Unfocused Thoughts on the End of the World

So I saw Fury Road and we're about twelve hours away from a Fallout related announcement and I have two post-apocalyptic campaign ideas kind floating around my head and I want to flesh them out a little.  I always find these kinds of posts are good for doing that.

Instead of doing two separate posts, I decided to juxtapose the two because it's unlikely I would run both.  The first idea is one I've had in my head since college, and one I've mentioned vaguely on this blog before.  I recently found a download for wilderness mapper, which is what I used to make the map back in college, and it got me all nostalgic.  Both of these maps were made with that program.

• Game takes place in the Tennessee River Valley and possibly the neighboring areas because I obviously mapped them out, but they're worse off because...
• The apocalypse (Pox Eclipse) was caused by a number of factors (probably) that have lead to an extreme level of pollution.  The valley was somewhat protected from it, whereas the flatter areas of the united states are toxic wastelands.
• In addition to the normal radiation/glow-cloud hazards normally found in such games players will have to deal with acid rain and acid snow.  The weather charts are gonna be rough.
• The general biome is kind of like Gobi-style cold desert with the chemically reserved remains of dead trees.  Visually kinda like the Road I guess, but slightly more in the future.
• Basic settlement types - normal people trying to get by in like a trade town,  descendents of survivalists who group together in roving bands of raiders, bunkers filled with now like albino-troglodyte descendents of rich people and government officials, and mormons.
• Players are 3rd or 4th generation apocalypse survivors.  Some really really old guy in the village was a kid when people had iphones and roads and stuff.
• No cars.  Everyone rides 'orses, which are like our horses but skinnier and with a weirdly squamous hide.  They also raise Big Pigs which are similarly squamous... big pigs.  Like Hogzilla big.
• Mutated animals, humans, raiders, and the occasional robot will be the kinds of things you fight.  The mutants will have certain types or species with very similar characteristics, which might make them less mutant-y but it allows me to use the X-com Method.
• The ruins of Knoxville might be a ruin crawl.  They also house the largest settlement int he area.  It's called Utuka (Oo-tuh-kuh).
• There's a group of raiders with a big fort in the mountains called Warburg.
• Dungeon types are old science installations, military compounds, survivalist caches, fall out shelters or vaults, and old monuments in the cities.
• Tech and ammo is unrealistically preserved and mutants unrealistically evolved because those are the genre conventions and I like them.
• One of the ruins on the above map (in the extreme south) is Talladega, which will either be a big Thunderdome for the few people left int he wastes or the only place where there are still cars.
• To do a thing I first did on G+ it's these guys in this place fighting these things.

Ok now for my second idea.  This one is easier for me to do because it is closer to Mutant Future and thus I don't have to do any work modifying a system or something.  It is called Mutassippi.

• Gamma World or Mutant Future levels of far in the future, coastline has changed,  technology was more advanced pre-fall, etc.
• Party is based out of Hadesburg, the Mutant Future version of my home town of Hattiesburg.
• Most humans are mutants but more of the Futurama variety, with like a third arm coming out of their back or no ears or something simple like that.  If you're playing a mutant it is because that mutants mutations are extreme.
• The islands that make up what was once Mississippi and Louisiana are hotter than their modern counterparts, which accounts for all the "jungle."  A lot of said jungle is still like cypress trees and hanging moss though for aesthetic reasons.
• Dzhakson is the ruin crawl in this one.
• Northern Mutassippi is dominated (as much as anything in Mutassippi can be dominated) by the Brotherhood of Man.  They're mutated humans that think they are the actual pure strain of humanity and they hunt pure strain humans and subjugate other mutants.
• Dungeons include some of the things mentioned in the Tennessee writeup but also can include more fanciful facilities like spaceports and cloning facilities.
• There is an assumption in this setting that before the fall more people moved to Mississippi because of its abundance of water.
• I may or may not mandate that all mutant animals be reptiles or amphibians of some nature.  I guess I also like the idea of mutant opossums.
• This setting also gets buzzed by flying saucers and may have a saucer-men colony on it.
• I'm going to make some single shot firearms available to starting PCs and they will clearly be of the Planet of the Apes variety
• This guy in this place fighting this thing.

Inspirational Pictures for Mutant Future

One thing I like about these pictures is that they still have vegetation, unlike a lot of post-apoc stuff. 

Mutant Future Wilderness Map

Here are some more postapocalypitc maps.  These are intended for use with Mutant Future, instead of something darker.

First I took this map:

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It is a map of the North America after a bout of catastrophic global warming.  I believe it was created by the same people who did the one I used for the Dark Country, but I'm not sure. 

 Anyway, next I got the map more centered on the area I thought was most interesting.  I then roped off squares that in order to help me make the type of large wilderness map I typically make.  Here is the result:

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Next I mocked it up in Hexographer.  I added some rivers which aren't apparent on the main map.  Gray is hills, dark grey is mountains: 

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It was difficult for me to pick which area to enlarge and make into the first region.  I couldn't pick between the Mississippi islands or the Knoxville area.  I finally picked East TN since it provided a more diverse landscape.  

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Obviously this looks quite different from my earlier map of the same area, and I believe the first one was more accurate.  I figured whatever caused the Mutant Future could be responsible for much more dramatic changes in the landscape than a more "plausible apocalypse."

Finally I set about stocking the thing.  I did this a bit more literally than I usually do, following Welsh Piper's system and my my own tables more rigidly than I normally would.  The big exception is the blast site.  Heres the result: 

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Quite a bit of adventuring to be had there.  I might do a similar map for the Mississippi Islands in due time, but if I need to run a post-apoc game in the near future it's likely I'll use this and Mutant Future.

Stocked Postapocalyptic Map

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The high occurrence of bunkers when I rolled makes me think this would work best as a map for a Fallout game set in East TN and SC.  Of course they could Vivos Group Shelters if you wanted something more "realistic."  

There are a number of unplaced caches and wandering mutants, but I'll let that go for now.  Tell me what you think.

Minor Encounters Take 2

A second attempt of a Minor Encounters Table for post-apocalyptic map stocking.

Minor Encounters (1d8 + 1d12)
2 -- Ancient Structure (Intact)
3 -- Battlefield
4 -- Religious Structure
5 -- Cave System
6 -- Meeting Place
7 -- Mutant Lair
8 -- Fort
9 -- Ruined Structure
10 -- Village
11 -- Isolated Homestead
12 -- Natural Hazard
13 -- Infrastructure (sewer, roadway, etc.)
14 -- Camp, Industrial
15 -- Camp, Semi-Permanent
16 -- Wandering Mutants
17 -- Cache
18 -- Fallout Shelter
19 -- Construction Site
20 -- Special Hazard (Biochemical, radiation, etc.)

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.

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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.

Gentle Reader: Recommend Me a Post-Apoc RPG

I'm already aware of Mutant Future and Gamma World,  but I'm looking for something with a tad more guns.  Don't get me wrong, I like Mutant Future and I'm off and on working on an adventure for it, but I'd like something where society hasn't collapsed as much.  Think Thunderdome with more mutants, or maybe Fallout.

I'm not generally a fan of systems that are too complex, but I would like something that supports hexcrawling fairly easily.

Any ideas?

Apocalyptia

A post over at the Land of Nod has caused me to think about a setting I started to develop a little over two years ago.  Post-apocalyptic fiction is probably my third favorite subset of genre fiction (after Horror and Fantasy); however, I've only used it as the basis for about four sessions of roleplaying.

Those sessions were all set in my short lived Apocalyptia setting.  The name was shamelessly lifted from Fallout 3, but thats how I do things.  I conceived it as a combination of post-apocalyptic, spaghetti western, and hexcrawling campaign.

Prospectors set out on expeditions into the wilderness to find "ancient" ruins where technology lay waiting to be discovered.  Raiders mounted their 'Orses (scaled creatures that disturbingly resemble and don't resemble horses) and rode out to terrorize the various settlements and take slaves back to their unseen masters.  Mercenaries accompanied ranchers on their long cattle drives, where they would take the Big Pigs (exactly what it sounds like) from settlement to settlement.

One thing I changed from the normal post-apocalyptic setup was that this setting was not a desert.  Well, I suppose it was of a sort, but not due to any lack of rain.  Most of the vegetation was either completely dead or rough and poisonous.  The rain was actually the cause of this: whatever caused the end -- I was usually vague on this point -- also caused massive amounts of pollution to enter the water supply.  Rain itself was acidic and horrifying, though a few settlements had makeshift filter systems that allowed them to harness it to grow crops.

Interestingly enough, I decided to set it in Knoxville long before I knew I was moving up here.  Technically it was set between Knoxville and Nashville, which were both in states of terrible disrepair, but never the less it's still set where I'm living now.  The main settlement was Petrol Hill, a small settlement based around an old gas station.  The fuel had long since run dry, but due to clever trading on the part of the original "owner," the settlement was able to acquire other things that made it attractive to possible settlers.

Despite 'Orses and Big Pigs, this was not a zany Gamma World type of setting.  Though few people had them, guns weren't as unheard of as they are in most Gamma World setups, and the general nature of both mutations and adventures was much darker.  I used the BRP yellow book combined with some charts on movement rates and provisions I cooked up the few times I ran it.

I only ran it twice, each time for two sessions.  The first was a murder mystery set in Petrol Hill that the players never solved.  In the second, I converted the lay of the land and general conventions to the Fallout setting and had the players be science oriented vault dwellers stepping out into the world for the first time.  What they found was rough justice and cattle rustlers.

The ultimate reason I dropped it was a lack of clarity in the design.  I wanted my gritty, the Road + Once Upon a Time in the West setting but also wanted something with mutants to stalk the ruins of the past.  It became the kind of conceptual nightmare that Scott of Huge Ruined Pile turns into brilliance, and I turn into a quagmire.  I still daydream about it from time to time.

Since it isn't designed for D&D or one of its variants I'm unlikely to post any further material about it unless there is an extreme amount of interest.  The setting is more or less dead, I was just reminded of it.