Monday, August 9, 2010

Writing post-apocalyptic

I started to write my post-apocalyptic setting. It is fun, as I have made the rules already, just to let imagination flow and write ideas down. I don't need to think rules at all at this point, I can just write.

I was thinking, what would be my special catch of this setting. It is not that something has happened, and world is ruined (that is included though, as post-apocalyptic heh) but how it happened. Well, there's the twitch. People don't know what, how and why did happen to cause this apocalypse. There are several theories through from religion to war to science. But there is no proof of what happened.

I didn't want to put this setting too far to future. And because the destruction happened, game master can easily take mp3-player and make it a valuable artifact. Also you can find things to clear the blur of past of what happened.

In the focus are these vaults where people woke up without memory of why they were there. Only memories of world before awakening is what they have learned from the books they've find already. I focus on one vault.

Special part here is, that I write the manual as in diary. Everything in the manual including items list, rules, history, setting etc. will be written like a character in the setting would have written it. So, you don't read rules manual, but a collection of insider's view from the world of post-apocalypse. Really fun to write stuff this way.

Zombies are cool, but meh, including zombies would be so predictable. But do you know what would be more predictable? Mutants! There will be mutants, who are like zombies. There will be mutants, who will be more organized and somehow intelligent yet cannibalistic. There will be mutants, who would be like you and me but avoided by others like plague or leper. Oh, and you need random charts for mutations, don't you?

Item's list will be fun to write also. You don't need that many pre-written items, as stuff are rare. I will give game master a freedom to look around the room he is gaming and saying: "In the ruins of old gas station, you find a plastic thing what leaves markings on the paper as you draw them. That would be really valuable, especially with the peace of paper you found earlier." It's boring to collect artifacts of alien origin or treasures of golden statues and gems, but finding a mp3-player, toolpack and 10 cans of dog food is a real treasure!

What will characters do then? They can be adventurers finding other vaults or doing quests to find new treasures and artifacts. They could be soldiers or mercenaries fighting robbering clans or killing mutants. They can be merchants finding and trading items and making new trade routes. What would you like to be in post-apocalyptic world?

This game will be using some sort of variation of my YDIN game. Not sure will it use Mini with only D6's or Generic with D6's, D8's and D10's. Unfortunately, as you dear readers know, my english sucks, so this will be in finnish.

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