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post-apocalyptic genre book


hancock.tom

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

The more I browse this topic, the more I notice how much of a meta-genre that PA is. You can have fantasy PA (Larry Niven's "What Good Is A Glass Dagger", if memory serves), Superhero PA (several of DC's Elseworlds stories, Marvel's legendary "Days Of Future Past" storyline), historical PA (the original War of the Worlds), and so on.

 

I'd really like to see a sourcebook on this.

 

The true Larry Niven fantasy PA would be The Magic Goes Away which touches on the death of magic in his fantasy setting. Lion in His Attic is pure post-magic as well. What Good Is A Glass Dagger is somewhat more standard fantasy as it is sometime before the end of magic.

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

The more I browse this topic, the more I notice how much of a meta-genre that PA is. You can have fantasy PA (Larry Niven's "What Good Is A Glass Dagger", if memory serves), Superhero PA (several of DC's Elseworlds stories, Marvel's legendary "Days Of Future Past" storyline), historical PA (the original War of the Worlds), and so on.

 

I'd really like to see a sourcebook on this.

 

So would I, but there also needs to be a campaign setting. The sourcebooks are invaluable but for people such as myself, who haven't got time to do the dishes let alone develop an entire campaign and adventure story arc, there needs to be more ready-to-run material.

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

So would I' date=' but there also needs to be a campaign setting. The sourcebooks are invaluable but for people such as myself, who haven't got time to do the dishes let alone develop an entire campaign and adventure story arc, there needs to be more ready-to-run material.[/quote']

So I guess I need to get cracking on writing up the Phoenix Project and submit it to Steve...

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

I don't think anyones mentioned this yet, but the best Post Apocalyptic setting that I have ever come across, be it in film, book, tv, or game, is L. Ron Hubbards novel "Final Blackout". It is a fantastic look at life amongst the ruins of a world war 2 that never ended, but rather just kept going and going until biological and chemical weapons have basically wiped out all of mainland Europe.

 

I would suggest that anyone interested in the Post Ap. genre should definately read this book.

 

(And don't worry he wrote this novel 25+ years before he ever decided to create Scientology, so there are no "messages" in the novel, just good, violent, life during the apocolypse fun.)

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Guest Major Tom

Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

So I guess I need to get cracking on writing up the Phoenix Project and submit it to Steve...

 

 

Isn't there something out there already called The Phoenix Project that's

sort of like The Morrow Project with time travel thrown into the mix?

 

 

Major Tom :dyn

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

Isn't there something out there already called The Phoenix Project that's

sort of like The Morrow Project with time travel thrown into the mix?

 

 

Major Tom :dyn

 

 

IIRC the Phoenix project was sort of Morrow's IAD, basically it was teams used for hunting down rogue Morrow teams.

 

There was also a game from FGU Year of the Phoenix, I don't recall the specifics but I believe it involved some kind of time displacement (time warp, cryo-sleep etc).

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

Isn't there something out there already called The Phoenix Project that's

sort of like The Morrow Project with time travel thrown into the mix?

 

 

Major Tom :dyn

Well, phooey. So now I have to come up with a new name for the campaign I'm running, while still trying to get it written into a sourcebook.

Guess I better get cracking, then.

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

You could call it The Samsara Project or make some other reference to reincarnation. Won't be as obvious as "Phoenix" though.

 

And as long as we're talking about 'past lives' it might be an interesting twist for the cryogenic process to induce some degree of amnesia, such that people have only vague recollections of who they used to be...

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

You could call it The Samsara Project or make some other reference to reincarnation. Won't be as obvious as "Phoenix" though.

 

And as long as we're talking about 'past lives' it might be an interesting twist for the cryogenic process to induce some degree of amnesia, such that people have only vague recollections of who they used to be...

 

More than one of our Morrow Project characters were suspected of having been "damaged" by the cryo-tube. Ice crystals in the brain maybe. Some of them were just...off.

 

You sure the game you're thinking of wasn't Phoenix Command? It was military like Morrow but used d1000 for to hit location instead of Morrow's d100. More body locations than you could shake a stick at. Think I only made a character but never actually got to play PC so I don't really remember what the setting was suppose to be.

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

More than one of our Morrow Project characters were suspected of having been "damaged" by the cryo-tube. Ice crystals in the brain maybe. Some of them were just...off.

 

You sure the game you're thinking of wasn't Phoenix Command? It was military like Morrow but used d1000 for to hit location instead of Morrow's d100. More body locations than you could shake a stick at. Think I only made a character but never actually got to play PC so I don't really remember what the setting was suppose to be.

 

Phoenix Command really wasn't a setting just a combat system and a very basic set of RPG rules. They did release Living Steel which basically used the same combat system but added a high tech future, semi-PA setting for it that included Powered armor fairly promently (Living Steel refered to the powered armor). I'm one of the few people I know of that actually played in a game using the Phoenix Command rules, it was actually quite playable once all the players caught on to the rules, but stay out of the way of the bullets, getting shot was a very bad idea.

 

Phoenix Command and Living Steel have alot of good ideas, the system just scares most people away because it is highly detailed and very lethal.

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Guest Major Tom

Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

Toadmaster: there is indeed a group in The Morrow Project called the

Phoenix team, which is essentially the special Special Forces Group of

the Morrow Project. They appear in the Prime Base module, and their

job is basically to carry out the missions that the MARS teams can't.

 

As far as The Phoenix Project goes, this is a homegrown RPG that, like

The Morrow Project, deals with the attempt to rebuild civilization after

its destruction in WWIII. The catch is that the people who are trying to do

the job of reconstruction are doing so by sending trained teams along with

the equipment and supplies needed for the task forward in time by

means of an artificially-generated singularity -- essentially, a controlled

black hole (the premise is that, when the singularity was accidentally created,

the people on the 'here and now' side of the singularity saw the future deva-

station of Earth, and took steps to try and restore the blasted world back

to a semblance of what it had been).

 

A search of the 'Net should turn up the page where the game can be found.

 

 

Major Tom :dyn

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

A few handy sites:

 

http://www.pamedia.com/links.html

http://www.greencine.com/genre?action=viewGenre&genreID=75 (movies!)

http://www.apocalypsefiction.com/home.html [Warning: Strong Language on site]

http://www.allbookstores.com/Fiction_Genres/Science_Fiction_and_Fantasy/Apocalypse.html

 

Sorry if these were already posted. My quick and dirty breakdown of the PA genre in media is something like this:

 

-- Before 1980 PA was treated as a moral dilemma and a soapbox for evironmental awareness issues, social commentary and the ubiquitous 'what if...' scenarios revolving around man's dependence on energy. Man against nature, and always a lament by the protagonist in some kind of 'we deserved this fall' commentary (that's more of a ca. 1950-1960s attitude).

-- ca. 1980 gives us the birth of the 'PA adventure' where commentary was more or less substituted for the action hero's dilemma and how he fought his way to a solution. Man against man, with the protagonist just as hostile as the antagonist.

-- ca. 1990 is the rebirth of the environmentalist revolution as the central focus, but there seems to be more a tinge on the violent resurgence of man run amok as well. Attempts are made at hiding the antagonist's identity in corporate/consumer overtones. Man against environment and other man, but the protagonist is more interested in running away to live another day. The violence that the protagonist offers is often regretted, and there's much more emphasis on finding the familiar once again.

 

No, I won't give examples because it would take a while for me to categorize. This is simply my loose observation from total submersion in the subject for a while.

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

Phoenix Command really wasn't a setting just a combat system and a very basic set of RPG rules. They did release Living Steel which basically used the same combat system but added a high tech future, semi-PA setting for it that included Powered armor fairly promently (Living Steel refered to the powered armor). I'm one of the few people I know of that actually played in a game using the Phoenix Command rules, it was actually quite playable once all the players caught on to the rules, but stay out of the way of the bullets, getting shot was a very bad idea.

 

Phoenix Command and Living Steel have alot of good ideas, the system just scares most people away because it is highly detailed and very lethal.

 

I ran both a Vietnam campaign using Phoenix Command (for well over a year..I ran it with three different units in three different zones) as well as a Living Steel campaign, which regrettably lasted much shorter. I not only played Living Steel, but Dragonstar Rising too. One of the things I liked about the Living Steel setting was the focus not just on the combat with the Ringer teams, but also the Alpha teams that helped in rebuilding society. There were a couple pages in the data charts devoted just towards seeing what kinds of tools you needed to build what sort of items.

 

You're right though, the game mechanics were actually quite easy once you played it about 3-4 times. I don't know why people complained about it so much. And I think it still has the best action phase resolution system of any game if you used the Advanced Supplement (where each action cost a certain number of actions, modified by the character's abilities, and you simply counted up till the combat was over). It required a bit of record keeping, and players had to think about what they did, but I hardly think it slowed the game down to the point where the realism didn't more than compensate for the brevity.

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Guest Major Tom

Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

Toadmaster: there is indeed a group in The Morrow Project called the

Phoenix team, which is essentially the special Special Forces Group of

the Morrow Project. They appear in the Prime Base module, and their

job is basically to carry out the missions that the MARS teams can't.

 

As far as The Phoenix Project goes, this is a homegrown RPG that, like

The Morrow Project, deals with the attempt to rebuild civilization after

its destruction in WWIII. The catch is that the people who are trying to do

the job of reconstruction are doing so by sending trained teams along with

the equipment and supplies needed for the task forward in time by

means of an artificially-generated singularity -- essentially, a controlled

black hole (the premise is that, when the singularity was accidentally created,

the people on the 'here and now' side of the singularity saw the future deva-

station of Earth, and took steps to try and restore the blasted world back

to a semblance of what it had been).

 

A search of the 'Net should turn up the page where the game can be found.

 

 

Major Tom :dyn

 

 

I think that I might have been wrong about the title being The Phoenix

Project; in fact, now that I think of it, the title was Project Phoenix.

As far as being able to find the page on the 'Net goes, I haven't had much

in the way of luck when it comes to finding it. I've tried both variations of

the title in the course of carrying out my Web search, and have come up

empty so far. I haven't given up just yet, though, so if I do find the Web

page where the game can be found, I'll post the address here on the boards.

 

 

Major Tom :dyn

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

I actually choose the handle Dauntless when I decided to teach myself how to program in c++ :)

 

Really though the Phoenix Command Combat System wasn't as bad as a lot of people at the time made it out to be. Just before playing the Vietnam campaigns using PCCS, I had run a Justice Inc. campaign, and I thought the two played roughly the same (though I did use all the optional rules like bleeding and stuff). And honestly, no one complained about combat being too slow. Then again, our group, though made up mostly of teens (this was the late 80's) were probably 80% wargamers too. In fact, I started my gaming career playing 15mm American Civil War, followed by 15mm Napoleonics. The other guys did some ACW and microarmor stuff too. So we weren't scared of big charts :)

 

But getting back to the PA stuff, I really do hope Steve or someone writes a genre book on it. I actually think it's a more popular genre than Dark Champions. And look at all the source material there is to do research on. Thank god I never threw away my Aftermath, pocket box versions of Car Wars, GEV or OGRE, or Twillight 2000 first or second editions. Now, if I could only find my Skyrealms of Jorune, After the Bomb (Palladium), Recon (a small pamphlet game before it was redone by Palladium), the pocket box version of Battlesuit (a SJ game set in the same world as GEV and OGRE), or 1st edition of The Morrow Project (mine is a 3rd edition currently), I'd be happier than a Republican who isn't associated with Abramoff.

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

Ok, now that you mention it I do recall some talk on a Morrow discussion board that might be what you're talking about. There was a member who was working on a home brew game similar to Morrow Project that had Phoenix in the title, I never saw any of the material though so I didn't know there had actually been any work done on it.

 

Dauntless I agree with you on PC, I think most people see the rules, those 1/10 second turns and all the charts and just write the game off as unplayable, personally I didn't find it any harder than GURPS or HERO once everybody got the swing of things. We used Living Steel for the RP rules but the setting was a more traditional PA game, had a blast but it didn't last long, we couldn't get the rest of the group to try it so it so it died off. Years later I got into a Twilight 2000 game that had borrowed heavily from PC, that was alot of fun, not quite PC but much better than the Twilight combat rules.

 

Recon (by RPG Inc) is a decent little game, its funny Paladium didn't really fool with the rules but they did mange to screw it all up by making it more Politically Correct and generic. You can find the originl rules on ebay fairly easily, I was able to collect the whole set of published supplements over a 6 month period for probably less than $100 (probably only $60 but I don't really rememeber since I got them a few years ago), not bad for the rules and 4 or 5 supplements. Since this is starting to drift away from PA I think I'll start another thread.

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Guest Major Tom

Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

SUCCESS!!!

 

I finally found the Web page for the Project Phoenix homegrown RPG.

 

It can be found at: http://www.lunariad.com/v2/projectphoenix.html

 

There are two options for getting the game; one is a text version in a .zip

file, and the second involves sending a money order (or something similar)

in the amount of $15 (plus S & H) to the guy in Florida who came up with it.

 

 

Major Tom :dyn

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

Just to let people know if they don't already, 93 studios is planning to make the 3rd edition of Twilight 2000, which amusingly will be called Twilight 2013. It won't be a sequel but rather will use today's events and timeline to craft a new rationale for WWIII. Unfortunately, the release date isn't until 2007. But it appears as if the company is looking for creative submissions.

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

Keeping the thread alive again! :)

 

You Post Apocalypse Herophiles should check out the latest issue of Heavy Metal for a piece called Slum Nation: 2018. The setting of Heroica definately has potential for you Gutterpunk-Meets-Mad-Max types who love urban (and human) wastelands. It's not the best story in the world, but worth the price of admission.

 

Matt "Earning-my-thread-CPR-merit-badge-again" Frisbee

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Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

 

I look at it like this: if Hero Games doesn't satisfy my Post-Apocalyptic craving' date=' then I'll just have to have my itch scratched by Timeline Ltd with The Morrow Project 4th Ed, and 93 Studios with the 3rd Edition of Twilight 2000 (ne 2013).[/quote']

 

Immediately followed by your conversion to the Hero system, right? ;)

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