The other week I ran the first session of a post apocalyptic hex crawl TRPG I’m calling, for lack of a better name, Dominion of the Sword. I transplanted some of the lore I’d written for a post apocalyptic wargame to come up with the seed for a setting and then fleshed out the local area and set the players loose.
The system name is inspired by this old English ballad which I think gives the sense of a period in which strength and daring can overcome entrenched powers and allow new ones to rise in their place. Exactly the kind of setting where the players can encounter and become techno barbarian warlords.
The game is set up to encourage dungeon delving, exploration, and the reckless pursuit of treasure. The system is loosely based on Into the Odd, with some other concepts I like from various different games.
You can find character sheets here: printable and online. Don’t worry, all data entered into the app is stored purely in local storage and never gets sent anywhere.
In which the party:
After a brief bit of character generation, our heroes were ready:
The party had been briefed that with war with the road warriors looming supplies were short and that anyone who managed to bring back valuable treasure would surely be praised as heroes. Starting with one of the rumours I’d created about an old government lab hidden beneath a quarry out West the adventure began on the outskirts of an abandoned pit mine.
After some initial prevaricating about where to look first for the lab, the party entered the foreman’s hut, noting that the door hinges looked surprisingly shiny. Inside they found a hideaway with warm food in a microwave.
While Silus and his thrall inspected the machine, Brick looked for where the suspected occupant of the cabin had gone to. Eventually the group moved back outside and smelled cigarette smoke from the machine shed.
Determined to get the element of surprise they instructed Mezoti and Christian to make some noise and the pair dutifully started smashing up the rusting cars in the lot. “Sneaking” up to the shed the gang burst in to find a wild eyed man brandishing a shotgun.
After some tense negotiation the man (McKenzie) agreed to show them his ghostly friend Lisa, who lived in the underground lab. Trusting the old man, the party followed him into the pit and through dark tunnels and caverns. Following a short debate on why the ancients had such bad grammar they found themselves talking to a “ghost” outside a hefty looking steel door.
The ghost (Lisa) ended up trying to negotiate with the party, hoping they would bring her the nuclear fuel rods she needed to extend the life of the reactor powering the lab. The party managed to convince her to allow them access to the first level of the base to look for various bits of equipment that they would need to retrieve the rods from the nearby power station.
While Silus played with a database, Brick and Dukat set about looting requisitioning gear. Brick ended up with a significant upgrade to his Kevlar and scrap metal in the form of an adamantine cuirass.
Dukat’s foray into the supply room ended in disaster though when he test fired a laser rifle and blew a whole in a wall, activating the lab’s security system and initiating a lockdown. Lisa informed them that the lockdown could only be overridden from security and that the security system was monitoring her to prevent interference. More importantly she told them that there was a combat mech waiting for intruders outside the lift. Fortunately Silus had earlier found a level 5 access card and the group decided to try and use it to get to security through the reactor and AI core.
We ended the session there, leaving a bit of a cliff hangar around how the party would escape.
Treasure found (not yet recovered):
rpgs homebrew journal
The other week I ran the first session of a post apocalyptic hex crawl TRPG I’m calling, for lack of a better name, Dominion of the Sword. I transplanted some of the lore I’d written for a post apocalyptic wargame to come up with the seed for a setting and then fleshed out the local area and set the players loose.
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As with all digital services spotify has begun to suffer from enshitification. Outside of price hikes this has come in the form of advertising even on premium plans. Now this isn’t product advertising for other companies, this is spotify pushing notifications about new podcasts that I have expressed no interest in down my throat. This upset me enough to cancel because: