Thursday, March 31, 2011

Stocking a Postapocalyptic Sandbox and a Map

These Charts more or less utilize Welsh Piper's Campaign Hexagon System, but are more tailored to Postapocalyptic nonsense.  If you're using Gamma World or Mutant Future, you might want to stick to the basic ones found on his site.  These are intended for games where technology has not quite devolved that far.


Major Encounters
1 – Town
2 – Fortress
3 – Bunker
4 – Ruin
5 – Mutant Lair (Large)
6 – Special Hazard

Minor Encounters
1 – Village
2 – Ruined Structure
3 – Isolated Homestead
4 – Fort
5 – Wandering Mutants
6 – Mutant Lair (Small)
7 – Camp, Industrial
8 – Camp, Semi-permanent
9 – Ancient Structure (Mostly intact)
10 – Natural Hazard
11 – Infrastructure (Sewer, roadway, etc.)
12 – Battlefield
13 – Cache (1d6: 1-2 Weapons, 3-4 Food, 5-6 Books or other intellectual goods)
14 – Contested Area
15 – Construction Site (1d6: 1-2 Settlement, 3-4 Fort, 5-6 Landmark)
16 – Cave System
17 – Fallout Shelter (30% chance of having pre-war valuables, 60% chance inhabited)
18 – Religious Structure (1d6: 1-3 Church or Temple, 2-4 Graveyard, 5-6 Pilgrimage site)
19 – Special Hazard
20 – Meeting place

I will note that I'm not as comfortable with the second table and I'd like someway to increase the chance that "ruins" show up, but what can you do.

click to embiggen

This map is what I hope to use the stocking tables with.  I've already determined the number of minor and major encounters, I now just have to figure out what they are.  

The map itself is based off of East Tennessee and the surrounding areas.  Each hex is roughly 10 mi, but the spacial representations are not entirely accurate.  The two ruined metropolises are Knoxville (my current place of residence) and Chatanooga.  It supposes a nuclear war, followed by a nuclear winter, followed by a nuclear summer, followed by global climate change ending in what is more or less an ice age.  Sprinkle on top of that massive pre-war pollution and you have a cold, acidic hellhole of a place.  Still it's better than what's to the West of it.

I'm still looking for a system to express this setting in, but I hope to have one soon.  I'll probably steal the premise of the Morrow project even if I don't use the rules, though with slight modifications of course.

4 comments:

  1. Great set of tables. We've just started a MF campaign and these will be very handy, thank you.

    To tackle the probability issue with the second table, perhaps you could change the roll to 2d20 and use the same sort of system Il Male put forward with the first table of his post here.

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  2. I believe that table is a 1d8 + 1d12 table a la the Monster Manual II.

    That is a great suggestion. I'll begin work on one immediately!

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  3. I'm not as comfortable with the second table and I'd like someway to increase the chance that "ruins" show up, but what can you do

    A quick-and-dirty method might be to roll a second d6 for any structure; a result of "6" indicates that the structure is ruined.

    For variety: make that a d8 with the following:

    1-5: break up however you want
    6: ruined (structure is post-apocalypse)
    7-8: ruined (structure is pre-apocalypse)

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