VIDEO: Mad Max has nothin' on these "New Barbarians"

This trailer for The New Barbarians, a.k.a. Warriors of the Wasteland (1983) sold me when they showed a motorcycle bandit take an exploding arrow to the neck (hilarity ensues thereafter). This is Italian-made Saturday afternoon, eighties Gamma-cheese at it's finest.

It looks like the prequel to my favorite Spaghetti-pocalypse film, 2019: The Fall of New York. (Somehow I missed doing a recap on that one, I'll have to correct that soon.)

It stars exploitation film staple Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, the Black Cobra series) as said, explosive archer. Really, what more can you ask for?

Anyway, check out the awesome trailer for Barbarians:

VIDEO: X-men: Days of Future Past brings the post-apocalypse

I'm really looking forward to this new installment of the X-men. It looks like they've done a bang-up job of envisioning a desolate future. This clip apparently appears early in the film with mutants on the run. It'd make a great adventure scenario--similar to the first part of the Gamma World War campaign's adventure path.

In any case, the visuals are stunning--and that's more than enough reason to post it!

Excelsior!

VIDEO: Viral ads for Dawn of the Apes are great setting primers!

Need something to help set the scene in your next Gamma-esque game? Give players the heebie-jeebies as they watch civilzation fall into ruin in seconds! These timelapse clips from the upcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes flick should do the trick nicely:

LONDON



SAN FRANCISCO



NEW YORK

Gamma World War campaign idea

So I've been hammering on how to organize a Gamma World War campaign in a string of adventure's (okay, an "adventure path"). Basically this would take you step-by-step through the storyline. You'd get to play different characters representing different sides of the conflict, but it could also be written to include a storypath for single group (but where's the fun in that?).

In my mind's eye, I envision this to be sort of tournament-style play where multiple groups play each round and outcomes get reported back to a "master judge" who can then give results, story cues, and other details to the GMs to run the next round. So each round should build on the previous.

Players would likely generate a few different characters at the outset, namely a few pure-strain humans, several mutants, and a few alien characters. At least three of these adventures (currently, anyway) have alternate takes where players could play for the other side (I've marked them as ALT).

ROUND 1: MUTANT SNIPE HUNT

You're a member of an elite team of pure strain humans called "Valids" that is out to clear the surface world of mutant scum and make the Earth safe or habitation again. Your team is one of several culling squads sent to hunt, capture, and eradicate the mutated hordes.

The hunting parties are given profiles of which mutants are valued for scientific study (capture) and which are too dangerous to roam (kill). Take your crackerjack team of specialists to the surface in a mechanized drill tank along with your Mother May-bot (artificially intelligent chaperone/drill sergeant) to keep you in contact with other squads and central command.

Good luck and Mother's Blessings be upon you!

ALT: Mutant players must rescue their comrades from a the brig inside the giant drill tank before it dives back beneath the surface.

ROUND 2: ARENA ROCKED

You're a mutated survivor of the Great Calamity who's recently been captured by those pompous human under-dwellers. They tossed you into a holding area with a great many other mutants where you were shipped to a walled-in city. There's little food, but LOTS of weapon caches in this abandoned urban wasteland. It's been turned into some sort of gladiatorial arena and you'll have to fight your fellow mutants to survive. But wait--there's an active resistance growing! It's time to set aside petty differences and form a fighting force to overcome your oppressors and escape!

 

ROUND 3: WALKING DREAD

You're an outlander--a human or mutant wanderer of the Gammascape's furthest reaches. As you enter a small city strange happenings give you an uneasy feeling that things are about to change in a big way. You stumble upon a skirmish between pure strains and mutants. Before you know it, a horde of zombies arrive to feast on the survivors. Outnumbered and overwhelmed, now seems like a realy good time to stick together--humans and mutants alike!

ROUND 4: INCOMING TRANSGRESSION

You're part of a new breed of Gamma Terran--an allied band of humans and mutants, trying to restore order to the ruined chaos. Reports keep streaming in about weird weather and the reanimated dead. You've got to fight off the necrotic hordes--and make allies of former foes--before something even more terrifying from beyond arrives to take control!

ALT: Undead players must divide and conquer the humans and mutants. Feast alone won't do it--they've got to turn some of them in to increase their own numbers in order to overwhelm and claim victory.

ROUND 5: BATTLE GLOBALE

The invasion has begun! Alien aggressors want this planet--ruined or not--for themselves. Only you and your coalition of humans and mutants stands in the way. Make your way to the World Security Council's HQ and activate the World Alert Beacon--the last remaining scrap of global civilization that could be humanity's only chance to call all Earthlings to arms. It's an all-out, gamma-lit, firefight. Who will claim victory in the Gamma World War?!

ALT: Alien characters are trying to put down the Earth's remaining humans and mutants and stake their claim in taking the planet!


Five adventures (modules?) seems like a good number, being not too long but still hitting all the key plot points. Plus, there's still room for a robot uprising, weaponized kaiju, and cyborg raiding party or five that I'd like to sprinkle in. :)

First trailer: OBLIVION starring Tom Cruise

So here's a Tom Cruise film I'd only heard a few whispers about until now. I'd nearly written it off it had been so long since I'd seen anything, Now that I see the trailer, I think it looks interesting in that it's got a sparse cast, but has a pretty tight concept. I'll be keeping an eye out for future trailers and plot leaks. Here's the synopsis so far, via io9:

Tom Cruise stars in Oblivion, an original and groundbreaking cinematic event from the director of TRON: Legacy and the producer of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. On a spectacular future Earth that has evolved beyond recognition, one man's confrontation with the past will lead him on a journey of redemption and discovery as he battles to save mankind.

Jack Harper (Cruise) is one of the last few drone repairmen stationed on Earth. Part of a massive operation to extract vital resources after decades of war with a terrifying threat known as the Scavs, Jack's mission is nearly complete.

Living in and patrolling the breathtaking skies from thousands of feet above, his soaring existence is brought crashing down when he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft. Her arrival triggers a chain of events that forces him to question everything he knows and puts the fate of humanity in his hands.

Here's the poster:

So far I'm digging it and if my guess is right, it could make for some inspired campaign setting. By the looks of it a subterranean Morgan Freeman is leading a band of merry rebels against the drones meant to keep the escaped humans safe.That sounds like a good lead-in for an adventure, yes?

Also posted over at Exonauts.

LotR in the irradiated wastelands

Here's a little brainstorming for a Lord of the Rings type of campaign (take the magical object back to it's maker in hopes of freeing the oppressed) for a Gamma World or Mutant Future setting. Here's the analogs:

Macguffin: No ring here, just a super-sciencey/sorcery object (okay, a ring! Or make it a tiara for all I care....) that imbues it's owner with invisibility, while mutating them over time into bullywugs. Oh, and it's psionically controlled by an evil techno wizard who's the ultimate mutant (a giant fiery eyeball!) in a high techno tower.

The mission is thought by the adventurers to be one of subterfuge to take the device back to the mutant wizard's tower to use against him. Unfortunately, he's got other plans...

You: Diminutive hominid of your choice, but can't be more than 50% mutant, I'd go with some form of hare or coney. I believe they call them "hoops" in G.W.

Elves: Grens - slender, greenfolk who are excellent archers that like to shoot first, berate later.

Dwarves: Stocky-figured, Gamma World Badders (badger people). 'Nuff said.

Humans: Valids (pure strains) who are suspicious and yet crave redemption

Orcs: Cyborna (cyborg jerkwads)

Trolls: Golthans - sad, childlike, and under the Eye's control

Mordor: Tall, ebony, techno tower of spire built amongst the ruins of a once great city

Minas Tirith: Gleaming city of platinum, built into a mountain side and barely touched by the cataclysm

Helms Deep: Underground keep of the centauroids

Moria: Badder mines that have been invaded and appropriated by Cyborna

Shire: Burrow holes in a grassy, reclaimed prairie

Smaug: Monster of your choice, but has to be big and intelligent. Why not make it easy and just go with an cyborg T-rex with artificial intelligence? Actually, Smaug needs to be more of a force of nature so perhaps something like an a bio-armored serpent the size of an aircraft carrier.

Sauron (aka "The Eye") is a human who's delving into alien overlord tech mutated him beyond recognition--body, mind, and soul.

Gandalf: Techno wizard who left the order to join the rebellion, loves tech from the ancients but also knows enough to fear it

Saruman: Another wizard, but he's in the apprenticeship of The Eye

Gollum: former hare of the burrow (hobbit of the shire) now a full-on bullywug creep who longs to get the device back in hopes of turning himself normal or disappearing forever....

I can see a long slog through irradiated junkyards, swamps, and foothills. Maybe even use the old Gamma World module found in the GM screen --it's already got a spaceport tower in a mesa-filled wasteland!

Thoughts about Zardoz

I've been trying to get back into the blogging habit and had this post rolling around my brain for a while. So it's at least an exercise in getting creative juices flowing again. A while back I found Zardoz on Netflix and it had been a long while since I'd seen it so I gave it another whirl. It's supposed to be (at least the way I've viewed it over the years) part action adventure/part intellectual experiment.

As an adventure, it has some really inspired moments, but kinda falls short of its potential. As an experiment it does well on grand scale, but the details get sort of muddled.

With movies like Inception, Dark City, and even something as wacky as 12 Monkeys, I think Zardoz could be remade and given a bit more gusto, perhaps fewer suspendered banana hammocks. Side note: I've tried to love the film, but in truth I've found it mostly boring with some good bits and an overall interesting--if sometimes shocking--premise.

Oh, and while the Book of Eli may have borrowed from ol' Zed, I'm talking more a straight-up re-imagining. So the characters and story details would be mostly intact beyond the overall concept. Sorry Singleton, we're not counting that one.

In Japan, Zardoz is in SPAAAACE!

So here's my pitch to re-imagine a new Zardoz:

PLOT
First, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the original plot. Done? Okay, we begin with a band of masked marauders known as Brutals sporting theme park mascot heads as helmets is laying seige to a seaside village. They take no prisoners and bow to a giant floating head, the god Zardoz. The most fierce of the bunch is Zed, whose curiosity leads him to discover the truth about their infallible, flying deity. His journey takes him to Vortex, a clandestine community of Eternals (psionic immortals) who yearn for the excitement that death brings--whether it's their own or the primitive villagers that make up the outer settlements. An artificial being known as Tabernacle rules as a beneficent adjudicator and administrator of Vortex's citizens. She has served humans for more than three centuries as a chorus of consciousnesses trapped in a single synthetic body. Over that time she has grown envious of her wards and planted the seed of their doom in a power hungry Zardoz pilot...Arthur Frayn.

SETTING
Let's leave the English countryside of the original behind and move to a beach on the California coast, dotted with ruined piers and broken highways. Since this is in the future, it'd be nice to see a few twists on the theme, maybe some mutated animals (carnivorous steeds for the Brutals) and evidence of a slightly more advanced civilization than our own (an upgraded Tabernacle that could neurologically control Vortex and its citizens). Zardoz itself is a remnant of a Wizard of Oz theme park erected in the late 21st century to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the film. The giant head really is the "wizard" as it appears inside a replica of the Emerald City--as part of the Wiz's main audience chamber. Vortex is a biodome commune that sprouted several towns over in a more rural area. Vortex appears similar to the Eden Project or Biosphere 2.

CAST

• Zed - Michael Fassbender (X-Men First Class, Inglorious Basterds)
• Arthur Frayn - Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Sorcerer's Apprentice)
• Consuella - Marrion Cotillard (Contagion Inception)
• May - Rose Byrne (X-Men First Class, Damages)
• Friend - Tom Hiddleston (Thor)
• Tabernacle - Vera Farminga (Source Code, Up in the Air)

DIRECTOR
Probably the most important aspect since a quirky film like this is usually driven heavily by the hand of the artist in charge. Chris Nolan seems like an easy bet with his deft direction of sci-fi-with-a-message films. Overall, I think he'd be good to reel in some of the more muddled elements that weighed down the Boorman version and still be able to make it the thought-provoking action/thrillers he's known for.

Yeah, cynics may decry him for being a bit over-wrought, but I honestly think he's yet to put out a bad piece of filmmaking. Whom would you rather have, Zack Snyder? (As if!) Ten years ago I would have said Alex Proyas who directed one of my favorite-ever films, the aforementioned Dark City. But until he comes up with something to make up for I, Robot--I think Nolan is the guy to make Zardoz fly.

So what would your Zardoz look like?


Previously: Zardoz Video Game in 8-Bit, Intro

Escape from the City of Mutants

The City of Mutants is every mutant's worst nightmare. Valids who come to the surface looking to kidnap and experiment on mutants have found a way to "test" their subjects in a free-for-all arena. Sometimes called "Darwin's Playpen", this walled-in ruined city is little more than a gladiator pit with Valid's salaciously watching the action from perimeter outposts.

So what makes this worse than a regular old Gamma Terra? The Valids have littered the urbanscape with booby traps--brutal and cruel to the last. Some traps are instant and deadly, others prolong the inevitable with lingering effects, and some are meant merely to hold prisoners until a hungry gargantuan can be dropped via ornithopter or hoversled.

Another terrible price while visiting the big city: there's no food. No sustenance of any type is ever dropped. There are no humanitarian gestures--these aren't humans, after all! No, the denizens are left to "make" their own meals through combat.

There are regular deliveries of all manner of weapons (including some Omega Tech), ammunition, vehicle parts, and some (mostly shoddy) equipment.

What little "scientific" knowledge can be gained by this travesty is unknown, but it provides many hours of live, hover-cam recorded entertainment to the Valids safely nestled in their underground cities.

One thing is for sure, if you're a mutant in the Playpen, your hours are numbered.

References:
Running Man
Death Race 2000
Escape from NY/LA
2019: The Fall of NY
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome


Props to Bully Says: Comics Oughta Be Fun! for the great image