[swordtart]

I prefer campaign games, gritty realism (as far as you can with cars with guns on), long running characters.

I based my game out of Florida (I am UK based, but CW doesn't really fit with the British driving experience), I often use google street map to generate realistic road environments for the combats and real world information to flesh out the campaign (tweaked to reflect the recovering post apocalyptic vibe). This is both educational and allows underlying consistency and credibility without having to put too much work into the foundations.

Different states have slightly different flavours, some are more cyberpunk, some mad-max and a very few atomic-horror. This influences the commonly encountered technology. Florida for example has a higher density of gas/alcohol vehicles than other areas. The RASG books are used, and the one that is missing (desert west) is where the mad-max and atomic horror are based since we can go completely off-piste without contradicting any published material.

I usually short-cut NPCs and use TV or Film characters transplanted outside their genre and sometimes species swapped (if SF was the donor) and gender swapped to mask who they are. This often allows me instinctively to know how they would react to a specific situation and they often come with an extensive back-story. Only one player has twigged for a single group of NPCs the other seem unware of who their alter-egos are. This is probably because I was a bit lazier than I would normally be and chose very similar names. For other groups I have started using a combination of characters first name and actors second name to help obscure them without making it hard to remember who is who.

90% of the campaign happens in my head, 5% makes into documentation and 5% is actually encountered by the players. This may seem wasteful, but it means that if the characters ever deviate from the main plot, I know all about where they randomly take me without having to stop the session and go and work it all out.

It also means everyone has a plausible motivation and thus clever players can work out what is going on without masses of exposition. As soon as I ask who are these bandits, I know what they are trying to achieve, how far they are willing to go and what tactics will be successful against them. Some will negotiate, some will accept surrender, others will fight to the death.

Players also now know that the Florida Juicers are lazy and just trying to make a living stealing small quantities of fruit from the local growers, the Mulberry Dregs are struggling to survive and will fight to the death as they have little to lose (contaminated water means they die young anyway), the Ft Meade Militia is trying to undermine the authority of the Arcadia local government but will try to avoid harming civilians (and even allow you to walk away from your wreck with whatever you can carry) and that Sazz's Gals are a wholly mercenary band who service corporate warfare and judge every combat decision on it's profitability and are quite happy to take a bribe and honour surrenders.

Now of course we have the Balloonatics based out of Bradenton ruins who are a fast moving wrecker gang that have been cutting out large vehicles on the I75 night convoys. When the contract recovery crews show up a few hours later, entire vehicles have been inexplicably spirited away.

Brandon truckstop already has a large complement of transport choppers and they can recover (at a price) even a rig that has come to grief West of the south county line road. South of Ft. Meade on the I17 the Triangle salvage company also has a heavy lift chopper that will recover most vehicles back to Zolpho Springs where, if not claimed within 1 month with proof of ownership or other approved authority, it will be sold for salvage.