Level Up A5E: Hacker's Game

The more I look into Level Up: Advanced 5E, the more I love the game. They have these two POD Homebrew & Hacking guides to make your own feats, heritages, cultures, and backgrounds. The above is the feats book, and being able to handcraft your own is just what I needed for some of my builds.

A5E lets you go to town to customize and hack the game. The book for heritages, cultures, and backgrounds is nice too, and they let you point-buy design these so they are balance with other choices.

Do you want them already done for you? They have a magazine-like gazetteer that comes out six times a year, and there are POD options by third parties. There is a Kickstarter for the 2023 book collection, and the 2022 collection is available in hardcover.

The Gate Pass series is a great expansion for the game and should not be overlooked by a true fan.

These are all excellent, and you can get them in print. There are a few 3rd party books from smaller publishers, which are all worth your time and investment.

The MOAR Complete book is fantastic. Some of the game's designers did it to expand the rules. Want to be a dinosaur-riding spy? You can do that here. This book is nearly 300 pages of expansion content, new archetypes, classes, feats, spells, and destinies, and this is almost like A5E's "Unearthed Arcana" expansion. This one is highly recommended if you buy into A5E.

If you are a fan, get this book - seriously. It is like the "lost content" from the original game and a fantastic collection of fun stuff.

And there is a nearly 300-page Dungeon Delvers Guide with even more of everything. And this is just this game alone; you can pull in as much 5E content as you want. There is a head-spinning amount of options here without leaving the game.

One thing I love about the hacking guide is it lays out the A5E differences in an easy-to-reference sidebar, namely:

• The concept of the expertise die (d4) and how they chain.
• Maneuvers and exertion for martial characters.
• The culture and engineering skills.
• Legends and lore for monsters.
• Exploration knacks to support wilderness adventures.
• Supply replacing rations and waterskins.

I would add to this:

• Fatigue and strife, the doomed condition, and the concept of a haven regarding resting.
• Destiny and inspiration.
• Strongholds (the original and far better knock-off "Bastion" system)
• Ability checks: critical success and failure special effects.
• World actions regarding combat and initiative order.
• Exploration party checklist, supply use, havens, and journey activities.
• Exploration challenges as encounters! (4E! Yay!)
• The bloodied condition and gaze attacks for monsters (Yay! More 4E mechanics!)

I still love Tales of the Valiant as my simple B/X version of 5E. There aren't all these layers of detail to worry about, and if you just want to sword-swing and let spells fly - ToV is that perfect mix of simplicity. B/X sensibilities, and Open 5E.

If I want a 'pick up and play' version of 5E, Tales of the Valiant will be that game.

But I want a complete game that lets my players go to an adventure area, and they decide to stay a while, so they build a stronghold in the area. They worry about supplies. The world is alive and can present challenges to exploration, combat encounters, and movement. If someone rolls a crit, something unique happens. Characters can achieve their destinies. The best of 3.5E and 4E can be found here or even modded in easily.

And A5E keeps the fantasy standards, dragonborn, drow, eladrin, tieflings, and all my 4E favorites. It expands them massively with all sorts of excellent options - and lets me create my own. The game allows me to hack and homebrew extensively.

And I can pull in as much 3rd party content as I want for even more. But what I like about A5E is it allows me to have that more profound level of depth for all of what I have, where a party of eladrin adventurers looking to recover their family's lost manor needs to worry about supplies, navigation, camping, and even the strange changes to the landscape of lost areas and wastelands. Where their warrior has combat maneuvers and a stamina system to put the hurt on enemies.

A5E reminds me a lot of the classic Aftermath game. People mock this game but realize it was only 254 pages with a few areas where the math blew up to an insane level. Otherwise, this was all straight d20, d00, and d6 mechanics. Where Aftermath shined is that if you were in a section of the rules, you could go as in-depth as you wanted down to the wires and screws. You could ignore the depth and skim over the section. But if you want depth, and in the situation it matters, it is here in all its oily, gear-grinding, battery cable, steel wire, greasy pull wire, and tie-rod detail.

The depth of the game could kill your characters. Being in a game like this is exciting since you start playing intelligently and carefully. In a more straightforward game, like 2014 5E, nothing there could kill your characters regarding depth - especially in exploration and social encounters. If the DM says, "You all die from lack of a restful camp and starvation" in D&D, people's mouths will drop open, and they will scream, "Horrible DM! Time to put this horror story on YouTube! You hate my self-insert lifestyle-brand character and thus me as a person! X Card! X Card!"

In A5E, I have the rules for this. The depth is there. I know it, and the players know it. If we agree to ignore it, the arrangement is made. I still like my safety tools, but even I agree they can be abused and joke about them (because I am an adult and not a clickbait YouTuber). But the depth is here. If we all agree to this (again, put realistic survival rules and grievous wounding in the safety tool sign-up sheet for the game, reverse tools FTW), then the rules are in play.

Aftermath's safety tool sign-up sheet would look like a phone book because you could catch dysentery, get tetanus from a rusty can, be shot by a sniper, chop a lion's tail off, have a diseased rat claw your eyes out, have a robot slice your hand off with a laser (which sets you on fire), get bitten by a poisonous snake, and step on a land mine and lose your leg in one combat encounter.

If you were bitten by the snake on the leg that got blown off, I might give you a break, but you are still getting thrown 1d6 hexes in a random direction; please don't get tossed down the rad-zombie-filled mine shaft lined with rusty blades on the walls.

That X Card will have a hole worn in it by the night's end.

A5E isn't as bad as this, but you get my point - the depth is there to make these rulings. This is a freedom and an absolute blast to play once you understand how much danger you are in and have the tools to avoid all this with care and common sense. Oh, and what the environment can do to you, it can do to your enemies, so have fun.

One thing I love about A5E is its mod-ability. If I wanted to mod in Aftermath-style realism and wounding rules? I could go to town. Any system in this game can be broken down into subsystems and expanded upon to achieve any desired result. All of this while staying within Open 5E and maintaining compatibility.

Then again, the freedom to build a stronghold in an area and use the rules to work to your advantage is compelling. Martial characters hit hard. Rangers are cool. Social characters have tools. Rogues are like Lara Croft or Nathan Drake. If you don't have magic, you can still be cool. Not many 5E games can say this, and certainly not D&D.

Magic should not be a requirement for fun.

In A5E, there is a deeper depth to the entire resource management system that puts it above A5E and even ToV. When I want it, it is there, and I can play that deeper game. If I just want a simple, sword-swinging, cantrip-flinging adventure like a B/X, I have ToV.

If I want an Open 5E game where I can mod, hack, and enjoy in as much depth as I want - A5E is my go-to game. Both work similarly and have the same adventures; it is just that one is a more straightforward way to see a 5E game, and the other brings a lot of depth to the experience.

I feel good playing both and can have both at my table for different moods and needs.

In Defense of Complexity

Complex games are rewarding in their own right.

I look at outstanding PC wargames, such as Hearts of Iron IV, which are complicated, deep, and in-depth. They have a steep learning curve just to play at a basic level. Is it "gatekeeping" for them to be so complex? No, people who enjoy that level of depth will put in the time, and the community that forms will be a dedicated group of faithful fans who can understand the game, and for that camaraderie around the time and effort everyone needed to be able to 'talk the talk.'

Some games require you to put in the time, which is fine. There are alternatives, World War II strategy games made for everyone and easy to pick up and play at a high level with minimum effort. The Panzer General series (and the modern Panzer Corps II) are good examples of games that are easier to approach but still have depth when you put the time in. Plenty of others, including the classic Axis and Allies series, are even more accessible to approach.

I would get why someone would want to play OSRIC over Swords & Wizardry or Castles & Crusades. The community that forms around a game that requires some effort will be better than games where anyone can play. This isn't 'elitism,' but it is a natural formation of a community that appreciates a little more depth and complexity, and the people who put the time in to be a part of that community will be able to play with people who have the same interests and commitment to the game.

This is also why the 'mainstreaming' of a game isn't always to the game's benefit. You invite everyone in, and you will get a lot of less-than-interested players who will drag the community down. They will also chase fads and leave when something else better comes along.

Accessibility and simplicity are not always ideal goals to strive towards.

The significant problem with complexity is if it serves no purpose, nor does it create an emergent strategy. If all that complexity adds nothing? It is a terrible design. This is why great game designers matter, not people paid by the word or can argue the loudest in front of a corporate whiteboard in a design meeting. A great designer can use complexity to significant effect and create strategies you need to discover - and the only way to get there is through putting the time in.

Even if you were told the strategy on a website or YouTube video, you can't walk in and pretend to be an expert if you can't understand the game. I have had this happen since D&D 3E, players with a cocky self-assurance that they are some 'great player' when all they do is read message boards.

I read the same board. I know exactly who you are and what you are doing.

Some companies write games with these 'fake experts' in mind. The people who do this are often very vocal advocates of a game since they can pretend to be something they are not. This is the social media age of the lie. You give people a chance to shortcut and impersonate knowledge and experience, and they will be very vocal in getting others to go along.

The classic Aftermath! is one of those games where you need to learn how it works. We were lost in this game when all our friends were playing AD&D. Few knew why we loved this game so much, and we dove into the complexity and depth - only approached by GURPS today, and knowing how everything worked and being fluent in this game put us in a very select few gamers. Did we have many to play with? Not really, but the players we did find were exceptional and an incredible group of friends to hang with.

These days, companies don't use depth to draw you in; they sucker you in with hundreds - or thousands - of dollars of book purchases and 'sunk costs' you put into a game - and you can't leave. And the books are expensive, low content, and full of filler. Aftermath was just one game that cost us twenty bucks back in the day, and while that would be more today, it was only three books (plus an 8-dollar module) - and that was all we had for the 15 years the game lasted us.

I get the same feeling from GURPS today that I did Aftermath back in the day; the more time I put in, the more rewarding it gets. Yes, it is insanely complicated and deep, but the community is excellent, and the rules are immortal. Sometimes, I play a simple game and create characters - it goes nowhere. It doesn't have anything to keep me invested.

And complexity isn't 'knowing the cheat builds' like in some games, where you 'dip' and take levels in this and that to snap together a rule-breaking build. There are 'cheats' in GURPS, but those are quickly banned at tables where you don't want the cheese. GURPS is a game where you use the rules to build a game, so both players and the referee come in with a different attitude - you aren't playing to break the game. You are playing to create a game together.

But to equate complexity with gatekeeping is just silly and foolish.

Some people like depth; to them, the complexity isn't a waste of time.

And the simple 'mass market' games just don't hold their interest.

Boxes of Stuff, Tangibles Lists

Some games are nothing more than a few loose rules tying together a box full of like things. The "stuff" the game collects is more important than the rules. Many sci-fi games fall into this sort of game design routine; there is very little difference between classic sci-fi games other than theming and flavor.

We mixed Traveller, Star Frontiers, and Space Opera equally. They were all just "stuff books" for each other, with Space Opera being the king. We didn't know much, the starship conversions were messy, but it worked out.

One of my favorite games in the genre is the excellent Cepheus Deluxe. I tried the new Traveller, but the Imperium setting keeps the game from being an actual 2d6 generic system. I prefer 2d6 with the Imperium removed and that core complex sci-fi universe challenging you at every turn. Still, I get the feeling a lot of these games are designed like that "box of stuff," like the classic Aftermath! game and its million ways to die, to-hit charts for snakes, hexagonal grenade explosion templates, and a strange assortment of late 1970s sporting goods weapons, like 0.22 long-rifle slash 0.410 shotgun break action over-under rifles.

The rules exist to hold the box of stuff together. With both games, the mechanics can get repetitive in ways never intended, endless die rolls to complete an action, with die rolls before combat rounds begin, layered die rolls to make attacks, and even more, die rolls to find out what happens to who. Many of these die rolls exist to confirm the average case or provide a "wouldn't it be cool" bonus that ends up being gamed hard since it is the easy path to win.

Incremental vs. Overall Design

This is where a game designer needs to step in and ask, "Why?"

Why are we rolling so many dice? Why are there this many steps to something that should be conceptually simple and serve the story? How many steps and die rolls do we need for one round of combat? Do the tiny differences matter?

Cypher System was a wake-up call to me, with its single-challenge rating system and abandonment of the minutiae. This is clearly veteran game designer work, something streamlined and designed to get out of the way and let you tell your stories.

Game designers, especially veteran ones with decades of experience, have been around long enough to see when a game's design is leaning too much on dice-rolling for procedural rules. Pretty soon, you get so lost in the box of stuff, multiple rules, and successive dice rolls in chains, you are applying special modifiers for one piece of gear in a unique circumstance, and suddenly, the trees are all you see.

Not the forest.

And indeed, not the story you are trying to tell.

The Tangibles List

But these boxes of stuff are the tangibles that link the experience together. What would Car Wars be without spike droppers, paint sprays, and flamethrowers? Some of these items are outside your typical "Road Warrior" experience, yet they make that box of stuff say, "I am Car Wars!" You can pick a few items out of Traveller, like the laser carbines with the power backpacks, the standard issue "blade" weapon and some space pirates still use revolvers and sabers as their boarding party weapons. That says "Traveller" to me, the same the iconic "power drill" laser pistol of Star Frontiers says that the game's box of stuff is unique and iconic.

You need those tangibles to tie the experience together.

I get why some don't like generic games like Cypher System, FATE, GURPS, or Savage Worlds. Cypher almost goes out of its way to simplify gear and weapons into three basic categories and toss away many special, single-case rules tied into gear. With Cypher, if you have the gear, you ease the task. Some tasks may not be possible without special gear, like hacking into a computer without a computer. All weapons are light, medium, or heavy. Even gear prices are grouped into a few levels.

Let's say you wanted to play a Traveller-style game with Cypher. Where would you start?

For me, the tangibles take precedence. I would probably print out the middle 30 pages of  Cepheus weapons and gear and use that as my "tangibles list" for my game. Starship combat, I would need to figure out. But that gear list ties the experience together, which is what you should start with when emulating a genre. I can simplify these down to Cypher-like items, the tiered weapons, and the gear that eases a task, but that gear list is my tangibles for the game.

The same with the fantasy genre, but there are some tremendous generic OSR equipment books to build your tangibles list from, such as the excellent Old School Armory (DriveThruRPG has this). This can be boiled down into the Cypher-like gear and weapons system, but it gives you a list of items that define the game and experience. When someone goes shopping, hand them the book. When you need to gear out a bandit, use the book.

The base Cypher rulebook has some great tangibles lists in the genre sections, but those feel generic. I prefer defining my genre and backing that up with a tangibles list to define what the players can find, hold, and use in the world. A lot of the "other stuff" can be cyphers and artifacts themselves; in that hard sci-fi game, you could say "the items of the ancients" are scattered around and use cyphers and artifacts to simulate ancient-tech items and have a great game. In fantasy, those are the magic items.

I feel that the "tangibles list" is one of the "unsaid parts" of the Cypher System, assumed to be there in the generic gear lists they give you, but much better if you can find and define a specific source of items in the world that you can use to say, "This is what is in this world."

You need cyphers and artifacts.

But you also need a defined, concrete, and well-designed tangibles list to base the foundation of the setting. While gear and weapons are ultimately flavors, strictly defining that flavor will keep the game grounded and feel more like a setting based on reality than on a list of generic items. These items also serve as inspiration for items that may ease the difficulty in tasks you may not have thought of, as that 10 gp crowbar will come in handy for forcing open stuck doors and chests. Defeat a vampire and want it to never return? You need that mallet and wooden stakes for 3 gp.

You need a great tangibles list.

Once you have a tangibles list, many other parts of the setting just come quickly. With just the Cypher System rulebook, I can have a fantasy world. With that tangibles list defined in a book like Old School Armory, what was once a "generic fantasy world" takes on an entirely new feeling, more old-school flavored, but definitely different than the one that comes with the core Cypher System book.

Yes, this is still just all "flavor," - but the flavor is narrowly defined and in a collection that is compelling and interesting enough to capture your imagination. This also gives you ways to break free from the generic parts of the game that don't seem compelling, like for treasure, and gives you the flexibility to drive player motivation with game-world wealth and value.

Real Money Options

Also, a great tangibles list with prices will let you break from the monetary system in Cypher System used in character creation, where prices are generic and tiered, to one based on the game world's currency. Sure, in fantasy, you can start with an "expensive" item; but once the game starts, you will find 157 sp and 68 gp and buy things from your tangibles list using that, not the generic tiered prices used only in character creation.

Then, seeing that 5,000 gp fist-sized ruby will put a sparkle in your eye. Some genres thrive on finding that 1,300 gp, or having 20,000 cr to upgrade a starship and having a tangibles list that supports prices and currencies adds to the flavor of the game and takes it a step away from the generic and into that familiar feeling area.

Could you switch freely between generic prices and realistic wealth? Nothing stops you, and using both systems may be beneficial. You could convert all a party's treasure to one wealth value and say it could buy a castle. You could keep realistic wealth for most found treasures, say a side job provides comfort equal to a generic price level, and track that on the side.

But if a party likes shopping and saving money for purchasing artifacts and other power items, having a tangibles list gives you a few more options while increasing flavor and immersion optionally and seamlessly.

Revisiting Aftermath!

 So I have been going back and taking a look at Aftermath! as a generic system. Having over 20 years of experience with the rules makes it an easy thing, plus we learned this game when we were kids so a lot just comes naturally.

First up, why? I like the system with the hit locations, special effects, and detailed combat. This is something that GURPS sort of gives me, but there is a whole lot more work involved. Sectional armor plus hit locations is a fun minigame to play, and if you have characters with cool armor sets made of different materials and protective values you get a really interesting simulation.

Bullets and damage are fun in this game, more so than GURPS. You get all sorts of fun special effects, but simplified from something as complex as Rolemaster. Also, a d20 (roll low) dice mechanic with a heavy reliance on ability score saving throws. Damage is straightforward with special effects that cascade out from rolled-for special effects (and is also expandable easily).

The system is also very calculated and math-like, once you get through what gets added to what to fill in what spot on the character sheet you are done. All your chances of success are on your character sheet. The system plays well from character sheets, and the special cases apply equally given situation X or Y. In fact, the game comes with a handy combat flowchart so you can't really get lost on how combat works.

Golden Age Sci-Fi

I wanted to use this game for something along a golden-age sci-fi game, but more gritty and realistic. If I have advanced aliens I will just generate them as age-group 5 characters and give them a ton of skills. My rule is +5 to ability scores and 10 skill points and eliminate rolling for development and attribute points. I purposefully avoid the Operation Morpheus generation system because it is way too bloated, and 10 skill points gets me a great starting character with room to grow.

For talents I assigned the following: -2, -1, 0, 0, +1, +2, and +3 to the seven values. I didn't roll since this lets me define strengths and weaknesses my way instead of randomly. You could roll random, your choice.

So in summary 80 attribute points, 25 talent points, 10 skill points, one firearm skill, literacy (x2), tech use (x2), culture (x2), two survival skills, and brawling.

Tech Use, Culture, and Literacy are Relative

Also, keep Tech Use, High Tech Use, and Literacy relative to the cultures. Tech Use becomes Earth Tech or Space Tech, and you pick your starting culture's Tech Use skill. This makes Martians have to learn how to use telephones, while Earthlings need to figure out Martian transport tubes. High Tech Use? Well, again, culture relative if you go there and really only applicable for the "super advanced" technology of the day, such as computers in the 50's and something like technology that was lost or theoretical to the Martians. 

Literacy and culture work similarly, Earth and Space, but let everyone read English and only roll for odd cases such as who Shakespeare or Guulilinak is in reference to classic literature of the planet. Culture is also similar, what is rock and roll and what is the Martian hoopa hop would be good areas for rolling.

Remarkably Flexible

One thing I love about Aftermath (that we knew all this time) is how remarkably flexible the game is to modify. This is a common trait to many old-school games, and I find a lot of the modern games are very easy to break and throw way out of balance. Some games exist to be completely out of balance and are further ruined by 3rd party content. The older games feel more grounded in "chance of success" and "consequences" and don't have these huge structured frameworks of class designs (that are never play tested well unless they are ancient and time-tested like B/X) bolted on them.

I can swap out the skill list. I can pare it down. I could put Gangbusters or Star Frontiers skills in there. I could do a decent Space Opera with the system. I could play fantasy. The post-apoc genre sits on the border of sci-fi and fantasy, and is grounded in modern day, so the system does everything reasonably well. I could do steampunk fine, and the whole BAP/MNA/PCA action system feels like clockwork mechanics anyways so it would thematically fit (and it isn't as complicated as I remember, just a phased initiative countdown system).

Plus you get vehicles and things that go boom. As kids, this killed D&D for us because we got to play with the big action-movie toys, real cool war stuff, and it just felt grand and epic, while being rooted in rules that were easily accessible from a single character sheet.

Simple and Fun

The system feels good to me. Likely because we used to run games that lasted years, and we played every day with a fast-and-loose version of the rules where we ignored hex maps and handled everything verbally. The characters start weak and grow to heroic proportions.

A fun system I am very comfortable using, and it feels like a great "mess around" home system with a lot of potential for random effects and outcomes in combat.

I am happy again going back, and that is something I didn't expect after spending nearly 20 years away.

FGU's Aftermath! Buyers Guide

I never knew this post would be that popular:

https://sbrpg20.blogspot.com/2015/07/design-room-fgus-aftermath.html

But it has, and I am so happy people love my semi-joking take on what this game was like for us. Coming from D&D and early-80s RPGs, Aftermath! was gonzo, crazy, high-powered military weaponry versus characters raw survival. It started with flint-tipped spears and caveperson clothes fighting over the last scrap of rat-meat, and ended in something out of Space Opera with power armored knights and robots fighting each other with 20mm autocannons, laser cannons, tanks, VTOLs, and missile launchers.

This was like our version of the game Civilization VI, but instead of a wargame spanning a planet and thousands of years from cavepeople to the space age, it was one group of characters in a single pen-and-paper campaign.

I have a 40-year relationship with this game, went through a nasty divorce with it, and we hooked up later in life only to discover what we felt at the start was true love. I am also brutally funny about it all, which helps. None of what I say regarding Aftermath! should be taken seriously, since we are like one of those couples who can brutally joke about each other's shortcomings and failings in life, laugh, and still love each other. The game, from me at a very young age and through life, helped define who I am, and it framed a lot of what I seen in life in the Aftermath! view of life.

Since then, others have discovered what fun this game is to play. It is brutally complex and demanding without requiring a huge page count in rules to understand. Book One, Basic Rules, which is basically a characters and combat book, is only 58 pages long. That is "rules light" these days compared to other games. The game also introduces flowcharting on how to handle combat, which is really a first, and this ensures that "you are playing it right" considering you can grasp all the situational rules that come into play.

Book Two, Survivors of the Aftermath, which is the heart of the game describes skills, guns, gear, survival, and vehicles for a total of 82 pages. This book only requires you to dip into the part you need, like the gun rules, understand how it works, and then you go back to suffering and surviving. It also has the cannibalism rules, which again, is a first for any pen-and-paper RPG. Take that B/X. Again, compared to a lot of new RPGs, this is a short section. Dense and gamy like mutant elk meat, but edible in small bites.

Book Three, World of the Aftermath, is where it all falls apart for the characters. This is the referee's book and it covers, environments, foraging, encounters, hazards, monsters, NPCs, technology, mass combat (wow), mutations, reputation, and ends with the gun list. This is 84 pages, and the total game is about 224 pages long - and compares to the 1,000+ page three-book mainstays of today, is quite a tight and concise game in total. This book sets the stage for all the referee's evil, and is a cookbook of post-apocalyptic mayhem. In Aftermath! treasure is defined as new ways to kill each other with or ways to avoid being killed.

So the question arises, to play the game by the way we experienced it, what other books are resources do you need?

Operation Morpheus

This book is a must have. To understand my jokes about robots and technology trying to kill you, just reading through this book is enough to get you in the mood for what underground government installations should be like in a great Aftermath! world. Armored warbots roaming the halls with M-60 machineguns with underslung 40mm grenade launchers? Check. Turrets with security cameras and attached megawatt laser rifles? Check. Wall mounted flamethrowers? Check. Robots too unconcerned about collateral damage they hop into tanks to fire at intruders in underground garages? Check. After the players survive an armed VTOL with Maverick missiles and 20mm Vulcans hovers up and vaporizes them and their loot? Check.

Before the collapse, the government's sole purpose is to hide trillions of dollars of defense spending underground, and protect it with sadistic glee and robotic manslaughter.

To understand this part of the game, this is the "high level play" as it exists in D&D. Only in D&D it is "going to war with the gods" again. In Aftermath! we are having a lot more fun because this is basically like a D&D dungeon, but instead of melee combat and magic taking up the combat round, it is World War III in every room and hallway. Do not feel like you are being a bad referee for having a robot fire a quad-mount 0.50 caliber AA machinegun at the players, instead, your players will thank you for getting Aftermath! high-level play right.

Because someone should have head-shotted that robot between the eyes with their 0.44 Automag loaded with AP incendiary bullets before the robot's action ever came up.

Why go so deadly? Well, this gives the players something to work towards. When they are out there fighting diseased marauder cannibals with pointed sticks over a can of beans, they are going to look at the "hidden government installation" and drool. They know there is no way they could ever bust in there and get all of that sweet weaponry, armor, and gear - but they know someday they just possibly could. Maybe someone repairs a high-powered hunting rifle and they could blast a wandering robot's head off. Maybe that robot has some worthwhile gear to loot, and electronics parts to sell to the local (either fascist, marauder, or communist) survivor communities. Maybe they repair a vehicle of their own and get mobile, and find an old World War II recoilless rifle to mount on it.

Slowly the pieces fall into place, and that Mount Weather of Doom (or a part of it) can be cracked upon like a delicious oyster to be looted for all sorts of goods. For us, just the basic books and this module were all we had, and frankly all we needed for 20 years of this being our go-to system.

Once you defeat the gods in Aftermath! what do you do? It is obvious, find a way into space where you can die instantly and the loot is a hundred times better. Or...into another dimension...

Aftermath Technology & Magic

Newer books came out that added a lot of new material to the game. While these were not a part of our experience, since 90% of our fun came from the basic books plus Morpheus, if you want a post-1990's ruined world the newer guides are a must have. The first of these is Aftermath technology, which despite the name has more than just new gear and guns in the book.

We have fantasy races, aliens, cybernetics, space travel, netrunning, new gear, vehicles, and robots. I would have liked the fantasy elements to have been in the other book Aftermath magic, but they are here and these two books are kind of a brother-sister pair of expansions for the game. The magic book adds spells and fantasy monsters, and is not really as useful as Technology if you are running a non-fantasy post-ruin game. If you are doing a more fantasy-inspired game, both of these books are a must have.

Added into Aftermath, this creates a strange, messy, post-ruin world where elves, halflings, orcs, tiger-men, dwarves, and demons walk alongside humanity in a brave fight after the bomb. Perhaps nuclear warfare merged two realities into a frightening whole, and the other world - angered by having their destroyed - takes out vengeance on the world of technology that shattered these parallel worlds. Perhaps the fantasy elements exist in a parallel dimension opened during the alien invasion. Perhaps nobody knows how or why the world ended and all of a sudden dragons are flying around, aliens are shooting blasters at humans, zombies roam the night, vampires stalk prey, demons crawl up from Hell, ape-men run around enslaving everyone, and evil robots and an orbital computer system try to wipe out humanity.

Aftermath! is as close to D&D's kitchen sink fantasy as you can get for a post-ruin game without owning a shelf full of GURPS books, and it does the job in a lot less pages. You have the freedom here to pick-and choose. Aliens only? Got it. 200-years after fantasy game? Coming up. Nuclear war? No problem. Asteroid impact? Coming in. Plague? Just set your calendar to 2020 and open the books. The game can do as little or as much as you want, and it can get as gonzo or as serious as you prefer.

Aftermath Survival Guide

This is another interesting book since it gets you into the survivalist mindset. It is a good primer for survival and different end-world scenarios, and it accurately reflects the "prepper" frame of mind. If you are doing a campaign set at "year zero" and the world goes from normal to destroyed during the game, this book is invaluable.

If you fear nuclear war, stay away from this book. It goes in-depth on the effects of these weapons and also potential targets. It is sobering and makes you want to support arms-control treaties, sister cities, peace agreements, and cultural outreach programs fervently. Why did we ever make these weapons? Please, give peace a chance and end the use and production of these weapons. That said, if you are doing a straight after-the-bomb game, this book is indispensable.

For some reason dinosaurs are added to the creatures lists and now this book is a must-have for my gonzo campaign. You thought the homicidal bears were bad, wait until you get a load of these guys. We also get vampires and werewolves, and a part of me desperately wants the material in the add-on books to be cleaned up and organized - but this is Aftermath! so leave it ne and enjoy the mess everywhere.

Campaign Pack 2: Sydney

For us, this book is optional, and worth it only if you are setting your game down-under or you are wondering what all the references are in Operation Morpheus. It is good as a sample campaign structure of civilized settlements, and provides some interesting artwork and ideas for structuring a larger, more survivor-focused game with various warring factions.

My advice is to pick an area, have an idea who the warring factions are and what they are fighting over, and let players pick a side, stay on their own, or do what they want. Assume neutral cities, if there are any, have all been subjugated or destroyed. Add in a fear of outsiders and an evil occupying army draining the local resources for extra tension. Throw in some unexplained and unknown. Keep it simple and let the players carve a path through your world, and then slowly expand out as things are resolved or just fled from to find greener (radioactive) pastures.

Also, what's cool is you can pick up all the above PDFs for just under $40 on drivethrurpg, which is a huge haul for less than the price of a new game. Sure, it is dated, but super cool and retro and it is all great stuff.

More Soon

I will write up more on this game soon, since my experience seems to have struck a nerve in the pen-and-paper community, and helped rekindle interest in the genre and game. I am happy it has, since this game provided endless hours, if not years, of enjoyment for me and my small group of players. I will write up more experiences and thoughts on these books soon, and also some more humorous stories of how we played this as a group of crazy kids and a gonzo gang of post-ruin survivors.

Would I like to see a revised, new edition of the game? That is a huge maybe. Keep the rules the same. Clean up errors or inconsistencies. Improve presentation. Add compelling artwork. Organize the content better. Modernize the gear and technology. Simplify just a little. Keep the toolkit approach. And do not succumb into "changing the entire system" for some dice pool mechanic or other major change.

Aftermath! is what it is. This is the game you saw advertised in the back of Dragon magazine in the 80s that you always wondered about, thought it was some crazy survivalist prepper handbook, and then smiled after it came in the mail and you realized what doors were just opened and all the fun you could have with a toolbox and sandbox system second to none in the post-apoc genre. Gamma World this wasn't, and the game put you in the moment where "the world changes forever" like no other.

Design Room: FGU's Aftermath

"What's that, a cast iron kettle? Great, put it on your head and duct tape it on, you need the armor."

Let's dive into the ruins of civilization with FGU's Aftermath game. Oh yes, you can STILL buy this one along with FGU's other products in their online store, and we have shopped there as well. Just use the link.

This one has the notorious reputation of being one of the only games in the late 70's and early 80's of rivaling AD&D for complexity. It doesn't just rival it, it severs AD&D's arm and beats it over AD&D's head, getting a further sever critical and knocking AD&D's head around a hex map clumsily superimposed over a square room.

And then Aftermath keeps AD&D's arm because it is such a cool weapon and also useful as food later.

I'm not joking. This game takes a -1 on a d20 off for every wall within a meter of you. I'm getting a -2 just writing this review, and a further -1 distraction just for using a second monitor. The complexity is brutal, with hardcore math and division being overlaid on top of a segmented combat countdown type turn with interlaced actions. You may take 4 segments to complete an action, in which a faster enemy (or a slower on who's turn has come up) getting a chance to act and lopping your head off.

Violent? This game has it in spades. In addition to all of the loss of limbs, this game had detailed weapon special effects charts for crushing, shooting, blow through, and other weapon special effects. These weren't as complex as say, Rolemaster, but they were simple and gruesome enough to insta-kill you 5% of the time when you were hit.

Before Fallout and the Walking Dead, there was this. And this was even more brutal than the offspring of both of those franchises. You could literally walk through an irradiated area with poisonous chemicals and diseases and not know it until your character starts disintegrating before your eyes. And that's just because you went scavenging for radioactive cans of beans. And an intelligent mutated rat gave you a nasty infection from a knife wound. And then the building collapsed on you.

And no, this isn't Gamma World, so the mutations from being irradiated were not fun.

If you were lucky, a homicidal walking robot would come along and sanitize your remains with lasers and flamethrowers.

We had a joke that the game's cover was in yellow and black as a warning label to players against referee sadism.

Character Creation

As long as you did not use the character creation rules out of Operation Morpheus, you were pretty well much okay. As your character got older, they tended to turn into massive skill lists with strange skills such as "Aircraft Maintenance 6%". It was also very much possible to play a primitive in this game without the "tech use" skill that lets you operate can openers efficiently. What you didn't know you could learn though, and skill books and trainers were at a premium.

It was the only game that made me see teachers and knowledge in a whole new light - these are absolutely necessary to society and survival. Teachers are to Aftermath what seat belts are to Car Wars.

With the Operation Morpheus rules, they introduced the concept of "smart people" who were frozen in cryosleep. They often woke up naked in cryosleep chambers underground next to Australian copies of Playboy. These smart people had something like five times the skill points, and they sucked as characters because they were so complex. They were good survivors, but just making one was a real pain since you could fill up half a sheet of paper with that many skills. Supposedly, they were trained and chosen for this mission, but we found them bloated and unwieldy (since you could already spin up pre-ruin older people with great skills).

It is probably a good thing the cryosleep chambers were underground and guarded by robots that would kill anything going in or coming out. You think you could sleep through this and have it good? Try fighting an armored combat robot with an M-60 machinegun while naked and wielding a rolled-up magazine.

Gear, Guns, and Loot

A modern assault rifle and ammo? That is your +5 Holy Avenger. Modern Kevlar armor? +5 Platemail. A resurrection scroll? A fully-stocked medical kit, and a doctor to use it. 100,000 gold pieces? Enough food and water to last the week.

You got to get your priorities straight.

You start out with no guns, and you are lucky to find pieces of rusty metal to grind into spears. Rocks are your friends and your ammunition. The armor you find is a mix between crafted medieval pieces of gear, riot gear, and sporting goods. A normal melee weapon, such as a sharp knife, is a real find. A gun that works? A treasure worth dying for. And the guns you do find are typically crap, like wooden single shot 0.22 plinkers that are rotted through and in desperate need of repair. But even a gun like that...is power. It is your magic item, your Excalibur.

Or you could loot all the good stuff off of enemies trying to kill you with it. This isn't like some D&D game where you roll the +1 sword and +1 chain on the treasure table after you defeat the bandit and you wonder why he didn't use it against you. No, in Aftermath, the term "treasure table" is replaced by "list of things they try to kill you with."

And if you see a pristine rifle lying there in a room untouched? Oh yeah, that thing is actually broken and booby-trapped by a grenade. Or the floor will fall into a pit of rusty spikes. Or there is someone watching with a poison tipped crossbow nearby. You get the picture. Loot is used to draw stupid people in, and it works both ways - for PCs and NPCs. That can of beans could be used to eat for a day, or it could be used as bait to lure some unwitting sucker in to get his stuff.

"Aftermath Guy" - Artist's Rendition

The World

The world ended in 1980. I know, that is 35 years ago, so this is kind of like a Fallout for the Miami Vice crowd, but trust me, the world ending in 1980 is pretty cool. There are no cell phone towers. Computers use giant tape reels, and the personal computer is something so primitive it has like 4K of RAM and no disk drive. You don't need to worry about computers. HAM radio and CB radios are how you communicate, if you had power and radio gear. Batteries suck in radios and flashlights, like an hour of power. There are no high-tech LEDs, just light bulbs. Televisions still used analog waves and tuning dials. Cable TV was high tech, and the Internet was some government computer system nobody used.

I know, this is very much like how Canada is today.

Okay apologies, but seriously, like parts of the idealized Great North, you know, those back woods cabins and lodges where there is no technology, they still have pay phones, and it always seems to be snowing outside? That. And if you were a grizzled unshaven mountain man with a hunting rifle, snowshoes, a 0.44 revolver, a machete, sticks of TNT and cans of beans strapped to your vest, and metal strapped to your parka you were boss.

It is very much Unshaven Survival and the game loves it. If you are a high-level character in this game you are ugly, hairy, smelly, and a beast of a monster with more scars and wounds than a map of the history of Europe. You carry a straight razor taped to your arm. You keep a scoped target pistol with hollow points in your boot. You own a club for beating squirrels. You keep a grenade handy should you need to blow yourself up.

Cigarettes are chocolate are your gold pieces. Food and water are how long you live. Everyone you meet is trying to steal your food and ammo, or they are trying to eat you. Survival groups are either neo-Nazis, paranoid socialist utopias, bloodthirsty bandits, or crazy survivalists who want to enslave you and put you into slave labor camps. Civilization after the ruin is a sick and cruel joke. Sometimes you are better off alone.

Technology is scary and its sole purpose is to try to kill you. Robotic soldiers, remote security cameras with guns and lasers, metal security doors that lock you in a bunker in the dark to starve to death, invisible IR beams and pressure plates that trigger deadly traps, rooms filled with gas, and genocidal computers wanting to destroy what's left of the world lie under the ruins of irradiated buildings.Technology hates you with a passion, and it is almost as if it senses and hates the fact that you are alive.

The best way to run this game is to take everything that is supposed to help you in our modern world and use it as a weapon against the players. Civilization, social order, technology, civilized behavior, law and order, medicine, computers, transportation, people, chemicals, and everything else that makes our life better is a danger to your survival. Things that hurt you in the modern world, such as hazardous weather, animals, temperature, exposure, and the basics of survival such as food and water? Even more lethal.

You have no friends, and you must learn to deal without.

"Robot Attack" - Artist's Rendition

Monsters

They had every monster in this game except the walking dead, although  making biological zombies would be a snap (and make life even worse). The only zombies they had were the irradiated horde, and the game covered a lot of ground with all types of animals, robots, and mutated rats. Due to the proliferation of city zoos, lions, sharks, rhinoceroses, elephants, bears, snakes, and all sorts of wildlife roamed the ruins of society to take out nature's extinction agenda on humanity. Like the I am Legend movie, actually. Oh yes, revenge was the name of the game when a tiger kills half your party and you escape by jumping into a flooded basement infested by plague-bearing piranhas.

And the animals have custom hit location charts, because that bear is going to be so pissed off when you shoot his tail clean off.

Robots? Yes, there are all sorts of robots in this game waiting to kill you, from metal humanoid can bots to Westworld-inspired replicants. They all seem to hate humanity as much as the wildlife does, so there is no Asimov inspired "serve humanity" BS going on here. I think all the robots in this game collectively decided that since humanity destroyed the world, humanity is unworthy of surviving. This even applies to robots such as ATMs or factory machines, which try to kill characters with alarming regularity.

Others mentioned but not spun up include aliens, three-legged walker death machines, and monsters from fantasy. There are vampires too if you know where to look. As if your life weren't difficult enough.

Adventures?

Basically survival. Scrounging for supplies. Hunting. Exploring. Looking for good stuff. Raiding other survivor's caches. Avoiding bandits. Judging the random people you encounter in the wilds and wondering when they will try to kill you or if you can trust them. Spotting people and animals from a distance and hunting them. Scoping out settlements and seeing if they are safe to go into. Getting your weapons confiscated at a gate to a settlement and wondering if you'll ever get them back.

Trust. Building relationships. Who you could trust, and how far that trust could be pushed in a bad situation was your currency. Good roleplayers could get away with a lot, and making friends when the chips were down you could go back to their camp and sleep off a bunch of wounds and a disease or two. Having those people you risked your life for help you, watch you when you slept, and kept an eye out on the camp. Don't think this game was all referee gotcha instakill, if played right, there was a remarkable human element of trust and uplifting and redeeming survival to it as well.

But  many times this game was about getting into a terrible situation where you are wounded, the temperature is dropping, rabid wolves are hunting you, and the house you took shelter in is ready to collapse. If you aren't barely alive, you're not living.

If your referee is cool, Road Warrior stuff. These types of games typically make resources more available, but gas becomes the thing you need, and you are scrounging again for car parts, tires, and oil.

The game does include some great scrounging tables, and the good modules typically have even more tables for loot. The entire game really is about scrounging, and sifting through piles of rubble while making sure no one is sneaking up behind you is the name of the game.

"Bear Attack" - Artist's Rendition

Our Experience

As disturbed as this may sound, Aftermath was our first generic game. That should tell you something about us when we were kids. We played science fiction with this game, GI JOE, fantasy, Car Wars, and all sorts of other genres. We simplified the turn structure and combat rules and things worked almost like any other d20 game does today, which should say something about the complexity of d20 games today, and nothing about our game design and simplification skills.

As you can imagine, science fiction was the most fun with characters flying out of holes punched through starship hulls with high-powered lasers and the character then exploding from decompression. Starship boarding actions were brutal and lethal, with grenades in starship halls causing more chaos than talking about Pathfinder in a D&D 5 forum. Blasters blowing apart bodies, lasers slicing off limbs, and flamethrowers torching the rest of the zero-g meat purees.

Modern spy games or GI JOE style military RPGs? File these under "fun with vehicle weapons against player characters." Your character learned a new level of hate for your enemies when the bad guys showed up in fighter jets to a fistfight. You ran, you dodged, and you put as much concrete between you and the bad guys as you could. It was pure action-movie bliss living on the edge of one lucky hit vaporizing your character.

It also made the CR system look like it was designed by a bunch of pussies. No, it wasn't fair. It was like a rage game in RPG form...but when you survived?

Absolutely heroic. A rush.

You were the man.

And you had to be an absolute genius and devious SOB to avoid fights and put the screw to the bad guys. You had to be good too. Not just "my to-hit is great and my character is optimized" but no, you had to have a spiritual guardian angel rolling your d20, know the rules, know where to shoot the enemy fighter jet with a pistol based on its make and model, and keep shooting until you got lucky. Your character had to train before they even got to the fight, spending hours on the practice range shooting everything from slingshots to bazookas. You had to lift weights and train every day, and your stats and skills mattered, even above 100% skill level.

You had to be the Arnold Schwarzenegger that Arnold Schwarzenegger would look up to.

Battletech with these rules was absolutely metal. It required a lot of conversion work, but it was cool, and gave you a new appreciation for man-carried SRM-2 rocket launchers. In the Battletech rules, SRM-2 launchers are near worthless. In Aftermath, they are an efficient way to end a bar fight.

Aftermath as our house system lasted for a while with us, and eventually we gave in and it was Star Frontiers that did us in. We realized that sometimes simple rules got the job done, didn't require huge character sheets and record keeping, and the game played just as well without all that detail. After that, the dominoes began to fall, and we went back to D&D for fantasy, and we started playing games to enjoy the design of their rules and systems. Star Wars d6 captured our imagination, and games like Vampire and Shadowrun showed us new ways of doing things while merging the experience with the rules.

And then our Aftermath books saw little use after that.

"Grenade Fishing with Bears" - Artist's Rendition

What Did We Lose?

Well, we gained an appreciation for the simple rules, the concise, and the cleanly presented experience. Every game couldn't be Aftermath, and in fact, many games were enhanced by the rules they used. We gained an appreciation for a game's rules to shape the experience of the players, instead of every world feeling like the same death-match meat grinder. Some games were lighter in spirit and made to play a certain way to enhance the fun, and we saw that when we converted back.

We gained an appreciation for how the rules shape the experience.

Some games, such as D&D 3.0 and 3.5 were inspired by non-RPGs, such as Magic the Gathering. To us, D&D changed at the 3rd edition, taking on a "rules interrupt" complexity of layered exceptions and special cases that felt more like MtG and less like D&D. The original beer and pretzels experience of D&D was gone, and the feeling that the original game's Monopoly-like rules and play experience was gone and it never really came back.

We saw D&D lose it's feeling when we converted it to a more complex system, and we saw it return when we converted the game back to its original rules from Aftermath. When D&D went 3.0, we saw it lose its charm and how it played. The OGR games nowadays that play like the original appeal to us more because that feeling is familiar. D&D doesn't need "story rules" or "balanced challenge ratings" for it to feel and play like D&D to us, it needs what it had, simple rules and dungeons where the fights weren't fair and you had to use your wits to survive.

The Game is Still Supported and in Print!

Aftermath really is a game that refuses to die. You can still buy this game and they produce new material for it to this day over on the FGU website. There is a survival guide that looks fun, and a much-needed modern arms guide. They even have a fantasy supplement with spells and monsters. That sounds fun, because I always wanted unicorns to impale ruins explorers with, and a dragon with a minigun and grenade launcher strapped to its head.

Surviving Aftermath

This game is strangely enough a huge part of our gaming history. We played it in its complicated original form, and then a simplified house system for many games. When we left it, we gained a great appreciation for how games played, and why certain rules systems were designed the way they were designed. We understood feeling and complexity, and saw how changing rules systems to something more complex affected players around the table.

I still hold a candle for this system, and I am happy to still see it being sold today. My players are happy these days are over with, like the Cold War that inspired this atomic-age relic. But still, a classic game and one that has been forgotten in today's world of...

...The Walking Dead.

..The Hunger Games.

...Divergent.

...The Road Warrior.

...Fallout 4.

How little we remember where our hobby came from, and I still feel this game was one of the greats, alongside AD&D back in the day.

Oh, and here's your arm back.