Shelters and Survivors is one of my oldest settings. Once calles After the Bomb (or ATB)the premise being a couple of contrafactual ideas. First, that the cold war went nuclearsome time around/after the Cuban Missile Crisis and total nuclear war occurred. The second being that the US and Soviet Union built massive underground Shelter complexes to protect their populations. Decades later, when the radiation has subsided and the vegatation has adapted and returned, the shelters begin sending out scouts to understand the changed world and connect.
The scouts find more then a wasteland, they find Survivors, communites descended from people who lived though the war outside of the cities living in the wilderness and ruins.
They also found the mutants and monsters grown from people and creatures that were unprotected from radiation and toxic chemicals. The Orc and Goblin human mutants in their tribes and warrens, able to scavenge and eat enve in radioactive and toxic areas, but have lost science and history.
Shelters and Survivors is a world of ruins, and hazards and people just trying to live in the aftermath of the end of the world. It has large concerns (like Russian invasion from Alaska and Canada) to small ones (someone's farm getting clean water). And it's long been my way of interacting with traditional fantasy RPG tropes in a way I'm comfortable with.
I feel that a good post-apocalypse system needs to have robust strict inventory and encumberance management. Scarcity is central to the experience, and making do, innovating new uses and crafting soltions are all part of what makes the setting special. I'm comfortable with the location-base encumberance system, but I need to develop an easy and playable inventory and crafting systems.
A fair scavagnging mechanic is another rule that needs to be developed to limit characters grinding a search that will be fruitless, and from players from metagaming things that don't make sense for the era.
Addtionally a resource use system and meter to measuer food, water and other consumables, with connections to the Inventory system. Hunger and rations Are par of the People vs Nature core conflict of the game.
One of the original systems ideas was to create an inverse difficulty system. Surface skills would be hard to learn for Shelter personnel, and Shelter skills would be hard to learn for Surface Survivors. Part of the reason was the game was designed with the explict idea there would be mixed groups to have diversity in equipment and skills.
This game will likely need signifigant additional text and images to try and give players and GMs the background needed to work with the world. Not to mention additional materials on opponents and potential encounters.
One of the larger concerns for motivating Shelter Characters to adventure is how to get them out of the shelter and keep them out of the shelter. If they can simply go back and open the door for more ammoe, band-aids or bug repellent, the game loses some of it's danger and urgency. To this end there are several start-of-game seeds, such as:
This setting has been a test bed for several rulesets and i prefer a percentile based one here. While it can be adapted to D20 or U5D or some other system, I feel the the seeting needs the support of a system built for it. It should be a pretty crunchy and deadly system. While deadly systems are unforgiving to player characters, they also make combat run fast as enemies are destroyed. Keeping things moving is important.
There are legal issues with the name After the Bomb. Palladium Books has a line of Mutant RPG books by that name. I've searched long for a more appropriate name that won't be a problem for attracting Cease and Desist letters. The Shelters and Survivors monikier may just solve that. Additionally, you may recognize lots of Fallout inspired ideas. It was definitely an influence on the ideas contained in this. Threrefore it;'s important to avoid using Fallout specific terminology that is trademarked.
A thorny problem is that of "Sub-human" races and "devolution". Due to my experience with Shadowrun "Goblinization" and the idea of "Sub-human" races in D&D, I figured my depictions would be in line with other games. Further as this was my substutitue for fantasy RPG settings. I wanted to have Orcs and Goblins, and "Devolved" mutants seemed reasonable and in line with post-apocalptic content like Wizards. However, I grasp now that all of this has specific racist roots and overtones that I don't want to promote. However, I still want orcs and Goblins as part of the world, if for no other reason then "The Orcs have Shotguns" and other subversions of player expectations.I'm not comfortable publishing until I solve and rewrite for this issue.
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