GW's Dark Future board game is getting a digital upgrade!

If your particular flavor of Gamma-style games runs to the road warrior side of the genre, then you'll be pleased to hear that Games Workshop's board game Dark Future is being developed into an incredible-looking crash-n-bash video game: Dark Future: Blood Red States. Here are a few mean lookin' street machines from the game:

But the source material isn't just being ported into the digital arena, it's also being updated to include a more modern and scientifically accurate take on the post-apocalyptic genre.

This behind-the-scenes video highlights the game's ties to science fiction and features interviews with the original creator James Swallow and game developers at Auroch Digital--and even a biologist who talks about the real risks that arise in a world affected by climate change. It's a fascinating way to think about creating or updating the source material and definitely great fodder for your own gaming inspiration!

Here's Auroch's new teaser trailer:


Side note: The box art features a nice little graphic labeling it a "3D Roleplay Game" which I adore, as an aficionado of antiquated marketing flair!

• There's plenty more details over at the official Dark Future site.
• Dark Future: Blood Red States on Steam

h/t to Phil Reed at Battlegrip!

MAD MAX TRAILER: "Blood and Fire" are the rules of Fury Road!

ZOMG! SO MUCH FIRE!

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:

Why do the aliens invade?

Any number of MacGuffins or standard scifi tropes would likely do, to serve as impetus from otherworldly conquerers. But this story gave me a pretty good idea as to why aliens in GWW might have reason to take over our planet--and not care if the surface was scorched clean by death rays. As it turns out, the Earth may hold up to three times more water reserves than previously thought--deep underground.

The V mini-series from the 80s was right all along!

From The Guardian:

The water is locked up in a mineral called ringwoodite about 660km (400 miles) beneath the crust of the Earth, [emphasis mine] researchers say. Geophysicist Steve Jacobsen from Northwestern University in the US co-authored the study published in the journal Science and said the discovery suggested Earth’s water may have come from within, driven to the surface by geological activity, rather than being deposited by icy comets hitting the forming planet as held by the prevailing theories.

“Geological processes on the Earth’s surface, such as earthquakes or erupting volcanoes, are an expression of what is going on inside the Earth, out of our sight,” Jacobsen said.

So the Earth is, in fact, an even bigger source for water in the solar system. Not to mention the fact that the reserves could be inspiration for the "great cataclysm" itself. It makes sense, from a narrative standpoint why the subterranean-dwelling valids would want to jealously protect the Earth's remaining, untouched resources.

What more can I say, science is cool!

Read more

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

Akira by....Kirby and Lee?

This recent entry by to The Line Is Drawn (a weekly online happening celebrating mashed-up comic book themes) imagines Akira being created Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. It's got all the hallmarks of a Bronze Age Kirby. This week's theme was Japanese anime and manga cast in a style of more American/western artists. The Akira/Kirby piece is by the fantastically talented Marco D'Alfonso.

Throw in a little of Kirby's own Kamandi and you've got the makings of a really interesting Gamma-style campaign!

Via io9.com

WAR MACHINE: Zodanga, Predator City!

"Zodanga, the predator city. Moving, devouring, draining Barsoom of energy and life." --Tars Tarkas

The city of Zodanga as portrayed in the film John Carter makes for one hella huge war machine! The John Carter wiki calls it a "walking refinery" which is a good start if you want to make a carnivorous metal monster.
 

In the movie, the city moves in an undulating, centipedal fashion atop dozens of enormous fingered-foot gear. Every mile, it's stirring up a dust cloud as it claws its way across Mars' arid landscape. With the Martian surface being marred with craters, canyons, and canals, the city's tapdancing spine could also act as a land bridge, allowing it virtually limitless passage. I imagine anything that lies in it's path is summarily rendered to rubble--including enemy settlements.


"Nothing speaks more powerfully than pictures and to see a city moving across the landscape, leaving a scar in its wake--it's ugly, and nothing says 'bad guy' faster than that."
--Andrew Stanton (Director, John Carter)

While the city doesn't seem to have any sort of (giant) primary weapon (unless you count it's feet, which is more like force of nature!) but it does carry a formidable complement of airships atop it's launch deck.

John Carter: "That doesn't look like a fair fight."

Tars Tarkas: "Zodanga never fights fair."

Airships are armed with a variety of short-range radium cannons for ship-to-ship, broadsides-style combat. According to the film there's also a fairly healthy number of soldiers (air marines?) aboard for when things get dicey and they need to overtake a captured vessel.

I'd wager there's probablly plenty of radium cannons (short-and long-range) mounted to the city itself, turning it into a mobile fortress of sorts.

Funny thing--after seeing Zodanga on the big screen last year, I was instantly reminded of the cover of Epsilon Cyborgs:

Though that looks a little like an evil cruise ship with giant tank treads, it's still pretty badass! For a Gamma World or Mutant Future campaign, Zodanga would make one awesome hideout for an evil sorcerer or a formidable clan of wasteland thugs.

Learn more:

• Zodanga on the John Carter Wiki
• Zodanga on the Barsoom Wiki

Mutants of the Musical Wasteland

Great commercial from the 80s for GE. I really think the height of post-apocalyptic cheese was the decade of excess. So much to love.

Via Boing Boing

Video: Action Cats are Awesome!

Anyone remember this commercial parody from Saturday Night Live, back in the day? I saw this as a kid and totally wanted it for our orange tabby at the time.

It's like the Dinoriders toys, but AWESOMER, because they fit onto a REAL CAT.

Perhaps these are the feline heroes of a forgotten Department of Defense program, now called back into action to protect Gamma Terra?

In any case, they also kinda reminds me of Gammarauders these days too (which I picked up a while back, and I'll need to do a full review of soon).

Still wish they actually made these. Forget Laser Cats and give me Skele-kitty!

WAR MACHINE: The Technodrome!

What do you get when you put treads on a Death Star? 
In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle universe, nothing matched the sheer menace or mechanical brutality as the Krang and Shredder's mobile HQ--THE TECHNODROME!

It was a massive, burrowing war machine, bristling with weapons and advanced technology. So OBVIOUSLY, It would make for a great set piece in any RPG.

As is, that is--a giant, earth digging, castle/tank for a mutant warlord looking for revenge against subterranean Valids.

Here's a scanner readout of some of the known features of this massive warmongering battlestation, courtesy of the TMNT wiki:

Equipment and Armament:

• A trans-dimensional portal
• Eyeball missile launchers
• 4 trident-shaped laser cannons
• A mounted surveillance eye on the top
• A mouser factory
• Training facilities for Shredder's henchmen, Bebop and Rocksteady
• Three-foot-thick titanium armor
• Huge tank treads
• Robot walker legs that can be used instead of tank treads (scene at the end of Season 3)
• Large holding cells
• Earthquake machine (used during Season 2)
• Various drilling mechanisms

Design Features

Classical Japanese Dojo Rooms

Balance control (during near the end of Season 3)

Anti-gravitation generators making the technodrome able to hover slightly above the ground (used during season 2 )

Disintegrator Unit (season 2)

Relay Room

Engine Room

Laundry room

For more, checkout...

• Technodrome image gallery on gammaworldwar.tumblr.com
• Great background info and episodes for inspiration at the TMNT wiki
• News of TMNT LEGO sets for 2013 bodes well for DIY Technodrome!

Switzerland is ready to become a post-apocalpytic fortress

So during the second World War, the Swiss began booby-trapping themselves in the event that neutrality didn't pan out. The Cold War did nothing to slow them down and now the country is rigged to become a self-contained bunker, says BLDG BLOG. An excerpt:

To interrupt the utility of bridges, tunnels, highways, railroads, Switzerland has established three thousand points of demolition. That is the number officially printed. It has been suggested to me that to approximate a true figure a reader ought to multiply by two. Where a highway bridge crosses a railroad, a segment of the bridge is programmed to drop on the railroad. Primacord fuses are built into the bridge. Hidden artillery is in place on either side, set to prevent the enemy from clearing or repairing the damage...

Further:

Near the German border of Switzerland, every railroad and highway tunnel has been prepared to pinch shut explosively. Nearby mountains have been made so porous that whole divisions can fit inside them. There are weapons and soldiers under barns. There are cannons inside pretty houses. Where Swiss highways happen to run on narrow ground between the edges of lakes and to the bottoms of cliffs, man-made rockslides are ready to slide...

This is where it gets really interesting:

McPhee points to small moments of "fake stonework, concealing the artillery behind it," that dot Switzerland's Alpine geology, little doors that will pop open to reveal internal cannons and blast the country's roads to smithereens. Later, passing under a mountain bridge, McPhee notices "small steel doors in one pier" hinting that the bridge "was ready to blow. It had been superceded, however, by an even higher bridge, which leaped through the sky above—a part of the new road to Simplon. In an extreme emergency, the midspan of the new bridge would no doubt drop on the old one."

And...

Describing titanic underground fortresses—"networks of tunnels, caverns, bunkers, and surface installations, each spread through many tens of square miles"—McPhee briefly relates the story of a military reconnaissance mission on which he was able to tag along, involving a hydroelectric power station built inside a mountain, accessible by ladders and stairs; the battalion tasked with climbing down into it thus learns "that if a company of soldiers had to do it they could climb the mountain on the inside."

I'd say Switzerland would make for one exciting Gamma-strain campaign! I wonder if there's any old WWII maps out there to make use of. Lots of hidden weaponry and sealed bunkers to pick at, and of course explosives hidden everywhere. And the lot of it defended by mutant ibexmen. Then when the PCs get close to their goal, the Under-Alps 9000 Megafort implodes!

Oh, another idea stuck me: it's been suggested that Switzerland was the basis for the peaceful planet of Alderaan in Star Wars. Imagine if they'd sucked themselves into a wormhole planetary escape hatch a split second before the Death Star's green beam of doom vaporized their planet as a fail safe from Imperial invasion or destruction. Somewhere the planet still exists, booby trapped to the brim--on the other side of the galaxy....


Via Boing Boing.

Seven Gamma-related Odds and Ends for Inspiration

I've been working on some more GWW ideas, but they're not quite ready for posting. In the mean time, here's a few post-apocalyptic items to feed your gaming ideas:

1. Nerd-haven blog io9.com has a great post debunking (ha!) purported security of on underground bunkers. There's a few thoughts to take away from it, including this little nugget:

And then there would be the threat of other survivors — once all the local Wal-Mart, Target, and sporting goods stories have long since been picked clean, the roaming scavengers would regard any remaining shelters as a major jackpot.

Anyone searching through rural areas of Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Texas (areas with a high proportion of these bunkers) could simply canvass the area with a metal detector, since these bunkers include EMP shielding, which requires a metal lattice. Construction contractors that worked on the bunkers, regardless of the confidentiality standards held during the building process, will also know the specific location of bunkers in the area. So the people inside the bunkers could easily become sitting ducks, waiting for a series of assaults from other survivors.

This seems like good fodder for a raiding party adventure. In Gamma World War it would likely be the mutants turning the tables on the valids (who typically prey on the mutated hordes for experiments). So this gave me some ideas for a variety of mission types, including rescues, reprisals, and yes, the ever-essential supply raids. Maybe even a few pure-strain-on-pure-strain attacks (drill-tank attacks between subterranean fortresses!).

Anyway, be sure to check it out as the article is, in fact, filled with similar ideas for other scenarios.

2. Also, if you're looking for some images of ruined or foreboding environments (GM screen art?) for your campaign, I added a new tag "background" over at the Gamma World War tumblr. This includes older images from the blog too.

3. Remember that Mars Attacks comic is coming out next Wednesday! Looks like fantastic war-of-the-wrecked-worlds mayhem:

4. Speaking of unwelcome visitors, the apocalyptic alien invasion show Falling Skies returns tonight. Rumor mill says the aliens are now 100% focused on exterminating the humans!


If you were looking for material to fill out your campaign, there's a Falling Skies wiki and comic to pull from. Between 'Mars and 'Skies, I've found a good mix of inspiration for GWW's own alien invaders.

5. Fantasy Flight Games (based here in my home town!) is currently producing a line of pre-painted plastic minis for their Arkham Horror game, including this great series of monsters that are waiting to terrorize your PCs. Or maybe they ARE the PCs:

6. While we're on the subject of monsters and mutants, check out this REAL tarantula infected with some sort of fungus that gives it antlers:

Stat this guy up (and enlarge by a factor of at LEAST x5 for your next game! I call him "Tarantlera". (P.S. click to enlarge, I made it smaller 'cause it's kinda' icky. P.P.S. By the time your players figure out how to pronounce "Tarantlera" their PCs will already be dead.)

7. Finally, this is just a fun article about illustrator Ken Kelly who did some of extraordinary work for the Micronauts toy line packaging back in the 80s. Apparently one of his best-loved pieces, Antron, was lost for ages. His work inspired the new evolutionaries for GWW. These guys have GAMMA written all over them:

UPDATE: Gah! How could I forget that Pitford: Gateway to the Ruins for Mutant Epoch is now out. Better make that EIGHT Odds and Ends then!

New Tumblr Image Blog!

Just a quick note to say I started an image diary on Tumblr. I'll still do art posts on this site of course when I feel the need. But if you're jonesing for some gamma-inspired images updated regularly (semi-daily) then check out:

gammaworldwar.tumblr.com

Four "Gamma" Heroes from Tom Scioli

I'm enjoying the HELL out of Tom Scioli's American Barbarian. Lately he's been churning out some superb one-off art too, which might as well be inspiration for your next Gamma adventuring party.

PYRO "ROCKETMAN" KING

RAGNAR

ROBOT DRACULA

THREED

 Find more great stuff and the weekly web comic at American Barbarian website.

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

Gamma Gallery: Whacked-out Inspiration

This last one is by Rustam F. Hasanov, an incredibly talented illustrator you should be following. :)

When You Wish Upon a Gamma Ray, Your Dreams Come True...

We all saw Zombieland, yes? Remember the climactic theme park excursion? Now, imagine that about 100 x's bigger, more twisted, with better rides, zombie mascots, android Lincoln, and a labyrinth of underground tunnels for "cast members".

I give you...

MAPS for MICKEYPOCALYPSE:

(Click to embiggen)

Props to Boing Boing. Maps courtesy of Wishbook. Check out the "Download the Large size of this photo" links for each pic on Wishbook's Flickr pages to get supa' high-res versions suitable for gaming. Our 16th robotic president courtesy Monster Brains.