22 Quick Post-Apocalyptic Questions Redux

My session last Saturday went swimmingly.  Almost exclusively an urban city-crawl, with Ancient self-cleaning toilets and down-on-their-luck androids and a kindly tortoise sawbones-slash-dentist-slash-beautician (who's kind of a racist) and multiple psychics cheating at poker and a duchy of chemical-guzzling creepoids and a mechanical dog and a bar brawl and stolen marshmallow fluff and an airboat.

I chalk up the success to fleshing out Gunspoint, and giving the players places they wanted to explore.  And the town grew in "real time" as they riffed and queried and such.  My settings and games are always collaborative efforts, and they're better for it.

Answers after the jump!  (And consult the map for more detail.)

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22 Quick Questions For Your Post-Apocalyptic Campaign Setting

1. What's the deal with my village's particular Rite Of Passage?  — You're no jailbait village bumpkin trundling to Far-Go or Quests Mountain in this campaign; you're an "independent contractor" in the bustling dive of Gunspoint 
2. Which way to the nearest tavern? — Fortunately, one of the PC's backstories includes being a bouncer at The Rusted Hulk, a mud-stranded ship converted into a bar. Convenient!  
3. Where do we buy useful gear? — Gunspoint is rife with vendors of all stripes; you can find pretty much anything, if you know where to look.
4. Where do we repair / reload / refuel these artifacts? — There's a few "tech guys" in town.  Expensive, though...will probably demand half your loot just to fix the rest.  And fuel cells are nigh-impossible to come by.  Explore, scavenge, repeat.
5. Where do we get some high-tech healing? — In the wastelands, where you plunder, plunder, plunder.  No one willingly parts with med-kits in Gunspoint, unless offered, say, a firstborn, or a soul.
6. Where do we fix our resident android / robot? — In "Cybergatory" (located in The Scumside of Gunspoint), where robots go to die.  Germaphobic engineer Mahgna Tinus will fix you right up, if you bring her another android (dead or alive) to provide the parts....
7. Say, what IS the local currency / medium of exchange, anyway? — "Currency" loosely consists of Ancient CDs, DVDs, and credit cards; the shinier / prettier / "neatest design"-ier the material, the more valuable.  Everything is mostly barter, barter, barter.
8. Are there any infamous ruins / vaults / laboratories / installations around where sane mutants fear to tread? — Go outside.  Walk a mile in any direction.  There ya go.  (Ok, ok...there's The Blastrodome and the sunken ruins of The Downtown and the NASTAR spaceport and a few others of note.)  And there's always those mythic Ruins Of Woebrook....
   
   
   
   
   
9. Where is the closest contaminated zone to idiotically try for powerful new mutations? — The Burning Sea is a smoldering wasteland of refineries and chemical plants and grounded tankers, where you'll probably just end up with cancer.  There's also the cracked reactor on the southern end of The Slime Barony.
10. Where do we get cures for the following conditions:  toxin, radiation, infection, lousy new mutations, nanobot infestation, corrupted databanks, broken cybernetic implants? — You're pretty screwed, unless you plunder, plunder, plunder.
11. Are there any cults / gangs / cryptic alliances I can join and / or fight? — There are plenty (like The Zoopremists and the Satan's Cerebrum's science-biker gang), but you're beneath their notice...for now.
12. Where can I hire mercenaries? — You ARE a mercenary, silly.  But other townies will happily work for you.
13. Where can I find a technician, lorekeeper, psychic, or other expert NPC? — Gunspoint has it all.  But it helps to know a guy who knows a guy.
14. Where do I find a mighty mutant monster mount? — The small villages outside of Gunspoint herd trilobison. And peliphants, beebras, and gruboceros live in the wilds. Pretty much, if it has legs, you can try to tame it.
15. Who is the greatest warlord in the wasteland? — The Queen (whoever—or whatever—she is) is taking over swaths territory with her mutant army.
16. Who is the craziest Artificial Intelligence in the wasteland? — REDACTED.
17. Who is hoarding all the gasoline in the wasteland? — Gas is pretty much gone; fuel is made from plant squeezins.  You find a source, you keep it to yourself.
18. What critters are sufficiently terrorizing the wasteland that if I kill them, I become famous? — There's a cult of blood-draining freak-os out there, and they serve big, scary, bat-things....
19. Are there any wars brewing I could go fight? — The Queen is coming for your town.  It's only a matter of time.
20. How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous artifact prizes? — Pit-fighting is as common in Gunspoint as extra limbs and venereal disease.
21. Is there anywhere on the map where certain races are shunned, mutations / artifacts are outlawed, and / or The Powers That Be significantly hassle the PCs? — The Slime Barony is adamantly pro-plant; fleshy ones, beware.  And Huntsvile is reputed to be overrun with robots that adhere to Ancient correctional policies and procedures....
22. Are there means to journey into space, or under the sea, or through the dimensional barriers? — The NASTAR spaceport would theoretically be a great place to visit the stars, if it wasn't infested with all those lunar lupines....

Gunspoint: A Wretched Dive Of Pondscum And Villainy

It's a bounty of polyhedrals, because in addition to my new Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign, I've relaunched my Mutant Future game for The Woman and some of her work chums.

Welcome, y'all, to the baleful bayous of Hugeston, Wrexus!

The swampy, mucky, sludgy campaign centers on Gunspoint, an Ancient shopping mall converted into a ramshackle fortress / trading hub / shantytown / sinmonger's paradise. Pole-powered barges, trilobison-drawn rafts, and rickety airboats traverse the Sandy Jack river, bringing staples and goods (particularly the illicit kind) from far and wide.

Adventure abounds around Gunspoint!  The closest point of interest is The Scareport, a once-bustling travel hub now awash in decrepit wreckage and freakish "living lights".

To the east lies The Queen's Wood.  Who—or, more accurately, what—The Queen is remains utterly unknown, as none who have seen her have survived the experience.  Her ever-expanding army of Mutant Humans and Mutant Animals shake down the locals, demanding larger and larger tributes...with the implied threat She will overrun the landscape.  The ruined Drearbrook Mall taunts scavengers with its promises of riches beyond imagining.  (But if that's the case, why hasn't The Queen claimed it as Her own...?)

Going northward are two key villages that supply food to the region.  Walled Den, home to The Craw, provides fish and aquacultural staples, and the citizens of Gone-Woe farm and ranch on their relatively pristine and healthy lands.  

Illis and Grieveland are communities that just can't catch a break, as there's always some disease, predator, and/or random disaster that afflicts them.  The current rumors about their worries are the most ridiculous yet, involving cyclopean chickens and renegade robots....

And speaking of renegade robots, no one dares venture too far north into the dead forests of Huntsvile.  A giant, headless, humanoid statue warns all to stay away, lest rampaging security-droids drag you screaming into the bowels of the region's numerous Ancient-but-not-so-ruined prisons....

The savage Wooded Lands take up much of the west.  Crypress, a secluded monastery for the "Brotherhood Of Thought", is the only settlement on the fringes.    Like Drearbrook, the ruined Woebrook commercial mecca lures the greedy and the foolhardy.

The Blank Zone is a mysterious area avoided by all, as no one who enters ever returns...and those who insist they actually arrived from there have no memories of the place.

To the south of Gunspoint lie the most dangerous regions.  The Downtown is an expansive sunken city where the skeletons of Ancient skyscrapers jut from polluted waters.  With its labyrinth of submerged governmental buildings, museums, banks, Fortune 500 companies, and nightspots of old, who knows what wonders lie beneath the surface...? And then there's the Blastrodome complex, a "mega-maze" with as many legends (involving gladiatorial games, subterranean slavers, monstrous trucks, cloned rock-gods, great beasts, and bloodthirsty cults) as corpses littering its grounds.

The Slime Barony is home to sentient fungi who prowl the swamps astride monstrous mounts and worship the powers of all things atomic.  Any who enter their lands must pay tribute or convert to their arcane beliefs, or suffer the consequences.  Only the Crules in the verdant Scareland are mighty enough to stand up to the Slime Barons' wrath.

Fearlake houses the crumbling husk of the NASTAR space program.  Rumors persist that the ruined center holds the keys to traversing the spaceways...assuming the wolves don't get you first....

The waters poisoned beyond all belief, The Burning Sea is a fiery graveyard of slagged ships and spewing petrochemical plants.  But many insist there are riches within the fiery tides, and they're plundered by the mutation-riddled pirates that call Graveston home.

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Here's a list of random words / phrases / people that tie into to the morass-y majesty of Gunspoint and its territories:

) gator raiders

) "N-R0N, The Thing That Should Not Exist"

) "The Psych Ward Psions"

) slicksand

) "Slakewood, The Oasis Of Blood"

) "The Star-Old's Brewery"

) "Satan's Cerebrums, The Science-Bikers"

) Exxon Honda, a.k.a. "The Kingpin Of Corruption"

) "The Monstrose"

) "The Aquarium"

) diesel demons

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The first real session is tomorrow.  (Last week, they rolled up characters and got a feel for the system by blasting a school of adorably toothy shunks.)  Stay tuned for updates!!!

"T" is for "Trilobison"

Trilobison

No. Enc.:  0 (3d6)

Alignment:  Neutral
Movement:  120' (40')
      —Swim:  45' (15')
Armor Class:  2
Hit Dice:  5
Attacks:  1 (head-butt)
Damage:  1d6
Save:  L3
Morale:  7
Hoard Class:  None
XP:  650

Trilobison (both singular and plural) are squat, low-slung, bulky beasts covered in chitinous carapaces.  They only reach between 3'-4' tall at the tops of their backsides, but stretch to lengths anywhere between 10'-15'.  Trilobison herds congregate near fresh water and mudholes to graze and wallow, and they are equally at home above or below the surface.

Normally docile, trilobison Charge when provoked, or when protecting young; however, their distinctive horns curl backwards, and are useless for goring attacks.

Many riverside and aquatic communities depend on domesticated trilobison for survival, as the creatures provide meat, milk, eggs, hides (for armor), horns (for weapons), and dung (for fertilizer).  Trilobison are also used as beasts of burden and combat mounts.

Mutations:  Aberrant Form (Gills and Lungs), Natural Armor (Extreme) (x2)