Best post-apocalyptic rpg?

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For near present day timeline it’s Twilight 2000; played a Hell of a lot of it back in the day but too crunchy.

I got the latest box set a few months back, so far it looks good. Tangentially related I ran MA a while back; good setting but first edition rules are too primitive IMO. I get why they are the way they are so I’d go later editions in both.
 
Palladium’s After the Bomb. I like the tone and the fact it is sort of post-post apocalyptic, rebuilding has started and it isn’t nearly as dismal as many games in the genre.

This is my favorite, I think the term best is pretty useless as we have no agreed upon criteria to make that judgement.
 
I would love to say some early edition of Gamma World, because I think these have the best creative juice and general vibes, but whenever I play them I get bummed out over how slow combat runs, given the low damage of most attacks and high number of most people's HP's
 
Traveller: The New Era.
Aftermath! (more for ideas and handy tables, as the system's more fiddly than it needs to be).
Stars Without Number & Worlds Without Number, as much for the really useful random tables as the games themselves (and WWN in particular is post-post-apoc).
For during/barely-post, Twilight:2000 2e (the GDW version, in other words). I'd consider the new one, but I'm not entirely happy with how they did weapons - IMO the scale is too compressed.
GURPS. Either 3e or 4e will do fine, though I'd want to limit the amount of gunplay in a 3e game, because it's rules for shooting can get pretty fiddly.
 
Sharrow said:
Stars Without Number & Worlds Without Number, as much for the really useful random tables as the games themselves
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Kevin Crawford is working on a revised edition of Other Dust, his post-apocalyptic book, naming it Ashes Without Number (probably a smart move.) The rules previewed so far look fairly similar to Cities, dropping classes in favor of more flexible Edges. Mutations are unique to it, taking the place of cyberware or magic for special powers.
 
Lofgeornost said:
Mutant Future is free in its no-art version, for a Gamma-Worldish experience. As are Atomic Highway and Irradiated Freaks for something more Mad-Max-y.
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I always appreciated that Mutant Future was more compatible with Labyrinth Lord than GW was with AD&D. I still prefer MF to Mutant Crawl Classics. The fact there is a good unofficial Thundarr expansion for MF doesn’t hurt either.
 
There is no legitimate metric to measure best, however add a qualifier or three and a pattern does emerge. Best Fantasy PA; Best Authentic PA, Best Mad Max PA; Best Ludicrous But Fun PA, etc... Really, the easier metric is favorite.

Best fantasy post-apocalypse rpg? Maybe Gamma World. Maybe MYZ.
Best ludicrous but fun? Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. Maybe Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, but there's an argument to be made that it's not post-apocalyptic.
Best authenticity (might be my personal favorite of any rpg) in a post-apocalypse rpg? Twilight 2000 1e. And there is almost no competition beyond the pair of second editions.
 
Teotwawki said:
There is no legitimate metric to measure best, however add a qualifier or three and a pattern does emerge. Best Fantasy PA; Best Authentic PA, Best Mad Max PA; Best Ludicrous But Fun PA, etc... Really, the easier metric is favorite.

Best fantasy post-apocalypse rpg? Maybe Gamma World. Maybe MYZ.
Best ludicrous but fun? Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. Maybe Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, but there's an argument to be made that it's not post-apocalyptic.
Best authenticity (might be my personal favorite of any rpg) in a post-apocalypse rpg? Twilight 2000 1e. And there is almost no competition beyond the pair of second editions.
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How are you eating authenticity? By person feel, which is definitely a valid method, by mechanics, by setting fluff? I’m curious what T2K brings over Aftermath or The Morrow Project.
 
1e GW for me. (Still have to try BRP Ruins & Rubble.) And at some point I'll milk Wizards as a convenient fluff source book. I'd also like to try a Changeling Earth vibe, or something more like the Fallout setting.
 
1 & 4 e Gamma World, 1e for gonzo with ray-guns and energy absorbing mutant rabbits, 4e for more serious AK 47s and diseases style play.

I do like GURPS for mid apocalyse games because it doesn't telegraph the nature of the apocalyse much like GURPS works better for horror than most horror rpgs because the players don't know what to expect.
 
Commercially or internet available?

If you want Mad Max, Fallout or a combination of both then Atomic Highway. I can share all my retro-future resources made for it.

If you want to replicate Fallout, then of course the d100 pen & paper Fallout RPG game that the developers of Fallout played (check the wiki). Pretty sure you can still find this version on the internet, it is Fallout because the computer game is d100.

If you have a deep love of crunch, and if you think Fusion, Fire & Steel was too light, then Aftermath! rules as written :smile:.
But no matter what certainly would get Aftermath! for all the rules independent stuff it has and that can be easily adapted (I'm pretty convinced the original Wasteland and Fallout were inspired by several ideas first presented in Aftermath!, looking at you psycho and stimpack)

I'd say also get the strategy guides they did for Fallout, but those are expensive it seems (they have hit that collectors realm) while you can get a copy of Aftermath! pretty cheap still.

If wanted mutants = the norm, a firm structure, with built in cooperative teams, a focus on backstory, motives and the like, with exploration and settlement building, I'd pick Mutant Year Zero.

If you could care less about grit and apocalyptic feel, but wanted D&D with gonzo mutants, then Gamma World.

In actuality, i like Mad Max + Fallout, and use my own system for that.
 
That depends. Assuming backgrounds here.

For Science Fiction and Fantasy, it's Jorune. Humanity is digging itself out of the dark ages on Jorune after fucking up that planet almost as bad as they fucked up Earth/

For Science Fiction, it's Living Steel. Humanity is post-apoc and trying to recover former glory.

For general play, probably Twilight 2000 4th Edition. Though again I'd modify it. We did some romps around Poland but we also ran games in the North West of the US, 50 years after the war. The system is low-medium crunch (defined as the need to consult rulebooks) and there's just so much third party stuff even if you leave out the fantastic and the horrific. Then again, why settle when you can have both.
 
Atomic Highway
EarthAD.2
Mutant Crawl Classics
The Mutant Epoch
Mutant Future
Mutant: Year Zero
Punkapocalyptic
Rad-Hack
The Ruin
Tiny Wastelands
Vaults of Vaarn
The Wasted Hack
Wasteland Sagas

zombies, ghouls, infected, cthulhoids, uplifted apes:
All Flesh Must Be Eaten
Apocthulhu
Era: Survival
Hunger: Zombies Must Feed
Infected!
Rotworld
Terra Primate
Z-land
 
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A lot of good suggestions already. I'll add the following two:

The Wasteland Hack (based on The Black Hack, not related to The Wasted Hack)
Barbarians of the Aftermath (requires Barbarians of Lemuria Legendary Edition, but broadly compatibly with Mythic Edition)
 
sharps54 said:
How are you eating authenticity?
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Eating authenticity? Hm. I figure that's got to be a typo, but it does cue this piece by a player about a prototypical game.

It plays out like this:
You discover your food has been contaminated with mold or eaten by rats.
The Polish countryside in winter is not a friendly place.
You kill and eat a dog, then later break into a farmhouse and take all their food.
You stumble upon a Soviet patrol.
Four of your six teammates die in the ensuing firefight.
You are taken prisoner and enslaved by the Soviet force.
The Soviet force has no women in it.
You later look back on eating the dog as one of your fondest memories.

sharps54 said:
By person feel, which is definitely a valid method, by mechanics, by setting fluff?
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All three, actually.

Settings fluff presents a realistic world that excels at atmosphere, especially looking back forty years at authors who didn't know first hand the geographic nor radioactive landscapes they were writing. So to hit the mark so precisely shows an inherent authenticity that is both its greatest feature and most daunting obstacle to potential players. There's no romanticism, no fetishes, no superheroes, no cavalry coming. When the tag line is used--you're on your own--they mean that. There's nothing hidden that's going to pop up to make everything better. There are no Deus ex Marines.

The mechanics provide the opportunity and ability to have characters face a struggle against fortune & luck (in dice rolls) to drink, eat, produce and use bio-fuels; scavenge usable petrol oil for engine/vehicle lubrication, ammunitions, shelter, rebuild/protect a community; or act nefariously and become warlords... genocidairés ...if players want to. This latter point seems a notable, if ignoble feature. To lay out a world where committing warcrimes is a distinct gaming possibility (common, perhaps, at some tables) is uncomfortably remarkable. And, although it's been a while since I read Aftermath and Morrow Project, I don't think that was baked in to either game (nor really many others). A bit like the moralistic choices given to a player of Spec Ops: The Line. The game provides the tapestry for bad actions, allows or even encourages those bad actions, then leaves the player with the moral decisions and consequences of behaving unethically.

By personal feel? I'm Sarajvan. When I first encountered T2k in the winter of 1992-93, I was living in a post-apocalyptic world doing all the things characters in the game must do to survive (other than avoid radiation and wander about the countryside). To find daily life depicted so accurately--so authentically-- was awesome (literal, not figurative, meaning: to be filled with awe). Gaming in a world that was terrifyingly close to what was happening around us. Both when it had present context, and more so in hind sight, it provided a surreal example of how fiction can present situations and circumstances that would be unsavory, hazardous, or horrifying to actually be in, and in doing so it is possible to learn things about others and yourself that may be useful if encountering a similar situation. Again, not many games do that. D&D ain't gonna teach you how to sword fight. But T2k could teach you a hierarchy of survival needs (if not actually providing the skills to distill fuel, etc).

T2k for me set the standard of what an rpg is capable of accomplishing. And has constantly driven me to have in-setting authenticity for whatever game I'm in or running (Bunnies & Burrows? Paranoia? Well, there's still authenticity to be had in such anthropomorphic or farcical settings).
 
1E GW is definitely my favorite incarnation, in terms of approach to the genre and game design approach (concise, punchy, full of ideas you can build on but with few metastory constraints). But unfortunately the mechanics of fights and power mean there are two 'classes' of character: those who get trapped in an endless do-loop of ablative attacks, and those who have a power or item that gives them a get out of jail free card that circumvents that do loop. This is a common trap in game design that is easy to recognize and avoid today but was unfortunately quite common in the 70s
 
3rik said:
The Wasteland Hack, The Wasted Hack and Rad-hack are all based on The Black Hack.
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They are but they're also separate games with stand alone books, different rules options and a different tone.

The last time I was in a chat about the Wasteland and Wasted hacks somewhere people got confused about the difference between the two and I just wanted it to be clear: this is a case of two separate games with similar names, not people calling the same game two different things.
 
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