A disease broke out among the citizens of a large city in the United States of America.
The disease caused the brain to overproduce the hormones that drive anger and rage in humans, meaning that infected people become highly enraged, aggressive and physically enhanced by the over-production of adrenaline.
The Rage (as it came to be known) is a highly infectious virus which essentially rewires the brain to bypass the pre-frontal cortex and enhance the amigdala. Initially the virus was transmitted through three means: bites and wounds from infected people, exchange of bodily fluids with a victim, and an airborne variety which the infected dead exude during decomposition.
An Apocalypse For One
This weekend has seen me beginning to respond to the survey results from my players taken a few weeks ago. The main discovery, if you remember, was that my guys have an until now unknown interest in Post-Apocalyptic gaming.
A couple of pressures have helped to forge the beginnings of this work for me:
- My prep time, speaking as a professional teacher, has become extremely limited.
- An intense desire to focus on creative story-telling rather than maths.
The result is beginning to unfold in my mind and in a
MyInfo file on my PC. So far it's brief, but it's almost enough to begin a game should the opportunity arise... an opportunity I intend to create, one way or another.
No Time For Complex
If you're a busy GM like me then you don't have the time for arsing around creating every little detail of your setting within the game system of your design. You will, like me, be let to a choice between two broad options:
- Run a solid system which roughly emulates the genre you want to play and then deal with the bits that don't match your vision.
- Run a generic system and emulate the setting using the tools you are presented with.
Regular readers will know that I chose Option 2 for our
Infinite Worlds game. The problem, however, was that the generic system chosen (GURPS) demands more prep time than I currently want to invest: creating a "vampiric" enemy for my last story took around 2 hours. This was about 1.5 hours too long.
I keep dreaming of playing systems like GURPS and Hero but I don't have the patience under the present life-style that I live. In order to be a teacher and enjoy a successful marriage it is vital to limit hobby time to the periods in the day when I am a) awake, b) alone and c) feeling creative. These moments are fewer and more precious than at any other time in my life.
I sat down yesterday morning, intent on creating the game that my players will enjoy (even if they don't yet know it) and realised that I needed to
Savage it.
Apocalypse Simple
My guys want to fight zombies, deal with fairly high-octane situations and still be able to play in an ongoing campaign with legs.
Zombies don't generally work well for the long-term. They are great for fight scenes but not much use for developing deep plotlines. That being said, who can resist the idea of zombies?
I started my setting design by listing the things that most interested me. Yes, me... because I am, after all, the one who has to be infected with enough enthusiasm to "sell" the campaign and run it.
Here's what I scribbled down:
Human survivors of the apocalypse fight back against the Darkness.
Demons are real. Magick is real. Faith needs to be strong.
Humanity is on the brink of extinction. Survivors flee Earth and try to build a future elsewhere. Space has been opened by the Gates.
Priests exercise faith to defend the population of believers in God from the demonic powers that surround them. They channel the power of Light into the world to heal, reassure and cast out darkness.
Magi are those who try to harness the Dark Energy of the universe to forge "vulgar effects", aka spells, to fight the darkness. Their power is misunderstood but seems to require some kind of innate talent to channel Dark Energy.
Hunters are those who fight the darkness with mundane weaponry and courage. They are brave and foolish souls who try to learn the secrets of the Darkness and undermine it.
Straight after that, when asking "what caused the apocalypse", I wrote:
What caused the destruction of Humanity?
Not everyone is completely sure, but the basic story goes something like this...
A disease broke out among the citizens of a large city in the United States of America.
The disease caused the brain to overproduce the hormones that drive anger and rage in humans, meaning that infected people become highly enraged, aggressive and physically enhanced by the over-production of adrenaline.
The details can be read at the start of this article... or, at least, the details I am prepared to share thus far.
This was enough to get things started. There are some tensions and apparent contradictions in that background stuff, but these are things that will force me to (eventually) resolve them through the story... but which I am quite happy to accept as elements of "setting paradox" and mystery right now.
Demons, Really?
Yes, really.
Making the demonic real in my settings is something that I really, really, really wanted to do a long time ago. To be honest, it has sat in the background because I was worried that my players wouldn't buy into it. Is this my personal spirituality forcing its way into my gaming? Absolutely... but what's wrong with that? If it makes for a fun story, why should I hold back?
Using demons means that I get to unleash other elements that I really feel excited about. Demonic entities require an entire metaphysical background which, if they are "evil", implies a need for "goodness". Of course, because I dislike the simple black-and-white morality of inferior settings, I opt for presenting a world in which demons and their opponents are locked in conflict through means that can always be called into question.
Are the hunters willing to do THAT?! Really?? That kind of sacrifice of life?! Indeed they might be.
Tetragrammaton
Yeah, so I watched Equilibrium again this week. That word, "Tetragrammaton", which is (for those not trained in Biblical studies) one which refers to the transliteration of the Hebrew name for God (YHWH), is a very cool word indeed.
Enter the Tetragrammaton Priests... a future survivors fusion of Jewish, Muslim and Christian belief and lore which is united against the Darkness. These guys are empowered by their God, granted amazing powers with which to combat evil and rescue their supporters.
Drawing on the imagery of warrior-priests and fusing it with the religious ideals of peace and "love for your enemies", I've begun to imagine a very cool group who would be a delight to run either as Heroes in the hands of players or, failing that, as interesting NPCs.
Rage
Rage is the name for the disease. Ragers destroyed the world as we know it.
This idea allows me to begin to map the path of the apocalypse but also to present a zombie-like antagonist to the players... but give it a twist. (Even if it is a twist inspired by the movie, "28 Days Later"...)
Ragers are more like ghouls than zombies in many ways. The undead motif, however, is strong and compelling to me. Here are some of the ideas I scribbled down:
Symptoms of Rage include a period of heightened anxiety 72 hours after infection, then a shortening of temper over a 1-3 hour period, and finally the victim attacks any living creature it comes into contact with.
Ragers will attempt to overwhelm the living and them sustain themselves by eating the flesh of the dead. Rage victims become seemingly super-strong and super-fast as their bodies over-produce hormones. After 24 hours of the initial Rage they will "burn out" and go into a dormant state for 8-12 hours while the body regenerates, before a second cycle begins.
The cycles continue until the brain and body are destroyed or the victim's body is totally worn out by the hormonal overdrive. The latter seems to become a risk some 2-3 weeks after infection, but not in all cases. High availability to consume fresh meat extends the Rager's lifespan.
This probably won't stand up to scientific scrutiny... but that really doesn't matter in a fantastic story of post-apocalyptic doom, now does it?
What's cool is that I can throw the Heroes into Rager territory to liven things up. I can have an outbreak appear in a settlement, I can threaten the Heroes with infection, and I can develop the "community" of Ragers over time.
To me, this is a far more interesting "zombie".
Savaging It
Finally, I need to work out how to get this into play quickly and with low-effort requirements. Enter
Savage Worlds...
I reviewed this game a few weeks back and, given all of the pressures on my right now, it seems like the perfect time to see how it plays. If the system ends up sucking big time, well... there's always the more time-demanding but solid systems like GURPS and Hero.
Right now, though, Savage Worlds is very appealing.
Need a bunch of Heroes for a demo game? I knocked up a character in about 20 minutes yesterday. And that was the first time I'd tried to do a character with the system. It was easy but also quite fun.
From the vantage of a pushed-for-time GM, this system is very alluring. Of course, it was designed to be used by just such a GM. So... having spent a bit longer than I wanted on this article, it's time to go and bring a few more details of my setting to life.
It's interesting that the working title for the setting has become, "Savage Dawn".
Game on!