Stars Without Number (No…Really!)

Last weekend I was down at Gary’s, browsing the used game section (as I am wont to do) where I found not one, not two, but THREE copies of Dark Heresy in the bin. What the heck?

I went and asked Tim about this: Is there a 2nd edition coming out or something? No. Is the game going out of print? No…in fact there was a new published adventure for Dark Heresy on the display shelf. Did the people that sold the game SAY anything about why they were returning it? No…in fact there were several postings on the bulletin board looking for Dark Heresy games. Why the sudden exodus from the hot, young system then? A mystery, certainly.

Maybe those people have recently discovered Stars Without Number.

Even though it takes place in the year 3200, the game feels more like the Warhammer 40K RPG than any game I’ve yet seen…and that includes the Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Death Watch books. Beautifully produced as those GW volumes are, if *I* were going to run a space opera game set in the 40K universe, Stars Without Number (SWN) would be the way to go. It just needs rules for titans and possession by warp entities.

SO…that’s a good thing. But for me, it’s about ten to 15 years too late…or more. Back when I first discovered 40K (in the late 80s) or when I RE-discovered it (in the late 90s) I would have leaped through hoops of fire to get an RPG like SWN. These days? Not so much. My tastes in RPGs and gaming have changed somewhat over the last decade, especially with regard to game design, and there are more than a couple red flags for me here.

Not that the game isn’t an amazing piece of work. Kevin Crawford has put together something every bit as good as Proctor’s Labyrinth Lord and offered it for free on the internet. Scratch that…what Crawford has done is even more astounding, as Labyrinth Lord is really just a rehashing of B/X D&D (and an adaptation of AD&D to B/X with the Advanced Edition Companion). Crawford isn’t “retro-cloning” anything at all. He’s created a SciFi themed RPG using the rudiments of the D&D system.

And I mean REAL rudimental. You’ll find the following familiar terms: class, level, XP, the Big Six ability scores, hit points, saving throws, initiative (using a D8 dice)…aaaand that’s about it. Most everything else is pretty darn new. Especially, SWN’s approach to adventure design and the designer’s objectives in the matter (more on this in a moment).

So back to my “red flags” (since I’m sure I piqued some folks curiosity). Let me first start by admitting up front: I am not a science fiction fan. Not really, no. I enjoy the hell out of “space fantasy” like Star Wars. I enjoyed Asimov’s Foundation because it’s a good yarn, NOT because I enjoy Asimov’s real physics approach to SciFi (for the most part, I’ve dislike Asimov’s writing for many, many years). Planetary romances like Stirling’s recent books? Good. Military SciFi with emphasis on the non-SciFi aspects (Starship Troopers, Armor)? Great. Visual storytelling (i.e. movies and TV)? My usual cup o’ tea.

But I am NOT into cool technology or “technobabble,” or even pseudo-technobabble. My buddy Steve-O is a reader of SciFi literature and combs the internet for the latest breakthroughs in computers and alternate fuels and space travel. When I started writing my space opera game he wanted me to include all these actual and theoretical technologies like plasma rockets and solar sails and a bunch of other stuff that I really didn’t bother to retain in my memory. I’m more of the “Lucas School” of SciFi terminology: blasters (they blast things), transports (they transport things), speeders (they speed around). I don’t need no dilithium crystals to power MY spaceship (I don’t even care how it’s powered…so long as it gets around!).

Crawford appears to be more like Steve-O.

The book is stuffed with cool technology, pseudo-scientific terms, and hard SciFi jargon. Me? I have a hard enough time saying “Griffon’s Crag Keep” in my weekly D&D game…I am just too lazy (or too unconcerned with specifics) these days to worry about the difference between mag pistols and rail guns and spike throwers. Now if YOU are like my buddy Steve in your love of nano-tech and whatnot, SWN does a pretty bang up job…I definitely give it a thumbs up over A LOT of SciFi games with extensive gear lists (better than or on par with ShadowRun, CyberPunk, Blue Planet, and Mongoose Traveller). For me, I find it incredibly tedious to the point of stupefaction.

Let’s see, other Red Flags for me personally…I didn’t bother reading the psychic section extensively, but it appears to be done well enough (Crawford takes a similar approach to my own game, though his categories are more classic SciFi: see WH40K or Mongoose Traveller for examples powers. Of course he uses Big Words for powers (even if the titles aren’t very intuitive, this is fine as there are a lot fewer psychic powers than types of tech). However, he uses a point (resource pool) system for psychics which is just one more record-keeping exercise I don’t find terribly interesting.

[oh, yeah…there’s also a lot of other tracking in the tech section regarding cost, availability, ammo, power clips, etc…ugh! I am too old and lazy for this kind of book work!]

Another red flag is the inherent skill system, though (and I found this to be very cool) Crawford provides optional rules for junking it! Neat…but with skill packages such a major part of character distinction, I’m not sure what chargen looks like without it.

Ah, chargen…you could sneeze a hole through a 1st level character in this game. From where I’m reading, the game combines some of the worst pieces of Old School and New School. Character creation is pretty long/cumbersome (New School) and character mortality is pretty near the surface (Old School)…the worst of both worlds! To make up for characters fragility you’ll find some metagame mechanics (combat re-rolls for warriors), high (i.e. good) armor classes, “Lazarus patches” (resurrection tech) and psychic healing, plus an admonishment to GMs to encourage playing smart, setting ambushes, and hiring meat shields.

Now this isn’t totally bad…again, I think the rules as written would be of great use in modeling Warhammer 40K (where life is cheap, and space marines are the most likely to make it through with their power armor, psykers, and apothecaries… though they still get wasted, too). But not everyone wants to play 40K…and I’m not sure the game works as well for, say, Star Wars or Firefly or Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica.

And advancement is its own weirdness.

But rather than talk about THAT, I want to talk about the new and innovative part of the game…at least new and innovative from a design perspective. That is, new to ME. Crawford’s main objective (other than writing a cool SciFi RPG that uses D&D as a base)…his MAIN objective appears to enable real and useful “sandbox” play. Several chapters of the game (including the GM Section, Factions, Adventure Creation, World Creation, and Aliens) are all written in aid of enabling the GM to run an organized sandbox campaign right out of the box.

I won’t beat around the bush…it’s a lot of work. But if you don’t mind the work AND you aren’t really feeling especially creative yourself AND you want to run a sandbox saga, then this is the game for you.

Sector creation, world creation, alien creation…all these feel very similar to Traveller (for me anyway), save that there are key words and phrases associated with various choices designed to act as indicators and hooks. “Factions” are a bit different, being a way for the GM to create influential power organizations (from pirates and cultists to Imperial hegemonies and rebel alliances), all of which are tracked in their own mini-game (complete with phases and turns) so as to keep third party action occurring on the sidelines, even when the players’ actions/attention divert them elsewhere.

It’s all very interesting. While Crawford acknowledges different ways to play SWN, I infer from his writing that he prefers (or at least idealizes) the old school “let the chips fall where they may” sensibilities. His text cautions GMs not get attached to favorite NPCs who might get dropped at any time, and players are cautioned the same about their own characters. It would appear that the faction system is a way to bring the neutrality and impartiality of The Rules to the GM’s management of the game universe. Factions have X number of resources and Y number of “hit points;” player actions deplete these resources, possibly disrupting or demolishing the faction…all as governed by the rules. It IS interesting and I’m curious to know how it plays in practice.

Not that I have an interest in practicing it. Running a game is as much an art as a science, and GMs of SWN are still expected to artistically integrate all the faction, planets, and alien hooks/key words along with player motivation.

And that last bit is where the whole house o cards starts collapsing for me. Players are supposed to give their characters motivations, something that drives them forward into adventure…but no hard and fast rules are given for this. Nor is there any game mechanic that manages it. Nor is it tied in any way, shape, or form to a reward mechanic (the main motivating factor for long-term play of an RPG). GMs have this huge swath of tools that allow them to craft and manage the sandbox universe (with a lot of work), all so the characters can putz around, maybe get the gumption to go do something, or maybe sit around doing nothing and saying, “huh what do we do now?”

I look at this game, the way it’s written (and it’s written well by the way; you definitely won’t find typos the way you would in the first printing of my book!)…I look at this game and I get this image in my head of the author. I see him as a highly creative individual, a person with a deep passion for his subject matter and his ability to create worlds, who has decided to codify his normal GM actions/prep-work, designing a game that will make his life easier in the future. He has put together a system that will allow him to manage (and micro-manage) vast galaxies of stars without number, so that no matter what the players in his game do, his created universe can continue on and on...sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes out in the open.

Man, I hope he has players that appreciate it. I sure hope they are down with his type of game and don’t whine “Ugh! You can sneeze a hole through my first level character!” My players bitch when I don’t let clerics have a spell at 1st level.

I hope they appreciate it because that is a CRAZY level of work to run a giant, galaxy-spanning sandbox that operates in such semi-independent faction. It’s like wanting to create (not play, but design and program) an MMORPG for the table-top…a living one with constant updates based on the actions of the NPC characters/groups. It’s like playing “Sim-Civilization” on a galactic scale.

Crazy. But GMs and game designers have been known to have a certain level of “crazy” in ‘em (look at that Tekumel guy).

Okay, the last thing I want to write about is the advancement system. Character behavior is often shaped and almost always influenced by reward mechanics present in a game…I don’t care if it is a game designed to facilitate a simulationist creative agenda. If anything clued me in on this being a sim-style game it was the scant attention paid to rewards (at least compared to other sections of the game).

Characters gain levels through experience points (XP). XP awarded are determined on a “per mission” basis, based on the highest level party member and the total number of player characters. Per the XP guidelines, at least half of the XP that would be awarded should be “hidden,” contingent on the performance of the player characters. From the writing, it would appear the XP reward = treasure found/awarded though this isn’t explicit in the text…it simply says here’s the reward (number) and that only profit from this (number) awards XP to characters.

Whatever…it appears that there are various ways to profit in SWN, but only a set number of points per mission will provide XP…and that number can be adjusted arbitrarily by the GM depending on the GM’s whim/preference per the text.

What is the net effect of this? Um…that PCs don’t know how or when or what they’ll do to advance. Level is tied to both effectiveness (in combat and skill use) and survivability (hit points and saves), but characters impetus to adventure is supposed to be some chosen “drive” that is unenforceable and unmanageable by the rules as written. And the reward mechanic doesn’t promote a particular in-game behavior because PCs are simply being rewarded for showing up at the table…if then (depending on the whim and designs of the GM).

This IS sim gaming, but it is pretty weak. That is to say, the drives of the characters are only going to be as strong as what the players bring to the table based on their own investment in the game. The detailed chargen system will help provide some initial investment (assuming players have at least some character concept to begin), but since a 1st level character has a maximum 10 hit points (warrior with max hit points and an 18 Constitution) and even a greatsword does 2D6 damage (not to mention a non-energy rifle which does D10+2), it’s hard to believe players are going to want to invest TOO much in their characters.

Now this post is not really a review of the game: I don’t really do reviews. I just talk about my personal likes and dislikes and thoughts and feelings. If a lot of this sounds negative, it’s because I’m explaining why the game doesn’t work for ME. A lot of these things…skills, technobabble, 220 page books with pretty pictures…are going to appeal to people besides me. Do I think the game is any worse than other SciFi RPGs that have been published? Not really…and it’s quite a bit better than some.

But it certainly wouldn’t work for ALL types of space opera and SciFi fantasy. I would certainly use SWN for any game modeled on the Warhammer 40,000 universe (the included setting knocks off more than a bit of the 2nd edition fluff). I found myself drooling a LOT at the thought of using it for a series that modeled Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series (at least the later books with the interaction between the Terrans and Darkoverans).

I would NOT use it for Firefly or Star Wars or a Heavy Metal-inspired mutant mash-up, nor for planetary romances like S.M. Stirling’s recent Venus and Mars books, and it’s a little limited for trying most military SciFi (like Starship Troopers and Nu-BSG). I mean, you could use it…but I would think it needs some hardcore tweaking to model certain serials effectively.

As for whether or not it can model hard core SciFi literature, I really couldn’t say. I don’t read that much, probably because I’m not a big SciFi fan.
; )

Polls Closing in Under 4 Hours

...and I may be closing them even earlier.

I believe I neglected to mention this: the reason for the short voting time on the poll, is I am going out of town. I'm flying to DC (the other Washington) today and won't be back till Tuesday night. I will be taking my laptop, but mainly I'm hoping to do some writing in my spare time...especially on the plane.

So whichever module wins the poll, is going in the backpack for conversion in-flight. Right now, that looks like Q1, but really it's still anyone's game.

Also coming with me on the plane is Dies the Fire (which I intend to finally finish), copies of B and X, some map paper, and my latest draft of the B/X Companion (going to make sure the table of contents and index all line up good)...and that's about it for entertainment. Hope y'all have a great weekend!

[hmmm...maybe I should bring some dice, too...ya' never know...]

Friday Update

Wow, JB...you dropped off the face of the Earth for the week. I’m sure that’s what SOME folks are thinking.

Well, kind of sort of not really...I mean I’ve been here after all, just doing things other than planting seeds in the old blog...or anything gaming related actually. But here I am, and hi and hello to everyone!

[by the way, I am currently writing this at the Wild Mountain Cafe, which does NOT have internet access...however, I shall be posting it later as I move to the Wayward Coffee Shop and it’s WiFi network...sorry, folks, this ain’t even in real time]

But who cares, right? What’s the skinny?

Well other than my own job-type work (which was incredibly back-logged and which I’ve finally FINALLY caught the hell up on, not that any gamers/readers would or SHOULD care), I’ve started writing again. As in really writing, not just scratching out notes and outlines. Just spent a couple hours yesterday doing it, and I fully intend to spend several hours today doing the same.

Thank God.

It’s been awhile...like WEEKS, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t call the problem “writer’s block,” per se...once I actually started typing the words kind of avalanched out of my brain (as per usual). All the stuff is up in the ol’ brain pan where it’s been ruminating/fermenting but I just haven’t been putting fingers to keyboard.

I prefer to call my syndrome “inertial block.” Historically, I have been a slave to inertia. When I am in motion I tend to stay in motion, and when I’m not...well, my wife will tell you it can be hard to get me moving once I’m “planted,” even with a ton of coffee pumping through my veins.

This week, I was using my inertial energy to bulldoze through the stuff on my desk/computer at work. By Thursday noon, I had nothing left to do, and after lunch a few phone calls and a nap, I had nothing TO DO but actually get back to work on the module....and knocked out a couple more solid pages, including a bunch of the boring stuff.

I’m back, baby.

So today should be more of the same...the last couple Fridays I’ve had tons of shit to do, including catching up on blog reading-writing and A TON of household chores in anticipation of Super Bowl / NFL play-off parties. Today, there’s nothing till 4:30 or so, which should give 5-6 straight hours of writing. I’m sure I don’t need to explain myself here, but it’s cathartic for me to express just how liberating this is...even with my tweaked back/shoulder twinging at my neck.

Anyhoo...there’s a lot of stuff I could blog about: my new super secret project, and a second only-slightly-less-secret project I like to refer to as Operation: Gypsy Road. I spent a lot of time reading about Oddysey’s Traveller campaign and it made me salivate to have one of my own...hell, I might even run some solitaire “trading missions” in my spare time to see how the system plays (I haven’t yet run a Trav campaign with the new Mongoose rules, though I’ve owned the book for a year or so).

I’ve been reading Dies the Fire...slowly...and I’m really digging it. It’s not nearly as depressing as the real life stories coming out of the Congo these days (folks, that place is in the shit and no lie...write your congressman to get involved!). It is also exactly the kind of story I was talking about including both the “struggle for survival” and the “re-building of community.” If I DO write my own post-apocalyptic RPG I think that Stirling’s book (along with The Canticle for Leibowitz) is going to be incredibly influential on how game-play is shaped...it ain’t just about looking for treasures buried under ancient rubble, it’s about finding a way to feed your clan/family in a world gone mad.

But PA is definitely on the back-burner today. For one thing, it’s cold and very wet today without a trace of Springtime Re-Birth in the air. For another, I want to bang out at least half-a-dozen pages on GQ1.

Happy Friday, folks!

The Eras of the Apocalypse

There’s nothing quite cut-n-dry about apocalyptic fiction in any media. It probably stems from the fact that most people use the term “Apocalypse” incorrectly (including myself). The Apocalypse is the last book of the Bible…i.e. the Book of Revelation. “Apocalypse” is the English translation of the Greek word that means “revelation” (in other words saying the Book of Apocalypse is the same as saying the Book of Revelation); however, because of the general belief that the Book of Revelation provides a prophecy of the “End Times” for humanity, we have allowed the term “Apocalypse” to become synonymous with the End of the World.

Or as I would call it, “the end of civilization as we know it.”

[by the way, in case anyone cares I don’t believe that what St. John describes is a Doomsday scenario but rather a symbolic blueprint of the path to enlightenment based on tearing down one’s selfish separate self / “ego” and re-building the psyche in terms of being a tool for following the divine will, the Seven Seals being the seven chakras that need to be activated through meditation and right-mindedness. Not that humans don’t run the risk of destroying themselves or anything, but I don’t think John’s revelation was anything about some extra-dimensional divine being saving us from THAT…accepting and following the teachings of the enlightened masters, like Jesus, WILL save your soul from the cycle of death and rebirth, but taking Communion isn’t going to give you a chair in some Astral Plane. Read your Edgar Cayce, folks!]

ANYWAY…so when I write “post-apocalypse” (or “PA”) keep in mind that I’m using the common, slangish parlance of “After the Doom of Mankind” not “post-revelation.” The latter phrase would be mean a state of enlightenment (I guess), while the former means a miserable pile of rubble that used to be society as we know it.

SO there are many shades to PA fiction; it ain’t all Gamma World and Mutant Future, that much is for sure. And part of writing a PA game is considering which SUB-GENRE of PA we’re deciding on. ‘Cause, after all, we can’t use every sub-genre at once, can we?

[that’s semi-rhetorical: my original idea DID try to include all sub-genres in one book, hopelessly overwhelming me and being a decided FAIL]

To my mind there are four or five PA sub-genres based on proximity to The End (proximity time-wise, that is):

#1 PRE-APOCALYPSE: Society hasn’t quite broken down, but it’s at the breaking point. Things are pretty frigging bad all over, the end is nigh, and there’s little to nothing anyone can do about it. Possible examples of this in fiction/RPGs include: Blade Runner, Mad Max, Cyberpunk, Car Wars.

#2 IMMEDIATE POST-APOCALYPSE: The end has come and gone and we are left to pick up the pieces. Society has been shattered and will probably never be what it once was, but it’s still within memory of those who lived through the apocalypse. Those who live weep for what they lost and try to maintain normalcy, even as they make do and attempt to survive. After effects of the Cataclysm (nuclear winter, radiation, disease) are as dangerous as the break-down in law and order and starvation (as a society not used to rustic life gets used to a lack of electricity, plumbing, and supermarkets). Examples of this genre are many: The Stand, The Day After, Dies the Fire (and Ariel), Reign of Fire, Damnation Alley, The Postman, Deathlands, The Road Warrior/Beyond Thunderdome. RPG examples are actually few but include the Rifts supplement Chaos Earth and Twilight 2000. Shadow Run could be a fairly wimpy entry into this category.

#3 MULTI-GENERATION POST-APOCALYPSE: The End occurred generations before living memory. People have learned to survive in the wilderness that is the new world, and have rebuilt some semblances of civilization. The wonders of the pre-apocalypse world are rarely understood entirely correctly but here and there people remember and pass things down. Working artifacts from the pre-cataclysm days are scarce except for well-preserved fortifications that have gone un-looted or ruins long abandoned due to multiple dangers. In some of the farther fetched genres helpful/beneficial mutations have become common, as have giant mutant monsters. Examples include Planet of the Apes, A Boy and His Dog, Water World, Logan’s Run, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Battlefield Earth. RPGs in this category are numerous: Gamma World, Mutant Future, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, Paranoia, and Rifts to name a few.

#4 ANCIENT APOCALYPSE: The Cataclysm occurred so far in the past that is understood only as a legend, like we might think of Noah’s Ark and the Antediluvian Age. Humans know almost nothing of the pre-apocalypse Earth, having long histories of their own new societies and civilizations and any ancient technology that has survived is more akin to “magic” than anything properly understood or even legendary. Mutant people and monsters are simply part of the local fauna and peoples of this new land. Examples in fiction include Thundarr the Barbarian (yes!) and the Storm Lands, the Dying Earth, maybe Bakshi's Wizards, and possibly some of the darker sword & sorcery pulp like Karl Vagner’s Kane series. Besides RPGs based on the mentioned fiction (Thundarr and DE both having games), Ron Edwards's “Sorcerer and Sword” supplement works, as does most any fantasy RPG you choose to adapt to this…Arneson’s Blackmoore campaign setting falls into this category which means OD&D works just fine.

#5 SPACE EXODUS: The Apocalypse destroyed the Earth and the only survivors of human society have been forced to make a new home…off world! The state of civilization may be any of the types #2 through #4, and may even be close to #1 (the Mutant Chronicles is an example). An example of #2 in space would include Battlestar Galactica or Titan A.E. An example of #3 in space would be Firefly/Serenity or Metamorphosis Alpha. An example of #4 might be McCaffrey’s Pern series, MZB’s Darkover series, or M.A.R. Barker’s Tekumel: Empire of the Petal Throne.

Now in one of my original PA posts I talked about what I found LACKING in the PA RPGs out there, namely the grim struggle for survival and the re-building of community/society. However, after writing up my list of PA sub-genres, I can see that these two “integral” parts of PA fiction don’t always apply…or don’t always apply the same.

#1: In this sub-genre, there is a grim struggle to HOLD IT TOGETHER. Society hasn’t collapsed yet, and things may be dangerous, but the main thing is holding on to what one has and knows and trying to keep from bottoming out.

#2: Both integrals apply, but SURVIVAL is emphasized.

#3: Both integrals apply, but COMMUNITY BUILDING is emphasized (for example, in Gamma World it is assumed your village has learned how to acquire food and shelter, etc. already).

#4: Neither "integral" is integral; at this point you’re simply playing a standard fantasy game.

#5: The integrals emphasized depend on which sub-genre of the sub-genre applies.

Now scoping all that out, the next question is: which game do I particularly want to design? Granted, one of the harder game concepts I’ll need to work out are rules to integrate the grim struggle for survival and community re-building into the game system, but before I get to THAT I need to figure out the setting for the game. I’m kind of thinking the #2 category (Immediate PA) is the less saturated category of RPG, but besides being awfully depressing (rape, looting, cannibalism, radiation sickness) it’s…well, too much firearms and not enough homemade spears. Unless, of course, I go the “Change” route (aka the Steve Boyett/S.M. Stirling “all-technology-just-stopped-working-for-no-good-reason” plot)

Nah, if I do #2, I’m most likely to set it in space (the #5 qualifier), kind of based on Titan A.E.: humanity has got to learn to come together in a hostile universe if they’re going to survive and rebuild themselves. Earth’s been wiped out to make way for a new hyperspace bypass; hopefully the survivors remembered their towels. ; )

I think #3 holds a lot of potential (probably so many of the RPG entries already out there fall into this category). I’d prefer something less whimsical than Gamma World, much more like A Canticle for Leibowitz (I love that book…it’s similar to a PA version of Asimov’s Foundation series). However, I’m not above adding some psionic mutations to the mix…the mutants Beneath the Planet of the Apes and those found in DC’s Kamandi comics being bizarre enough without throwing in talking animals.

'Course in the words of one PA film: nothing is certain, the future is NOT set.

More later...

One Page Dungeon Contest

"Post-Apocalypse Week" will continue...perhaps tomorrow (I am in the midst of reading S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire), but I forgot to announce the 2010 One Page Dungeon Competition. It's going on, and I'll be one of the judges!

Ha! Is this because ol' JB is so excellent at being judgmental? NO! It simply means I volunteered to be a judge because I wanted to be involved but don't want to actually design a one page dungeon...so there!

For more information, check out the full announcement here. I'm looking forward to reading the entries!

: )

Post-Apocalyptic Fantasies

The sun was shining today…I mean REALLY shining after weeks of grey, wet misery (that January-February kind of Seattle weather that will eventually beat down even diehard rain lovers like myself…too much mud and sickness) and even though we haven’t even got to Groundhog’s Day it feels a tiny bit like the beginning of Spring…I mean you can feel we are on the upside of days getting longer and such.

And so I find myself thinking of the Apocalypse.

I don’t know why…the last couple-four plus years that’s just what Spring and Summer start doing to me. Thinking about The End of the World is hard to do when in the midst of the happy holiday season…or is perhaps too depressing to take out and look at period during the grey, wet winter days. But Spring time…the Easter season, a time of renewal, etc…makes me think about the death of our world and the rebirth of the next.

Not to be morbid or anything…I don’t clean out the bomb shelter or re-stock the canned goods and ammo or anything. Me…I start getting in the mood for post-apocalyptic fiction and role-playing.

Post-apocalyptic fiction/lore (I’ll just call it PA for short from now on, or this post will get waaay too long) is something that’s held great interest for me for a looong time…so long I’m not sure when it started. It’s like my interest in astrology or fencing…from the moment I discovered such a concept existed it has held a great and terrible fascination for me (not that astrology or fencing are “terrible,” but they would draw my interest to the point of distraction even years..decades!...before I started practicing either).

Using Wikipedia to see the release dates of the earliest pieces of PA fiction I remember might give me a clue to when I first started dwelling on the subject. The Day After (1983) was a horrific made-for-TV movie that I remember watching as a 9 or 10 year old…though I also recall falling asleep before the end and having to ask my folks what happened (spoiler: everybody dies). Thundarr the Barbarian I watched religiously on Saturday Mornings and it aired from 1980-81 (age 7 to 8). Sometime around the same period I recall watching George Peppard in Damnation Alley on television and wow, did that one haunt my nightmares as a kid…but it was released in the theaters in 1977 so it was probably not broadcast on television for at least 5 years (’82 or so). Definitely I saw Planet of the Apes early-early in life, and found that pretty horrific…though I’m sure I didn’t see that until the 5-7 year old range (again on TV). My aunt and her friend almost took me to see the Road Warrior in the theater (US Release circa 1982), but at the last minute ended up taking my brother and I to see The Secret of NIMH instead…and I can recall vividly having a long conversation about the Apes movies on that summer day in Montana, so I must have already seen a couple of the films (possibly more than once).

But the earliest PA fiction I can recall is watching the Logan’s Run television series on TV (broadcast 9/77-1/78…’round about the age of 3-4!!). While not dealing with the horror of nuclear holocaust (or did it? Was that the one where there were these crazy scarred mutants wearing gold masks and black cowls to hide their disfigurement?), it certainly involved dystopian societies and bubble cities.

Hmm…I wonder if I can get that one on Netflix. I might need to re-watch it.

Anyway, I’m sure growing up in the Reagan "2^nd Cold War" 1980s helped fuel the paranoia/fascination with the coming apocalypse and “what happens thereafter.”

[Hmmm…just remembered that I also saw the 1978 version of the Time Machine on television when I was 5 years old, and the whole Morlocks/Eloi-cannibalism depiction of THAT film had more impact on my young psyche than any other version of the Time Machine I’ve seen since…this might even have something to do with my whole squeamishness regarding cannibalism]

Yes, long before I ever picked up a copy of Gamma World (2^nd edition, found used in the usual Montana bookstore) I was watching and reading tales that would depict (either in plot or background) the End of Civilization as We Know It. Hell, what 13 year old spends his own money to pick up a paperback of After the Bomb? Probably the same kind of kid that grows up watching Buck Rogers (with the nuked Earth surrounding “New Los Angeles”) and videotaping Chuck Heston in The Omega Man to watch multiple times. Yes…I am weird.

So it might strike some as odd that I’m kind of indifferent about most PA RPGs on the market.

But allow me to clarify: I love-love-LOVE the IDEA of the PA RPG. When I first started designing RPGs myself (as a hobby…my B/X Companion is going to be the first thing I actually publish, folks), I had a half-dozen fairly different RPGs all of the PA variety. I even figured I would call my “company” (whoa! Delusions of grandeur!) something like “Post-Apocalyptic Games.” I just felt there was such a dearth of material out there…and I wanted MORE.

Here’s the short-list of published PA RPGswith which I’m familiar:

Gamma World (1^st through 3^rd editions)

Rifts (and After the Bomb, etc.)

Twilight 2000 (and Cadillacs & Dinosaurs)

Deadlands: Hell on Earth

Car Wars (post-peak oil)

Mutant Chronicles (more Cyberpunk than PA)

Shadow Run (more Cyberpunk than PA)

Cyberpunk (see above)

Paranoia

And of course other assorted weirdness that can be categorized as PA: Obsidian, HOL, World of Synnibarr, some versions of Terra Primate (of course) and AFMBE (zombie apocalypse!), etc. And of course there’s Mutant Future, the OSR’s current darling of whimsical PA mutation & exploration.

The problem for me is: none of these games really satisfy my itch for PA role-playing.

I suppose I should look for a copy of Aftermath! (which I’ve never owned, nor read). But the reputation for being especially fiddly is off-putting to me, even as I like the idea of a grim survival based game.

'Cause that’s 50% of the problem…”grim survival” is the thing that is really missing from all the RPGs I listed above. Gamma World has the potential to be an excellent metaphor for man and his relationship with technology (especially the 1^st edition with some minor 2^nd edition tweaks), but usually gets bogged down in silliness like fish that turn people to stone and rabbits that turn guns to rubber (not to mention all the rest of the well-known gonzo mutants). Rifts and DL:HOE are waaaay too over-the-top to ever be considered grim in a semi-realistic way...and most of the other games don’t even come close.

I’ve never owned Twilight 2000. My friend Jocelyn DID, but we never played it…and her descriptions of the game to me did nothing to entice me to play (she made it appear to be a WWIII simulation fought with conventional weapons only, rather than a broken military in a PA world which might have been intriguing). I DO own Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, a true PA meets Lost World type pulp game that uses the same system as Twilight 2000. Unfortunately, I find the system to be incredibly BORING. I’m not sure exactly why (I’d have to pull it out and read it again), but after picking it up (recently…within the last 12-18 months), I was left feeling like I REALLY wanted to read the Xenozoic Tales comics instead of playing the RPG.

Grim survival ain’t present in these games, system-wise…and that’s something I’d want to see (yes, yes, a GM or referee can certainly tailor events to be “grim” but I want it INHERENT, dammit!) for a real PA game no matter WHAT the nature of the apocalypse. I mean, look at Reign of Fire (the film). Here’s a world that’s been burned to a near-cinder by DRAGONS but (as with all the best PA stories) still there is the over-reaching story of the GRIM STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL. Not, oh dragons exist maybe we should study magic. Not whimsical stories of captured maidens or bad guys allying themselves with the beasts. This is HIDE OR BE EATEN. Which is a common theme in many types of PA fiction (even without dragons).

But as I said “grim survival” (or lack thereof) is only 50% of my dissatisfaction with PA RPGs. The other 50% of my dissatisfaction comes from the other missing integral part of the genre: COMMUNITY BUILDING. The PA story is NOT simply concerned with 'O woe is us we don’t have electricity/plumbing anymore.' Most PA stories involve some sort of rebuilding/rebirth…a rise from the ashes and possibly a redefining of what community and “civilization” means to those left behind.

Now maybe this is just the Plutonic/Scorpio part of me (Pluto, ruler of Scorpio, is greatly concerned with volcanic upheaval that leads to karmic transformation within our lives) but that shit fascinates me. Surviving the apocalypse? That’s tough enough. But re-building the world from the rubble up? Now THAT’s a heroic task.

And again, while this can be simply “injected” by the GM of the game, I’d prefer it to be a real and integral part of the rules, hopefully directly linked to the “reward/advancement” system in the RPG. Reward systems based on behavior encourage that behavior that engenders rewards. Call that Axiom #3 of RPG design. If characters are only rewarded for killing monsters and getting treasure, guess what: that’s what they’re going to do (unless they wander off on a tangential Creative Agenda like, say, Story Now…hello Trollsmyth and Oddysey!). If characters are rewarded for “good role-playing” (whatever the F THAT means) then you’re going to get some hammy play-acting from your players (or you’re going to get players leaving the group disgruntled ‘cause they’re not into being judged on their improv abilities).

Now again, Gamma World (2^nd edition) comes O So Close to establishing this in its Status/Rank reward system…after all, what is being measured in GW appears to be characters value TO their particular community (or Cryptic Alliance, should they join one). Defeating mutants raises their “standing” in the eyes of their people, as does turning in valuable (and working) artifacts with the instruction book attached.

However, while community is INVOLVED in the advancement process, it is not being directly BUILT (perhaps INdirectly, depending on how many mutant monsters get killed and how many tribesmen the PCs arm with Tech III weapons). And community building is the main component of the PA genre…after the grim struggle for survival of course.

[as for the non-Gamma World games, they don’t even come frigging close to addressing this]

Community building or defining: you see it in the Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome. You see it in A Canticle for Leibowitz and The Postman. You see it in The Stand, The White Plague, and even Battlefield Earth and the Matrix films. In all these stories, the grim survivors of the Apocalypse (no matter what form the Apocalypse takes) must come together and redefine what their community is, what it stands for, what they’re all about and how they are going to relate to each other in this changed world. Heck…even those little rag dolls in 9 do this!

Yep, there is the ever-so-faint smell of Spring in the air and I’m itching for some Post-Apocalyptic action. I’ve yet to see The Road or The Book of Eli but I fully intend to see both if possible at my earliest opportunity (watched It’s Complicated on Friday which was very good but certainly not “apocalyptic” in subject matter). I’ve also been meaning to check out S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire, which seems to be a rip-off of Steven Boyett’s 1983 book Ariel (though without the unicorns). I just discovered Stirling in the last year with his throwback planetary romances (Mars and Venus) and Marching Through Georgia, but his PA series has gotten some of his ravest reviews and I’ve yet to peruse any of ‘em. As I finish up work on the B/X Companion and its companion adventure module, I find myself more and more enticed with doing a new 64 page RPG…and I wonder if I have enough junk material (and new ideas) to distill some sort of Post Apocalyptic goulash that will meet MY particular needs of gaming in a world gone mad.

; )