This August, I’m launching the Kickstarter campaign for a brand new roleplaying game entitled PunkApocalyptic: The RPG based on the miniatures game by Bad Roll Games. This game promises a hardcore, fast past, down and dirty, vulgar descent in to ultra-violence, in which you play mercenaries fighting for bullets in the Wasteland of post-apocalyptic Earth. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be showing off sexy previews of what you can expect from this bad-ass game. Full warning, though. This game is ugly, full of cursing, and a whole hell of a lot of fun to play. Here’s a taste:

The Wasteland

The world as we know it is gone. The why and how of is subject to debate, but there are few left who have the time or ability to wax philosophical about it.  All that’s left is an extremely dangerous place, which, depending upon your point of view, is either a reeking open sewer, a radioactive shithole rife with wasting disease and lingering death, or a desperate place of hunger and want where anyone will trade anything just to survive one more day.

     Actually, your point of view doesn’t matter. It’s all of these things.

      Deadly and violent, much of the world has become a deserted, barren land dotted with the remnants of whatever came before. The Wasteland, as it’s called, though, is not as empty as it might first appear.

     Here live the wretched descendants of the undesirables, the impoverished, the castoffs, and everyone else deemed unsuitable for entry into the great and mythical Megalopoli: fabulous cities built during civilization’s collapse that became more myth than reality to most of the rugged shitkickers trying to scratch out a living in the Wasteland. Unless you’re one of those privileged few living in one of ’em, you’re pretty much fucked and have to figure out some way to survive in some of the worst places you can imagine, alongside all the other poor dumb bastards who will just as soon tear out your throat to get their mitts on your rusty can of beets as give you the time of day. Not that anyone has a working watch or really gives a shit about what time of the day it is. Beets, though? That’s another story.

     But as unpleasant as the world has become, opportunity abounds for anyone with the grit, determination, and moral flexibility to stay alive and maybe even thrive—well, at least by comparison to the other slags around you.

     In the Wasteland, resources are quite scarce. Electricity is nearly nonexistent, and those few who know how to build or even repair complex devices are rarer still. Therefore, just about everything has been reduced to the most of basic items, assembled from whatever can be dug and salvaged out of old landfills, plundered from the ruined cities of the Before Times, or simply robbed from some other weak, stupid bastards.

     Digging out salvage is no easy task as most ruins are overrun with roving gangs, mutant abominations, murderous cannibals, or fanatic disciples with insane beliefs. When you’re offered a few bullets to put an end to a local warlord, fuel to fill up the car you’ve kept running with bubblegum, duct tape, and hope, odds are you won’t have much choice other than to take the job.

     As tough as things are in the Wasteland, one can still find small settlements, often fortified, which somehow manage to survive the neverending hardship. Some outposts serve as commercial hubs, while others represent the best chance for the weak and feeble to survive. Some settlements have greenhouses and water collectors for growing crops and supplying clean water, while many host murderous gangs who trade only in bullets instead of goods and foodstuffs that would actually make life more livable. Go figure.

     Then there are roving hermits who collect odd pieces of useful junk and technology, or bands of mystic nomads in search of some arcane “truth” that often involves blood sacrifice (usually yours or that of your teammates), or the odd religious cult dedicated to bizarre gods of their own invention, bent on forceful conversion of any who they meet (also, usually you and your teammates).

     Anything and everything is possible in the Wasteland and you’re bound to discover something truly strange that would shock even your seriously desensitized and cynical world-view before you punch your ride ticket and call it an end to the miserable fucking life you’ve lived in this world of shit.

(c) 2019 Bad Roll Games