Apocalyptic Swords & Wizardry - Food, Fuel, Bullets, and Parts: The Currencies of the Future

Public Domain Art

First things first: when discussing a gonzo post-apocalyptic setting, the simplest foundation to build upon is the economy. Or, more specifically, common resources often serving in trade or as treasure: fuel, ammunition, and mechanical/electronic parts. The necessities of post-apocalyptic "civilization", if one can call it so.

The basic economic unit in my version of the gonzo apocalyptic future is the Trade Unit (TU). A TU is the worth of enough food for one person for one day. In the less-contaminated parts of the Slag Marsh, water drinkable by mutants who survived for generations on untreated water. In more arid settings, the water required by one person for one day is also worth a TU. Food for one day weighs 2 pounds.

Pre-Collapse vehicles, as well as jury-rigged post-Collapsed vehicles use fuel. I won't go as far as to differentiate the various kinds of petrol products, as an abstraction, a Can of Fuel weighs 10 pounds (just as a US "Jerrycan" weighs) and is worth 100 TU. (Fuel can also serve to create Molotov Cocktails, 10 per Can of Fuel.

Making bullets is relatively easy with certain mechanical tools and chemical supplies a post-apocalyptic town with access to pre-Collapse scrap. However, the standard dirty bullets, made after the Collapse, are inferior to advanced bullets, made before it with mass industrial technology rather than in a post-apocalyptic cottage industry. Dirty bullets are standard; they also jam the gun on a natural result of 1 or 2 on the 1d20 attack roll. The rarer advanced bullets never jam the gun and enjoy a +1 bonus to both attack and damage rolls. Bullets (as an abstraction) come as either handgun ammunition, rifle ammunition, or shotgun shells. 50 bullets of any type weigh 1 pound. 10 dirty bullets cost 1 TU; a single advanced bullet is worth 1 TU.

Most scrap left by the Collapse is not very useful for post-apocalyptic tinkering, such as repairing pre-Collapse tech and jury-rigging contraptions. 1 pound of useful mechanical parts is worth 5 TU, and 1 pound of useful electronic parts is worth 10 TU.

Food, Fuel, Bullets, and Parts may serve as "coinage". Of course, when finding a stockpile of fuel, the intrepid scavenger will have to be careful when carrying such valuable, but flammable, load back to "civilization"... Note that the most valuable "currency" compared to its weight are advanced bullets, at a worth of 50 TU per pound.

First Post of 2023 - Gonzo Post-Apocalyptic Swords & Wizardry!

 

Public domain image by Burnt Pineapple Productions

My first post in this blog for 2023 is an idea I am thinking about for quite a while: writing a post-apocalyptic hack for Swords & Wizardry: Core or Swords & Wizardry: Complete. As I noted before, I am returning to Swords & Wizardry from other d20 OSR rulesets (such as OSE and before that, ACKS), as S&W has a growing community here in Israel, and I am very actively involved in writing material for it in both Hebrew and English. I also know that S&W is extremely hackable, perfect for creating variant rules.

Now, why hack S&W for an apocalypse? After all, I have my own 2d6 post-apocalyptic game, Cepheus Atom, and there are several other prominent and excellent gonzo-apocalyptic games, most notably Mutant Future by Goblinoid Games and Mutant Crawl Classics by Goodman Games. However, Cepheus Atom is less suitable for the dungeon crawling I had in mind, and I find Mutant Crawl Classics to be a bit too random for my tastes; I am also less fond of some of the design choices in Mutant Future (such as the significant starting hit points).

So, here I am, hacking S&W: Core/Complete for gonzo-apocalyptic gaming, as a side project. Right now, this is a "hobby" project, but it may get published in the future.

What do I want from my hack?

• If it isn't broken, don't fix it. Much of Swords & Wizardry works perfectly both in a fantasy dungeon or in a gonzo-apocalyptic swamp. No need to write the combat rules, the monster design methods, or even much of the Fighter and the Thief.
• Ease of play, related to the above point. Not making the rules unnecessarily complicated by my hacks and additions.
• Strong dungeon crawl and hex crawl support. The "Old School D&D game loop" of exploration, finding treasure, experience, and mechanical character growth. But mainly, a strong emphasis on exploration of ruins and wilds.
• Gonzo! Mutants! Psionics! Robots! Sentient animals! Mobile sentient plants! Gengineered dinosaurs! Ray gun! Cool stuff that will make my inner child shine with joy.
• Complete compatibility with S&W and most OSR. Once again, the hack must not change the basics too much; I want to be able to port monsters on the fly and turn them into mutants! Muhahahahaha!

Also, behold the tentative setting, the Slag Marsh!