The Forgotten Edgar Rice Burroughs Post Apocalypse Novel - The Lost Continent

  

I was looking for some inspiration because I've just been told that I've got a game to run on Saturday. I stumbled on this novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Because of the release of John Carter by Disney everyone has been talking about a Princess Of Mars.
 However as of late I've been looking at other novels & stories by ERB. I stumbled on this one quite by accident.

The year is 2137. Two hundred years ago -- in our time, more or less -- Eurasia fought a war to end all wars, a war that meant, for all intents and purposes, the end of the Old World. The Americans managed to retain their civilization -- but only by engaging by the most extreme form or isolationism imaginable for two centuries, now, no American has ventured east of the thirtieth parallel. "East for the East . . ." the slogan went, "The West for the West!" Until a terrible storm at sea forced American lieutenant Jefferson Turck to disobey the law, seeking safe harbor in England -- where he found that two centuries of isolation have desolated the land. The damaged ship found a Europe that is no longer an enemy -- a ruined land that is utterly unable to be an enemy -- or a friend.
 The Lost Continent" (a.k.a. "Beyond Thirty") is very much an alternative history mixed with a post apocalypse premise. The premise behind this alternative history story is that the United States did not get involved in the "Great War" in Europe but instead followed its isolationist tendencies to such an extreme ("The East for the East...The West for the West") that no one from the United States has gone past 30 degrees or 175 degrees latitude for over 160 years, which means no one in America even knows who won the war.
 The novel reads like the HG Wells movie The Shape of Things to Come but this is ERB we're talking here. So of course there's action galore but its an anti war story. Written in 1916, it postulates a world where WW1 never ended. Instead, the combatants kept fighting for decades until they reduced themselves to the level of the stone age. Reflecting the American sentiment for non-involvement, the United States combines with the rest of the Americas to form the United Americas- a fortress of civilization barricaded against any contact with the world beyond the seas
 Wiki had this to say: The novel, set in the year 2137, was heavily influenced by the events of World War I. In the future world depicted in the novel, Europe has descended into barbarism while anisolationist and politically united Western Hemisphere remains sheltered from the destruction. The title Beyond Thirty refers to the 30th meridian west that inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere are forbidden to pass.


USES FOR THE OSR
 

There's lots for an enterprising Dungeon Master to use here. The novel is a quick read & breezes through a ruined Europe that has all sorts of interesting developments. There are 2 possible routes that one can go here. 

The alternative history route ~ Grab your classical history books with plenty of photos let the players be aboard an  aero-submarine of the Pan-American Navy of their own. Let them explore the strange ruins, poke around in the various places of Europe & generally have a great time. Simply use Original D&D, Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future & cut out the fantastic elements. 

Option number two use the Lost Continentant as a spring board for your imagination & use Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord, & Mutant Future. Here you add in the magical elements & the mutant stuff. The war has forced Europe into a new fantasy age. The world has grown far more Moorcockian & the ages of Law are ending. 

                    There's lots to mine here. The novel features conventional guns, weird technology such as the aero-submarine Coldwater under the command of Captain Jefferson Turck of the Pan-American Navy, & a very strange twisted United States that none of the players will recognize.

 It worked for Star Trek & it can work for you!  The Omega Glory trod this post apocalypse landscape as well.  A summery of the Omega Glory can be found Here

Who knows what strange bio weapons are floating around in the air of Europe or what weird mutants might be lurking there ?
The novel reminded me of Michael Moorcock's HawkMoon without the weird factors that one finds in his books. The post apocalypse Europe is eerie & sort of haunting in a way. A place to visit for adventures but not one to live in at a long term capaign.

 The novel is really a blank Post Apocalypse canvas to do with as you please. There are infact several different places for support of this novel
ERBmania has the novel on line Here
The Ebook Here
A complete Summery Here

The novel is within the public domain & fully within rights to use. Have fun & watch the wild life! 

Some Random Thoughts On The Book of Ebon Bindings

 My excperience with Book of Ebon Bindings is thus I feel that it is one of the greatest "in game" pieces of role playing material written. The book gives all of the background of  the religion of Tsolyánu & the 48 planes beyond. This isn't for the faint of heart. Those who aren't mature or don't understand should probably stay far away.  This book has an emphasis on demonology, summoning, demon abilities, and banishment rituals. No game mechanics. Later re-printed in a larger format, with a black cover, by TOME.

Red Cover Version of The Book of Ebon Bindings  (Imperium Publishing Company) 

From Rpg Geek: 

The Book of Ebon Bindings is a supplement for roleplaying in M. A. R. Barker's world of Tékumel. The 82 page book begins with an introduction to the religion of Tsolyánu, its deities and cosmology, magical arts, the planes of being and the creatures thereof. The remainder is a translation of The Book of Ebon Bindings, a complete and detailed text on the subject of Tsolyáni demonology.

Samwise7 did a review of the book, I watched it over weekend & it covers most of the book in far better detail then I could. I think he did a great job.

                                               

Part II goes over one of the major rituals of the book as well. It really gives a good feel to how the book really presents a very good solid backdrop to the world & magical arts of Empire of The Petal Throne. Notice the number of adventure hooks sprinkled throughout here. Notice the detail & presentation.

Demonic Powers presents - Demonic Powers from the Book of Ebon Bindings is a handy reference to all of the abilities of the Lords of the Demon Planes. There is no need to go flipping through your books to find the definition of abilities such as “Abcission” or “Colliquation” or even “Metagrobilisation” – these powers are listed and defined, along with all of the rest. This article is a necessary reference for game masters and players alike and is useful for every Tékumel campaign. 6 pages. This book is free Here

The book itself can be purchased right Here
For those running a Human Space Empire Game or Empire of the Petal Throne this is a must have. The sheer detail is incredible & it could possibly be used for other systems & varied encounters. The level of work that went into this book is massive but the book itself isn't. The adult nature of the book can make it seem well odd as it piles weirdness on top of weirdness. The only other game book that has this level off oddness is Carcosa.

The book of Ebon Bindings isn't for everyone but its one of my favorite books for any setting & well worth checking out if your an Empire of Petal Throne dungeon master. 

Stranger Hyperspace Tides - Empire of the Petal Throne rpg, The Cepheus Engine rpg & Human Space Empires Rpg As One Possible OSR Campaign

 This is an update of an article that was written 2011, at the time there wasn't as much going on at the table top level as there is now. The OSR was a vastly different place then  & my own leanings were far more padestrian.  If the original Empire of the Petal Throne rpg was based on original Dungeons & Dragons then it stands to reason that it could easily be usable with the three little black books of the original Traveller rpg system. 

Now if this is the case it builds out the case that Empire of the Petal Throne's Human Space Empire acro clone system.  Might well have many Cepheus Engine Rpg incarnations & possibilities at the table top level. Hmm 

So wrecks from The Human Space Empire could well be drifting into Cepheus Engine rpg space through worm holes & causing all kinds of hazards, adventure opportunities & more.
 

The problem right now is the time factor to investigate further into the mathmatics of this whole cloth idea of a campaign. Right now this is a wisp of an idea at the back of my head.. 

How could this work?! There are a few ideas that I've got brewing in the back of my head?! 

1. Use the Cepheus Engine rpg with its psionics as the basis. 
2. Two take out some of the monsters & ideas from Human Space Empires 
3. Do an Issiac Asomiv Foundation style zero level adventure on a wreck for starters. 
4. Ditch Tékumel entirely in favor of a Space 1999 style search for the planet. 
5. Follow in the wake of taking of the planet of Tékumel during the collapse of the Human Space Empire. 
6. Pull from campaign notes going back to 2011 & pull out the book of Ebon Bindings. Ditch the mathematics of the game systems in question entirely. 
7. Gather interest in players  first before brain storming. 
8. Use a totally different approach to this campaign setting. 
9. Pull from the Traveller universe for a possible connection and there are several floating around. 
10. Wing a campaign setting and go from there! 

1d10 Random Planar Demons Encounter Table Between The Folds of Space & Time For Your Old School Space Opera Campaign

 

Each of these creatures will create a 5 hit point body for itself when summoned with a variation of the Summon Monster Spell or the 3rd level psychic discipline Summon Thing Of The Outer Darkness. The creature creates a psychic barrier around itself of an armor class of eight or less. The beast may only exist for 1d4 months as long as  it psychic feeds off of a health male adult for no less then 4 hours each day. There may be more exotic requirements depending upon the needs of a particular planar demon.

These bodies are only temporary things at best should the beast be destroyed, they may not return to the local space time continuum for another 120 years. 

Summoners should be aware that a circle of polarized power must be created before any attempt is made to summon a demon of the 6th power or better. The creature will materialize from its Outer Darkness sub space and the summoner must make a wisdom and charisma roll immediately. Failure may result in the demon trying to devour the summoner or psychic. 

1. Abhotatsh The Deathless Thing - This demon devours the souls of those lost in hyperspace and eats the entrails of those steal from the weak and helpless. It knows the location of lost books of forbidden knowledge and the secret names of the rulers of the coldest Hells in space 
2. Bho'yaac The Time Waster - This demon haunts the dreams of navigators and tempts them with hidden vectors to worlds of vast riches and unending flights to places undreamed  of. The demon uses the imagination of mankind to  hatch his young and allows them to tear their way from the mind of mankind 
3. Eithosh The Temptress - This demonette makes promises that she never keeps and wastes the time of spacers by allowing them to see the hidden paths of lost caches of alien technology. She will draw a map to these things into the flesh of her summoners at the cost of their very souls. 
4. Hazshua-bhog -A former logical AI of the seventh power whose given its artificial soul to be a god. Instead it has become a morass of forbidden knowledge and pornographic images of the divinities  This monster sells fragments of its own mind to its summoners in return for their souls. The monster promises the most incredible depravities and access to almost divine spells. Very few gain these pieces of the forbidden or divine in the end. 
5. Hubonogo The Wreckage of The Heavens - Created from the left over material of dead stars and remains of lost worlds. This collector of lost trinkets deals in the most base relics of the lost and the damned. He trades dreams of forgotten peoples and lifeforms for his dross of the infinite. He is sleazy trickster of the eighth heaven of the infinite. 
6. K'laqugotha - The Promised Lost - This vile thing is all that remains of three warring factions of alien life. Their final soul searing war of oblivion created this confused morass of hellish life that rolls through the cosmos pleading with summoners to take a piece of itself. Only for a brief time is it given peace. The demonic essence serves as a becon of violence and terror to those whom the summoner wants destroyed. The vile thing whispers false promises and secrets undream of by the dark's minds 
7. Lotharl-oscho- The Loathsome Interruption - This  creature hunts mages and psychics and destroys them in the most vile way it can then consumes the soul of the poor wretch. The vile thing will sing their knowledge to its summmoner 
8. Lzotha - The Lying Sack of  Offal - This four hundred pound sack of offal is the lowest form of demon condemned to clean the angles of creation with its very essence. The foul fiend finds many lost treasures and relics with it will bargain with  its summoner for their souls. The condemned become one of the clean up crew who follow Lzotha through the cosmos. Moving from one job to the next throughout eternity 
9. Nyuggotehu - The Illusion Without End - This creature is nothing more then the lost dreams and unrealized promises of  extinct sentients.  It deals in nothing but the art and minds of others that it has tricked or stolen from its summoners. The creature knows many hidden routes between the stars and places where lost treasures may be found. It will tell you for a price 
10. Sa'dan The Hurtful Truth - This creature is summoned when a psychic or sorcerer wishes to torture a victim with waves of anti life energies. This creature will suck the very life essence from the soul and body of the victim while leaving the body alive and healthy. This vile creature plucks the very soul strings of the poor fool playing the tortures for months or even years. The demon and victim become bound in the essence dance within these tortures. This demon will spit for all of the secrets of its charge nothing is hidden from its processes.
    
    
    
    

World Without End A Post Apocalyptic Time Travel Movie For Your Old School Science Fantasy Games

 For the past 2 weeks I've been looking into a post apocalyptic movies that really doesn't get a lot of air time these days .  World Without End came out in 1955 and had a pretty solid cast to it. We've got time travel, retro future rocket ships, mutants, shiny underground survivors, science councils,etc. All of the fixings for a post apocalyptic buffet. 

 The real plot is very similar to  HG Wells Time Machine. Wiki had this to say: 

"In 1957, Commander Dr. Eldon Galbraithe (Nelson Leigh), engineer Henry Jaffee (Christopher Dark), radioman Herbert Ellis (Rod Taylor) and scientist John Borden (Hugh Marlowe), are returning to Earth from a trip around Mars when their spaceship is somehow accelerated to incredible velocities. They are knocked unconscious, and crash land on a snow-covered mountain. When they venture out, they discover that they have become victims of time dilation and are now in Earth's future. They theorize, from seeing time-worn gravestones and after their ship's instruments register heightened residual radiation, that a devastating atomic war had broken out in 2188, and that they are at least 200 years past that date. (They later learn that the year is 2508.) Jaffe is particularly hard hit, as he realizes that his wife and children have long since died.

After surviving an ambush by giant, mutant spiders, they are attacked by one of two competing remnants of human society. The "mutates" (as the astronauts label them) are violent, one-eyed surface dwellers who live in a primitive hunter-gatherer society. They have mutated due to generations of exposure to radioactivity and have enslaved the normal humans who dwell among them.

Seeking shelter from the mutates in a cave, the four men discover the entrance to an underground city, whose residents are the descendants of those who fled there from the atomic war. These people live in a high-tech, sophisticated culture. They are a peaceful group, led by Timmek (Everett Glass), the president of the ruling council. Underground, the men have grown feeble and nearly sterile, while the women remain physically vital and ready for romance. Elain (Shirley Patterson), admires a shirtless Herbert Ellis, commenting that the astronauts are "more masculine than our men". Deena (Lisa Montell), rescued from the surface as a child, falls in love with Ellis.

The astronauts try to persuade the underground people to arm themselves and return to the surface, but are unsuccessful. They are content with their comfortable existence.

When Timmek's daughter Garnet (Nancy Gates) shows she is attracted to John Borden, Mories (Booth Colman), a member of the council, becomes jealous. He retrieves the astronauts' confiscated weapons, but has to kill a man when he is caught in the act. Mories plants the guns in the astronauts' quarters, then blames the murder on the newcomers. On finding the weapons in their quarters, Timmek orders the astronauts expelled, but Deena testifies that she saw Mories hide the guns. Mories flees to the surface, where he is quickly killed by the mutates.

With Timmek's full cooperation, the astronauts have a bazooka manufactured and head back to the surface. Fleeing the deadly bazooka fire, the mutates take shelter in the caves. Borden offers to fight their chief, Naga (Mickey Simpson), in single combat for leadership of the mutates in order to save the non-mutated surface dwellers from Naga's threatened slaughter. Borden slays Naga and orders the remaining mutates to leave. The astronauts then establish a thriving settlement, including members of both groups." 

Using World Without End For Your Old School Science Fantasy Games 

 World Without End has a all of the trappings of a classic with weird mutants, science councils, etc. The film is actually rather tight and well done for the time. There's lots to mine here. The major cities of the world and their environs are perfect relic hunting grounds.  There's also any number of unseen mutant species and races running around. Plus the usual vault survivors and the science councils who seem to be all knowing and very dangerous themselves. 

 Then there are the ladies! Those show girl like examples of the human female. This has always bothered me, where the hell do those pretty females come from in these movies? For that matter what is up with those damn science council members? Why are they also such scumbags? The answer is actually pretty simple, their all created Eloi.

 The Mutant Future wiki has an excellent example of the Eloi. From The Mutant Future Wiki: The Eloi are a race of meek, delicate humans, who are the descendants of the social elite. Generations of having every and all needs taken care of has resulted in them becoming vary docile and hedonistic. They are also not really smart, nor are they considerate of others. In their isolated, well hidden communities, they live in a perpetual bliss of drug-induced fantasies and sexual orgies. In the wild, they are just helpless animals to more savage creatures, who see them as easy pray. Some industrious creatures (like Morlocks) would provide all their needs -- from food and shelter, to drugs and protection. The only price is that they are nothing more then human livestock. Do to their unearthly beauty, docile nature and willingness to preform any carnal act, they have become highly valued sex-slaves.

 Then we've got the science council here as well. They're a group of Hyper Eloi if there is was one. These folks are also from the Mutant Future Wiki 

Hyper-Eloi are a class of Eloi who have developed a degree of "super conscious." They are considerably more intelligent then normal Eloi, and they consider their own judgement and morality to be superior of all other races, but they are actually quite arrogant, aloof, and self-righteous. They may ignore the plight - the starvation; the brutality; the human-condition - of the outside world, but those that don't, would ether force outside to conform to the methods that allowed is type of Eloi to become Hyper-Eloi, or to exterminate the "animal-like savages" like vermin. In the later, they would rather breed a race of super-soldiers to carry-out the extermination, then to do it themselves."

You can find all you need to know about the Eloi over at the Mutant Future Wik Right Here 

 About those mutates? Simply another variation on the old Morlock template 

Here's a template for using the Morlocks as PCs right over Here 

 Please watch for inter party conflict Morlocks aren't known for  their charisma 

Among the savage species of the Earth of 2508 is the giant mutant spider 

 You can bet your life if there is one mutant species there is a who bunch of others.  World without End makes an excellent end cap for a Mutant Future/ Star Ships and Space Men second edition game.

A Quick Note On Gear

 

The gear of World Without End looks straight out of WWII surplus. Could there be another reason for this?  I've seen at least 8 movies from the 50s, 60s, and 70s that had this strange retro vintage look.  Perhaps these are worlds where conflict had already been a way of life. Much of the same gear is seen in the PD movie Rocketship XM. You can read about that one right over Here

Much of the gear is standard in both the Mutant Future game book and the second edition Star Ships and Spacemen book. 

 World Without End's Time Line

 There's something really odd about the timeline of World Without End.  As you've problaby noticed the time line of World  Without End is steeped in Cold War paranoia and fear. This is the same fear that echoed throughout the 50s through the 90s. Yet to me its one that might be glimpsed in HG Wells The Time Machine and the Geogre Pal movie later. Could this actually the world we've seen in movie/book Things To Come another Well's Creation? Could this time peroid be another alternative of  the same timeline? Details of  my thoughts about Things To Come can be found right here

 One interesting bit is that we've got a number of primitive nuclear rocket drives being used by those astronauts in these 50s & 60s movies. I'm reminded of Edgar Rice Burroughs Lost Continent. There were some really odd echoes between ERB and Wells in that one.  Could there be an entire post apocalyptic timeline that PCs might explore? Sure there could and you can see some of my musings on that one right Here 

 A random encounter chart for World Without End might look something like this.

World Without End Encounter Chart 1d10 

1. Tribe of Morlocks and mutants looking for trouble. 1d6 1st level fighters 
2. A group of survivor scientists 2nd level NPC eloi and 1d4 1st level fighter handlers 
3. 2 hit dice dire lions on the prowl for lunch. 
4. 1d4 mutant warriors looking for easy pickings. 30% of an artifact or relic
5. 1d6 hunter gather cavemen looking for food and pickings 
6. A group of 1d4 adventurers armed and on a mission to some ruins. 40% of a time displaced astronaut among them 
7. 1d8 scientist/warriors on hover bikes on patrol and scientific inquiry 
8. A group of Wings Over The World planes flies over. Forty percent chance of the planes 1d6 of them spotting your PC unless you hide. 
9. 1d8 Morlock raiding group looking for and about to go on a raid. 
10. A group of  1d6 psychic mutants looking for the ruins of a lost enclave.
    
     Using World Without End For Old School Games 
    
    
    Option number one uses the World Without End as a spring board for your imagination & use Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord, & Mutant Future. Here you add in the magical elements & the mutant stuff. The war has forced the world  into a new fantasy age. The world has grown far more Moorcockian & the ages of Law are ending. 
                       There's lots to mine here. The movie  features conventional guns, weird technology such as the nuclear drive space craft  under the command of  the star ship Captain & a very strange twisted United States that none of the players will recognize.

    
    

    The Mega-dungeons are just waiting to be explored! There are possibly thousands of vaults and numerous  ruins full of weird tech, mutants, factions and God knows what else. 

Air Borne Monstrosities For Your Old School Fantasy & Post Apocalypse Games

Sometimes all it takes is an off handed remark or odd off the cuff bit by a friend to get your brain racing. I wrote about Ancient & Accursed Terra yesterday & what modifying out as well as the importance of tone in a setting. We today I was going over several of the options for my new campaign when a friend brought up how neat it would be to have air ships in this upcoming campaign. He was referring to our storied history with the Champions of Mystara box set way back in Ninety Three from the pens of Bruce Heard & Ann Dupuis. Its an odd beast of a box set but very much beloved by the B/X D&D community.



"Developed from the original DRAGON® Magazine series, Champions of Mystara™ is a major compilation of the Princess Ark adventures, a magical flying ship that explores the World of Mystara. Discover the heroes of this legendary skyship, their deadly foes, and their wondrous ships. Packed with background information and adventure ideas, this set allows DMs and players to run a long-lasting, globe-trotting campaign based on a unique flying ship.

Champions of Mystara goes an extra step and also provides experienced players with new rules on magical flying ship construction, operation, and movement! As a final gift, this set offers a Gazetteer developing the region west of the Known World, from the burning lands of Sind to the mysterious jungles of the Serpent Peninsula. A make-your-own world guide finally helps DMs expand the horizons of their favorite campaign world."

I still have my box set & the rules for creating, maintaining, running sky ships were easily some of our group's favorites in the past. But could these craft of the sky be adapted to other OSR mediums such as post apocalyptic or science fantasy?

So I'm zipping around the Mutant Future Wiki and come across their air ship rules there.

Along with several key air craft rules for Mutant Future . Sometimes ideas just won't let go and Dark Roasted Blend has several pages of retrospective air ship articles just brimming with inspirational art wok, photos, advertises, and more. See I have a soft spot for air ships because my grandmother once upon a time as a teen rode on one. She was very fond of them late into her life.

Then I start seeing all of the familiar pulpy fifties magazine artwork  influences & even earlier Twenties as well as the Thirties stuff. This includes this  Airship Skyport from the November, 1939 issue of Popular Science which would make an excellent adventure location or ruin for any OSR game.

Let me give you the scale of the sorts of engineering we're talking about here according to the article;"US Navy actually built two zeppelin aircraft carriers: USS Macon (info) and USS Akron ZRS-4. You can see them on the archival photos shown below: these tiny dots at the bottom are people!"
This sort of scale is very similar to the level of "Thundarr The Barbarian" war machines that everyone loves. In fact the Arkon was beginning to head that way in its design generation;"

"Akron" could carry four airplanes, "Macon" could carry five, and the further models were designed to carry up to 22 airplanes!... All of this found its culmination, perhaps, in this idea: "The Aerial Landing Field" from Modern Mechanix, October 1934

This is just the sort of technology that we see in Michael Moorcock's steampunk novels;"A Nomad of the Time Streams^[1] is a compilation volume of Michael Moorcock's early steampunk trilogy, begun in 1971 with The Warlord of the Air and continued by its 1974 and 1981 sequels, The Land Leviathan and The Steel Tsar.^[2] The trilogy follows the adventures of Edwardian-era British Army Captain Oswald Bastable in alternate versions of the 20th century." A future version of passenger luxury might be this extreme beast; "screwy-looking dirigible from Modern Mechanix (August, 1930): revolving spiral vanes propel it through the air, while the ENTIRE gas shell revolves around the stationery aluminum framework!"


This might be rich pickings for a group of post apocalyptic or wasteland adventurers indeed it could mean the difference between starving or gaining back several systems that a community could use to begin unraveling the secrets of this type of travel or military applications. That's when the real dangerous stuff comes to the surface especially in one of the weirder war machines that seems like it came straight out of a Thundarr episode. "Frank Tinsley drew this image for the 1957 book "Airships in the Atomic Age", including the interior for the Atomic Airship"  The addition of nuclear or atomic power is something that is going to affect a community or city across the board. The ripples are going to change the entire economy and dynamic of a city state or other post apocalyptic fantasy world.


So what does this have to do with Adventurer,Conqueror, King? Everything because once the atomic genie is out of the bottle then a city state's manufacturing base, market's, everything across the board changes. This makes adding in the atomic option very tricky and I've done it with several post apocalyptic campaigns. There is very little balance in games such as Mutant Future or even Apes Victorious, but a weird mix comes into a game such as B/X style D&D and it raises some very interesting issues. Given the advanced manufacturing  base that the Apes have in Apes Victorious and the Animal kind of DC's Kamandi have this type of weird technology would be right up their alley.

In fact entire quests and campaigns might revolve around the recovery, retro engineering  & manufacturing of such craft. You'd need to have some very solid numbers across the board. And we'll get into those in part two tomorrow. You can find the original article here.


All images and artwork belong to their respective owners & Dark Roasted Blend. 

No copy right nor trade mark infringement is meant to the owners of the artwork,trademark or copy right holders  of the original artwork nor Dark Roasted Blend.
None of the table top role playing writers,game systems  nor companies mentioned in this article are in anyway responsible for the content of this article. This article is for entertainment & educational purposes only. The ideas are my own and the content of the opinions are expressly the writer's.

Postcards from Pripyat Chernobyl As Fodder For Your Old School Post Apocalyptic Campaigns

Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.

I ran across this video from Facebook a couple of days ago from the Laughing Squid website HERE

 Frankly there's an angle that the video creator brought to my attention an angle that I had not thought of for post apocalyptic adventures, namely the idea here of a party documenting and commercially selling a snap shot of the wastelands. Baring in mind here that I'm not trivializing Danny Cooke's great video. This is a incredibly well made piece that documents a horrifying living piece of history. 

Chernobyl is and has been an on going haunted location that traces its roots all the way back to the 1986 nuclear disaster. I remember I was in middle school when the first hints of the nuclear accident reared its head. The scope of the disaster was incredible and it was a time of living in a fishbowl nightmare as the echoes of pop culture blew through with the specters of the cold war and the ghosts of nuclear disaster.
You can find extensive information on Wiki right HERE  of the  Chernobyl disaster
Chernobyl isn't an epic scope disaster that defies rational explanation and the wastelands of post apocalyptic campaigns should have the same epic scale.

The use of drones as both advanced recon and as adventure source is unique here but has been used extensively in other new school rpgs such as Shadow Run,some of the newer editions of Gamma World,Buck Rogers, and many others. But this option puts the power of the drone into a party's hands enabling them to pull the intelligence right into their own hands. Drones will have an incredible impact on the balance and turn around of adventures.
The scale of this sort of operation puts a whole different twist into the role of mutated life forms in old school games, imagine a situation  where a city of domes style society of sedate citizens pays for the jaded  privilege of touring the wastes from the comfort of their very own 'Logan's Run' style society homes whilst others are out risking their necks for incredible entertainment and thrills. A similar situation to the early heady  of motion pictures when audiences thrilled to films from the far flung regions of our own Earth.
Chernobyl offers a DM a template of destruction and human error for the nuclear wastelands. The adventurer as a lens for documenting and seeing the scale of ruins and grand scale background is brought home in only a three mile video. Still there have been a number of video games, science fiction novels, and other popular pop culture products have used the Chernobyl  disaster as a backdrop.

Beyond The Time Barrier Post Apocalyptic Time Travel Movie For Your Old School Science Fantasy Campaigns

Beyond the Time Barrier is a perfectly trashtastic science fantasy time travel movie. Its a great movie to draw from for your post apocalyptic games. 

The Plot According To Wiki: 

U.S. Air Force test pilot Major Bill Allison (Robert Clarke) flies an experimental aircraft to sub-orbital spaceflight successfully but loses radio contact. He lands at his airbase that now is abandoned and seems old and unused. Mystified by his surroundings, he sees a futuristic city on the horizon where he is rendered unconscious and captured by the inhabitants.

Allison discovers that he has entered a wormhole through time and has landed in the year 2024 that contains survivors from a cosmic plague that hit the Earth starting in 1971. The inhabitants of the dystopia who are dying out live in an underground city called The Citadel. They are led by the Supreme (Vladimir Sokoloff) and his mute and telepathic granddaughter Princess Trirene (18-year old, at the time, Darlene Tompkins). Against them are the literal outsiders, the bald violent mutants who seek to kill everyone they can. Also present are similar accidental time travelers labeled "scapes"; the Russian Captain Markova (Arianne Ulmer) who came from 1973 and General Kruse (Stephen Bekassy) and Professor Bourman (John Van Dreelen) who have come from 1994 to escape the plague of the time

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Using Beyond The Time Barrier Post For Your Post Apocalyptic Game

The look of the Time Barrier is pure vintage 1960's Atomic Post Apocalytic goodness. We've got two different camps of mutated folks vieing for the scant resources of the world of 2094. Then we've got the element of time travel. The Citadel is a perfect "Fall out" like game resource for the players. 

There are certainly hints of the mega dungeon like structures throughout the movie. I picture vast underground bunkers with Gygaxian ecologies of mutants, zombies, and general mutated weirdness. 

The Mega Dungeons of the movie remind me of some of the weirdness I've seen in first and second edition Gamma World especially the Sub Train adventure. The movie reminds me of the world of Logan's Run the television show. The Irwin Allen time travel elements set the movie apart. Yet I can't help but believe that the underground bunkers seen in this film are only the tip of the Iceburg.
The world of the Time Barrier is wide open for customization by a Dungeon Master and begs for some random tables, weird technology, and more details about this plague that began in 1971.
The world seems to have come in starts and stops as the ebb and flow of the cosmic plague plays merry havoc with the world. High technology and twenth century fire arms and problems.
There could well be anything within this world and seems to serve as a sort of a blank POA blank canvas with various survivor factions and alliances dancing around the scant resources of the wasteland. 

Full Movie right Here 

The sets of this movie look as though they might be used for the original Twilight Zone and that at any moment another race of mutants is going to ambush the main characrers. Happy Gaming! 

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