SWADE Post-Apocalyptic "West Marches" Campaign, With Ashes Without Number Tools

[Reynard]

EDIT: I changed the thread title to reflect the fact that I decided to run the game with SWADE instead of Ashes Without Number (mostly because SWADE is well implemented on Fantasy Grounds). But I plan to use AWN tools to populate the sandbox, etc.

I have decided that once my D&D 5E 2024 campaign is over in a few weeks, I am going to run a post apocalyptic sandbox game using Ashes Without Number and aiming for a "west marches" style game.

So, give me your advice. Your Ashes Without Number advice. Your sandbox advice. Your West Marches advice. Your general post apocalyptic advice. Your logistical advice.

And, importantly, your Foundry advice. I mainly use Fantasy Grounds, but AWN is not supported there so I figure this is a reasonable excuse to finally learn Foundry.

Thanks!

 

[payn]

I have decided that once my D&D 5E 2024 campaign is over in a few weeks, I am going to run a post apocalyptic sandbox game using Ashes Without Number and aiming for a "west marches" style game.

So, give me your advice. Your Ashes Without Number advice. Your sandbox advice. Your West Marches advice. Your general post apocalyptic advice. Your logistical advice.

And, importantly, your Foundry advice. I mainly use Fantasy Grounds, but AWN is not supported there so I figure this is a reasonable excuse to finally learn Foundry.

Thanks!

Most of my advice is gonna be inregards to Foundry. I have built out a really great module for Pirates of Drinax for Traveller. The journals can eb written in advance to give to the players, NPC library, music, etc.. I get a big kick out of adding material and I dont mean written adventures, more game aids for the sandbox.

Dice tray for Foundry is a nice add for everyone using the VTT.

 

[Reynard]

Most of my advice is gonna be inregards to Foundry. I have built out a really great module for Pirates of Drinax for Traveller. The journals can eb written in advance to give to the players, NPC library, music, etc.. I get a big kick out of adding material and I dont mean written adventures, more game aids for the sandbox.

Dice tray for Foundry is a nice add for everyone using the VTT.

What would you suggest for a complete newb to Foundry for "learn to use it video" or wiki or whatever?

 

[aco175]

I tried an open game with my regular players and intending it to be a series of 1-shots where each player would have 2-3 PCs and choose which one would play depending on the night. It did not work as planned and each player tended to play only one PC. This was amplified when that one PC started to gain levels and the players did not want to choose a 1st level PC.
I guess I could have had all the player's PCs gain a level each time one of them did to allow the choices to not matter in terms of level. Not sure if this helps.

 

[payn]

What would you suggest for a complete newb to Foundry for "learn to use it video" or wiki or whatever?

Im a bit of a tactical communicator myself. By that I mean finding the shortest possible video to tell me exactly what I want to do as opposed to hour long videos telling me a myriad of things.

This is a good one for starting to add/install modules.

If you are cruising around and cant find any google hits, come find me here at EN world.

 

[Reynard]

Thanks @payn I will.

Folks in general: which campaign management wiki/site have folks had success with. If this is going to be a ever evolving sandbox and a rotating cast of heroes, I want a central repository for lore, session notes, etc...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The benefit of a Without Number game is its generative nature, but I would decide ahead of time on some broad parameters. If you want this to stay post-apocalyptic, for instance, maybe you want to keep a finger near the scale so that you don't randomly generate an advanced settlement that has rebuilt after the apocalypse, because if your PCs decide they're going to join that society, the post-apocalyptic crawl basically ends there.

I would glance at what's out there in this space, including the Fallout TV series, to get a feel for what general boundaries you want on the game. Do you want this to be Silo? Fallout? Gamma World? Wizards? The Walking Dead? All post-apocalypse, but all very different in their particulars.

 

[The Soloist]

Start each group in different locations relatively far from each other. Different settlements, with different sets of values (genetic purists, reconstructionist, anti-tech, mutant heaven, etc). It will be interesting to see how they eventually meet and clash because of different world points of views.

 

[nyvinter]

Folks in general: which campaign management wiki/site have folks had success with. If this is going to be a ever evolving sandbox and a rotating cast of heroes, I want a central repository for lore, session notes, etc...

It might be too simple for what you want to do, but if you want to keep that inside Foundry there's Campaign Codex. Characters, factions, locations, and if one of the sheets is GM only then you can make it so that the interlinked sheets don't show those.

(These look a little different from stock sheets because I've made a cosmetic CSS module to make it more in tune with the campaign.)

 

[payn]

It might be too simple for what you want to do, but if you want to keep that inside Foundry there's Campaign Codex. Characters, factions, locations, and if one of the sheets is GM only then you can make it so that the interlinked sheets don't show those.

(These look a little different from stock sheets because I've made a cosmetic CSS module to make it more in tune with the campaign.)

View attachment 438198View attachment 438200

Nice. Did something similar with my Traveller game.