roleplay the cleverness that let them survive when most other people did not. Moreover, players have a much easier time identifying with their characters if their characters could be them. They can talk normally without the GM having to remind them every few minutes, "Uh, you never saw one of those," or, "You wouldn't know what that is."

Conversely, these two are the least likely to work as explicitly post-apocalypse campaigns. They might work fine as slice-of-life games set in alien societies that happen to live on a planet very much like our own, but they won't have the post-apocalypse "feel," any more than would a game about Victorians digging up Greek and Roman artifacts. All sense of immediacy will be lost, and if there are still people around after a century or especially a millennium, then plausibility demands that hand-to-mouth survival is no longer an issue, as generations of people have clearly figured it out. See, for instance, Horseclans.

These two comments suggest two important themes:

1. A chance to be clever.
2. Hand-to-mouth survival.

All-in-all, something disturbingly close to a fantasy dungeon crawl. It's no surprise that Gamma World did just that.

—

I should add that pure-strain survivalist, cabin-building gaming – in the vein of, say Twilight 2000 – is a rare and acquired taste. Most gamers really don't want to count cans, make tons of rolls for searching ruins and building shacks, and avoid violence because there aren't enough bullets or bandages. The majority view of post-apocalypse gaming has mutants, psis, weird tech, zombies, etc. It comes closer to something like the Resident Evil movies. In my case, for instance, I couldn't imagine a fun post-apocalypse game without zombies. Oh . . . and dog skull.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Not necessarily true. I ran one that featured cryogenically frozen early 21st-century people unfrozen way, way too late. Worked just fine, and avoided the whole "the zombies are coming, run!" element I didn't want and let them use their out-of-game knowledge to try to solve in-game situations. They could act like modern-day people who got to play with a user-friendly Death Ray Zorcher to fight some rampaging psionic mutants. Sure, they encountered people who'd solved the whole "survival" problem, but the PCs hadn't, and not everyone just wanted to help them.

Except you need an established civilization for your Deathball or Jugger league, dude. Otherwise you're just a bunch of weird refugees with sticks with a chain on the end and a dog skull.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

In general, gamers don't like or want meta-plot – partly because "meta-plot" has been co-opted to mean "publisher-side story arc with which my campaign is liable to get out of synch." As well, for mundane apocalypses, getting at the source can lead to moral explorations that most players aren't up for. So a big campaign about the social decay that led to destruction, ending in developing a new and ethical society, probably has limited appeal.

On the other hand, this is where the gold is in weird apocalypses! Dig back through the rubble and find out who made the Death Ray, zombie plague, or whatever. That brings the PCs into conflict with the surviving remnants of those who did the deed – and most players love conflict more than anything else. It also extends the hope that the PCs can find a cure for the plague, huge underground city with food to which they can lead the survivors, whatever.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Oh, you can engineer things so that it works. Defrosting the PCs is a different and unusual premise, though. I was mostly assuming people who didn't have a 100- or 1,000-year discontinuity in their memory.

Zombies don't preclude established civilization. Humanity could fight them back and entrench, and build an uneasy civilization outside which zombies are dialed back to the threat level of storms, enemy invaders, or man-eating lions: lethally bad, but not automatically society-destroying. Check out Unhallowed Metropolis, for instance. One thing I find weird is the assumption that a zombie apocalypse is more grim and less likely to let society rebuild than, say, a nuclear one. I see it as quite the opposite.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

You missed the option of the Integrated Human-Zombie Deathball League.

The IHZDL is pretty popular in some regions. ;)

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

My comment was aimed at the combination of "there when the fit hits the shan" and "established civilization." Seems like you need to compress some time between there.

And the funny thing is, I associate Zombies with "run to the woods and build a cabin and worry about leaving tracks to your lair" and nukes with "rebuild civilization on the ashes, no point in hiding out with your guns in the cabin." Seems to be quite the opposite of your associations.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I read through The Deathlands novels once. They weren't so great. But it was the same sort of "suvival porn" you get with The Suvivalist series of novels. The only real difference was whether it was muties or bikers getting killed. But I am more interested in the reasons players would choose this genre, mutants or not, than what they kill.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Then I'd cut all my verbiage down to:
It's all about showing off your mad skillz (item the first) in an environment where they're all that stands between you and death tonight (item the second). Every post-apocalypse game has that thread, whether the skills in question are those of cabin-building, empire-building, or just shooting the heck out of things, and whether death comes courtesy of exposure and starvation or at the creepy hands of zombies and Humungus the bandit chieftain. Desolation is great, but why does it matter? Because it puts you in a hand-to-mouth survival situation from which cleverness can extract you and give you hope.

As for "survival porn," a big problem with most of it is that it moves the focus off skills and onto material preparation. The latter relies more on player cleverness than on PC cleverness: the non-survivalist player of a skilled survivor gets hosed for a poor approach to suitable gear while the survivalist player of nobody special can parlay his encyclopedic knowledge of gear into an excessive edge. This is the not-so-subtle reason why lots of post-apocalypse games have mutant powers and zombie-killin' fu, and why quite a few post-apocalypse films talk the talk about starvation and exposure, yet you never see anybody die from either – just from "not being the main character, who is a badass."

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Yeah, I get that too. I find that to be a common problem in many genres, however. I think what makes it most insulting here is that most people resent the idea that mundane gear can provide the same edge as choosing sleep over magic missile, or whatever.

As for "a chance to be clever" and "hand-to-mouth survival," I'm not sure those are particularly endemic to PA gaming. You can be clever and use skills in any game, and the survival aspect could be played out in any setting. I think PA grants the players a level of freedom and abandon -- there are likely no laws, jails, cellphones, maps, etc. It's just a sandbox waiting to be explored, er, conquered.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

In GURPS specifically, this stems from the "costs points vs. doesn't cost points" divide. In essence, if it comes out of your points allowance – like attributes, advantages, and skills, and some gear, like Signature Gear and things with Equipment Bond – it should make a difference. If it comes out of your cash (or barter) allowance, it really shouldn't. Equipment not bonded to the character in some way is just breakage- and thief-bait, and players know that, so they dial the importance of such things down and bank on innate abilities that have point costs.

In a PA campaign, one interesting fix would be to identify a list of skills very relevant to survival and say that every N points in those skills gives access to one item from a limited list of survival gear that the GM knows will be insanely valuable. Another would be to allow those with such skills the option of buying a level of Gizmos with a "Survival gear only" limitation for every N points in skills, so that they can simply whip out the right thing when needed because ". . . of course an expert at Survival (Radioactive Wasteland) has a spare dosimeter!" Neither is hard realism, but as the problem being addressed is caused by hard realism, I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

As an aside here, I'll point out that while some people like to think of PA as a hard-realism genre, it surely ain't that. It's complete speculation. For every gamer who sees it as realistic, there are 10 who can't completely dispel the thoughts of mutants, zombies, and Humungus, and therefore regard it as a special form of skiffy or even fantasy (especially if there are any swords in evidence at all!). I think the silly Gizmos might fit better than one might think, even despite the fact that they weaken the power of scarcity.

Sure! Which means that the "chance to be clever" is far less limited, as organized society – with all its rules and norms – won't interfere. Which makes it more important. And which means the "hand-to-mouth survival" comes with no society to provide safety net. Which makes that more important, too. I'm not saying that these themes are unique – few genres have truly unique themes. I'm saying that these themes are emphatic here.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Kromm hit on this too, so I hope I'm not being redundant, but for me the key thing that comes with PA is the whole aspect of self-reliance. Because there is limited or no civil authority, at least in some places, there will be times during which the characters have no mundane power or authority greater than themselves to which they could turn, if they were so inclined.

I know that as a GM, at times I have to handwave away the ability for the players to contact their patrons, bosses, or COs, because I want *them* to make the dramatic decisions (even though it seems as though the situation might warrant a "lets hold off and confirm our orders" kind of approach).

To me, that's one of the gaming problems "solved" by a setting with some measure of anarchy.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

You might be interested in S John Ross's Five Elements of Commercially-Viable RPG Design.

He writes of the importance of

• cliche - elements familiar to players
• combat - fights are dramatic, people like 'em
• fellowship - the PCs are in it together
• anarchy - the PCs are pretty much on their own and can do as they wish
• engima - there's something about the setting that the PCs can never fully know

He notes,

"These elements aren't keys to quality ... a game can be crummy with them and excellent without them. They are, though, a useful window into the appeal of RPGs as games, into the conventions of RPGs as a fictional medium, and into the considerations that make the design of a game world a beast distinct from other kinds of world design."

To my mind, postapocalyptic is one of the most useful of settings to a GM, because it so easily offers all five of those elements, and because it allows so much variety in them. The postapocalyptic world has many elements of our own, so it has cliche. Immediately after the apocalypse the world is chaotic and lawless, generations after it's either low-population with large stretches of wilderness or so high-population density that nobody can possibly police it properly, and so it has combat and anarchy.

That leaves only enigma. Immediately after the apocalypse, the mystery can be how regions immediately outside the PCs' one have changed; generations after, the mystery can be both that, and how the apocalypse happened - or even that it happened at all. Think of the final scene of Planet of the Apes.

With or without magic/supertech, whatever the kind of apocalypse, the postapocalyptic setting very easily offers all five elements, and allows great variety in their presentation. Of course as Ross said that doesn't mean the campaign will be any good, but... :)

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

What Kromm and Bookman said.... re: choice of skills vs nifty things.

You have me thinking of "Dies the Fire" by SM Stirling, especially the first couple of chapters, where there is 'some' nifty toys, but it can come down to skills and decision making.

Stirling does have a strong 'work together' as opposed to 'rugged individualist' subtext going on, but. Not to mention hordes of plague carrying refugees, and crazed cannibals (ersatz zombies).

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Do you run/play it as a mutant killing machine or as a half-naked scavenger?

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

In the games I run, they usually start out as half-naked scavengers, and build up to Mad Max, more or less. I have them start out in an isolated valley or cryogenics experiment so they don't even know what caused the apocalypse. I offer "building" sorts of things, where they can establish their own order, but usually they're not interested. They just want to smack over "bad guys" and go "woohoo!" as they ride their truck.

I've played in a game where there was some building, with my character leading groups from immediate postapocalyptic chaos to some order, and fighting against other people's nastier attempts to establish order. I enjoyed that a lot - but as I said, most players don't seem to be very interested in that.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Struggle to survive. On the individual level, the search for food, water, and other resources, and protection from nature (heat, storms, mutant zombies, whatever). On a society-wide level, people are attempting to rebuild civilization with limited resources and little or no preexisting culture, legal system, etc.

Juxtaposition of different technology levels. Scavenging and jury-rigging. Postmodernism; a PA society is free (perhaps even required) to reuse and reinterpret modern technology and culture in ways that we would not. Stop signs as shields. Corporate logos as design motifs.

Desolation and isolation are important elements, but shouldn't be omnipresent. Likewise, Man vs. Man has a lot of story potential, but people who are struggling to survive generally don't have a lot of time to fight.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

A common theme of post apocalypse fiction seems to be a man (or women, usually a man) overcoming things that may limit his will or freedom. The idea that without the petty constraints of society men can be men, free to live by their strength and cunning. Often villains are dictators trying to unify the land under their rule. Like the villian from the mail man.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

There is a fair bit of the Frederick Jackson Turner thesis in PA stories, true. But do gamers focus on that bit more than just killing radioactive beasties with a giant throwing star?

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

You mean the Postman right?

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Rebuilding

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

If you were to pick up a 50-page GURPS book on this, what would it look like?

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

What I really want is Aftermath with more comprehensible rules.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I'm sorry, I'm not that familiar with Aftermath and its rules.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Aftermath was originally produced by Fantasy Games Unlimited.

http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?o...ok&bookid=2973

Aftermath has been digitized and is sold by one of e-23's competitors. It is presently on sale as part of their GM's Day (well, week) sale for about one-third of their normal asking price.

I GM more than I play, because I'm much better as a GM than as a player. In my experience, GMs care a lot more about things such as the Turner thesis than players because for the GM part of the fun is building the world. GURPS players seem somewhat more interested in ideas than other players but the key to a good game for most players in my experience is their ability to exert their dominance. That's very Turnerian, but unless you've got builder players they'll just be throwing ninja stars at the mutants/zombies/cannibals/other tribes on the frontier and not engaging in community-building, the part of the Turner thesis that won him his place as one of the great historians.

For a fifty-page setting, I would want an apocalypse to have:
a. brief to moderate length metaplot for the GM that explains how and why the apocalypse happens and explains the new world demography (if a toolkit, provide a metaplot as example and briefly cover other metaplot options)
b. a few clearly defined locations with maps (could be generic if you're going for a toolkit book) for PCs to adventure in
c. a great deal of guidance on how to run the setting, along the lines of the excellent discussion of superheroes in GURPS Supers 4e (if it's a toolkit, more generic is fine)
d. the new economy: how to handle scrounging for goods and how trade would work in this new setting. Also, some gear that would be common
e. GM and player advice of the player vs. PC survival skill conundrum in a post-apocalypse game
f. New perks and advantages and suggested perks and advantages appropriate for the genre

The real question is whether to go for a campaign setting specifically or do a toolkit book. Either of those would be valuable to GMs; good settings are hard to find. Toolkits tend to be more useful to DIY GMs, so that may be more saleable.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I have a method in mind for this. Would folks want to deal with this--as players--by accounting with the typical GURPS $, or some other symbol? The Fallout series uses bottle caps, for instance.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

GUPRS:HUNTERGATHERS TO HOBOS
a practical guide to sifting through refuse,wreckage and existing environment for useful tools, clothes and foodstuffs.

Nymdok

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Speaking from personal experience what makes a good PA setting are hope and a sense of discontinuity. First of all there has to be hope. The notion that everything is irretrivably broken and that the only thing to do is mark time until you die is an absolute turn off in fiction and that is doubly true in gaming. Characters have to have a reason to keep going, it may be that they will screw up and wipe themselves out, but they must have the opertunity to survive and even possibly prosper after a fashion.

Secondly there has to be a sense of seperation from history. The Apocalypse should draw a line under the preceding civilisation, it shouldn't make recovery impossible but it should break civilisation badly enough that it won't come back upon exactly the same lines even if people wish it to.

If you can get these things the rest is negotiable. Personaly I prefer building campaigns with a bit of distance from the actual apocalyptic events (50-200 years post whoops). I am also not fond of the atomic horror style of mutants at their best they are a species of pop-up target, something to shoot at for the sake of it, and at worst they are a crude way of disguising the fact that the writer was unable or unwilling to create a compelling background.

The two things that I would like to see in a book on the subject would be a rough timeline of how long various artifacts could usefuly be expected to be viable for and some more sugestions for improvised technical fixes in the vein of the 'Dirty Tech' sidebars in HT.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

If in doubt go with the dollar, it would make for greater readability and wouldn't actualy be too preposterous providing you play up the idea of the gurps dollar as an abstract measure of value. From a background point of view there will probably be measures of that sort in any relitively organised comunity. And from a rules point of view it makes no sense to invent one for use in a set of campaign materials when a perfectly good one already exists.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Yes, I was thinking of a book with technology decay rates, more detailed scrounging rules, a bartering system, and more Dirty Tech, mainly. But if shooting radioactive muties and superscience is more fun, it might not sell.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Yeah. And you can always say it stands for something like $crounge or $hells (i.e., ammo).

You can have both. A 64-page item of which 16 pages is a chapter on getting weird isn't exactly sacrificing babies to the devil. Most crazy PA settings are not-crazy ones ". . . with zombies!"

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Oh, $ for everything. I used them for Fantasy, even though no likely hf setting is going to actually have a "dollar" in circulation. They're just a GURPS convention. Besides, if it's post-American, the name "dollar" will stay in use, I think; British currency continued to use Lsd long after no one called the small coin a "denarius."

Bill Stoddard

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

This what? The struggle to survive in a post apocalyptic wasteland? Not sure it merits 50 pages of text, even with illustrations. Or a hypothetical PA campaign setting? Or a hypothetical PA genre book/toolkit? Or whichever one of these I would most likely buy?

If it's a campaign setting, write it up like any of the dozens of existing examples.

If it's a genre book, then I expect to see stuff about the genre: common themes and ways of exploring them, common tropes and ways of exploiting (or twisting, or avoiding) them, rules suggestions (or even expansions) for typical PA activities (finding safe water, or rendering it safe; scrounging valuable or useful objects, getting radiation sickness, that sort of thing). Some discussion of society, logistics, and fixing/using/maintaining pre-apoc technology would be useful; how many times have people asked here how long it would take to reach TL X given sufficient knowledge but limited resources, or how large a community have to be to maintain a certain level of technology? How have real bandits/raiders operated historically, and how could they function in a PA setting? Equipment isn't a primary concern (it would be mostly covered by -Tech books, or be setting-dependent) but it might be useful to have some sample items that could be made with ancient techniques and modern (leftover) materials, or that could be made by applying modern scientific understanding to available materials.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

A PA building campaign. Specifically, I meant how would a supplement help GMs design and run a campaign expressly for the purpose of rebuilding civilization.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Having played both Aftermath and Morrow Project mostly during the 80's. I always enjoyed the PA genre some of my favorite gaming experiences are from these games. I think its the challenge that the world as you knew it is no longer there and that you now have to step up and to provide for your self.
The first Aftermath game I played in we were playing slightly glorified versions of ourselves running around Biloxi MS trying to figure out what happened and why we survived. Lots of fun.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I've run several PA campaigns in GURPS, and Twilight 2K. These were mostly "low fantasy" equivalents with some building and combat heroics. As the other poster said, part of the fun is that NO ONE will come help. You get shot, there is no helivac. You must recover on your own. Lots of folks don't like lying around for three game sessions though, I imagine.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I hereby put my hand to volunteer to playtest safisher's GURPS Postapocalyptic Mayhem. With him GMing us online in irc, of course.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Well, first we have to convince SJGames to let me write it. Then I have to have the time to do it.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I'm with JB on this, and can offer a second control group >..>

Ghostdancer

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Well, they have to put out an actual worldbook in print for 4e other than Banestorm eventually... Then I would start buying GURPS books here again - Aussie stores gouge us, Characters is currently A$78, which converts to US$50 - yep, twice the price of the US, it's as though the stores are buying it retail and shipping it over (they're not, they're getting them wholesale, it's just that there are only a few stores so they know they can gouge us). For me, it's just not worth spending the better part of a day's wages just to be able to have characters target arteries or something instead of only limbs, vitals, etc. But a rich worldbook, like they used to put out in great numbers, that would be very useful.

Honestly, what with Characters, Campaigns, Magic, Powers, Space, Martial Arts, High Tech, Ultra Tech... we have enough rules, worldbooks would be a nice change.

Gotta start somewhere with 4e worldbooks, why not start with a postapocalyptic one? :)

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I'm really interested in a worldbook. A general book on designing and running PA adventures, heavy on the material culture and themes of desolation and isolation of PA stories, with a dash of madness thrown in (zombies, radioactive hamsters, etc.), perhaps. Maybe this summer I'll have time.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Generally speaking I prefer the world building be left to me, Im always down with the crunchy. Also, the world books from 3e are, for the most part, easy to convert.

That said, I certainly dont see any harm in a Post Apocalyptic world book, unless it's writing delays Horror, LowTech, Vehicles etc.....

Nymdok

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I'm thinking:
Homemade guns and powder
Scrounging lists based on places: a vehicle (2 years or less, 3-10 years, etc.)
Modern artifact construction with hand tools (from Low-Tech)
Food and supply cache lifespan
Growth of vegetation in cities, collapsing of structures, etc. based on years after the fall.

Things like that.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

MSRP (and what I paid at my FLGS) here in the U.S. is $39.99, so while you are indeed getting gouged, not as badly as you think.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Yeah! Like rebuilding train tracks and canals and such. What sort of goods would be traded and over what sort of trade route?

There are salt mines under the Great Lakes. Such things as salt and other food/chemicals needed would have to be traded. Once the Home Depots and Acme Markets run out chemicals for fertilizers would be needed as well.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Looks good, one other thing I would suggest is logistics, how much is needed (in terms of gross requirements, food, water, fuel etc) to maintain a community? I know the information is already out there, probably even in existing GURPS products but a quick refference would be useful.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I'm willing to toss in for some play by post play testing as well as any other way I can help out.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Do you mean per individual or family? Or are you talking for a small enclave?
I'm not sure at-large stats for large communities would be all the useful.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I agree with you on this, but maybe a box on X amount of Y item keeps the community going for Z days. Part of the fun of PA is that you really have to fight to survive, you have to be clever or you end up as bleached bones in the sun.

I know this is a sideline...but I would really like to see some rules for weather, that sounds dumb, but a hard rain in the middle of nowhere creates a interesting survival situation. Also what about Nuclear Winter? Ice Ages? Just useful tidbits could flavor a whole campaign.

And for the record, I think this book would be immensely popular, PA is one of those sub-genres that everyone likes IMHO

Ghostdancer

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Might be helpful for worldbuilding stuff. Make sure your town actually has resources to support it and all that.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Themes I like in PA settings:

-The 'I told you so' element.
-The grittyness of a whole world going 'Lord of the Flies'.
-The rediscovery by softies of what it takes to survive.
-The 'Connecticut Yankee' possibilities, both technical and social (Think Lucifer's Hammer).

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Good ideas. These are compelling general themes.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I definitely have to agree on this one. There is a line between gritty realism and utter hopelessness and I think I have seen that line crossed at least once, and nobody has any fun once one player looks out, sees the hopelessness of it all, and says "I start walking off down the road."

As for my ideas about what makes a good post-apocalyptic campaign, I would say that having some puzzle to piece together (whether it be the location and acquisition of resources or the gradual re-structuring of society or something else) is important, and a sense of hope that you can accomplish significant portions of your task. Having played PA campaigns set in the 1940s, 1990s, 2000s, and mid 21st and 22nd centuries, I would say that the best ones had those two elements. There were hopeful (you are not fighting innumerable or invincible foes) campaigns without a puzzle that just seemed like we were spinning our wheels and there were campaigns with puzzles but no hope (foes that enjoyed tech so high that they were in essence invincible and/or problems/situations that were so impossible to overcome and/or dangerous that you had to suspend even the slightest notion of realism to think you could succeed) that literally made people just quit playing.

I think this is actually one of the key concepts behind lots of successful campaigns in general (and television, and movies, and books). Look at The Incredible Hulk (TV), The Pretender, MacGyver, Kung Fu, The A-Team, Star Trek, etc. etc. etc. You have a basic story that has a person or group of people out there moving around from place to place with nothing to tie them down and a whole new adventure every week and while they have a loose set of rules they follow (most of which would be GURPS disads), the whole hook is how they will deal with the new adventure just around the corner. That can be applied to any setting (medieval, modern, post-apocalyptic, you name it) and you have instant campaign flow. When characters sit around waiting for the world to come to them, you get boredom (think early Deep Space Nine). All the best campaigns I've ever been in have the characters taking a journey, which usually includes a physical journey as a major part of the story line.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

I think the other interesting thing would be how you could use existing stuff in a "dirty tech" fashion. What else could you use railroad tracks for? Strip them down for raw materials to use in constructing other structures or use other vehicles to travel efficiently along them when the road system decays? Could you set up a quick and easy distillation plant to purify water and extract salts in a coastal area? How much effort would get put into maintaining things like bridges across the Mississippi river? Could you and/or folks you know do quick and dirty repair work on such a structure, or would the US be essentially divided in half? That's the kind of stuff I would find intriguing as objectives and/or tangential story lines.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

What I would like to see would be goods per indevidual or household as appears to be appropriate for food stuffs, domestic fuel etc and for lack of a better word per batch for the more essential light indistries eg arms repair and manufacture. I am well aware that this might well be difficult if not impossible but I though it was worth sugesting.

Re: Post-Apocalypse Campaign
 

Are you saying a list of contents in a complete household? And the production rate for small arms if made by hand? Is that what you want? Like this:
http://www.vbs.tv/full_screen.php?s=...5DC&sc=1363196