Savage Worlds Campaign Info
Oct. 28th, 2007 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneI'm going to be starting an RPG for friends in Las Cruces, this is the intro material. Feel free to read it, and if you're ever in 'Cruces, you're welcome to play. This is a first draft intended to give you a feel for what I'll be running.
What Are You Doing After the Holocaust?
Or, an Introduction to Wayne's RPG
Background
It's the year 140 P.A., that's approximately 2140 A.D. The P.A. stands for Post-Apocalypse. The world is a pretty shitty place. The planetary population is estimated at 10-25% of the year 2000 levels. The weather system is absolutely whack, the jet stream has shifted and England is now pretty much a block of ice. Several nuclear power plants popped, contaminating their surrounding areas, several chemical factories and nuclear refineries did likewise. Most towns with populations of 3-5,000 are gone. There's pretty much no television or phone service, forget about the internet, though there are computer networks in some places. Airports and airplanes? Forget it. There are some diesel trucks because that fuel doesn't require as much refining as gasoline. Trans-continental travel? Well, they're working on dirigibles, but the weird weather patterns make it kind of risky. International communications are mostly through radio, and because of the erratic atmospheric propagation patterns, Morse code is used more than voice because of its reliability.
Weapons have devolved a little bit. With most factories not functional due to electricity shortages, man-power shortages, raw materials shortages, and other problems, guns are now mainly black powder. They've made some chemical advances so that they're more powerful than Civil War era powder and can cycle automatic and semi-automatic firearm actions, but still not quite as good as 20th/21st century smokeless powder. Everyone is armed, everyone knows how to fight hand-to-hand effectively, and no one goes out alone. Flame-throwers are fairly popular but dangerous to both users and those on the receiving end.
You police your brass whenever possible.
Average life-span is down to below 60 years and falling steadily. Curiously, there aren't that many plagues, which is good, because medicine is largely back to post-World War I levels of penicillin and sulfa drugs. You get about 15 years of protection once you're born during which you're trained and educated, then you go on the line or out on patrol. Every year that you live becomes increasingly precious because of all of the people that you knew who are no longer with you. College education? Good luck. When it was obvious that the human race was pretty thoroughly screwed, an effort was made into preserving libraries that was moderately successful. Books are the ultimate barter items: someone with an Encyclopedia Brittanica from 1960 could live like a god.
The most common form of travel is Shank's mare. Part of your crèche training includes hunting, survival cooking and plant identification, so it's not difficult although a lot of time has to be allotted to hunting, gathering, and food prep. The rail system is surprisingly intact, though lots of tracks are out of commission due to land slides, earth quakes, and deliberate sabotage. All trains have spotters watching the track in front with high-powered binoculars, they also have guards on roofs and tend to not run at night since vampires can move pretty quick. There is a declining number of diesel locomotives and growing numbers of steam engines.
The good news is that once you kill off three-quarters of the world's population and the accompanying industry and shuts down, the ozone layer is doing pretty good for itself.
The Beginning, The End
Few people know exactly what happened. Most stories center on a place that used to be known as Los Angeles as being the apocalyptic epicenter not long after the turn of the 20th century. Simply put, there was an explosion forth from that place of vampires, zombies, demons, undead of all sorts, and even the occasional dragon. Lots of religious people were rather surprised when they weren't Raptured up to Heaven, they were even more surprised, albeit briefly, when hordes of these creatures broke into their mega-churches and started slaughtering them.
Effective ways of battling these things were found, but so much of the world was caught totally unprepared that it didn't matter much. Armies found that M-16's were of limited effectiveness because the damn things regenerated. Napalm and flame-throwers worked great, as did high explosives in the form of close proximity to 500 pound bombs. Certain biological weapons and nerve agents were also effective, but when the wind shifted, they sometimes had terrible repercussions. Falling back to swords and crossbows seemed to be the most effective method of dealing death blows: decapitation, wood through the heart, etcetera. It was very surprising to the military high commands that the traditional methods in horror fiction actually worked. Werewolves were tricky until they made sure that new swords had silver laced into the edges. Mining operations of all sorts became prime defensive locations.
For the most part, you have to be bit to become infected and “cross over”, the obvious exception being zombie and ghoul scratches. It is standard procedure upon a person's death, whenever possible, to behead and stake the body before burial.
It's a good thing that there's been few reliable reports of vampires turning into bats or mist.
Who Are You?
You're young, no later than your early 20's. You live in a community called Holy Man, it used to be known as an Air Force base called Holloman near the former town of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Holy Man is a pretty good place as things go these days, the base is easily defended and supports farms and ranches in the surrounding areas. Horses are almost as valuable as books, and there are enough ranchers around who know and pass on the intricacies of breeding to improve stock that they are able to send mounted squads on patrol or when reports of supernatural activity take place.
What Are The Rules?
I'm going to be using a set of rules called Savage Worlds, published by Pinnacle ($30, I don't know who carries it as I bought mine in Phoenix). It's a lot like the original Deadlands system, you'll need polyhedral dice, one of each is sufficient. You will also require a d30, which I will explain shortly. Have at least two or three d6, and make sure that one of them is a different color or otherwise easily differentiated. I need to remember to bring a deck of cards, so if you bring a deck in case I forget, that would be a good thing.
I would prefer that your first character be roughly an analog of yourself to simplify the start of the game. Think about what you went through in terms of training and such as you grew up. You've been skilled enough to survive five years outside of the “crèche”, so you are clearly of superior skill and ability, after all, you are a player character.
I've played a lot of Deadlands in the past, Russet is also familiar with it. The basic mechanics aren't difficult, you have five attributes that have a single die. Most saving rolls have a default value of 4. Roll that number or higher and you succeed. If you roll the maximum value of the die, you keep that value and roll again, leading to potentially spectacular results. This is known as rolling an Ace. For every +4 that you get on your roll, you get a Raise and improved results.
I've never run this game system before, and I don't know how lethal the game is. I expect there to be an occasional player character death. However, if you do have to start a new character, you don't start over at ground zero: your new character receives half of your former character's experience, so you get an automatic leg up.
I will be providing copies of core creation info and we'll have an character creation/intro session. If you want to buy a copy of the rules, go ahead. They look pretty sound, and are designed to be like GURPs and usable for just about any genre.
Now, about the d30. If you're fighting a vampire or similar beastie that has a specific kill possibility, i.e. stake in heart, beheading, etc., then every time that you attack and hit the beastie with an appropriate weapon, like a sword, you roll the d30. If it comes up a one, you've beheaded or staked the beastie and it's dead. Usually. I haven't decided what the number will be for a crossbow or bow and arrow, and you'll probably be only able to get one shot off with them before the critter is upon you.
What Are You Doing After the Holocaust?
Or, an Introduction to Wayne's RPG
Background
It's the year 140 P.A., that's approximately 2140 A.D. The P.A. stands for Post-Apocalypse. The world is a pretty shitty place. The planetary population is estimated at 10-25% of the year 2000 levels. The weather system is absolutely whack, the jet stream has shifted and England is now pretty much a block of ice. Several nuclear power plants popped, contaminating their surrounding areas, several chemical factories and nuclear refineries did likewise. Most towns with populations of 3-5,000 are gone. There's pretty much no television or phone service, forget about the internet, though there are computer networks in some places. Airports and airplanes? Forget it. There are some diesel trucks because that fuel doesn't require as much refining as gasoline. Trans-continental travel? Well, they're working on dirigibles, but the weird weather patterns make it kind of risky. International communications are mostly through radio, and because of the erratic atmospheric propagation patterns, Morse code is used more than voice because of its reliability.
Weapons have devolved a little bit. With most factories not functional due to electricity shortages, man-power shortages, raw materials shortages, and other problems, guns are now mainly black powder. They've made some chemical advances so that they're more powerful than Civil War era powder and can cycle automatic and semi-automatic firearm actions, but still not quite as good as 20th/21st century smokeless powder. Everyone is armed, everyone knows how to fight hand-to-hand effectively, and no one goes out alone. Flame-throwers are fairly popular but dangerous to both users and those on the receiving end.
You police your brass whenever possible.
Average life-span is down to below 60 years and falling steadily. Curiously, there aren't that many plagues, which is good, because medicine is largely back to post-World War I levels of penicillin and sulfa drugs. You get about 15 years of protection once you're born during which you're trained and educated, then you go on the line or out on patrol. Every year that you live becomes increasingly precious because of all of the people that you knew who are no longer with you. College education? Good luck. When it was obvious that the human race was pretty thoroughly screwed, an effort was made into preserving libraries that was moderately successful. Books are the ultimate barter items: someone with an Encyclopedia Brittanica from 1960 could live like a god.
The most common form of travel is Shank's mare. Part of your crèche training includes hunting, survival cooking and plant identification, so it's not difficult although a lot of time has to be allotted to hunting, gathering, and food prep. The rail system is surprisingly intact, though lots of tracks are out of commission due to land slides, earth quakes, and deliberate sabotage. All trains have spotters watching the track in front with high-powered binoculars, they also have guards on roofs and tend to not run at night since vampires can move pretty quick. There is a declining number of diesel locomotives and growing numbers of steam engines.
The good news is that once you kill off three-quarters of the world's population and the accompanying industry and shuts down, the ozone layer is doing pretty good for itself.
The Beginning, The End
Few people know exactly what happened. Most stories center on a place that used to be known as Los Angeles as being the apocalyptic epicenter not long after the turn of the 20th century. Simply put, there was an explosion forth from that place of vampires, zombies, demons, undead of all sorts, and even the occasional dragon. Lots of religious people were rather surprised when they weren't Raptured up to Heaven, they were even more surprised, albeit briefly, when hordes of these creatures broke into their mega-churches and started slaughtering them.
Effective ways of battling these things were found, but so much of the world was caught totally unprepared that it didn't matter much. Armies found that M-16's were of limited effectiveness because the damn things regenerated. Napalm and flame-throwers worked great, as did high explosives in the form of close proximity to 500 pound bombs. Certain biological weapons and nerve agents were also effective, but when the wind shifted, they sometimes had terrible repercussions. Falling back to swords and crossbows seemed to be the most effective method of dealing death blows: decapitation, wood through the heart, etcetera. It was very surprising to the military high commands that the traditional methods in horror fiction actually worked. Werewolves were tricky until they made sure that new swords had silver laced into the edges. Mining operations of all sorts became prime defensive locations.
For the most part, you have to be bit to become infected and “cross over”, the obvious exception being zombie and ghoul scratches. It is standard procedure upon a person's death, whenever possible, to behead and stake the body before burial.
It's a good thing that there's been few reliable reports of vampires turning into bats or mist.
Who Are You?
You're young, no later than your early 20's. You live in a community called Holy Man, it used to be known as an Air Force base called Holloman near the former town of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Holy Man is a pretty good place as things go these days, the base is easily defended and supports farms and ranches in the surrounding areas. Horses are almost as valuable as books, and there are enough ranchers around who know and pass on the intricacies of breeding to improve stock that they are able to send mounted squads on patrol or when reports of supernatural activity take place.
What Are The Rules?
I'm going to be using a set of rules called Savage Worlds, published by Pinnacle ($30, I don't know who carries it as I bought mine in Phoenix). It's a lot like the original Deadlands system, you'll need polyhedral dice, one of each is sufficient. You will also require a d30, which I will explain shortly. Have at least two or three d6, and make sure that one of them is a different color or otherwise easily differentiated. I need to remember to bring a deck of cards, so if you bring a deck in case I forget, that would be a good thing.
I would prefer that your first character be roughly an analog of yourself to simplify the start of the game. Think about what you went through in terms of training and such as you grew up. You've been skilled enough to survive five years outside of the “crèche”, so you are clearly of superior skill and ability, after all, you are a player character.
I've played a lot of Deadlands in the past, Russet is also familiar with it. The basic mechanics aren't difficult, you have five attributes that have a single die. Most saving rolls have a default value of 4. Roll that number or higher and you succeed. If you roll the maximum value of the die, you keep that value and roll again, leading to potentially spectacular results. This is known as rolling an Ace. For every +4 that you get on your roll, you get a Raise and improved results.
I've never run this game system before, and I don't know how lethal the game is. I expect there to be an occasional player character death. However, if you do have to start a new character, you don't start over at ground zero: your new character receives half of your former character's experience, so you get an automatic leg up.
I will be providing copies of core creation info and we'll have an character creation/intro session. If you want to buy a copy of the rules, go ahead. They look pretty sound, and are designed to be like GURPs and usable for just about any genre.
Now, about the d30. If you're fighting a vampire or similar beastie that has a specific kill possibility, i.e. stake in heart, beheading, etc., then every time that you attack and hit the beastie with an appropriate weapon, like a sword, you roll the d30. If it comes up a one, you've beheaded or staked the beastie and it's dead. Usually. I haven't decided what the number will be for a crossbow or bow and arrow, and you'll probably be only able to get one shot off with them before the critter is upon you.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 01:44 am (UTC)I'm thinking that as players improve that their d30 number will increase, for example, if they hit Legendary status, they might actually be up to a 10% chance.
The concept of each player having an SRN is interesting, though. But my gut feeling is that it's easiest if everyone has the same number.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 01:23 am (UTC)Btw. one of my players set the edge for earliest player death at a lovely -30 seconds, dying from his fatal ailin' roll in Deadlands... Top that! ;P
no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 01:46 am (UTC)I'm sure that I'll find out soon enough!