So, instead of letting me sleep last night, brain started coming up with ideas. Somedays I’d love it if it would turn off and let me sleep, but I’ve had some of my best (and worst) ideas in the early hours.

So, the world has ended. Maybe the bombs fell, maybe a virus, maybe it was President Trump. No-one remembers. What is known is that civilisation has fallen. Bands of raiders, scavengers and worse roam the wastes between enclaves, searching for anything they can find, be that food, tech or worse. A small group of survivors have recently made their way to what was a settlement, hoping to rest, recover and maybe establish a small enclave of civilisation, or at least civilisation as they know it. Pretty much your standard post apocayptic template – I’m hoping enough time rolling around the brain will produce something with a bit more flavour.

I’m not a rules lawyer, or even much of a fan of crunchy systems (As those who’ve played my con games can attest to). I’m also not a fan of class based systems in LARP, so having skill tress that players can pick from is the idea at the moment. Initial idea splatter begins:

SOLDIER: Killing is your business, and business is good. Guns are lovely, but ammo is sparse. After all, knives don’t run out of ammo…

TECHNICIAN: Blackthumbs, they’re the folks who keep everything running. Specialties include mechanical, electrical and cyber. (Tempted to call them ‘teshnishans’ – points to anyone who gets the reference.)

SCIENTIST: Regular Doctorin’, along with science both regular and mad. Cause if you can chemically boost someone’s adrenaline levels or replace half of them with steel, why not? Sure, there may be drawbacks (Rust for starters…), but that’s the price of progress.

SCROUNGER: Pickpocket, spiv, person who finds things that fell of the back of trucks.Useful but untrustworthy. Can MacGyver stuff together at the risk of it exploding in your face.

PRESERVER: Something like Bards, they try to preserve and reconstruct the old world. I love the idea of building myths upon incorrect facts, mostly inspired by the scene in Reign of Fire where they’re telling The Empire Strikes Back like Shakespeare.

As for monsters, you’ve got the standard issue raiders, mutants and what not. Possibly some zombies. But if you set the thing in Australia, then you get MOTHERFUCKING DROPBEARS. Because an angry koala isn’t terrifying enough, make them man sized and give them a taste for flesh. If that’s not brown trousers time, then I don’t know what is. Oddly this isn’t the first time I’ve looked up something along those lines – I spent some time looking for Emu costumes for a prospective Nerf event based around the Great Emu War. That got put on the backburner owing to the fact that the Emu’s just don’t give a fuck about small arms fire. If you gave them access to said small arms they’d MURDER THE ENTIRE WORLD. As for an Emu/Cassowary alliance, well that could conquer the galaxy…

More to follow, assuming brain doesn’t fly off on another tangent.