I've been puzzling over this one for a while. The standard D&D money system with set price lists really doesn't feel right for a post-apocalyptic setting. A good post-apocalyptic money (or barter or whatever) system should have two qualities:
First, there should be no set price list, because prices are going to vary dramatically in a world where trade isn't safe or regular, and shortages are frequent. Also, I'm constantly going to be introducing new things for sale and I'd rather not obsess over finding the "right" price for it.
Second, whatever people use as money needs to have clear practical value as something other than money. No fiat currency, obviously, but also no shell money. Ain't no patience for fancy money in the wasteland!
So that leaves three options that I can see, and I'll show you what I settled on in the end, including how I set prices.
Barter
Barter seems thematic for the fucked-up remnants of a fallen civilization on a blasted planet. Trade animal pelts for lodging, a gun for some gasoline, some doodads from a ruined city for bullets.
The only problem is it gets incredibly tedious. And imprecise. And makes it hard to accumulate and store wealth. Okay, barter sucks, which is why money is one of the first things humans invented.
Commodity Money
By commodity money, I mean the common expendable items everyone needs are now money. Something like:
Cup of water– copper piece
Bullet- silver piece
Ration– gold piece
Can of gasoline– Platinum piece
This makes a lot more thematic sense. Using bullets as money is metal as fuck. It has a few problems though.
First, it strains realism, if you care about that. Gasoline actually only keeps a few months. Bullets might keep for years if they're well-made and stored properly, which they probably wouldn't be.
Second, what if the value of these commodities changes? That's always true for money of course, but seems a more likely issue when the money is perishable.
Third, and most importantly in my mind, it negates one of the main challenge vectors of an OSR game: managing resource depletion. As an expedition goes on, you should run low on food, ammo, torches/batteries and the like, while accumulating treasure. At some point you have to make the hard decision to head back to town for rest and supplies.
So if the treasure you gain largely consists of the same resources you deplete during an adventure, much of the resource management aspect of the game is lost.
Alright, So Actual Money Then
But like I said before: no set prices that are consistent from village to village– or even month to month. And the money has to be useful stuff, which after all money originally was. Here are the coins I'll use in my campaign:
Copper penny– used for wiring, cookware, cups and plates, making bronze and brass
Scrap (or titanium– decent-quality pre-apocalypse alloys anyway) dime– used as a structural material for things that need to be tough like weapons, armor, and certain parts of vehicles and buildings.
Silver dollar– used for mirrors, jewelry, batteries, electrical contacts, weapons for use against supernatural threats, dental fillings, certain medicines, etc.
Gold pound– used for electronics, dental fillings, jewelry, or electroplated over other things to rust-proof it. So-called because it's usually worth about a pound of scrap metal.
Platinum crown– used for catalytic converters in vehicles, high-temperature applications, certain electrical parts, and certain medicines. And extremely fancy jewelry. So-called because you're rich if you have a few platinum coins.
Like most games, each coin is worth ten of the next cheapest one, so a crown is worth 100 dollars, or 10,000 pennies.
Items cost d4 coins by default. What kind of coins? Depends on the item.
Basic consumables like food, water, lodging, bullets and torches cost copper pennies.
Basic low-tech gear, minor luxuries like wine, and low-tech weapons and armor cost scrap. By low-tech, I mean anything a pre-industrial culture could make, not withstanding that more advanced alloys may be used since there's pre-tech scrap metal lying around.
More specialized gear, small animals like cats, dogs and chickens, low-tech vehicles like bicycles, rowboats or wagons, and modern tech weapons and armor cost silver.
Land (in town– land in the middle of nowhere is free to whoever can hold it), cobbled-together modern tech vehicles (motorcycles and small buggies), and small futuristic tech devices, weapons and armor cost gold, as do really fancy luxuries
Magic items and small futuristic vehicles cost platinum
Move up a coin size if it’s particularly fancy, i.e. fine food rather than cheap food, a private room in the inn rather than the common room, a custom car rather than a beater, a decent sword rather than a spear or dagger, chainmail rather than padded.Move up two coin types if it’s really fancy, i.e. plate armor, a rare vintage of wine, or a bazooka.
Move up a coin type for every order of magnitude of size above personal items– car, house, ship, fortress, etc.
Move down a coin size if it's a piece of shit– a care that might break down any time now, spoiled food, a rusty weapon, etc.
Items cost d4 coins. If size is relevant like with armor or meals, d4+1 if sized for someone big, d3 if sized for someone small.Double, triple or quadruple the price if there’s a shortage.
If there's a glut of an item, you might get a small discount on one, but you can get much bigger discounts for buying in bulk. In other words, if there's a surplus of something it's meant for export to other towns.
Examples:
Plate armor: low-tech armor is scrap, but custom-made plate armor is extremely fancy and expensive, so that's gold. If you can't afford that, mass-produced 3/4 plate is silver.
A modern sniper rifle– modern weapons are silver, but sniper rifles are kinda fancy, so gold. If you can't afford that, a lower-quality bolt-action hunting rifle could be silver.
A crappy modern-tech motorcycle would cost gold. A big all-terrain van that can hold the whole party plus hirelings, gear and loot would cost platinum, as would a really good motorcycle. A really good big ATV would cost tens of platinum! On the other hand, if you really want a ride for the whole party at cut-rate prices, you can get a sketchy battle van for gold. Your funeral.
Whatever price you roll, that's the price in that town for the near future. Yes, the same item might cost 4x as much in the next town over. If so, there's a reason why prices haven't equalized, like bandits preventing regular trade between the two towns, or the towns just don't get along. Figure out what the reason is, and turn it into an adventure seed.
Let's say you're planning a game that will have a massive variety of equipment– anywhere from daggers and chainmail, to assault rifles and kevlar vests, to powered armor and laser guns. If so, six things are probably true:
1) You're awesome
2) So is your campaign
3) Your game will have hundreds of different weapons and armor options in it
4) You want these options to be somewhat balanced, such that plasma guns are better than longbows, but not realistically better– that is, the cowboy will be outmatched against the space marine, but will at least have a chance of doing damage and maybe winning
5) You don't want to individually write up those hundreds of items all at once
6) You want it to be easy to introduce new items as the game goes on, likely including weapons and armor designed by your players
I like the simplicity of systems that say, like, small weapons like daggers do d6 damage, medium weapons like longswords do d8, and large weapons like mauls do d12. In those systems, you can introduce any new weapon you want and immediately know what its stats should be.
This is the same concept, except a) much more comprehensive for systems where you have wide variances in tech level, and b) uses armor as damage reduction.
Weapon Types and Damage
Unarmed attacks do d3 damage.
Weapons fall into four sizes: small (dagger, pistol), medium (longsword, machine pistol), large (greataxe, rifle), and heavy (scorpion, mortar, bazooka, heavy machine gun).
In post-apocalyptic games, you have four tech levels: improvised or stone age weapons, low-tech weapons including medieval and wild west stuff, modern weapons of 20th and 21st century tech level like assault rifles and pump-action shotguns, and futuristic weapons like laser guns and lightsabers.
In cyberpunk games these have different names but are mechanically identical: improvised, civilian-grade (mostly legal with permit), military-grade (illegal but widely available), and cutting-edge (not mass-produced yet, the kind of stuff you'll be stealing from corporate research labs).
A weapon's damage value depends on size and tech level:
Further, a weapon might have certain weapon tags, like it's silent, has an area of effect, needs to take an action to reload after every shot, or uses rare and expensive ammo. Every positive tag lowers the damage one step, every negative tag raises it a step.
A few exceptions: Automatic fire; weapons with full auto aren't less powerful, generally. Reach weapons aren't generally less powerful because greater reach isn't worth as much in these settings. And versatile weapons (can be used one or two handed) are kinda their own thing; the exact benefits of using two hands may depend on the weapon. Some tags are also not clearly positive or negative.
Examples:
Broadsword: medium low-tech/civilian melee weapon, d8 damage + STR mod, no tags
Three-section staff: large low-tech/civilian melee weapon, d8 + STR mod Tag: chain weapon, can ignore shields and be used to entangle enemies
Machine pistol: medium modern/military weapon, d10 damage. Tags: full auto, versatile (can only use full auto with two hands
Monofilament whip: light futuristic, d10 + DEX mod damage. Tags: chain weapon (ignores shields), precision weapon (uses DEX instead of STR for damage), dangerous (you hit yourself on a crit fail), powered (needs a battery or power source)
You can adjust somewhat from there, but use those as starting guidelines.
Armor Types and Values
As mentioned, armor acts as damage reduction rather than preventing you from getting hit. Shields, in this system, affect your defense (chance to get hit) rather than acting as damage reduction like armor.
Armor is divided by the type of material used and amount of coverage provided.
Armor Materials
Light primitive, like leather or cloth
Heavy primitive, like steel or iron
Light modern, like kevlar or plastic
Heavy modern, like titanium or modern steel alloys
Light futuristic, like aerogel, genetically engineered spider silk, or carbon nanotube mesh weave
Heavy futuristic, like liquid metal, adamantium, or crystalline metals
Certain mutant animal hides or carapace may count as modern or even futuristic material
Armor Coverage
Partial, less than half the body, like a jacket or vest
d2- light primitive material d3- light modern or heavy primitive d4- light futuristic or heavy modern d5- heavy futuristic material d6- d8- d10- d12-
If the armor has majority coverage, raise it one die step. For total coverage, raise it two die steps. If it's so heavy you can barely move, like a bomb suit or most powered armor when unpowered, raise it three die steps. If it's powered armor so heavy you literally can't move when it's unpowered, raise it four die steps.
Roll your armor die when hit, counting a one as a zero, and subtract that value from the damage received.
You can mix and match armor pieces to create a composite suit; just figure out which of these categories your personal armor panoply comes closest to.
Bear in mind that armor is never made solely out of heavy materials; there always has to be a light under-layer, and modern armor styles tend to use heavy material only over the most vital areas. That still counts as heavy, not a mix of heavy and light materials.
Armor can also have tags, like flame resistant, electrically insulated or conductive, specialized against a certain damage type, etc.
Examples:
Kevlar vest with no plates: light modern material with partial coverage, d3
Spiky leather jacket, chainmail kilt, and soccer shinguards: majority coverage with a mix of light modern, light primitive (biggest piece) and heavy primitive, d4
This new army system: mostly heavy modern materials, majority coverage, d5 with all components, d4 if you strip out some of the extra parts like the face and hip pieces
Concealable form-fitting body armor made of spider-silk weave with aerogel reinforcement over the vitals: light futuristic material with majority coverage, d5
Space marine powered armor like in 40k: futuristic heavy materials, heavy total coverage (heavily encumbered and disadvantage to dexterity tests if it goes unpowered), d10
Bomb suit: Heavy modern materials, full coverage, ones actually count as one, specialized: explosions d5 vs most attacks, 2d4 vs explosions, fire and shrapnel
What This System Does For You
Nearly unlimited variety without much work. You can take pretty much any weapon or armor– a chainsaw glaive, spiked hockey pads, homemade grenade launcher, rubber tire lamellar– and immediately know what its starts should be.
This system also compromises between realism and gonzo– high-tech equipment is significantly better, but not the unsurmountable advantage it realistically would be, so a party armed with revolvers and swords and armored with leather, sports gear and scrap metal can fight robots with laser eyes and have a decent chance of winning.
These chase rules are meant to be used with these post-apocalyptic vehicle rules, although they could be adapted to other vehicle rules pretty easily.
They're also meant to be used for foot chases, so they can be used to create awesome parkour chase scenes.
Moreover, they can be used for combined vehicle and foot chases, like if someone on foot is being chased by someone in a car. Obviously there's an issue there in that vehicles are just plain faster than runners– I'll explain how to deal with that later.
Initiative is side initiative for people on foot, and by vehicle for people in vehicles.
Roll d20 (or 2d10 or whatever your chore mechanic is) plus DEX mod plus maybe a relevant driving mod for each driver. That is their vehicle's initiative, and everyone in the vehicle goes on that initiative score, including not only passengers but also prisoners or boarders from the other side.
For each side, do the same thing but have whichever character is the most dextrous, best at parkour or whatever, roll for their whole side. If there's a skill system they can add their athletics skill or whatever is most likely to get used, the same way drivers can add their driving skill.
Break ties by who has the highest skill, highest modifier, or just by rolling dice.
Chase Positions and Range Bands
At the the start of the chase, figure out who is in the lead, who's being chased by everyone else– they're at range zero. Anyone within like 30 feet or less, or the range of a taser or thrown rock or dagger, is also at range zero.
Anyone within a hundred feet or so, or easy pistol range, is at range one– they're one range band behind the lead.
Anyone within around 500 feet, so fairly easy rifle range or extreme pistol range, is at range two.
Anyone within less than a couple thousand feet, so sniper rifle, heavy machine gun or anti-tank rocket range or extreme rifle range, is at range three.
Anyone within about a mile, or extreme range for sniper rifles and heavy weapons, is at range four.
Anyone within about 3 miles is at range five. At this range you're still visible assuming no obstructions, but you're out of range of any weapon short of tank cannons or guided missiles.
Anyone at 3-9 miles away is at range six. At this range you might not be visible even with few or no obstructions, you might be over the horizon, but anyone chasing you has at least a rough idea of where you are. Also you might be leaving a visible dust cloud even if not visible yourself. People at this range can keep chasing you but at the referee's discretion might have to make a tracking test or something to make sure they go the right way.
Anyone more than ten miles away is at range seven– they've lost track of the person in the lead. If someone else is at range six, maybe they could follow that person and hope for the best.
I wrote those ranges mainly with post-apocalyptic car chases in mind; for pure foot chases in a crowded urban environment, keep the same system but maybe re-interpret the range bands as being shorter.
Obviously the logarithmic scaling of these range bands means time is somewhat abstracted; a combat round in a chase represents a rather indeterminate, abstracted amount of time. If that becomes an issue for spell durations or bard car songs or something, treat each round as being ten seconds if people are at close range, and a minute if the closest chases is out of weapons range. Or something like that.
Actions During Combat
On their initiative each round, each character takes a movement action, and might also take a non-movement action. Note that if you're driving or on foot, you have to take a movement action. Even staying still is an "action" in the sense that it causes you to fall behind and affects your position relative to everyone else. Only passengers get to not take movement actions.
Here are the options people have– or at least the ones that need to be codified for this system.
Chase Actions
I'll explain DC's for chase and other movement actions at the end of this section.
Chase actions can cause you to gain or lose a range band. If you're not at position zero, this means you get closer or further to position zero. If you are at position zero and you can a range band, you stay at position zero and everyone else falls a range behind. If you're at position zero and you fall back a range, you fall to position one if someone else was at position zero with you, or everyone else gains a range if nobody else was at range zero.
Note that things like ramming and other maneuvers are not considered chase actions, since they don't change your chase position.
Hold Pace– This is the equivalent of running but not sprinting, or driving fast but not pedal to the floor. If you do this, you can also take a non-chase action, but it's at disadvantage unless it's something that directly involves movement like ramming, maneuvering, etc.
Make a driving or athletics check. On a success you stay in your current range band, on a critical success you either move up a range, or can give one passenger advantage on a non-movement action this round, or ignore your own disadvantage, your choice. On a failure you fall back one range, on a critical failure, save or crash.
Push It– Sprint or put the pedal to the metal to try and gain range. Make a driving or athletics test. On a success you gain a range band, on a critical success you can gain two if you want. On a failure you simply don't gain a range band, on a critical failure, save or crash.
You can't take any non-chase actions if you pick this, other than ramming, dive tackling someone, etc.
Slow Down or Stop– You deliberately fall back. This doesn't usually require a test at all, but it might if you're in a vehicle, want to stop altogether and were pushing it last round, or if the terrain makes it especially difficult, like you're on ice.
You can take a non-chase action without disadvantage this turn.
DC's for Chase Actions and Movement Actions
For any chase action or any non-chase action involving movement like ramming, the DC is determined by terrain. Drivers will make tests using either their vehicle's speed or handling modifier.
Runners will usually use dexterity, but very occasionally might use strength.
Encumbered runners, or heavily encumbered runners (whatever the equivalent of having a heavy backpack that would significantly slow you down is called in your system) get disadvantage on all chase actions and other movement actions. Being encumbered in a chase is really, really bad.
Runners from a race that has a lower movement speed, like dwarves, get disadvantage on tests related to raw speed, but not tests relating to agility. If you have higher than normal speed, you get advantage instead.
For mostly open terrain, the DC is 10 for speed and you can't rely on handling/agility.
For somewhat cluttered terrain, it's 15 either way.
For very dense terrain, it's 10 for handling/agility and you can't make speed tests; you have to use agility.
If it seems weird that dense terrain actually makes handling tests easier, remember that what's being measured is not your absolute speed, but your speed relative to everyone else.
If you're in the lead, you're free to choose which way you want to go, and the people chasing you largely have to follow you. If you're following, you need to either follow the path of whoever you're chasing, find a shortcut, or potentially take a long way around to cut them off if you're in a car and they're on foot.
Finally, a word about speed differences. Cars with high speed are faster than cars with low speed, and high-dex people are faster than low-dex people. Not by enough to automatically outrun each other though; just, they are likely to win contests, but they still have to roll.
Cars vs people, or planes vs cars for that matter, are a different story. Cars automatically succeed on speed tests vs people, and people automatically fail them vs cars, ditto for cars vs most aircraft. If you're on foot running from a vehicle, you pretty much have no choice but to go into dense terrain where the chase actions will have to be handling/agility based; you can't win on raw speed.
Non-Chase Actions
Attack– This works pretty much as normal, with two considerations. First, you may get disadvantage on an attack if you're at long range, or if the target is moving across your field of vision, fishtailing wildly, etc. Second, people in cars are likely to get some kind of cover bonus to AC.
Use an item, cast a spell, etc– Again, this works pretty much as normal. People might need to make a DEX check to do it while running or in a bumpy car though.
Full Defense– Usable by drivers or people on foot only, you take some evasive maneuvers. Make a driving or athletics test; on a success, attacks against you have disadvantage until your next turn, but so do attacks by any of your passengers if you're driving. Doesn't apply to attacks from the same range band, or to ramming attempts.
Ram, or dive tackle someone– Make a driving, athletics or grappling test against the target's unarmored AC. You have disadvantage if you weren't in their range band at the start of your turn, i.e. if you sped up to catch them then tried to ram. However this doesn't stack with the disadvantage from your chase action, and you can try to do this even if you pushed it.
A successful dive tackle during a chase does d4 damage on soft ground, or d6 on hard ground, and then you're on the ground grappling.
A successful ram does damage to both vehicles. Each vehicle inflicts one die per size, so one die for motorcycles, two for cars, three for large vans, etc. The die size is d4 if the vehicle's velocities are nearly matched, like you side-swipe or bump someone front to back, and d6 if you come in more from the side. If two vehicles collide head-on, they both inflict d8, and if you t-bone someone, you inflict d10's and they inflict d6's.
Armor modifies damage. Reduce damage taken by one for every point of armor. Increase damage inflicted by one for every two points of armor.
It is imperative that you do armor this way, even if it otherwise acts as hit avoidance in your system. Treating armor as hit avoidance would imply that, say, a motorcycle ramming a tank is unlikely to damage either the tank or itself.
If a car rams a person, treat this as if the person was a size 1 vehicle. Their armor counts as half– personal armor isn't as substantial as vehicle armor– and only hard armor, like metal not leather, adds to damage inflicted.
Jump onto a vehicle, off a vehicle, or from one vehicle to another– Oh hell yes, you can totally do this, provided you and the vehicle you want to jump to are in the same range band.
The DC is 10 if the two vehicles are less than 5 feet apart, 5 if they're locked together somehow, 15 if they're 5-10 feet apart, and 20 if they're 10-20 feet apart. Disadvantage if what you're jumping from and what you're jumping to haven't roughly matched their velocities, including if tiehr vehicle's driver is doing full defense.
Vehicles are always moving of course, so base this on the most opportune moment you think someone would get within that particular round.
If you succeed you make it on or off the target vehicle, and you now act on that vehicle's initiative count, or on your side's "on foot" initiative count if you jumped to the ground. Anyone onboard an enemy-driven vehicle acts just before that vehicle's initiative count, so if you board an enemy vehicle you get the chance to stab someone before they react, unless someone uses a held action or something to hit you as you jump.
If you critically succeed you land so softly people don't feel/hear you land on the vehicle, though they might still see you. If you fail you fall, take damage, and lose your next turn; save for half damage and to not lose your next turn. If you critically fail, you don't get to save.
Note that while this potentially allows someone to game the initiative system by jumping back and forth, they risk falling every time they do so. If this isn't enough to discourage people from jumping around constantly, your NPC's aren't maneuvering enough.
Any other action people can think of– Rule as necessary. This includes stuff like combat maneuvers to push people out of a vehicle, or called shots to take out a car's tires.
Chase Procedure
The referee will need a notebook and pen or pencil, or maybe some post-it notes. Each round the referee will tell people what the terrain is like where they're located, giving them an idea what their options are. i.e. you can speed along the road or try to veer off into the field, you can run down the alley, try to jump a fence, or climb a fire escape, etc.
The referee will need to keep track of what terrain people have moved through in past rounds, since anyone chasing them and following their route will have the same options. In essence, the referee only has to come up with new terrain when the person in the lead advances.
If people start taking different routes but still chasing the same person, treat them as being laterally separated by one range band. i.e. if Mad Max is being chased by two bandit cars, and one car stays on the road Max is on while the other cuts through a canyon, the two bandit cars are one range band apart left-right in addition to any front-back distance.
If people start veering off in different directions, you've essentially got two or more separate chases at that point.
Chases are over when one side gives up, gets killed, or the range distance between the people running away and the people chasing is seven or more. Or if the people running find some clever way to hide other than sheer distance. If the people running stop running, then you're into a standard combat.
Compared to my rules, Varya's generator is faster, doesn't quite give you all the stats you need, but also offers a tremendous variety of really cool flavor details that mine doesn't. The best part, we both agreed, is that some of the cars it produces come with specific music loaded into them so you can blast some rock and roll during your chase scenes.
As tends to happen, that got me thinking. The game I'm working on won't include bards as a character class...but what if the car itself was the bard?
Once, long ago, there were a group of musician-sorcerers called bards. It is said that they could entrance entire crowds with their magical songs, driving people into fits of rage, inspiring them to love, or sending them into the darkest depths of despair with only their voices and their guitars.
But sometime, somehow, somebody killed them all off. Nobody knows how, but bards haven't been seen in centuries.
Except...they're not entirely gone. The souls of some bards were captured, bound into vehicles. The tortured souls of these bards were made to perform their magic for their twisted owners. Using CDs imbued with a fraction of their old power, the bards can play once more, the range of their magic now amplified by the power of vehicular stereo system.
As much pain as they're in, the souls of these bards can bear it. Anything, just for the chance to play again. Their repertoire limited by their selection of CDs, they want nothing more than to collect and perform more songs. They will willingly, if not eagerly, serve any owner who makes an honest effort to gather more CDs for them.
Rules: Bard cars are extremely rare. Any vehicle has a 1% chance of being a bard car, but obviously more powerful or magically-inclined owners are more likely to have them to raise that chance accordingly.
When a CD is played, it plays for 10 minutes and affects everyone who can hear it. With loud enough speakers, this could be everyone for a mile. Earplugs won't shut out the music unless you're near the edge of the song's effective range. The music is also audible, but muffled and ineffective, at twice its effective range.
When a song is played, it plays for 10 minutes, repeating as needed. If it's a Ramones song, maybe you'll hear it 5 times. Once started, nothing short of physical damage to the car will stop it early. Playing a song costs an hour's worth of fuel.
Cars are just the coolest thing ever.Fuck walking.Everyone must make a willpower/wisdom save to get off a vehicle if they’re aboard one, or to not immediately try to get into a vehicle if they’re not in one.Moving from one vehicle to another is fine.
Want to be a kung-fu cowboy?Everybody gets +1 to morale and +2 to saves vs fear.In addition, people get +2 to rolls for special combat maneuvers like shoving, tripping, grappling etc, as well as called shots.This only applies to tests made with one’s own body; not with vehicular combat maneuvers.
Everyone who hears this feels the need for speed.All vehicles receive +2 to their speed modifier.However, if they fail a speed-based test they must immediately make a handling test to avoid wiping out.
Magic-users…don’t you just get sick of them?All non-magical damage inflicted on spell casters and magical beings by people with no magical abilities is doubled.
Grief has a strange way of turning into admiration.When a group would have to make a morale test due to suffering casualties, they instead make a new reaction roll.This can result in them suddenly being friendly to the people who just killed their friend.It applies to player characters too just as if they were NPCs.
Those who hear the ballad of Montsegur will neither retreat, nor parlay, nor compromise.They will fight until their fortresses are torn to the ground, and burn before they recant.All damage inflicted on structures is doubled.Combatants may surrender, but will never switch sides nor recant their views.
This song turns everyone who hears it into a ninja for a few incredible minutes.All melee attacks get +2 to hit.People get advantage on agility-based movement tests such as parkour, climbing, etc.
This song makes people surrounded by enemies unable to even think of escape.Anyone who is flanked cannot move.They can of course try to not be flanked by killing, shoving, or otherwise disabling their attackers.
Why fear death?VALHALLA AWAITS!Anyone who would die for any reason, doesn’t.Not for a combat round.They make take one last action, and they suffer no penalties for any injury short of having libs completely severed.
Everyone who hears this song loses all skill with weapons, but attacks with their bare hands became as strong as a bear’s.All weapon damage is one die size smaller.All unarmed damage is to die sizes larger.
Nobody cares what anyone thinks of them under the influence of this song.People must make a willpower/wisdom save to resist doing exactly what they want to do– like fleeing, striking someone who insults them, etc- regardless of the consequences or who is watching.
THE LOUDER THE BETTER!All speech is magnified at least tenfold.People who yell can be heard nearly a mile away, even over the song itself.Normal speech is intelligible hundreds of feet away.Even a whisper carries at least a few tens of feet.Combatants will frequently hear each other’s plans.In the interest of fairness, some of the player’s strategizing should be treated as in-character, within reason.
Pain is amplified under the effects of this song.Anyone who takes damage or would otherwise suffer pain must past a willpower/wisdom save or save vs paralysis, or be incapacitated, screaming with pain.The save can be repeated each round to end the effect.
There’s always more killing to be done.This song makes the listener cynical about death; they get no joy from killing, but do it with a sense of grim resignation. Anyone who kills or incapacitates an enemy can immediately make another attack against a different enemy.
The devil is never far behind. All demons get an extra hit die.Rolls to summon demons are made at advantage,Rolls to banish or control them are made at disadvantage.
You know what everyone likes?Treasure.People who hear this song must succeed on a willpower save to not pursue the most valuable treasure (excluding anything already possessed by their allies) on any given round.
You can do anything, as long as you have God on your side.Each side in a combat automatically ignores the first failed morale/loyalty check.Additionally, commanding underlings to perform dangerous or unethical actions, like making a suicide attack or executing prisoners, does not force an automatic morale check as it normally would.People who perform such actions may suffer from crushing guilt afterward, possibly inflicting a mental disorder \.
Everyone driving or on foot must succeed on a willpower/wisdom test to not move as fast and as far as they can, every round, whether they need to or not.
Under the effects of this song, people become aware of just how many options they truly have.Players who can’t decide what to do may ask the referee for help; the referee must suggest one idea that has not yet been voiced by anyone.NPCs should be played as being more creative and unpredictable than usual.
Just because the woods are deep, doesn’t mean they have to be dense.All tight terrain is treated as rough terrain and all rough terrain as open terrain, for purpose of both travel speed and driving tests.This doesn’t actually let vehicles fit anywhere they couldn’t fit.
Nothing is impressive to one who hears this song.No deed is worthy of respect or reward.No bounties can be collected for kills made while this song was playing.No XP is earned, no positive reputation gained for actions performed during this song.
Listeners are filled with an intense sense of loneliness.Radio communications don’t work, nor does any sort of magical or psychic communication with a range of over a hundred feet.Being loud, like with a megaphone, still works fine.
27-30: I’m out of ideas.Fill these out with songs you like to make it an even thirty.Or go for fifty if you feel up to it.
I'm working on a post-apocalyptic cyborgs and sorcery RPG- imagine if the world of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser advanced to 22nd century level technology, then there was an apocalypse and they went all Mad Max.
Obviously, it needs vehicles.
Every set of vehicle rules I've ever seen has tried to categorize vehicles into either general categories, or specific makes and models. Here are the stats for a buggy, here are the stats for a sedan, etc. I'm taking a different route.
In the post-apocalyptic world, every vehicle is unique. A labor of love, formed (usually) from some mixture of a core pre-apocalypse vehicle, salvaged replacement parts, hand-made replacement parts, and improvised add-ons like scrap armor and gun turrets. There are no "standard" models.
Instead, vehicles get rolled up in a manner similar to characters.
Step 1: Size
Listed vehicle types are intended as examples, not an exhaustive list
Roll a d3, d4 or d6 depending on the largest vehicle you could plausibly have found
1- Motorcycle, small ATV
2- Car or buggy
3- Van, oversized buggy, small wasteland fighting vehicle
4- Minibus, APC, cargo van, large wasteland fighting vehicle
6- Large bus, main battle tank, semi or mobile fortress
Air vehicles can be bigger, and sea vehicles can be a lot bigger, but that’s as big as land vehicles get.
Step 2: Quality Level
Roll d4-1
0- Rustbucket
1- Fixer-upper
2- Good as new
3- Pimpmobile
Add quality level to every ability score and number of hit dice.
Step 3: Ability Scores:
There are six, but vehicles might only have four as the last two are absent on most vehicles.Roll 3d6 for each, modifiers as normal for your system.When driving, use the vehicle’s speed or handling modifier rather than your own attributes.When repairing, use the vehicle’s reliability mod in addition to your intelligence mod.
Speed:Both raw speed and acceleration.Different vehicle types work on different scales, so a 10 speed helicopter is faster than a 10 speed car.Modifier applies to speed-based actions during chases.Doesn’t affect travel speed which is more about terrain type.
Handling: Turning speed and stability.Modifier applies to maneuverability tests.
Body: Measure of durability. Affects ramming damage, along with size. After hit points are depleted, body gets depleted.When it reaches zero, the car is totaled.
Reliability: Measures how likely it is to break down and easy to repair.Modifier applies to all such tests.
Sensor: Measures sensor systems.Most post-apocalyptic vehicles won’t have it, but high-tech vehicles usually will and drones always will.
Pilot: Quality of the autopilot.Most vehicles won’t have this.Any vehicle that has Pilot must also have Sensor.
Step 4: Fuel type
roll 2d6
2-4 Petroleum (gas and diesel bi-fuel engine)
5-9 Plug-in bi-fuel hybrid
10-12 Electric
From what I read, plug-in hybrids aren't expected to catch on in real life because of the added cost and complexity of the engines and fuel sources. But the calculus is different in the wasteland; most vehicles are plug-in hybrids with bi-fuel engines because fuel is scare and you want to be able to use multiple types of it since you never know what type you'll be able to get.
Step 5: Other Values
Number of seats: size squared, plus or minus 50%. This is approximate; in post-apocalyptic movies it's perfectly normal for people to hang onto the outsides of vehicles, or modify them to have platforms to stand on.
Hit dice: A d8 per size level, plus bonus dice for quality level.First die maxed. Again, hit points represent fairly superficial damage that's easy to repair (but it is damage and not just avoiding getting hit). Once they're gone, Body starts getting depleted.
Fuel: Enough for 3d6+size hours of driving.One hour is size x half a gallon, or size x 10 kWh.
Again, unrealistically high but post-apocalyptic vehicles have bigger gas tanks because who knows when you'll find gas. Water vehicles should probably have like ten times as much fuel storage and air vehicles should maybe scale differently; I haven't thought it out yet.
Armor class: By system, but in most systems where an unarmored human has AC 10, it’s 12 - size +handling modifier (treat as one lower than the lowest possible modifier if the car isn’t moving)
Step 6: Add-ons
Roll one if size 1-3, two if size 4-6
1-8: This many points of armor. Reduce speed by one for every two full points.
9- Nuclear electric generator.Generates one hour of electric charge per day.
10- Nitrous oxide injectors.Activate to add +2 to speed modifier for 3 rounds.3 uses before it needs to be refilled. While it's active, you can't slow down, and any handling test that fails by 10 or more is an automatic crit fail.
11- HAM radio set.Doesn’t use much electricity but if you use it all day, maybe one unit of fuel a day.
12- Tank treads instead of wheels.-1 to speed modifier but ignore most critical failure effects on handling tests.-20% travel speed, but treat each terrain type other than road as one better.
13- Multifuel engine.Can use motor oil, jet fuel, natural gas, etc.Can’t mix two wildly different fuel types at once, but fuel capacity is split into two smaller tanks so you can carry two kinds of fuel.
14- Covered in spikes.Does extra ramming damage to both cars and people in them.Anyone jumping onto the vehicle must DEX save/save vs traps or get skewered as if by a spear.
15- Portable solar recharger.Not a component so much as carried in the trunk; these solar panels take a turn to set up and break down and cover size x 40 square feet.On a sunny day they recharge 1 hour of juice per 4 hours; half that on overcast days.
16- Rooftop solar panels- recharge at half the rate of a portable charger, but they’re always active.
17- Loudspeakers- not like a boom box.Think those civil defense vehicles meant for warning the whole city of an air raid.At max volume can be heard from 3 miles away.
18- Lowrider- looks super pimpin, can be adjusted to keep a low profile or protect the undercarriage from rocks.
19- Gun turret.Need a gun, can hold something like a machine gun or harpoon launcher.
20- Amphibious.Floats on the water, goes about 5 MPH.
Travel Speed- Based on terrain and weather
Terrain: Road, Open, Bumpy, Tight
Weather: Clear, high winds or light rain, storm
48 miles per hour on a road (presumably dirt, gravel or covered in potholes)
30 miles per hour in open terrain like plains, etc
18 miles per hour on rough or bumpy terrain like hills, sandy desert, low-density forest
6 miles per hour in close terrain like rubble, jungle, etc
Multiply travel speeds by 2/3 for light rain, high winds, etc and 1/3 for storm conditions.
Note that what constitutes different terrain types will vary by vehicle.A forest may be bumpy for a motorcycle, tight for a buggy, and impassible for anything bigger.A road might not be a road if it’s narrower than your vehicle.
The road speed may seem low, but bear in mind that all vehicles are assumed to be off-road optimized, as well as optimized for fuel efficiency at the expense of some speed. Plus you're watching for enemies and presumably having to navigate an unfamiliar area, so bump that up a bit if conditions are even more favorable.
There should probably be something about vehicles making a reliability test every so often to see if the break down, but I haven't worked that out yet.
You'll note that between the high speeds and ability to quickly burn through all your fuel, vehicular travel looks very different from traveling by foot or on animals. You'll generally move in short bursts, followed by long periods staying in one area adventuring or scavenging for fuel.
Roll for random encounters every hex or every hour, whichever is more often. High-speed travel means you can potentially have quite a few encounters in one day, however you can also blow past a lot of them. Some you might not even notice; you just get spotted by a hidden bandit or something but they can't do much besides watch you drive on.
Still working on vehicle combat rules; I'll get them written up sometime in the next few weeks if it seems like there's interest.
Obviously this whole process could also get way more interesting if you add more and weirded options to the add-ons table. Might do that too sometime.
