As a bonus, I have a cool post-apocalypse boat as well.

From Japan, self proclaimed post-apocalyptic artist Yanobe Kenji has created the Lucky Dragon boat that breaths fire, flaps it wings and spits water. As a weapon of war it is pointless but as the flagship for the gang leader in a low budget 80s end-of-civilisation B-movie, it is perfect.

There is a video of it in action as well.

Source: DesignFeedr and ‘Lucky Dragon’ fire-breathing boat in Osaka

1. Its a cliche, so what?

John Rouke is an surgeon, an ex-CIA operative, firearms expert, pilot, survivalist and as American as apple pie and failed foreign wars. He has a chiseled jaw, a strong moral code, loves his family and is not afraid of solving problms with a gun. To describe John Rourke as a one dimensional stereotype is being flattering to the character.

But so what? The books never set out to be literature. They are fast paced adventure stories much loved by teenagers and others with limited critical faculties. He is the right character for that audience and he drives the books forward. So GMs, never be afraid to revert to stereotypes and cliches if they fit your game. Conan and many other great adventure books have relied on them.

2. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story

The plot holes in the Survivalist series are large enough to drive, well just about anything through. John Rourke himself is no older than his mid-thirties and yet has found time to become an expert surgeon, qualified on various military aircraft, an expert in weapons and has built by himself, from scratch, a massive, luxury survival retreat. Anyone one of those takes a ten plus years of work. But it doesn’t matter. If the story moves fast enough, if it doesn’t allow the reader (or the player) to stop and think too hard about things, then just about anything will be accepted at face value.

3. No loose ends

One of Ahern’s better literary devices is his use of minor characters. Anyone given a name will have their own story wrapped up. Generally this involves dying in some honourable or heroic way, unless they are bad guys in which case they almost always get killed by Rourke. This is exactly the same technique that Shakespeare used and Ahern does it better in places than the Bard (see the end of A Winter’s Tale if you don’t believe me). Though Shakespeare tended to marry some of his characters off rather than kill them all.

The reason for this technique is that it allows the audience (or your players) to go home knowing that everything is finished. On the gaming table you may want loose ends as plot threads for future adventures but that is fine. As long as you know that such-an-such an NPC is a loose end and will reappear. If they won’t, make sure the party sees or learns about the NPCs fate.

4. Brand names and signature moves

Whenever a character is mentioned, their branded equipment is also mentioned. Rouke is always drawing one or both of his twin stainless steel Detonics pistols or his Python or his 2″ Law Master or his CAR-15 with 3x telescopic scope and so on. He never just has a pistol. The more major a character, the more branded their equipment. Everyone with a name in the books has a piece of equipment or fighting move or personality trait that makes them unique. As a GM you can use this technique. Just make sure all your NPCs have something distinctive about them and make sure you keep mentioning them to the players.

5. We all like heroes

Rourke and his party are heroes – they save the good guys and kill the bad guys. There are no moral dilemmas – no one becomes an old and embittered drunk because of being put in a wheelchair during a gun fight. You either win (quickly recovering from your wounds) or you are dead. There is nothing wrong with games that are gritty and realistic but heroic adventures from Conan to Star Wars are the bread and butter of dramatic fiction. So let your players be heroes.

Bad Books, Good Ideas

From a literary point of view these books are bad. Bad writing, bad characterisation, some extremely dodgy politics, in fact there is nothing going for them. Except they are great fun to read when you are a certain age. Even reading them now, 20 years on, I still get some of the old excitement from them because they are simple and direct. As a gamer, my taste have I’ve matured a lot since I last read these books but these books have left me itching to get back to the old school, simple, heroic adventures.

John Wyndham’s classic book, Day of the Triffids, is about to be remade into a new BBC two parter. Written in 1951, the book starts with an unexplained phenomena blinding most of the world’s population. This would be bad enough except the world is heavy dependent on the Triffids. 6′ Tall, walking plants with deadly stings, that provide important bio-fuels. With everyone blind, the triffids break free, making a bad situation much, much worse.

As with all post-apocalypse stories, in The Day of the Triffids, the real enemy is not the obvious one. Most of the danger comes from fellow survivors rather than the plants themselves. Again, as with similar disaster stories, the novel reflects the concerns of the time. Mankind was sent blind by everyone watching an amazing meteor storm. Was it a natural occurrence or an attack by the Soviets? The book never answers the question but cold war political worries and the concept of attacks from space where in people’s minds only 6 years after V2 rockets had been falling on London. It was also only a few years after DNA was discovered and scientists were beginning to speculate about how plants and animals can be modified and used as resources. Science getting out of control and humanity being out-evolved were reoccurring themes in Wyndham’s work.

The BBC clearly like the Day of the Triffids. It has been adapted for radio at least 5 times in the last 50 years. In 1981 they made a six part TV series version. I saw the first episode and fell in love with it. It is probably one of the reasons I’m so much a fan of post-apocalypse RPGs. The series was repeated recently and it has dated badly but from memory it was a faithful adaptation. Unlike the appalling 60s’ film version that should be avoided like the plague.

The new adaptation of Day of the Triffids will be a two parter, due for release in 2009. It is interesting that post- apocalypse films, TV and books are making a comeback. Traditionally they have always flourished in times economic and political uncertainty. Strangely, they tend to shy away from the most obvious threats, Nuclear War in the 80s, climate change in the 00s, and focus on monsters or zombies or natural disasters. Maybe it is because the real threats are a little too close to home. Or possibly being chased by a killer plant makes better TV than the sea level rising 6m over the next fifty years.

• The D&D Insider Character Builder was opened up for beta testing this week. If like me you don’t have a D&D Insider account, you can see what you missing with this video of the Character Builder (thanks to Questing GM)
• Common sense in RPGs is the issue in You Don’t Have to be a Brain Surgeon to Build a Realistic Dungeon from Dungeon Mastering
• In a similar vain, The Gamer Dome is Staring at Maps of Stairs
• Magic items that add character to a game are the subject of Bone Scroll’s Resurrecting Non-Violent Magic Items
• Bring on the end of the world because Sword & Shield is looking at post-apocalypse games in How Soon Is Now?
• Whilst we are thinking about the destruction of mankind, have a read about a British Company Ready for the War Against Robots
• Zack’s Guide To Being Smart With RPG PDFs is exactly what it claims to be.
• Fancy meeting up with other UK gamers? Then read Darran Sims’ UK & Europe RPG Conventions Listing

This image of the Shibuya district of Tokyo is typical of many post-apocalypse artworks. During the seventies and eighties, a lot of SF related art work would feature cities or spacecraft overgrown with plants. Assuming the city had not been destroyed by nuclear attack it appears that our cities will turn green very quickly without us. The History Channel’s Life After People did a good examination of this (see also National Geographic’s Aftermath: Population Zero). Amazing how little of human civilisation will survive even a few hundred years.

Whilst I’m on this Aftermath / Post-Apocalypse theme, have a look at Wired’s 10 Best Apocalyptic Vehicles. For a more RPG orientated take on the end of the world, The Post Apocalyptic Forge has plenty of info on out-of-the-ruins type games. For more films and TV news about the end of the world try Post Apocalyptic Media and QuietEarth, especially the list of 158 Post Apocalyptic movies

Image from Tokyo Fantasy: Images of the apocalypse but also have a look at Neo-Ruins: Lithographs of post-apocalyptic Tokyo

Even better, they are have plans to launch new products: Aftermath! Technology! 2.0, an updated version to the never released technology supplement; Aftermath! Magic!, rules for magic and fantasy creatures; and the Aftermath! Survival Guide with rules and information on a multitude of disasters including nuclear war and zombies. Their website says that the Technology! supplement will be released March 2008 so clearly things are not going to plan but we have waited 20 years for new products, we can wait a little bit longer.

Aftermath! has long been out of print but Amazon have some copies available via 3rd dealers. Check out our RPG store’s Aftermath! page for details. I’ve used it to complete my collection of scenarios as not all of them made it over to the UK.

Asteroid’s strikes can be global events that permanently change the Earth, such as the one that killed the dinosaurs. But even a relatively small one can have a huge impact, such as the Tunguska Event (also here). The amount of damage caused relies on numerous factor, ranging from the obvious like the speed and size of the asteroid to the less obvious such as the type of rock it hits and its angle of approach.

Now you can experiment with these different factors by dropping asteroids on Wales using the Impact Calculator. Destroying Wales is a worthwhile activity in its own right but now you do it in a spirit of scientific enquiry and whilst planning your next post-apocalypse RPG.

I’ve been playing RPG’s for about 25 years now, starting with Traveller and then Tunnels & Trolls. D&D, in the form of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons enter my life a couple of years later when I started attending a local games club through which I met Rob. Since then Dungeons and Dragons has been the staple of my role playing life but I’ve also continued to enjoy SF style games. Including my favourite all time RPG, the post-apocalypse game Aftermath, though it is a close run thing with a well run Call of Cthulhu campaign .

I tend to GM more than I play because I love writing adventures and creating worlds. Rob and I play in a regular Thursday night game and I’m running a campaign based in ancient Rome. Because Rob and our friends will be reading this I can’t say to much about it but I will be publishing the complete campaign here on 6d6Fireball in a few months time. Or sooner if the player’s mess up and allow the bad guys to win.