I don't want to play Gamma world, or Resident evil.
I want to play modern planet of the apes. Or the walking dead, or maybe Mad Max, but that might be a little too gonzo for what I am thinking. The Post Man would be great, book not movie.
Anyone got a recomendation?
Twilight: 2000.
Aftermath! from FGU is exactly this. Available in print from Fantasy Games Unlimited and pdf from DriveThru. The core rules even include Planet of the Apes. It is an Eighties game and character creation is crunchy, but it does real world post apocalypse very well.
GURPS After the End? (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/aftertheend/) or GURPS Zombies Day One? (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dayone/)
Muatnt Year Zero with human only characters. It's pretty gritty.
Apocalypse World
Mutant: Year Zero
Twilight: 2000 - actually this is probably the grittiest one.
All Flesh Must Be Eaten
After the Bomb
The End of The World series - Zombies, Wrathful gods, Machines, Aliens....take your pick
Eclipse Phase is essentially post apocalyptic.
Judge Dredd in the Cursed world, although this is obviously comic strip.
Savage Worlds - Hell on Earth
Feng Shui future junction is basically Planet of the Apes
There is probably lots more. You can dial up or down the gonzo elements in a few of them.
If you are inclined to the lighter end of the rules spectrum Rotworld from Goblinoid Games uses the old Pacesetter system (Chill et al) is a zombie apocalypse that lets you design your zombies and includes handy tables for when the gas in gas stations will run out, how long food will last in the grocery stores etc which could be used for any PA game.
Barbarians of the Aftermath, based on Barbarians of Lemuria, also lets you design your own apocalypse and is rules light.
One thing I wish they would do - which has been mooted by Chaosium - is a post apocalyptic Call of Cthulhu era book.
The Morrow Project. Still my favourite for its more realistic depictions. Theres some mutants, but they tend to be less over the top.
Runners up being Aftermath which I've heard of but never seen really aside from a glance. And Twilight 2000 I hear of alot but never seen.
Others.
Gamma World can do more realistic PA by simply removing the mutants and super-science. Its got all the rules in place to handle it. We even did some GW sessions more like Morrow Project.
d20 Gamma World is an odd one. Its super-science up the wazoo. But the DMG gives some advice on running all sorts of settings including more realistic ones and even more fantastical ones.
TFT has a solo PA style module but havent tried it yet.
Atomic Highway- PDF downlod for free here:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/70124/Atomic-Highway--Post-Apocalyptic-Roleplaying
Quote from: Patrick;977653Atomic Highway- PDF downlod for free here:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/70124/Atomic-Highway--Post-Apocalyptic-Roleplaying
I was just going to recommend this game, too:).
Quote from: Patrick;977653Atomic Highway- PDF downlod for free here:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/70124/Atomic-Highway--Post-Apocalyptic-Roleplaying
I would recommend this as well. It is very light, very streamlined. Adding races (for planet of the apes) would not be hard. It has a mutant powers - type add-on to emulate Gamma World but the base game doesn't have that. This is the epitome of rules light.
Aftermath is the exactly opposite. I liked the game, but I think it is entirely too 80s of a crunch game for me now (not just crunch, but random and with-unclear-point crunch. I believe theirs a 2D3 roll in the starting skill points calculations, which even in the 80s I was thinking, "okay, fine, but why?").
Quote from: TrippyHippy;977636One thing I wish they would do - which has been mooted by Chaosium - is a post apocalyptic Call of Cthulhu era book.
Does
The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/84215/The-Cruel-Empire-of-Tsan-Chan) count? When you talk about post-apocalypse and Cthulhu at the same time, I'm not sure if you are talking about a
normal apocalypse or a
Mythos apocalypse (i.e. the stars align for the return of the Old Ones). Tsan Chan is the latter.
Quote from: Headless;977560I don't want to play Gamma world, or Resident evil.
I want to play modern planet of the apes. Or the walking dead, or maybe Mad Max, but that might be a little too gonzo for what I am thinking. The Post Man would be great, book not movie.
Anyone got a recomendation?
Not sure I follow, but... assuming you want a nearly realistic apocalypse with just one (or two) well defined twists on our otherwise normal world?
Broken Rooms - It's actually a game about dimensional jumpers crossing into alternate, connected Earths. But each of those Earths is dying in a different (well done) way, and you can easily gut the weirder stuff and just run with a single apocalyptic world.
Summerland - Nature just went... berserk... one day. Hard to have roads and cities when trees and grass cover it all, and animals all went feral and smart.
World of the Dead - If you want to run a zombie apocalypse in Savage Worlds, this one takes the cake.
Quote from: DavetheLost;977634includes handy tables for when the gas in gas stations will run out, how long food will last in the grocery stores etc which could be used for any PA game.
This sort of thing is what a near-term game would be about. That, and detailed rules for starvation, disease, etc., since that's what the game will be about.
Unlike in most PA stories, the gasoline goes bad/inert pretty quickly, and food gets scarce
immediately. Water, too, depending on where you live, and it requires boiling in most circumstances anyway. So your characters will spend most of their time gathering firewood, boiling water and scrounging for bugs to eat. And avoiding cannibal rapists.
I've toyed with running a realistic survival campaign like that every once in awhile, right up to the point where I realize that I don't want to run
The Road: the RPG.
Other Dust by Sine Nomine. It's essentially D&D with a skill system. The closest thing to gonzo is gross mutants, but you can just leave them out along with any long-lost tech that's a bit too high-tech for your taste. Good sandbox play support.
Quote from: Headless;977560I don't want to play Gamma world, or Resident evil.
I want to play modern planet of the apes. Or the walking dead, or maybe Mad Max, but that might be a little too gonzo for what I am thinking. The Post Man would be great, book not movie.
For Planet of the Apes, there is Terra Primate (from Eden Studios, using the Unisystem rules); and Apes Victorious (from Goblinoid Games; using OSR-style rules).
I haven't run either - but Terra Primate seemed solid if not particularly innovative. I'm not sure about Apes Victorious.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;977782I would recommend this as well. It is very light, very streamlined. Adding races (for planet of the apes) would not be hard. It has a mutant powers - type add-on to emulate Gamma World but the base game doesn't have that. This is the epitome of rules light.
Aftermath is the exactly opposite. I liked the game, but I think it is entirely too 80s of a crunch game for me now (not just crunch, but random and with-unclear-point crunch. I believe theirs a 2D3 roll in the starting skill points calculations, which even in the 80s I was thinking, "okay, fine, but why?").
Aftermath is awesome as source material, I highly recommend it for that purpose.
The actual system leaves something to be desired even using the lens of "the 80s". It was overly complex for what it did and it has numerous inconsistencies in the rules. I am convinced that much of the complexity was added simply to make it complicated to feed the common belief in the 80s that complex = realistic. Still there are a lot of neat ideas buried in the rules, and it could probably be made into a decent system by somebody willing to do a lot of work.
Quote from: dbm;977569GURPS After the End? (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/aftertheend/) or GURPS Zombies Day One? (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dayone/)
These are both great resources; mechanically as well as in terms of inspiration and gameable ideas (the looting/survival tables and building collapse tables are pretty fun, too).
Good sources of practical knowledge on how long things like guns will "keep" during the apocalypse depending on their storage conditions, gasoline, viable technologies that could be maintained without modern-day infrastructure, etc. Great advice on "building" your apocalypse; the cause(s), how long after the end to set your campaign, and the effects/ramifications of those choices.
I would also add GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout to the list of valuable post-apoc GURPS material.
Quote from: Edgewise;977792Does The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/84215/The-Cruel-Empire-of-Tsan-Chan) count? When you talk about post-apocalypse and Cthulhu at the same time, I'm not sure if you are talking about a normal apocalypse or a Mythos apocalypse (i.e. the stars align for the return of the Old Ones). Tsan Chan is the latter.
That's a monograph of course, which is fine, but I'm talking about a fully developed setting book. Sandy Peterson alluded to writing up some adaptation of his Cthulhu Wars boardgame, into a rpg context and there is an End Times bit in the Cthulhu - Through The Ages booklet too. I'm imagining something akin to a zombie survival game, but with much more varied, alien horror.
Quote from: jeff37923;977562Twilight: 2000.
Just as long as it's the first edition.
But if you want
Planet of the Apes type stuff, why not use Teenage Turtle Mutant Ninjas or After the Bomb?
Twilight 2000 for the super realist. Redline was a nice d20/ogl Road Warrior game.
Apes Victorious for Planet of the Apes.
I want planet of the apes, with out the apes. The walkind dead with out and dead. I'm not against apes or dead, I just don't want it to be about the dead apes.
Does that make sense?
Quote from: Headless;978043I want planet of the apes, with out the apes. The walkind dead with out and dead. I'm not against apes or dead, I just don't want it to be about the dead apes.
Does that make sense?
Yep.
Find a good review of Broken Rooms to idea mine (some of the disasters are of a mundane* nature), then look into Twilight 2000, Atomic Highway (it's free and pretty mundane* really), maybe One of the Living for All Flesh Must Be Eaten (yes it's for a zombie game, but it may still prove very useful for apocalypse games in general), and go watch Life After People or read survivalist manuals.
The thing about realistic gaming is that you don't really need a particular system to emulate it. Just pick a system with a level of mechanical detail you want and go with it. Everything else is just a matter of doing non-gaming research.
(*I use mundane here in the sense of "something of a non-fantasy nature" and not a slur)
Quote from: san dee jota;978059The thing about realistic gaming is that you don't really need a particular system to emulate it. Just pick a system with a level of mechanical detail you want and go with it. Everything else is just a matter of doing non-gaming research.
If you were willing to do a little work on the PA elements Top Secret(/SI), Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, d20 Modern, Call of Cthulhu, or other RPGs with a contemporary or near contempory setting and a set of resolution mechanics you like would serve quite well.
Most of both Aftermath and Twilight 2000 was skills and combat resolution and detailing out in game mechanics all the PA stuff like scrounging fuel, converting engines to run on alchol instead of petrol, etc.
Quote from: Headless;978043I want planet of the apes, with out the apes. The walkind dead with out and dead. I'm not against apes or dead, I just don't want it to be about the dead apes.
Does that make sense?
Well.....no.
Quote from: Headless;978043I want planet of the apes, with out the apes. The walkind dead with out and dead. I'm not against apes or dead, I just don't want it to be about the dead apes.
Does that make sense?
so maybe The Book of Eli or The Road?
As far as gaming goes, that would get old real fast for me. I need quite a bit of "gonzo" in my PA just for the variety. Even just zombies or apes isn't really enough...I'm a huge Zombie Apoc fan, but only for about the first few weeks post-apoc. After that it becomes TWD (which I tapped out of after about the first 12 issues) and it's just a boring progression through ever more psychotic survivor groups. Blah.
But as has been noted, for what you're looking for it seems like any reasonably crunchy PA game would do - just leave out the bits you don't want in.
Book of Eli might be fun. I have no interest in playing thr The Road.
I agree about needing some gonzo. I just don't want the desingers telling me what my campaign is about. So I won't be playing broken rooms but if I can find it I'll pick it us for souce material.
For a campaign I would be leaning to low combat, Survival.
Dare I suggest Apocalypse World?
Quote from: Headless;978301I have no interest in playing thr The Road.
That's where all of my realistic apocalyptic survival campaign ideas break down: I don't see any way for it
not to become that, so I just go straight to Thundarr.
Quote from: Headless;978301I have no interest in playing thr The Road.
I prefer the Blood Meridian RPG by the guy who did Carcosa. It sits on the shelf right next to the Salò LARP. And Lamentations.
Quote from: Headless;978043I want planet of the apes, with out the apes. The walkind dead with out and dead. I'm not against apes or dead, I just don't want it to be about the dead apes.
Does that make sense?
I think in that kind of circumstance a system like GURPS really shines. You tell it what that the game is about, and it just provides the tools to run it. For a campaign concept where there isn't an already perfect fit flexible generic systems are your friend, and GURPS does gritty by default with gonzo easily do-able (cf Mars Attacks (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/marsattacks/)).
I've only played a tiny amount of gurps. If I remember right it was crunchy to the point of tedious. So many rules.
Quote from: Voros;978311Dare I suggest Apocalypse World?
Interestingly this may be the best suggestion for keeping the game about human struggles and scarcity. But then there is the Weird stat and Psychic Maelstrom. How would you deal with these? Simply cut it out?
Quote from: Headless;978716I've only played a tiny amount of gurps. If I remember right it was crunchy to the point of tedious. So many rules.
It certainly has rules, I guess whether there are too many or otherwise is a matter of personal taste.
After the End 2 does try to condense things down for you some (AtE 1 covers survivor templates). It covers a lot of ground in 50-ish pages, from physical survival to gangs, mutants and rogue killer robots to scavenging and gadgeteering. There are simplified rules for gunplay, too.
Still might not be to your taste, of course.
ETA: tried to add contents page but it is
tiny and I can't figure out how to delete it...
**double post**
Quote from: Itachi;978724Interestingly this may be the best suggestion for keeping the game about human struggles and scarcity. But then there is the Weird stat and Psychic Maelstrom. How would you deal with these? Simply cut it out?
Yeah the Maelstrom was the one real gonzo element I thought of. I wonder how it plays if you remove the Weird stat and PM? Haven't checked out the 2nd edition, I wonder what was changed?
GURPS doesn't have to be tedious. Just cut out the rules you find tedious. :-D If you use the suggestions for streamlining in the Action series, you can simplify range modifiers and skill modifiers.
It's hard to beat the basic damage system in GURPS for ramping up the feeling of "I'm getting hurt" as you take damage. The long-term fatigue rules in After The End also bring a sense of "realism" regarding thirst, hunger, etc.
The Mook has tons of great stuff including some fast-start and streamlining articles here --> http://www.themook.net/gamegeekery/gurps-grab-and-go/
Quote from: darthfozzywig;978454That's where all of my realistic apocalyptic survival campaign ideas break down: I don't see any way for it not to become that, so I just go straight to Thundarr.
One of my favorite PA novels is The Earth Abides (https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Abides-George-R-Stewart/dp/0345487133). It was written in the late 1940s and is less dark than many later PA tales where it seems all of humanity breaks down into sociopathic tribes.
Another good one is A Canticle for Leibowitz (https://www.amazon.com/Canticle-Leibowitz-Walter-Miller-Jr/dp/0553273817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502580424&sr=1-1&keywords=a+canticle+for+leibowitz). Like the Earth Abides it takes a long view of the PA world, and while it does include some examples of sociopathic tribes it again does not focus on only a bleak future.
I would recommend either book for anyone who wants to play in a PA world that has more to the plot than fighting for a tank of "the juice" in a blighted wasteland.
Gurps Reign of Steel is a good post apocalypse game in some ways, as well as a blatant Terminator ripoff in all ways.
There is a game I saw but never looked at much called S.A.V.A.G.E. which means survival and victory after global extinction. You can look it up.