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View Full Version : [Campaign][d20m/d20a] This Future Sucks



Neek
2012-07-03, 09:45 AM
I've been hard at work. Well, as oft as I can get to work, specifically with a few new, brave concepts: I'm designing a campaign setting, in whole, to be used seriously and effectively to tell a number of stories incorporating a number of separate themes. The campaign is built around modified rules for d20 Modern and d20 Apocalypse, bearing heavy elements of d20 Future and Past as well.

As a note, italics are for my designer notes, while normal text is simply descriptive fluff.

The Buildup

The world, as we know it, is over. It didn't happen overnight, however, and it wasn't bombs or disease--or at least, it wasn't just those two alone.

It was an event that began with a massive incident that was barely known or noticed by anyone without the proper background. Conspiracy theorists didn't even imagine it happening.

From 1989 to 1996, someone or something was busy at work. A massive number of nuclear stockpiles were rigged, rather unnoticeably and without trace, to detonate in December of 2012. This was discovered early in the 00s, but it wasn't much of a concern. A review done in 2010-2011 discovered that only recently decomissioned weapons, with their fissile material removed, were set to detonate--a rather curious coincidence?

This, however, raised an innumerable number of questions, however only one question was answered: "What if those bombs did detonate?" And the answer was an order: "If they did, preserve this world."

So began a chain of events and government organizations. The US Government signed the New Manifest Destiny Act in 2014. It was a philosophical PR move moreso than anything--it merely stated that the government should support actions that preserve knowledge of this world. Part of its overarching theme were a collection of two words, set side-by-side, that was meant to represent more than a pact to support grain vaults and renewable resources: Liberty Imperative. It wasn't quite known what it meant or what purpose it had, yet it invoked many companies to operate within it.

Perhaps the most expansive and expensive of the lot was the Liberty Imperative Forge Exercise (LIFE, which may be a backronym.) It was, at its heart, a coorporate think-tank. A series of contractors, mostly not profiteers but major international companies and governments working together. And it was motivated by fear. The LIFE Projects grew and grew, some made seed packs and instruction manuals on how to till soil and build canals and purify water. Others built weapon kits that would let you service a weapon indefinitely or fabricate new parts out of scrap metal. Others simply built vehicles of war. Freeze-dried antibiotics and grow-your-own medicine kits. One company toyed with cryogenic freezing on a mass, long-term scale. Another company built computers that could read and write brain signatures.

Despite all this mastery of new, wonderful technologies--little becoming commercially available or ever affecting modern life--most of it was mothballed. Stockpiled. Vaults were built. Kits were buried randomly. Hardly any of it ever saw the light of day.

And during this all, a few random cases of a new disease came from China. It wasn't a difficult to spot disease, and it wasn't always fatal. They called it the Red Leprosy, though it wasn't a communist-themed virus. It wasn't even a virus or a bacteria, but a strain of cordyceps--a mushroom. What it did was spread rapidly, painfully; it rendered its victims incapable of controlling their own behavior. It rendered them from dying when they should be dead. But it didn't stop the victim from being afraid or in pain, but somehow the mold rewired their brain, never let them give into shock or pain--though felt it and wished for death.

It's not as though the governments were prepared for the catastrophe--and perhaps, the preparing for this catastrophe was its catalyst. Had China designed the mold to help? To hurt? No one is sure. In a matter of six months, the outbreak was stopped through tactful action. Cities weren't lost or quarantined, and less than a thousand people became infected outside of China.

A nervous chill ran down the spine of governments all around the world: It is obvious that China developed this. The reasons weren't that clear--to gain an edge in the Olympics or to build a weapon, it's not sure. And they weren't willing to talk. All international social etiquette broke down, but not fast mind you. Fear begot anxiety and anxiety begot paranoia, which finally gave birth to action: China was invaded. Russia backed China. Who backed whom became a rush for power, money, and land. Red Leprosy was touted as a reason for the war, though it hardly was an issue anymore--it had been dealt with with great ease.

The war lasted less than a year. No one was willing to use a nuclear weapon. Intelligent use of chemical warfare, coupled with irresponsible psychological warfare and ground-forces. It was a war on land, on water, on sea--a good ol' fashion war. Soldiers against soldiers in open battlefields. And someone or something had to set off a nuke. A review following the event stated that the weapon was a terrorist attack, but the review was not fast enough to stop the aggressive nuclear exchange, nor did it even suggest that we shouldn't react accordingly. The war was too costly, bankruptcy loomed as a real threat. Ending the war with a barrage of nuclear strikes would only save money, yet damn the lives. Nearly every available weapon was cast into the sky, a veritable carpet bomb of high-yield fire and radiation.

The poor souls on the space station could only hear through radio--the blasts, though massive, were too small to notice with any appreciation so high over the ground. Then silence came.

The world wasn't changed much: Sure, cities were scorched and cratered. Entire populations removed within hours from the Earth. Yet the governments still stood, though everyone had gone quiet. Perhaps those responsible, hidden in their bunkers, had realized the devestation that they left throughout the world. The trauma of inflecting pain had a sudden impact on each and every one of them. Yet they tried to pull their tattered nations back together. Some communities refused, some joined. Yet there wasn't any infrastructure yet. The high-altitude detonations of about 50% of the total yield destroyed anything resembling technology. The LIFE Projects went quiet--perhaps they were targets too?

And in years, everything fell apart. Without being able to support a nation, the nation itself crumbled. At least the debt was wiped clean, what with no one to pay and no one to sign the check left. And over the years, what nature could survive the harsh world now encroached into the world. And men resumed life in niches and corners of the world.

Now fastfoward 250 years.

The game is supposed to leave a lot of this information as mystery--and a lot of it is. Alliances are for one contended for those who practice pre-War history. The disease itself is a contention as few are willing to admit that Red Leprosy started the war, but was a byproduct. A lof of this information may be conjecture or bar-stories or musings. History is, afterall, not a study of events, but of controversies. And this War, though its effect on the world, is simply put that: A Controversy.

I may change half of it by the time the game hits the table. The players might find conflicting reports of what's been going on. Who knows.

The Game

"This Future Sucks" is a d20 Apocalypse game set in the post-Modern Dark Ages. The nations that grew up in the wastes are scrambling for the lost relics of the older years. Their warfare means aggressive expansion, because the technology is never enough.

Yet the wildlife is as harsh as the nations fight. Weather and climate have changed, so have the animals.

And the players are members who enter scene from stage left, perhaps from cryogenic chambers or isolated communities that tell stories of great fires in the past, but have hardly noted the loss of anything substantial other than hubris.

It is, ultimately, a survival game.

Alternative Rules

In the future posts (that I'll reserve), I'll include samplings of LIFE technology and alternative rules I'm using and sample nations for the area.

The rules so far that I've picked out is: The Injury Variant, which is requiring a rewrite of the Tough Hero because they suck with the Injury Variant. I'm also using a Diplomacy rewrite (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=242947) that I concocted.

Neek
2012-07-03, 09:46 AM
LIFE Projects

The Liberty Imperative Forge Exercise is best described as a quango. It is a heavily government-based expirement with severe private, corporate interests. A variety of international businesses picked up contracts to produce whatever product was on the roster. Unusually, there was little profiteering--or what profiteering there was was severely outnumbered by the number of actual involved projects.

Some of the products included robotics and heavy equipment, however the majority of the products are kits. Kits are special pieces of equipment that have at least one function, each function requiring a use, and carries either a certain number of uses are a chance of exhaustion from use. Each function requires a skill check, however the skill check is not affected by not having the proper tools (as the kit itself is a proper tool for the function).


List of LIFE Projects

ApoTech Research Institute, L.I.F.E. [A3FC453] Project: 18%

The ApoTech Research Institute, located in San Francisco, CA, is a massive manufacturer for pharmaceuticals. They were known, at the time, for being a producer of low-grade and non-controlled over-the-counter and prescription substances until they were shut down temporarily by the FDA. Over the two years it was under audit and investigation by the FDA, they had drafted a contract with the Liberty Imperative, allowing them to resume production and research despite the federal investigation underway.

When their doors reopened, they were less concerned with producing consumer medicines, and moved forward into uncharted territory. They began production of pharmaceutical kits: Kits capable of producing antibiotics, medicines, and diagnosis equipment that have impressive shelf lives. Such kits have proven invaluable in medical clinics across this new world.

The ApoTech kits are receiving a rewrite since I updated how they operate (beforehand, using one required a percentage check to determine if it is exhausted).

Department of Defense Armament, Militia, & Repair Project, LIFE
The DoDAMR Project (pronounced “Dodammer”) was a vastly successful military operation to advance weapons storage and maintenance. Like any L.I.F.E. Project, it was designed to keep a specific product or service available in the event of a world-wide cataclysm, in this case armaments.

Storage of the DoDAMR equipment was mainly aimed at stockpiling small amounts of weapons and ammunition in a wide variety of locations to assure a policy of Minimal Tolerable Availability. According to the policy, were the weapons stockpiles too centralized, then anyone who was savvy enough to access these caches would have too much firepower at their disposal. Additionally, centralizing the stockpiles meant such caches would become targets by an invading force.

The stockpiles weren't limited to just firearms and munitions, but kits that allowed weapons to be maintained, repaired, or fabricated from spare parts.

DoDAMR Products
[b]Firearm Repair Kit (10 TUs; 4 lbs; Uses 1d4+1; KB DC 15, special)
Firearm repair kits were designed to maintain a specific type of equipment, either a specific weapon or a class of weapons that share similar properties. It can be used to maintain or repair a weapon. A Firearm Repair Kit has a limited number of parts inside it and has a maximum of 7 uses, including kitbashed uses and stock uses. When kitbashed, one mechanical part is converted to one use with the kit for maintenance or repair.
[i]Maintainance (15 minutes, Repair DC 10, 1 use) A weapon that is properly maintained is free from general defects. A roll resulting in a natural 1 does not break the weapon for 72 hours after maintenance has been performed.
Repair (1 hour, Repair DC 10, 2 use) A weapon that is jammed or otherwise broken can be repaired easily with this kit. Once used, the weapon has returned to normal operation. It is not considered maintained.

Guardian Mobilized Infantry Program, L.I.F.E. [A26JB481] Project: 8%
The Guardian Mobilized Infantry Program was a tie-in to defense manufacturers, mainly a coordination of aerospace and automotive manufacturers, to design weapons of warfare. It was an unspoken, international arms race to produce more advanced military components than the other.

Statblocks of the GMIs forth-coming. I just don't have time to reformat them from Word

Neurotech API Institute, L.I.F.E. [A0ZV120] Project: 98%
The Neurotech API Institute was an open-source project designed by multiple universities to create a computer programming language to read, write, and otherwise interact with a human’s memory. The Neurotech API is usable in MemoratOS (Memorat Operating System).

A creature or person altered through MemoratOS is considered less an individual, but more a piece of property. They are dehumanized and called eidolons.

There is a specific template for eidolons, we'll get into that later.

Robotics and Automatons R&D, L.I.F.E [G2ZF382] Project: 4%
The Robotics and Automatons Research and Development program was not, in specific, any sort of plan of construction or collaboration. Rather, the program was an affiliation of a variety of manufacturers who drafted up specifications for mechanization and automation of a variety of fields in a way unseen in previous years. It did not just focus on robotics, frames, or the development of intelligent machines, but rather on the production of self-maintaining machines capable of limited tasks over a long period of time with minimal human intervention. Such technology allowed the concept of mothballed factories to come to fruition: The idea of having factories on standby with simple start-up procedures and resource demands.

Very little of this technology entered into the private market, but rather was assumed by governments world-wide and the medical institution. The creation of automated medical complexes to perform simple procedures (such as suturing, setting bones, etc.) was considered to be extremely valuable in a post-apocalyptic setting, while leaving decision-making skills such as diagnoses, to the physician on hand. Easy to assemble field-kits were also constructed which ran on simple power sources, however were not nearly as popular or prevalent.

In the form of governments, sentry bots, drones, and self-automating UAVs were constructed. Decision making skills were rather advanced, allowing it to discriminate between personnel, civilian, and aggressive forces based on a number of circumstances like body language, facial expressions, clothing choices, etc. Despite that, it was also considerably easy to fool such pieces of equipment and they worked most optimally with a small team of coordinators who were capable of handling the decision-making processes a little better than the automatons.

Yes, you're going to have to wait for statblocks. But they're robots--not as interesting as the rest of the stuff above it.

Neek
2012-07-03, 09:47 AM
[Reserved for Nations and Groups and NPCs]

Neek
2012-07-03, 10:40 AM
[Reserve for classes and feats]

Neek
2012-07-10, 08:02 AM
[Reserved for additional stuff] But you may begin posting as I'm working. Yes, it's a Work-In-Progress.