Wasteland Wanderers of Earth AD 2

Here's two example characters I worked up for Earth AD 2, to give you a couple examples of how diverse the PCs can be in this game. I used a die rolling method for stats (roll D6s and re-roll 6s) and otherwise used the default point method.

Initially I rolled up some PCs with a range of skills. After testing the system a bit I realized that anything less than a 4 in a skill is a bad idea if you plan on succeeding occasionally, so I revised the characters accordingly.

The first example is a "mutt" or mutated human:

Name              Quron

Stock              mutated human (Mutt)

Description    gruesome looking melted features, male, 6 feet tall, greenish tinge to skin, sickly yellow eyes

Fitness  4, Awareness 2, Creativity 2, Reasoning 4, Influence 1

Skills:                               

Fitness: Archery 3, Athletics 4, Brawling 3

Awareness: tracking 5

Creativity: Scavenging 4

Reasoning: general knowledge 4, Survival 5

Influence: composure 2

Gimmicks:                                    

Technological ignorance

Beneficial Mutations: adaptation, battle sense, empathy, night vision

Detrimental Mutations: Diminished Talent (Influence), periodic amnesia, seizures, ugly

Gear:

Weapons: Lead pipe (3fat; attack 7), knife (1inj; attack 7), bow with 12 arrows (1inj; attack 7)

Armor: coated leathers (1 armor)

Background Details: Quron grew up in a village that thrived on salvage from a nearby ruin and live in mild opulence compared to other tribes. His disgusting form was overlooked for his unique ability to adapt to damage forms, as well as his talent for sensing enemy intent and seeing in the dark. Despite this, his issues with short term memory loss and seizures made him more suitable to guard the village than to venture in to the ruins….until the raiders with advanced weapons came, and torched his town! Now he wanders the wasteland with the spasmodic Speculos, looking for a new path in life…or revenge.

After Quron I worked out Speculos, the dude from my earlier combat example. Speculos is a "ripper" which is basically a robot with a human brain....a relic of the lost age who is somehow still functioning. In the rules you can spend 1 attribute point or 3 skill points to buy a gimmick...I opted to spend 3 skill points to equip him with a built in gun:

Name                 Speculos

Stock                  Robotic Implanted Human (ripper)

Description        a robotic skeleton with a plastic human-like sleeve of fake skin over it. Kind of loose. Eyes appear unnaturally human but the voice is high and monotone. Wears a light blue synth suit with cracked bubble helmet. Right arm can flip wrist back to reveal gun.

Fitness  3, Awareness 1, Creativity 1, Reasoning 5, Influence 4                              

             

Skills:                               

Fitness: athletics +2, Firearms +4, Melee +4

Awareness: ---

Creativity: scavenging +3

Reasoning: old earth lore +3, Mechanics +4, old earth technology +4

Influence: composure +2

Gimmicks:                                    

Inexhaustible energy, mechanical discrimination, radiation immunity, reduced stamina, restrictive movement, toughness (2); Speech limiter (malfunctioning), cybergun implant (blaster pistol)

Gear:

Weapons: Lead pipe (3fat; attack 7), knife (1inj; attack 7), 3 energy clips for arm-mounted blaster pistol (4inj; attack 7)

Armor: synthetic suit (2 armor)

Background Details: Speculos doesn’t remember his real name, but he knows he’s been wandering the wastes for a long time. Some years ago after a run-in with scavengers his speech limiter was damaged and he now spends much of his time cursing and howling until ordered to reboot his speech modulator. He recently stumbled across the mutant Quron who was stumbling around in the wilderness looking for the raiders that destroyed his village. Quron has reluctantly taken to traveling with the human, whom he won’t admit he has taken a liking to.

Speculos is actually ancient, and his addled brain is filled with stories of the old world but the details are often viewed through a hazy fog of memories from a time when he was actually a living being and not just a brain in a robot body. 

EARTH AD 2: It's Post-Apocalyptic Ass Kicking Time!

I knew of Earth AD 2 from some time back but haven't actually had an opportunity to explore this game until I acquired a copy from Precis Intermedia recently. If you have been, like me, wondering: site is active and ordering from PIG for both digital and print is quick and easy! Customer service is stellar and Matt is very accommodating.

Earth AD 2 is one of the many post-apocalyptic RPGs out there on the market right now. It's current definitive edition is a 137 page rulebook which includes all the rules you need to run the game as well as a ten part story arc and thirty ready-to-go character templates. It's a small package by contemporary RPG standards,  but the rulebook really is complete, with a robust game system and a focus on going from "read rules" to "play game" as quickly as possible. It's not OSR, but the design aesthetics will make you feel like it is....and honestly, it's design is reminiscent of the many cool "all in one book" RPGs we got used to in the early eighties, so keep that in mind.

The setting is a robust "kitchen sink apocalypse" in which you have a world of mutants, pure strain humans, cybernetic survivors, robots with human brains, humans adapted to undersea life, radio controlled cyberpunks, mutant animals and even an option for visitors from outer space. The actual rules for character generation are only 23 pages in length but within those 23 pages you get 9 character "stocks" (humanoids of various mutation/change states/origins), 43 skills and about 166 various gimmicks, which cover everything from mutations to defects to cybernetic implants and more. You can make a lot of weird characters within these 23 pages, and the rules allow for campaigns that run the gammut from 1st edition Gamma World in style all the way up to Fallout style games, or with a limit on the character types and choices a more realistic "The Road" or "Morrow Project" style setting is completely feasible (albeit not really the point of the game).

The core mechanic of the "Genre Diversion i" system that Earth AD 2 is powered by is 2D6-based. You add a relevant attribute to a skill, calculate any bonuses or penalties to the difficulty, roll 2D6, and roll equal to or under the target margin of difficulty which is the result of the modified skill+attribute (so yes, in this system a snake eyes is a crit and box cars is a fumble). There are five attributes, and interestingly only one physical trait: fitness. You modify your agility, strength and so forth through a combination of boosting specific skills (such as finesse or athletics) to distinguish character from being strong and clumsy vs. weak and agile, or grab toughness to reflect a  hardy constitution.

Stats can go up to 5 and skills can go up to 8. This means a supremely skilled and gifted character could roll against a skill at a potential 12 value, meaning a very tough hombre only fails on the box cars.

Combat is broken down in to turns that are five second increments long, and involve an initiative check (a reaction roll) followed by a fitness + skill roll based on attack type. Various modifiers will bring the target number up or down, and each round a character can engage in one contested defense action (but no more). Contested checks in the game involve a skill roll off, and the target with the widest margin of success wins.

Damage in Earth AD 2 is tracked by five levels of one of three types of damage: fatigue, injury and disease. Armor reduces damage by letting you roll dice equal to the armor value. If each die rolls equal to or under the armor value, then you reduce the incoming damage by that amount. Some weapons only deal fatigue damage (initially) and armor may only protect against one of the three damage types, as well.

Combat Example: Speculos the Ripper is a robot with a human brain. He has a blaster pistol embedded in his right arm and has a charging giant roach coming at him. Speculos rolled for his reaction modifier and got a 4 plus his modifiers of 4 (fitness 3 and awareness 1) vs. the roach's roll of 1 plus fitness 3 and awareness 2). Speculos has an 8 reaction to the roach's 6. The roach declares it's actions first but Speculos gets to decide what he does afterward: the roach is charging at him; it's hungry for that tasty brain. Speculos is shooting it, and will try to dodge if necessary. All actions are then resolved simultaneously.

Speculos has firearms of 4, so he has a target of 7. The roach is at short range (modifier 0), but it's running at him. Speculos has a built-in weapon so no quick draw penalty. He rolls a 9...a miss! It's over the target.

Simultaneously the roach closes and leaps. The roach has a fitness 3, brawling of 4, and it's jaws are exceptionally tough so the GM declares it's a "1inj" (one injury) attack (more on this in a moment). Target is 7....but Speculos wants to defend with a dodge if the attack hits, so it's potentially a contested attack....target 6 (brawling 2, fitness 4). The roach rolls 9...a miss! Speculos doesn't even need to dodge.

Next turn Speculos gets a reaction of 10 vs. the roach with a reaction of 11! Speculos is trying to side strep and get a point-blank shot and dodging if needed. The roach goes for the head! A head shot is a +4 difficulty margin.

This time Speculos rolls 3! He also has a -2 difficulty due to being at point blank range....so success by a wide margin. The roach can dodge (rolls 11 and fails). But it still gets it's bite: it rolls 9, failing again.

Speculos did hit. His blaster pistol deals 4 injury points. The roach has the extra tough gimmick (2 points the GM decides) and so it gets two armor rolls: rolling 2 and 2 means it actually absorbs 2 damage! The shot only drops the roach to a -2 injury (sprained) which means it has a base +1 difficulty to all actions now.

Next round Speculos gets a reaction 8 and the roach gets a 6. The roach continues to try and bit Speculos, and he will fire and maneuver around. This time Speculos gets a 7 on his attack, which succeeds because a -2 difficulty at point blank range means his margin is 2 better than the target (so his target 7 turns to 9, or at least that's how I interpret it). Roach tries to dodge and fails with an 8, but the roach attacks with a 7, with a margin of 0, but a difficulty of +1 so it needed at least a margin of 1 to hit and misses.

For damage, Speculos deals 4 injury points and the roach rolls 2 armor dice, getting a 6 and 1. It absorbs 1 but takes 3....it's at -5 on the injury track (incapacitates). It is unconscious and will die if it takes 1 more damage. Speculos steps on it.

Some combat notes so far: there are a fair number of modifiers but all of the combat charts total about 4 pages; I think the first couple combats will have a modest learning curve, after which it gets progressively easier and more intuitive. Also, the game's use of a more old school method for reaction rolls as determining the sequence in which actions are declared (to let faster opponents react to the declared actions of the slower characters) while still making all actions simultaneous is an interesting design choice. My expectation is combat will go faster but my modern gaming group might have to adjust to the idea that because they are faster does not necessarily mean they can stop an opponent's action pre-emptively (without creatively describing their action, anyway).

For the rest of the book there are over seventy monsters and a wealth of detail on the hostile environments your PCs can adventure through. The monster stat blocks include stats and suggested gimmicks, some with more details than others (giant roaches, for example, will have some toughness and jaws, but the GM gets to figure out just how much). This is a slight deterrent....the game would help a bit if fully functioning stat blocks were provided up front for monsters (and the scenarios do exactly this). That said, it's still easy to modify on the fly.

The rest of the book includes rules for full vehicle combat, scavenging, wasteland encounters, expanded rules (noting that character advancement is under the expanded content), and ten scenarios that comprise a ready to go campaign, totaling a 32 page mini campaign that will probably get you through ten sessions of gaming, easily. The scenarios do include the functional stat blocks I had mentioned earlier.

About the worst I can say so far about the book is it's a bit sparse on art (not a lot, but what art is here is nice line drawings, and setting appropriate). The rules show a bit of brevity at odd moments...I did a double take on what to do with the monster stat blocks that provided gimmicks but no specifics until I determined it was up to me to "flesh it out," for example. Another spot that was a bit vague is the action economy.....I interpreted the rules to suggest you can move and attack, but it's all very Old School in that the extent to which you allow actions is the GM's view on whether what you are doing takes 5 seconds or not, basically.

So: overall, this book is an absolute steal for fans of simple but robust game systems with lots of options, and those who love wasteland post-apocalyptic adventuring in the tradition of Gamma World and Fallout. I'll be posting some material soon, including sample characters and scenarios.

Solid A+!

Savage Worlds: The Tricky Gray Apocalypse

For your entertainment....the introduction to the next Savage Worlds game I just sent out to my players. Note that this is pitched, technically, as the beginning of a post-apocalyptic tale....

You are all people in the near present who have found yourselves one month out from an apocalyptic event*. You were each either chosen, invited or kidnapped by the Reverend Wilhelm Sikorsky to his mountain retreat, the "Temple of the Healing Earth" located in the White Mountains east of Sedona. Traditionally Sikorsky is known as a medicine man and healer, something of a mystic, and a major believer in UFOlogy and the presence of aliens in our affairs, even if we don't know it. One day, abruptly and unexpectedly, Sikorsky invites all of his attending guests to the "cave" where he conducts his spiritual healing ceremonies with the Earth and then....you find yourself unexpectedly locked away, the cavern entrance in the mountains protected by a sealed vault door that can only be opened from the outside....

This is where your tale begins!

Suggested archetypes include: the wealthy millionaire looking for a relaxing vacation, the eccentric conspiracy UFO theorist, the healing crystal follower, the skeptic who was out to debunk Sikorsky's "Cult of the Healing Earth," the complete innocent person who was kidnapped from a local diner in the nearby town of Alpine by two of the cultists and locked in a, anachronistic, secure prison chamber in the network of tunnels behind the "healing cave," or perhaps even a halpess cultist who was just trying to help the newcomers feel comfortable and is completely oblivious to why the Reverend closed the foot-thick steel door that you had always been told was designed to keep the cave a "living" environment by preventing its internal moisture and atmosphere from evaporating. 

Equipment is limited (obviously) by what you would have reason to bring to this "cult spa and resort" but stuff you might have in your bags could be inventoried in the event you escape the cave....

Everyone can start with 10 XP (so, 2 picks). No arcane anything...no magic, weird science, anything. Zero magic world. Any profession that fits "today, or not too far from now" works.

The Apoclayptic Event:

Each of you is certain doom is nigh. The apocalyptic event you believe in is as follows (pick one, because none of you think it's the same):

1. Asteroid 2015 GL5589 has been rumored to be on close approach, passing between the orbit of the moon and the Earth. You believe (either rightly as an astronomer or wrongly as a fanatic) that there's a deadly risk it is really going to strike the earth and the government is hiding this from the populace.

2. You recently heard about the bizarre outbreak in South America of the mutating Small Pox Virus that is completely resistant to all vaccines and is deadly so far in 94% of those infected. The news claims the virus is quarantined and under control in Brazil, but rumors are that three cases cropped up on the border in the US...

3. In the wake of belligerent diplomats and politicians, a major conflagration took place in the South China Sea between the US and China. Bombastic rhetoric on both sides could be the lead in to nuclear war....or more noise...but either way you're not taking any chances. White Mountains are way off the grid....

4. The sudden surge in UFO sightings in the last several weeks, culminating a month ago in approximately 200 exotic ufo sightings over Mexico City, Phoenix and Denver have level heads stating it's a product of military build up due to the South China Sea conflict, but you know better....this is the culmination of a pattern that began over twenty years ago, a pattern of invasion....!

5. You can't say it's the "end of the world" but a month ago you attended a conference on the American Association of Biology on the adverse risks of CRISPR technology. One scientist warned that it was already suspected that North Korea had used CRISPR technology to create a cordyceps sinensus that was extremely robust and hearty, primarily (it was suspected) to harvest a more robust form of aphrodisiac for Kim Jung Un. The results were questioned however when it was found that the fungus could infect and grow on large scale hosts outside of ants....and rumors were that North Korea had moved it to weapon testing. Disturbed by the concept, you made your way to the retreat a month later to clear your head, after an ex-GF suggested it was a great place to veg out, if you ignored the crystal stuff.

Five Basic Roleplaying Sourcebooks I Would Really Like To See

With the recent changes at Chaosium, followed by the Big Ass Sale which has cleaned me out as I acquire all remaining BRP/CoC books I don't already own, it got me to thinking about what Basic Roleplaying still could use in the way of sourcebooks. Here are five tomes I would like to see in BRP's future, and maybe you would, too:

#5. BRP Zombies
We have GURPS Zombies which, like most GURPS books, works well as a sourcebook for any RPG (although 4E is slightly less useful in this regard than the old 3E sourcebooks, I admit). Sure, there are also dedicated zombie apocalypse games out there, but BRP's baseline "rules of realism" work exceptionally well for zombie apocalypses. I ran a BRP zombies campaign not too long ago that was an amazing experience, and introduced at least one new player to RPGs in general...it's a brutal genre, but an in-depth guide would be well worth exploring.

#4. BRP Bestiary
It goes without saying that one of the strengths of D&D is it's ability to produce copious quanities of creatures for adventurers to fight. Although your average BRP game is going to be about more than just slaughtering monsters and taking their stuff, that's a style of play that nonetheless resonates well, and having a large volume of monstrous foes to pick from has always benefited those games that need it...hell, look no further than Malleus Monstrorum for Call of Cthulhu to see an example of how this works for the horror genre.

#3. BRP Post-Apocalypse
Rubble & Ruin is a great monogaph but it is more like a taste of what we could have. I'd love to see a book for BRP that gets the Will McAusland treatment, but powered by BRP. Just imagine what that could look like...or even something robust enough to support an in-depth Mad Max styled campaign without any extra work on the GM's part. Rubble & Ruin was a good start: we need a glorious, full color finish! If we can get an amazing pirate book like Blood Tide, I think BRP Post-Apocalypse should be a no-brainer.


#2. BRP Cyberpunk/Transhumanism
Although the rules say you can construct cybernetics from the super powers rules, and having done so I would say yes, that is a reasonable work-around, it's still better to have a dedicated system (or extrapolation) on cyberware and wetware, along with a detailed world/setting guide that discusses the future cyberpunk dystopias and transhumanist singularities that we could build stories around. I'm thinking of more of a "world/setting creation book" than a premade setting....too often author bias makes the specific setting books of limited value. We need GURPS Ultratech and GURPS Biotech but for BRP, essentially....along with some glorious world design rules.

#1. Future World
This is the top dog....and it could even include the aforementioned cyberware/wetware rules. Magic World works as a great intro game because of its focus on fantasy. A SF-focused rulebook or even toolkit guide for SF gaming would be a much needed addition to BRP. Something which includes cusomized professions and skills, world generation, star travel, ship design, trade and commerce, exploration rules, alien design, cyberware, robots, androids, wetware and more. A "campaign design" book rather than a single setting book like we've been getting...something akin to Savage World's Science Fiction Companion, which as you all know is one of my favorite little toolkit books.

The GURPS Repository plus: Post-Apocalypse vs. Pirates?

Despite my bouncing back and forth on the idea last week, GURPS is not only not "off the table" for my next planned campaign, it's looking like it will be the top dog in this coming race. My Saturday group will be returning to 13th Age....but I plan to indoctrinate the Wednesday gang in GURPS! Just gotta settle on a genre and setting now...

Anyway, while searching for GURPS resources and blogs online I discovered the GURPS Repository. This is a pretty cool resource....312 monster entries, 60 racial templates and more make for a very useful resource. My GURPS games are probably going to lean either post-apocalyptic or pirate historical (verdict is still pending) but this site still has a lot to offer a GURPS GM.

VS.

But wait.....why choose?!?!? Just....do....POST-APOCALYPTIC PIRATES!

Post-Apocalyptic Plot Seeds

These sixteen plot seeds for Post Apocalyptic adventures originally appeared in TSS 43, but I'm reprinting them here....possibly for a second time, my memory fails me!...for your enjoyment:

1 While traveling through wasted ruins, characters stumble across a colony of sentient rats which have descended from genetic experiments before the holocaust.

2 The players see a distant shooting star that grows ominously large, and crashes somewhere nearby. On investigating, they find a starship, out of which emerges a cosmonaut who claims to have been part of an experiment to test a ship that could travel close to the speed of light. The cosmonaut’s ship left Earth orbit in 1970.

3 The entrance to a hidden vault is found, in which a fabulously wealthy billionaire from Old Earth, surrounded by very human-like android servants has whiled away the years, kept unnaturally young by telomerase resequencing treatments. Recently, he discovered that his auto-docs are failing, and he need to find the tools and materials necessary to repair his anti-aging system.

4 One of the players discovers what appears to be an impressive ebony sword trapped in a lava flow. After pulling it out, the local survivor villagers proclaim him a new warlord. Unfortunately, the sword was lodged in the chest plate of a powerful pre-cataclysmic warbot, which, weapon now removed, begins to heal up with nano-repair bots before shattering its rocky tomb. Oh, and it wants its sword back.

5 A nearby volcano (which may be a smoldering crater from the end times) is radiating a lethal cloud of spores, which infect local humans and animals with a silicone-based life form that drives them in to madness and frenzy. The spores are wafting from a lava tube inside the crater, where the deadly plants are blooming, having grown up and out after being exposed from the depths of the earth.

6 A war satellite is still functioning, zapping targets at random on the planet below with a powerful particle beam weapon. It is possible to be stopped, but this involves finding an ancient comm. Station, breaking in past the still-functioning robot security units, and shutting it off.

7 A squad of immortal super-soldiers wanders the wastelands, carrying out a need for war which was genetically encoded as a biological imperative. They wander in to the peaceful lands of a survivor community, and attempt to forge an army out of the weary folk, or destroy them if they wont cooperate.

8 An alien vessel arrives in orbit and sends a contingent of scientists down to the surface of the apocalyptic world to investigate. It turns out they are from Earth, and that the Wasteworld is really a colony that succumbed to civil war decades ago!

9 While traveling the across the wasteland, the players stumble across a humongous relic from the old war, a tripod-like tank left over from the Martian invasion of Earth.

10 Locals are terrorized by what appear to be immense ravaging dinosaurs straight out of the cretaceous and beyond. They ask the adventurers to stop this menace. The trail leads to a ruined laboratory where particle physicists once worked on creating wormholes. It turns out that the AI which runs the facility is still quite active, and finished their work, creating a wormhole in time which leads back in to the distant past. It’s trying to perfect a way to send people through, to test the laws of causality!

11 Sometime during the cataclysm an ancient army of war machines was buried beneath waves of lava. The basalt later proved to be a valuable mining source for a local colony of survivors, who were digging for the metallic parts and pieces entombed within. One of the war machines was otherwise preserved intact in the quick-cooling lava flow and has awakened! It now seeks to reconstruct the interred army of its machine brothers, to complete the job they started…and needs humans to serve as "living brain cases" for the hyper-advanced machine intellects!

12 A horde of slavering, liquefying mutants that generate voluminous quantities of highly corrosive vomit are marauding the land and terrorizing the local citizens. The heroes stumble upon a camp of survivors in an otherwise intact resort facility from before the end times who are being terrorized by these slimers.

13 An alien vessel investigating the burnt out shell of Earth has crash landed, and the alien is on the loose! The alien is masquerading as a mutant, or perhaps even looks human enough, but some of the more savvy scavengers in the area have gotten wind of this high tech marvel wandering around and are trying to find it. The characters might benefit from aiding the creature in repairing is starship, either for gifts it offers them, or a chance to escape the Wasteworld. Of course, they could just as easily by the scavengers!

14 There’s a local hermit in the mountains called Big Ben who is a survivor from the old days, an ageless cyborg soldier who has lived through a hundred years of struggle and doom. Rumor has it that he’s the only one who knows where the crazy cyber-mutants from the nearby city ruins are coming from, and the PCs need to convince him to help their little survivor town.

15 Monstrous mutant insects are coming from south of the old border, larger than skyscrapers and leaving massive swaths of destruction in their wake! The PCs are not only challenged with protecting their local community, they have to figure out why the bugs are migrating north, and what could possibly be so terrifying to these immense mutants that they would flee from?

16 The PCs are investigating rumors of a local mystery, where people are seeing a strange, supernatural entity that they are calling the Mothman. Someone still has a working DVD player, or one of them curious “books” about the mysterious Mothman, so they know this is a supernatural being from before the end-times, and a small cult is growing up around this being, which people believe is a harbinger of doom. A local skeptic thinks the Mothman is a fake, and that someone is behind it, maybe even the preacher who’s initiating the new cult growing up around the creature, and he wants the PCs to debunk it in favor of his techno-church that’s losing its congregation! Of course, the mystery of the Mothman could be a fraud, but maybe, just maybe there's something more to it....

Beyond Red Crater is out!

Mutant Epoch gets a new sourcebook! Beyond Red Crater is available in PDF on Rpgnow and that means it ought to be available in POD at Lulu (yep, it is).

I had no idea this was scheduled for imminent release (for shame!) so it missed my recent PDF/indie buying spree, but I'll snag it soon, I promise! Mutant Epoch was a game I wanted to run a lot more of last year (only managed to get in a couple one-offs) and it's still on my list as a game I'd like to run a good 10-15 session campaign with. Maybe soon?

Noon

Another awesome short on Vimeo, this one a post-apocalyptic snippet of an especially interesting future earth:

Thirty One Days of Horror: Terror Within

Day Twenty-One: Terror Within

"My god, it's full of tropes..."

Here's the sort of movie I subscribe to Netflix for: some obscure, otherwise forgotten post-apocalyptic survival horror flick that I otherwise missed back in 1988 (and would probably have liked less then, anyway) just waiting for me to discover it for the first time. Like Leviathan that I reviewed earlier its a product of the 80's, and shows it. Unlike Leviathan, this movie was done on what looks like a shoestring budget and where Leviathan attempts for a fancy rip-off of The Thing and Alien, Terror Within aims instead to be the unholy love child of Alien and C.H.U.D.!

Since this movie is not high on my list of "amazing films" be warned that copious spoilers lie ahead!

Our tale opens in the Mojave desert, some undetermined time after a biological agent has decimated the world population and mutated the unlucky ones into hideous mutants referred to as gargoyles. Luckily the surviving employees at the Mojave Center for Disease Control subterranean labs (a complex no doubt built under contract by Umbrella Corp.) are boldly setting out to see what's left on the surface as their resources run low. Food type resources, that is. They seem to have all the hair care products and gel that they need....in the 80's, hair was always a priority. Always.

After the first two guys go missing with sound effects suggesting an untimely demise, two more agents are dispatched along with the adorable dog Butch to see what happened. They discover that the two previous agents are dead, as is a camp of survivors, much to their surprise. Then they stumble on a lone woman who lived through the massacre, it seems. They return with her to the base; she's the ray of hope that survival in the post-bioplague wasteland is possible!

What happens from here on out boils down to: "we wanted to do Alien, but we lacked the budget for a sci-fi blockbuster so we worked with what we had." The script, characters and even several situations are essentially pantomiming or otherwise ripping off Alien at every turn, but with that horribly cheesy eighties era TV-actor special style to it. They are so busy ripping of Alien, in fact, that they repeatedly miss opportunities to do their own thing and distinguish their film from the obvious source material, which is a shame.

No hair was harmed in the making of this film

The film plods along toward the inevitable conclusion, as they discover the survivor in the wastelands is pregnant, but the fetus seems to be growing at a rate of days instead of months. They decide to operate and remove the fetus, but it's too late and the little monster escapes. As you may expect the only thing more impressive than its two day gestation period is it's enormously efficient metabolism and the baby gargoyle mutant is a large, lumbering rubber suit adult in a matter of hours.

The group makes improvised weapons, including a flamethrower, crossbow and some lasers that look suspiciously like either nail guns or some pvc tubing and the hunt is on! If you've seen Alien you've already seen how this movie goes, except much, much better and with more thought put into it. If you still want to know, read on.

Long story short, the mutant wants women, and it grabs one of the CDC employees and has its way with her. The crew dies slowly but surely while trying to kill it, and eventually we're down to two survivors (a Hasselhoff wanna be and the good lady doctor) plus the rascally dog Butch. Butch is the real star of the movie here, and even when he gets in a tangle with the mutant he lives. Butch is a horrible dog actor, but he makes up for it by being adorable.

Eventually the two final survivors (note that I feel no compulsion to restart this movie just to remember what their names are) have a final confrontation with the mutant and manage to grind it up in a large fan blade. Then another base finally contacts them and they feel a ray of hope. We end with the trio leaving, blowing up the installation and a couple more rubber suit mutants up behind them.

Some of the more amusing moments in Terror Within include:

1. Bad Dog acting. Butch the dog is not terribly good at what he does, but he makes up for it by being so cute. Butch is to Mojave CDC Lab what Jones was to the Nostromo.

2. This is an underground lab, right? I guess it's secret because its entrance is an old prospector's shack in the middle of the desert, with no visible roads or means of reaching it. The lab itself is ambiguously large...which is to say, as large as the plot demands for it.

3. I liked we have two goofy tech/mechanic types, who precisely match the same roles of the two mechanics on the Nostromo. I like how one dies while dropping his cigarette in an eerily similar scene to the same event in Alien.

4. The mutant gargoyles in this movie suffer from the age-old rubber monster problem of "jaws and teeth too large and unwieldly to live with." How the hell do you eat, let alone bite, with a jaw like this thing has?

5. We don't need no stinkin' metaphors! This movie avoided the "alien as a metaphor for rape, sexual invasion, and pregnancy" and simply made it exactly that, with the mutants seeking to impregnate normal women with their infernal fast-growing spawn.

6. Aside from all that, this movie was shot in locations that look very much like where I grew up as a youth, so there was a pleasant sort of home-iness to it for me.

7. This film is filled with a delightful load of retrotech. There's even a spot where splicing a tape becomes a tension-filled moment! Yay for the retrofuture as envisioned by the past.

8. "What do we do now that we've killed it?" "I know! Let's leave our underground base, where the only technology that can broadcast a subsonic noise to drive the monsters away exists, and blow it all up because SCIENCE, bitches."

Seriously, I have no idea why they thought blowing up their base at the end was a good idea, other than because the Nostromo blew up so there ya' go.

Terror Within aspires to be Alien but with no budget, poor acting, an ill-conceived script, and styled hair that is far too good to be true in the post-apocalyptic landscape. Plus, this movie came out after other, better films like Predator and The Thing so it had no excuse. Still, it was fun to watch and might be even more entertaining with friends who like to rip bad movies apart. I'll give it a solid D, with the caveat that I still found it enjoyable to watch, for a groan-fest of fun. But Butch the dog gets a B+, for being the best and cutest actor in the movie!

Play Dead

A new amazing short film on Vimeo. I don't know if Play Dead is a sign that the zombie genre has been completely tapped out for ideas, or if it's a sign that we've barely scratched the surface....but it is definitely worth watching. It's about 15 minutes long.

Important warning! This is still a zombie survival horror flick, no matter how canine the stars are. Expect the usual body count when it comes to zombie flicks, amongst both men and dogs. But trust me, if you're into zombie films, this is a must see.


Play Dead (2012) FULL MOVIE from Andres and Diego Meza-Valdes on Vimeo.

Quest for Power: A Post-Apocalyptic Scenario

Back when the new Gamma World came out I worked up a scenario that I was going to use....but as is common, the chance to play never came to pass. I present now the scenario/location for use in Gamma World or pretty much any other suitable post-apocalyptic campaign...w

Quest for Power

A Tale in the Ruins of Old Sanaf and Kirkie

Introduction: Emergency in the Village of Bern

   The villagers of Bern have come to inhabit the ruins of a large, seemingly resplendent ancient building. The building in question included an amazing store of food, kept in a unique “freezer” powered by an unknown source. Until recently, this reserve was in no way threatened, but unexpectedly the enigmatic power source has gone out.

   The village elders (named Moxo, Paz, and Erna) have gathered and asked the PCs to seek out a means of fixing or replacing the power source for the “freezer.” They know of two likely sources: Kirkie is a vast metropolitan ruin and there may be lost tech that can replace the power source; in Old Sanaf there is a known tinkerer called Electro Bill, who is reputed to be extremely savvy with lost tech and might be able to repair or bring the power back on line.

   Bern is only ten miles north of Kirkie. The ruins of Kirkie suffer from two primary threats: first, the Great Crater with the ruins of what some call a “Martian” Sky Platform in its center, and second: the legions of the Super Mutant called Noximus ( a serf). Noximus is said to have found a vast cache of lost weapon tech, and he has used this to make his raider gang the most powerful in the region. Kirkie City is his domain, and he lords over what used to be a fairly friendly community to the south.

   Old Sanaf suffered less during the Cataclysm, but still has problems. The ruins are thick with overgrowth and rumors of strange plant mutants abound. The technologist named Electro Bill is supposedly now working for the enigmatic order of the Restorationists, and it is believed that he is dwelling in an ancient Vault in the mountains just north of the ruins. Problem is, raiders from Noximus’s army have also been searching for the technologist and his allies for some time now; there is also the problem of the indigenous plant-based mutants, which are notoriously hostile to all beings.

   The elders have decided to task the new young heroes with this job. They have opened up the village’s cache and will let the heroes each pick one piece of omegatech from the resources at hand to help them on their journey to save the village’s previously unending food supply.

About Bern

   Bern is described as:

“A fabulous village built inside an ancient structure. It is filled with brightly colored boxes from which the coins of the ancient spill in endless quantitity; these can be smelted and turned in to useful tools. The long cooridors and open spaces of this structure have been turned in to indoor protection for dozens of huts and families, constructed from the many strange boxes and other materials left intact after the Collapse. It is most famous for the so-called “restaurant” in the back which is still in working order and run by a mutant called Cook. The restaurant is connected to a storage unit called the pantry, which in turn provides a unique sort of freezer called a “Stasis Freezer,” in which vast quantities of food can be found. The machine that operates this device has been repeating verbally to Cook that it detects that the “fusion cell” is powering down and either needs to be repaired or replaced.”

GM ONLY: Bern was built inside the ruins of the Star Casino, and the machines within disassembled or smelted down to make construction materials or tools. The actual furnace and smithy is located outside, but the surprisingly intact main structure now provides shelter for an entire town. About nine years ago the open-air section of town inside the old multi-story car garage was lost when the garage collapse. Since then, the villagers (about 200 of them) have lived off of the vast amount of food inside a very long-lived Stasis Freezer, which keeps its contents perfectly preserved (and might even do so to living beings trapped within). The freezer is powered by a cold fusion cell manufactured from the alternate timeline that the casino comes from, and had a 200 year lifespan which is now winding down. A new power source as well as a technologist or mechanic of decent skill (DC 28) can fix it and get the device working again, before it shuts down completely and the food is spoiled.

Locations in Bern:

The Smithy: Run by Chos, a big burly fellow, this is where materials are smelted and cast in to new molds. Chos comes from Phenx and is famous for his learned talent as a smith. He can make real weapons for the PCs if they ask, though he likes trade for services rendered.

Chos: Giant yeti (level 3)

The Cache: Once a bank vault in the casino, this is now where the village omegatech cache is kept. Many items acquired through salvage found inside the building and abroad can be found here, and many of them aren’t even very well understood. It is guarded by an android named Mike.

Mike: android pyrokinetic (level 4)

The Smokes and More: this was once the gift shop, now converted in to a store front for the village and run by the woman Yasna. She’s always looking for new items for trade. She is known for being able to stalk fresh tobacco smokes, made and traded to her by the Westos Trading Guild. Her main contact with the Westos Traders is Tom Orlan, a Badder from somewhere out west.

Yasna: radioactive cockroach (giant spider level 2)

The Glitterhall: this is the largest central area of the casino, where more than three dozen “huts” made from reworked slot machines and tables have been turned in to housing.

The Restaurant: Here is where Cook serves the food he “prepares” from the Stasis Freezer. Villagers eat free, but guests must pay; Cook likes ammo in trade for food best; he has quite a collection of arms in his private room.

Cook: seismic elektrokinetic mutant (Level 3)

Hall Watch: the old security room has been turned in to a makeshift office and is used by the android cockroach swarm named Moxo as the constabulary headquarters. The security cams still work, and he uses them to monitor the village, though he suspects they too will go off, once the “fusion core” expires.

Moxo: android sentient cockroach swarm (level 4)

The Wastelands outside of Bern:

   Traveling outside of Bern is always risky. The following represents a sampling of the threats that might be encountered (typically encounters happen on a 5 or less on a D20 once per hours of travel in the region 10 miles around Bern):

 

D20                        Encounter

1                              An undiscovered cache of omega tech (1D4 omega draws)

2-4                          Raider patrol for Noximus (800 XP):

                                1 dabber sharpshooter (scout), 2 hoop warriors,  2 porker marauders, 1 porker       warhog

5-8                          independent raiders (600-1000 XP):

                                Pick 2D4 from Random mutant list

9-10                       Pack of Green Folk Gren (850 XP)

                                3 gren headhunters, 2 gren archers

11-12                     Blight flight (850 XP)

                                2 blight hunters, 2 blight venomwings

13-14                     A lone android named Praetorius willing to trade (has 1D6 omega tech)(650 XP)

                                1 android, 4 badder steading guards, 8 mutant cattle pack animals

15-16                     A lone Orlen named Chud arguing with himself (350 XP)

                                1 Orlen

17-18                     Pack of wild mutated dogs (600 XP)

                                6 wild mutant dogs

19-20                     A predatory sep land shark attack (600 XP)

                                3 sep land sharks

Year Zero and Black Mountain

So I stumbled across this trailer and I am not sure whether the I am more intrigued by the video or the music. The music is by Black Mountain and is absolutely amazing stuff, the kind of music I can listen to for years to come. The video is, well...here's the blurb from Vimeo on the trailer:

YEAR ZERO is a modern take on high performance surfing set in a post-apocalyptic world, reminiscent of Mad Max or an HG Wells novel. It tells a story of a band of renegade surfers, including Dion Agius, Yadin Nicol, Nate Tyler, Taj Burrow, CJ Hobgood and Damien Hobgood, on a road trip through the apocalypse in search of waves, women, and good times. The film’s original soundtrack by BLACK MOUNTAIN, whom VICE MAGAZINE has called, “One of the best rock n’ roll bands of our time,” creates a sonic landscape that fully delivers the immersive experience that director Joe G envisioned for the film.--Vimeo



Globe's Year Zero (0000) Final Trailer from Globe Surf on Vimeo.


So that looks interesting. Now for Black Mountain, There's a couple free songs for download here, and you can request a sampler of their albums here. Naturally Amazon has us covered with all their albums up for grabs as well (no idea about iTunes, I don't do iTunes).

Plotting the Post Apocalypse

This article originally appeared (I think) in an issue of TSS, but I present it now for posterity on the blog...

Needless to say these plots should work with any post-apoc game, be it Mutant Epoch, Mutant Future, Atomic Highway or Gamma World!

10 Weird Plot Ideas for your Post-Apocalypse Adventures

1                    While traveling through wasted ruins, characters stumble across a colony of sentient rats which have descended from genetic experiments before the holocaust.

2                    The players see a distant shooting star that grows ominously large, and crashes somewhere nearby. On investigating, they find a starship, out of which emerges a cosmonaut who claims to have been part of an experiment to test a ship that could travel close to the speed of light. The cosmonaut’s ship left Earth orbit in 1970.

3                    The entrance to a hidden vault is found, in which a fabulously wealthy billionaire from Old Earth, surrounded by very human-like android servants has whiled away the years, kept unnaturally young by telomerase resequencing treatments. Recently, he discovered that his autodocs are failing, and he needs to find the tools and materials necessary to repair his anti-aging system.

4                    One of the players discovers what appears to be an impressive ebony sword trapped in a lava flow. After pulling it out, the local survivor villagers proclaim him a new warlord. Unfortunately, the sword was lodged in the chest plate of a powerful pre-cataclysmic warbot, which, weapon now removed, begins to heal up with nano-repair bots before shattering its rocky tomb. Oh, and it wants its sword back.

5                    A nearby volcano (which may be a smouldering crater from the end times) is radiating a lethal cloud of spores, which infect local humans and animals with a silicone-based lifeform that drives them in to madness and frenzy. The spores are wafting from a lava tube inside the crater, where the deadly plants are blooming, having grown up and out after being exposed from the depths of the earth.

6                    A war satellite is still functioning, zapping targets at random on the planet below with a powerful particle beam weapon. It is possible to be stopped, but this involves finding an ancient comm. Station, breaking in past the still-functioning robot security units, and shutting it off.

7                    A squad of immortal super-soldiers wander the wastelands, carrying out a need for war which was genetically encoded as a biological imperative. They wander in to the peaceful lands of a survivor community, and attempt to forge an army out of the weary folk, or destroy them if they wont cooperate.

8                    An alien vessel arrives in orbit and sends a contingent of scientists down to the surface of the apocalyptic world to investigate. It turns out they are from Earth, and that the wasteworld is really a colony that succumbed to civil war decades ago!

9                    While traveling the across the wasteland, the players stumble across a humongous relic from the old war, a tripod-like tank left over from the Martian invasion of Earth.

10                Locals are terrorized by what appear to be immense ravaging dinosaurs straight out of the cretaceous and beyond. They ask the adventurers to stop this menace. The trail leads to a ruined laboratory where particle physicists once worked on creating wormholes. It turns out that the AI which runs the facility is still quite active, and finished their work, creating a wormhole in time which lead back in to the distant past. It’s trying to perfect a way to send people through, to test the laws of causality.