The setting of the Desolation RPG is post-apocalyptic. That implies that things are pretty bad for the survivors.

One question that GMs may have is "how bad is bad? How awful should I be making it for the characters in my game?"

I think that one answer is "pretty bad, but not relentlessly so."

What I mean by that is that it's important to remind players that the world has changed fairly significantly, but not to keep beating them over the head with it. Each and every session should contain reminders of what's been lost and the new dangers created by the Night of Fire (and if you can tie that into each character's MPH, more the better.)

However, unless the current storyline is dealing with one particular aspect of the aftermath, "bad things" should not distract players/characters or GMs from the story going on.

Just some thoughts - what do you think?

Hullo, Stephen,



To be honest, this is one of the questions about the game world that I had debated asking here on the forums. In the three or four campaign scenarios that I've run to this point, that is the one aspect of the playtest versions of the game and playing in the game world that aren't really clear.

Granted that things have to be pretty bad for the survivors, as the game *is* post-apocalyptic, but it has been eighteen months (?) since the Night of Fire, so I would hazard a guess that there is some semblance of emerging into the ruins to find food, water, shelter, and so forth.



Okay, while I understand the gist of what you're saying here, how about some examples of this?



While I agree with this, I think it also depends on what one means by "bad things". There are likely to be all the standard sequences and the like of post-apocalyptic stuff happening, but it can get to the point where it is stereotypical, even if it is happening in a fantasy wolrd like [i\]Desolation[/i], and can become too...commonplace.

I think some guidelines on the sort of stuff to have the characters see, specific to the Desolation world, would be useful here. Heck, you could even make this into an article for the website in PDF.