We're returning to the ruins of the post apocalyptic Mars SWN game campaign setting game. But I've decided to upgrade with Stars Without Number's Other Dust.
Grab It Right
HERE
Three months ago I abandoned my Stars Without Number game campaign which had moved its location to my post apocalyptic Mars setting. That was because of a friend's medical issue and I'm happy to report that my gaming party has put that issue behind itself and we're moving forward. That being said,I'm upgrading my campaign world to the Stars Without Numbers campaign expansion 'Other Dust' and its addendum thanks to the game's author some months ago.
Other Dust is a 150 page plus expansion of the Stars Without Number game and has at its base a number of post apocalyptic options that make it a good choice for science fiction old school gaming.
The Drivethru explanation of Other Dust :
The world is an open grave.
Green glass plains and trinitite pearls necklace the throats of torn cities. Prismatic jungles heave with nanite-infested life, thick with twisted bodies and fever-hot madness. The ancient towers of Old Terra are cast down into the mire and the stars above no longer send their ships of steel and burning light.
Humanity has been reduced to struggling enclaves and fugitive tribes. Left to scavenge the bones of their former glory, mankind yet fights the New Earth with steel, salvage, and a burning defiance. If the motherworld means to end her children, she’s going to need a bigger apocalypse.
Other Dust is a stand-alone, fully-compatible companion game to the free Stars Without Numbersci-fi RPG. Within its pages savage mutants, crazed psychic overlords, runaway war machines and the relentless decay of a shattered world all conspire to snuff the last few embers of humanity. Yet heroes remain among the scattered survivors, and their courage and will to defy the coming night might yet save their people from a waiting doom. Use the tools this book provides to rebuild societies, reforge their ancient bonds, and bring a new dawn to a thousand points of night!
Inside, youll find...
- Smooth old-school rules for rolling up and running the intrepid wasteland warriors and fierce avengers of a broken world. Fully compatible with Stars Without Number classes and play, too!
- 150+ pages of GM tools, techniques, and resources for building and running a sandbox post-apocalyptic campaign. If you liked it in Stars Without Number, you'll find it in here.
- Rules for running groups and enclaves in the radioactive wasteland, with concrete tools to help players save or doom the hard-pressed people around them. Found your own or crush someone else's!
- Easy-pull techniques and resources, system-neutral for quick transplantation into your own campaigns or favorite systems.
There are huge number of reasons to do this upgrade and the part of the reason is that I'm now in the middle of a higher end Stars Without Number game. With a party of higher level adventurers the challenges have to be challenging and dangerous for PC's. Other Dust allows me to draw from this realm without losing the old school flavor of the campaign. I have alot of writing and history at stake with this campaign.
Post Apocalyptic Mars Setting
Imagine a world partially terriformed by Terra along with the races and aliens of ERB as well as humans from Earth. Now imagine that the Tharks have left Barsoom or Mars. Someone had launched the nanite and entropic weapons across the face of the planet and now the whole of the world has changed. Everything is vastly different. The wars are long over with but the conflicts continue. Tribal divisions remain the same and old locations across the planet lay in ruins. Mutation, disease, undeath, and worse plagues this Barsoom. Old invaders come back to roost as the aliens from HG Well's War of The World claim countries and sections of their old colony world. The space port is a shambles but only recently has Earth re established some flights between Mars and its blue Terran neighbor. Things are shaky to say the least.
The face of Mars is dotted with the reminders of mankind's thumbprint on this once beautiful world and the proud city states are only now beginning to thrive once more. But the scars of war are everywhere. Ruins, dungeons, and the Martian underworld contain vast treasures and artifacts perhaps the answers of how and why.
Mars has only been 87 to 90 percent been terraformed. The vast stretches of wilderness hide mutants, Red men neanderthals, hordes of aliens left behind, outlaw Earth men, and worse. Not to mention insane A.I.'s, crazed military weaponry, and more. All this is just waiting for my players in tomorrow's game.
Addition material will be taken from the free SWN game material pdf
'The Dust'
Available Right
HERE
The Terran Mandate was forced to let the frontier worlds go when the expansion of the Second Wave sent too many colonists too far from the core's organs of control. The Directorate did not intend to make that mistake a second time. The Dust was their solution- a planet-wide mist of microscopic nanites, conduits for the unblinking gaze of the AI Maestros and their panopticon security state. Not a single core world escaped the basilisk glare of the Dust and its masters, until the madness of men and the cold resolve of the Maestros clashed in the last hours before the Scream destroyed them both.
Now the Dust remains scattered throughout abandoned Mandate bases and derelict Fleet ships, watching for what never comes. Unsleeping AI security directors and mad explorers stand ready to seize control of this waiting storm, and as the nanofabs begin to groan to life after half a thousand years, the black streamers of Dust promise a new night without end.
Additional Material will also be used from the Codex Of The New Earth Cult of the Still Lady.
Also Available Right Over
HERE
In the desolate wastelands of the New Earth, the Still Lady sends forth her crazed servants in pursuit of her own demented obsessions. Her mind scorched by the devastation of Old Terra's fall, she is obsessed with staving off the chaos and change of the crumbling world around her- and to do it, she needs sacrifices for the cruel demands of entropy. The tumors of devotion blossom in the flesh of her faithful, and the Red Trees that were once men give food and drink to those who bow before her inexorable alterations. Grab this free codex now and get a taste of the upcoming Other Dust post-apocalyptic role-playing game!
All of this material dovetails quite easily into one another and since Drivethru and Rpgnow are having a sale its very simple to use this stuff to give my SWN a much needed upgrade. This Barsoom isn't the same one as we've seen in the Warriors of the Red Planet. Its actually part of a much later network of colonies of Mars that exists throughout the universe and across a series of alternative Earths.
