Favorite Apocalypse

[SheikhJahbooty]

Which post-apocalyptic games are your favorites?

If you're going to mention Rifts then you also have to mention a runner up.
Jason has to mention three favorites because I'm assuming Dead... And Back will be one of his favs.

Feel free to argue for something that doesn't quite fit, like if your fav is NeoTerra, Paranoia, Living Steel, Dark Sun, etc. I want to read about the weird stuff.

[maledictus]

Since I saw Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior when I was a little kid, the post-apocalypse setting has become my favorite one, and I love post-apocalyptic games.

d20 apocalypse Have tons of ideas and extensive rules for scavenging, and things like radiation and fixing stuff.

Redline By Fantasy Flight Games, also using the d20 system. It's a little setting with 64 pages. I like the Backgrounds (sort of Races), things as Feral, Drifter and Bygone. Also with many rules for vehicle combat (like Mad Max!). I like the mutations here, really nasty things nothing as cool super-powers.

Gamma World This must be my favorite post-apocalyptic setting and with many editions to chose from. I like the first one, the Alternity edition and the one from White-Wolf. Now I'm waiting to see the one that's going to release Wizards with the rules from the last edition of the d20 system.

As a fan of the Basic Role-Playing system, from Chaosium, I would like to use the mutations rules in a post-apocalypse game. Wish I knew more games with this setting.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Depends on how you define apocalypse really. I refer you to the "" for about 13 shades of existential threat.

Technically, my favorite apocalypse is - the one I'm not involved in and don't have to suffer through. Possibly followed by the one I cause, but the death-ray isn't working yet...

I'm actually kind of an optimist about the government's ability to repair the country. If I had to find a place to hide, I'd head for a nuclear power station - their safe locations, will probably have national guard nearby, and will be part of the rebuilding effort as their cores will last quite a while after the supply lines for coal etc are cut off to other plants. MaKaJaWan - a boyscout camp up in Wisconsin, or my old college in Macomb Illinois (One of the halls was actually set up as a fallout shelter) are also on my list of places to go.

That aside, in alphabetical order:

All Flesh Must be Eaten is designed around the classic plague/walking dead end of society as we know it scenario. Depending on which "deadworld" is chosen, the players are either in a position to stop this before it happens, or living out their days as the last breathing humans on earth.

Battletech falls all over the map on the scale. Jump ships exist, but the technology to make them is lost. Many people are serfs to knights operating 50 ton laser armed combat robots. The "Four Succession Wars" have set back technology a century or two as everyone scrambled to be heir to the galaxy spanning star league. Its a good example of SF using devastating shake-ups to explain how we got here, and why certain technologies are not in use. Most people understand the world has been set back technologically by disaster better than the social singularity that develops in a few centuries if they're unrestricted...

Blue Planet uses a combination of hard and soft apocalypses in its background, and even its present is a wild frontier. Earth sends a bunch of scientists through a wormhole to explore and initially colonize a new world. After they leave, the engineered blight hits - leading to a world wide famine and upheaval. In turn this means the follow-up expiation is never sent, and the colonists realize they need to give up their high tech and go native to be long term sustainable. The game picks up in the aftermath of this, with desperate people trying to get to the new colony both to escape Earth and because of the "gold rush" for "Long John" - an ore that assists genetic engineering, and may hold the secret to immortality. Of course, there are disagreements between the descendants of natives who have been living on the archipelago for decades, and those who are eager for new exploitable resources.

Cybergeneration provides another good example of a soft apocalypse. A plague is out these killing most adults and mutating children. A hold over from the CP-2020 has the natural environment almost gone, the ocean so polluted in spots it burns, the US government effectively replaced by an oligarchy... Yet no nuclear weapons or asteroid strikes for the big upheaval so its one people deal with rather than struggle through, and its not just another scavenger world.

Dead and Back The anarchy Zones setting reflects a lot of things I want to see - the (pre-event) NEST seems like my ideal habitat, wearable computers and augmented reality are cool, and nano-factories are intriguing. Technically the human race faced a greater than 95% attrition rate in the time between 2050 and 2055 when the game actually occurs, but those who have made it this long can look forward to rebuilding, intelligent alien tenants, and neat tech left behind.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the inspiration for Blade Runner, and in turn so many other cyberpunk milieus. A dedication to preserving nature (or giving a semblance of doing so), bounty hunters tracking androids/clones through the city, so much decay its been give a cute name(kipple), and those who can are running to off world colonies.

is a free game of note. For one, all the action takes place underwater because an asteroid has rendered the surface world uninhabitable. Its a disaster bad enough they've adopted a new calendar to mark the epoch - Etiam Vivere. (Latin for ‘Still Alive) Its a neat mix of hard SF (super-cavitation) soft SF (psychic powers) an innovative core mechanic, and cyberpunk leanings.

Fallout (One, Two, and the free ) has humor, a definite 50s style, and a lot of interesting artifacts. Its also kind of nice that there is a lot of hope - helping farmers and assisting caravans is a major source of XP in the first two games. While a little cumbersome on the tabletop- combat is fun and a nice change of pace from the more abstract combat systems of some games.

Rifts. Its like street performance - you don't have to like it, but you probably will acknowledge it was interesting.

Twilight 2000 features limited nuclear exchange, World War Three in Europe, government collapse and the rise of free cites. I find the cold war fascinating, the scenario isn't too bleak, and since most players are military remnants, GMs have a built in control mechanism - so players aren't just murdering raiders in the desert. (For some odd reason, I always want my players to be Max, and they want to be the marauders). The reprinted first edition I own is also a neat insight to 1980s game design, and has an amazing attention to detail. (There are rules for fishing with grenades.)

XenoExodous. Its the first game I started writing, and the story is that that an alien piece of technology is xeno-forming the Earth, giving us just under one century to evacuate the planet. This is flat out impossible of course, but we're trying our hardest to mass produce what are effectively space roll-on/roll-off ships to get a good number out. In turn, this creates all sorts of upheaval - from religious factions that want to limit who gets off so the colonies will be a new Eden, to trans-humanists who believe only the fittest should leave, and those who are willing to let anyone out so long as they swear allegiance. Given the flimsy nature of the space ships, space warfare is almost always mutually destructive, so combat is more a matter of espionage on a scale the Players can be involved in.

Two games by me, Rifts, six others, and a book - do I need to include any more or does that fulfill my obligation?

[maledictus]

I didn't say Fallout, because I only thought in tabletop rpgs, but I have to say that this is my favorite setting including movies, video-games and all. It's just awesome, I really linke the post-apocalypse-world-in-a-retro-future style thing. I've been playing it since the first one and what I like of the third it's the aesthetics of the designs, even better than those in the first games (but I like the most the Brotherhood of Steel from Fallout 1 and 2)

Did you know that Fallout was originally thought to use the GURPS system, but after some problems with Steve Jackson Games, they developed the SPECIAL system? If you don't believe me, .

[Evil_Lawyer]

The two Warhammer 40k have nice similarities to the Battletech ideology with lost and forgotten tech, and the fading suns settings have much of the same vain. I even think one deadlands setting is also post apocolyptic with an atomic wild west feel to the post apocolypse.

Tribe 8 was something I was curious about but have never tried and even Exalted is the 6th age after the fall of the last great golden age.

EL

[SheikhJahbooty]

Well of course, I started the thread because I was reading El Rey Muerto.

And Dead... and Back is super snazzy.

I also like Tribe 8 and Engel.

Oh, since we're arguing for Battletech, Fading Suns, Blue Planet, Warhammer 40K, etc. I have to add Living Steel and Jorune to that list. I actually played both games. I never played Tekumel, but I suppose it belongs on a list of post apocalyptic games, and I've seen a Tristat version, which might be really cool.

Oh, on the topic of convoluted, hard-to-play games, I also played Cyborg Commando once, but then we decided to make up a similar setting using Heroes Unlimited, and that was a lot better, probably because it turned out a lot less like Cyborg Commando and a lot more like Necessary Evil.

Necessary Evil uses Savage Worlds, so it's one of the few games (other than Tristat dX) that I've mentioned that I would still play. Savage Worlds has a pretty good rules set.

Hot War has a really good rules set too, but it's focused on horror, helplessness and drama, and I think I need more escapist games for a while (because I had another surgery yesterday).

I noticed Maledictus' interest in road warrior style apocalypses. You might like to check out Man & Machine. I think it might be inspirational or useful or something.

[Sanglorian]

Apocalypse World, without a doubt. Great game, great character classes, great GMing advice. Not free, I'm afraid, but you can learn more about it: http://www.apocalypse-world.com

EDIT: More explanation.

To be honest, what I like about Apocalypse World is not its apocalypse. It's the game itself. Each character action (or 'move') leads you further and further into trouble - but you still make progress. Most successes are partial - leaving the player in the unenviable position of choosing how things stuff up.

Does this build the sense of post-apocalyptic stoicism, where every victory is fleeting and new problems always arise? Probably, but as you can see from the forums it also builds a sense of teen angst in games of monster romance, suits the machinations of lords in A Song of Ice and Fire and a handful of other hacks besides.

[maledictus]

[SheikhJahbooty]

Yes, I'm sorry. I keep forgetting that visitors can't see file links.

I could have just linked to the file diredctly.



But I was absent minded.