Mad Max gaming

[Relique du Madde]

My current PBP "Red Sand Chronicles" is a post apocalyptic diesel punk set on Mars (it has mad max like elements). The game is ran using Mutants and Masterminds 2e.

Personally, I don't think a dedicated rulebook is really needed to run a rpg like Max Max since the only thing you really need to run such a setting are:
1. A reason for the apocalypse.
2. Lots of vehicles.
3. Lots of weapons.
4. (Optional) Vehicle orientated rules (primarily chase).

The adventures pretty much write themselves.

 

[S'mon]

[MENTION=5875]danny[/MENTION] -I don't think Bill has those specific cars, no.

My current PBP "Red Sand Chronicles" is a post apocalyptic diesel punk set on Mars (it has mad max like elements). The game is ran using Mutants and Masterminds 2e.

Personally, I don't think a dedicated rulebook is really needed to run a rpg like Max Max since the only thing you really need to run such a setting are:
1. A reason for the apocalypse.
2. Lots of vehicles.
3. Lots of weapons.
4. (Optional) Vehicle orientated rules (primarily chase).

The adventures pretty much write themselves.

Well, I find that to run a good campaign I need to have an environment prepped. It's not so much rules I need, it's locations, NPCs, conflicts, etc. That then naturally generates adventure as the PCs engage with the environment.

Hm, AIR I do have a setting book for Cyberpunk: 2020, 'Land of the Free' I think, around somewhere, that could be maybe be Mad Maxed up a little. It details a whole continent though, as does the other possibility I have, "GURPS Autoduel Australia". What I'd really like is a smaller scale, properly post-apocalyptic, sandbox setting, maybe 100 miles x 100 miles sort of size. I get the impression no one has ever done something like that.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What I'd really like is a smaller scale, properly post-apocalyptic, sandbox setting, maybe 100 miles x 100 miles sort of size. I get the impression no one has ever done something like that.

The Autoduel computer game- based on Car Wars- covered a nifty portion of the USA's Atlantic seaboard...and the Wasteland computer game covered a largeish chunk of Nevada...

Not that that helps you much.

However, all they really did was take some interesting locations and "apocalypse" them up. Autoduel's take on Atlantic City still had a casino in which you could gamble, for instance (I spent many hours of gametime gambling there to build up my bankroll)...before hitting the road and risking my life again.

In your position, I'd just take some of the local towns or cities you and/or your son have a particular interest in and do likewise. Are there any festivals or sites nearby that might survive an apocalypse in a twisted form?

 

[S'mon]

In your position, I'd just take some of the local towns or cities you and/or your son have a particular interest in and do likewise. Are there any festivals or sites nearby that might survive an apocalypse in a twisted form?

'Local' for me is two thousand square miles of city terrain, since I live in London. Not ideal for car-based post-apocalypse I think; assuming it was not nuked then either London would be under centralised military rule or it'd be scavenger/gang cantonments in the urban jungle, probably divided by ethnicity - Somali, Pakistani, Jamaican, Turk/Kurd, maybe Cockney, etc.

That's not really the sort of game I'd want to run, too grim and too close to home - I already deal with local gang issues on the Safer Neighbourhoods Panel IRL! And the Apocalypse seems a lot more fun in a nice warm, dry climate!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I was thinking "local" in the same sense as those games are to me- I'm in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex...far away from Nevada and the Atlantic seaboard.

And since Autoduel uses places like Syracuse, Boston and Atlantic City, the takeaway is that the nature of your apocalypse matters.

IOW, London could still work...but you could also just use a more rural area in the British Isles. Parts of Wales, Scotland or Ireland, perhaps?

Or just yoink Mad Max's Australia!

 

[S'mon]

Or just yoink Mad Max's Australia!

Yeah, but what I'd really like is 10,000 square miles or so of 'Mad Max's Australia' statted out in proper sandbox fashion, with major NPCs, factions, gangs, zones of control et al. I'd like someone else to do the heavy lifting.

I guess I could take a local Australia map for eg west Queensland and hex-overlay it, but I'd still have to detail the encounter tables, NPCs etc.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Have you ever been there? Bill?

No one will know if you just wing it! or just use the gangs- and plot- from The Warriors!

Ack! I can't believe we've gotten to page 2 of this thread without mentioning the possibilities yoinkable from Escape from New York!

 

[S'mon]

IOW, London could still work...but you could also just use a more rural area in the British Isles. Parts of Wales, Scotland or Ireland, perhaps?

Apart from the small size of these areas, a problem is that most rural white-British are too communitarian & deferential for the Mad Max ethos to be very credible, it would be all warlord/military/gang cantonments, more Twilight: 2000 than Road Warrior. Not bad for "rebels vs the evil fascist regime" though - there was a fun post-apocalypse TV series many years ago called "The Knights of God", which concerned good-guy Welsh & English rebels fighting a bad-guy theocracy based loosely on Cromwell's Puritans, in order to restore the Monarchy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_God

 

[S'mon]

Have you ever been there? Bill?

No one will know if you just wing it!

Uhm, I live in London, chances are half my players would be Australian.

 

[Kannik]

2. Does anyone know of a Mad Max type sandboxy setting?

One setting that might be interesting would be Death Valley Free Prison, put out by ICE for Cyberspace in the 90s:

Death Valley Free Prison - RPGnet RPG Game Index

It's got that Mad Max vibe, it's got enough of a structure (various factions within the prison, a quasi economy, etc) and a pretty easy starting point (hey, you're new here, time to survive, good luck). The vehicular combat will be quite Mad Max in terms of it being cobbled together by bailing twine type feel, and depending on how you want to run it you can tweak the setting to allow more crazy hardware and even cars and car types to be somehow allowed into the prison (a place where old cars are sent to die? or just the whole political/corruption angle, why not find some way to smuggle/bribe in some weapons if you are getting something out of it. What are those corps getting out of it? That could be a plot hook in of itself...)

Being a literally contained scenario it makes a great sandbox with well defined edges.

I do love me my car-wars-esque type games.

game on,

Kannik
-Veteran of the Thunderdome