'45 Psychobilly Retropocalypse

[JakSpade]

Hey all,

Has anybody seen this game? I just picked up the PDF (and book) from RPGNow, and I'm having a laugh riot with the game world. The system is a dice pool game, but there's enough there to use Hero with easy. It reminds me of Mad Max meets Army of Darkness meets B-Movie Cinema meets Pulp meets Thundarr the Barbarian meets Gamma World.

'45 Psychobilly Retropocalypse
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=6598&

Here's the text from the back cover of the PDF:


'45 is the game of an alternate past, a future that no longer exists and a crazy sort of science that never was.

Imagine a world where WWII was fought with atomic weapons on every side. Imagine a world where the superscience of both Axis and Allies ran away with itself. Imagine a world where every country felt the impact of atomic bombs. Imagine a world where nobody actually won the war.

In the aftermath the wildest excesses of the movie makers imagination became real. The fallout from the bombs combined with the aftermath of strange and terrible experiments conducted to try and win the war has spawned monsters and mutations the likes of which would make God himself flinch.

Society has broken down into feuding city states, there is no government but one's own conscience, no law but the law of the gun.

Martians watch from outer space, desiring our planet for their own purposes. Mutated evil stalks the landscape. The undead move to the command of the Voodoo priests. The Fourth Reich hovers above the landscape in their city-zeppelins and demand tribute and men for their breeding camps.

Into this world step brave Rock N' Roll heroes.

A new generation of guitar-wielding, raygun-packing, hotrodding heroes who spit in the face of authority and live free in the blasted landscape of post-atomic America.

'45 is a Psychobilly, retropocalypse, road-trip of excess and adventure. Are you ready for it?

[mattingly]

Man, that sounds awesome. I'm going to go pick up a book, too.

[Theron]

I'm hep, daddy-o. I'm hep.

[JakSpade]

I'm going to have to do a little more research on the music of the era, 1940s-1950s rock n' roll and rockabilly. There's some interesting one-page references into the city settings (Chicago, New York, Detroit, Dallas, and Nova Berlin, a Nazi zeppelin city) and some cool references in the back for monsters (albino aligators/crocs, mutant locust swarms)... pretty inventive.

jak

[Theron]

I'm going to have to do a little more research on the music of the era, 1940s-1950s rock n' roll and rockabilly. There's some interesting one-page references into the city settings (Chicago, New York, Detroit, Dallas, and Nova Berlin, a Nazi zeppelin city) and some cool references in the back for monsters (albino aligators/crocs, mutant locust swarms)... pretty inventive.

jak

This past year, Rhino put out a four disk CD set called "Rockin' Bones: '50s Punk and Rockabilly (http://www.amazon.com/Rockin-Bones-1950s-Punk-Rockabilly/dp/B000FOQ0JG/sr=1-1/qid=1168100706/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-3813367-6577464?ie=UTF8&s=music)" It's a little out of the period, but dead-solid perfect for the genre, complete with the voice-overs from "kids gone bad" and horror movie trailers.

For my part, I wouldn't be too overly concerned about tying the music directly to the period. Part of the joy of psychobilly is that it's intentionally retro and revels in creepy and sci-fi themes. A good selection of stuff from The Meteors, Nekromantix, Rev. Horton Heat, Demented Are Go, The Hellbillies, Los Straightjackets, Batmobile, and the Swinging Neckbreakers should get you started.

(If nothing else, Rob Zombie produced a disk a couple of years ago called "Halloween Hootenanny" that contained creepy songs by a number of current psychobilly bands. It's a good place to start.)

[Publius]

Bought it, like it, I'm thinking of a convention game maybe :)

[space wolf]

sounds kinda like playing fallout to me...

[Susano]

sounds kinda like playing fallout to me...

...mixed with Feng Shui.