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Copyright © 2002 by Mark Damon Hughes. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to print and use free of charge, but do not redistribute - always refer others back to these originals at <http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/Bomb/>

Introduction

Campaign Level

Character Creation

Community

Character Example

Equipment

Experience

Insanity

Radiation

Dice Odds

The Bomb uses the Big Eyes, Small Mouth 2nd Edition (BESM) system. Each player will need 2d6, a pencil, a blank character sheet or two (the mortality rate is fairly high), a warm radioactive glow, and at least one person should have percentile dice.

Introduction

Once, humanity had civilization, miraculous machines, and amazing levels of wealth. There were no mutants, no aliens, no monsters. It was paradise. But humanity is mad, and this civilization had a war with its miraculous doomsday weapons. The Earth was ripped apart, the skies were blackened, the cities and fields were poisoned, and everyone died.

Almost everyone. A few clung to life, hiding in the wilderness, far from anything worth destroying. When they crawled out of their shelters, they found a world changed beyond recognition. Monsters now prowled the nights, changed from harmless plants and animals into nightmare beasts. Humans who had been closer to the death zones were changed into mutants - some remained civilized, while others became the Reavers, vast nomadic tribes of cannibals who live only to destroy the remnants of humanity. Some humans and mutants exposed to radiation developed bizarre psychic powers, and those who adopted ritualistic techniques for these abilties called them "magic" or "miracles", the rest adopted the term "psionics". It is said that the energy of the thousands of millions of people slain in the war provide the energy for these powers.

It has been over a century since the Apocalypse. You know only this new and deadly world. The time of desperate rebuilding is over - civilization needs heroes and explorers now, to go out into the wastelands and recover lost knowledge and artifacts, to defend people from the monsters, Reavers, gangs, and wandering villains, to restore hope to a destroyed world.

Campaign Level

There are three standard campaign levels for The Bomb: Survivor, Mercenary, and Demigod. Many of the rules are modified depending on the campaign level you choose.

Survivor:

You're a human or mutant. Life is hard, dangerous, and short. You stay in the shadows and try to scrape out a living in a world filled with entities vastly more powerful than you.

Mercenary:

You're a human or mutant. You're loaded up with weapons and equipment or cyerbenetics, or you're a low-powered psychic or magic-user. You're capable, tough, and dangerous. Most settlements you pass through either fear you or want you to help them. But there are bigger and tougher things than you out there...

Demigod:

You're vastly superior to mere humanity, a human or mutant transformed by magic or a powerful alien entity. The world trembles when you pass.

If the GM wants to create a new level, that's fine, too.

Character Creation

Skill costs are as listed for 'Hotrods & Guns', except that Riding, Wilderness Survival, and Wilderness Tracking cost 4 points/level.

The Attribute Max Level does not restrict the levels of Defects, and almost any character type can have Special Defects.

The Organizational Ties: Government and Wealth Attributes are not permitted; they're determined below in Community. However, even the poorest Untouchable can take the Personal Gear Attribute. If you want, you can skip ahead to Community and determine those, but be sure to go back and check for modifiers to your social level after making the character.

Characters with no levels of Personal Gear get 2 minor items. Everyone also gets clothing appropriate to their social level, 7 days of trail food, 2 1-liter waterskins full of clean water, and a large knapsack.

If the character has any Racial Attributes or any Special Defects, the character is a mutant or (much less commonly) an alien, and will most likely also have the Marked Defect, with a visibly non-human appearance. However, some mutants can pass for human unless checked with a gene scanner. Around 40% of the population are mutants, and perhaps 1% are aliens.

As much as 15% of the population have level 1 Psionics, and another 5% know level 1 Magic, but less than 1 in 1000 have level 2 or higher in either one, or possess both. Player characters don't have to reflect these demographics, naturally - they're the exceptional ones, and many of them do have psionics or magic.

Community

You can select or roll to determine what your home community was like. An adventuring party often comes from the same community, at least initially, but some do "meet in a bar", as the cliché goes.

The post-apocalypse world has developed a fairly rigid and intolerant caste system - while social mobility is possible, it is not easy. The GM may allow you to pick your social level, but most often it should be rolled. Subtract 20 for mutants and aliens, and add 10 for anyone with psionics or magic.

Within your community and anywhere your social level is known, you get a modifier to all social tasks equal to the target's social level (the number in parentheses in the table) minus your social level. For example, a Lower Class character trying to purchase an item from a Middle Class merchant is at (3-1) a +2 penalty.

If you go somewhere you're not known, and steal clothing appropriate to another social level (few merchants will sell better clothing than someone appears to be "fit for", and will charge extortionately if they do), you can improve your local social level. Doing so does leave you vulnerable to blackmail from anyone who knows or finds out what your original social level was, though.

Character Example

Equipment

The GM will have to determine what the "default" tech level of the campaign is - I like to assume that it's medieval in most places, with modern equipment only available as pre-apocalypse artifacts (major Personal Gear or Items of Power), and at most 19th-century tech manufactured in the most advanced cities. Relic war machines like tanks and aircraft would be terrifying, gangs could be riding around on carefully-maintained motorcycles, chased by desperately shorthanded cops with souped-up automobiles. Others may want to have giant robot death machines, energy pistols that can level cities, armies of cyborgs, and power armor. That's cool, too.

Most trade is done by barter, and even large cities do not have what we would consider complex economic systems. For trade in cities and between communities, the currency in common use is based on Gold Pennies (GP). A GP is a 10-gram, penny-sized coin in most areas, though it will vary from region to region. Gems are also used in trade in more civilized areas, worth 1 to 10 GP per carat (200mg), depending on the kind of gem. Most characters should have a variety of trade goods to barter, though, just in case. And weapons to keep others from taking those trade goods...

No standard equipment list is provided. To estimate the price of an item, take its modern price in dollars. If the item cannot be manufactured locally, either from scarcity (food and water in a desert) or because local industry is not up to it (laser weapons in a low-tech area), multiply the price by 2-10, depending on just how scarce it is. It's a good idea to write down the prices as you quote them to players! Alternately, you can use a fixed equipment list, either your own or from another game (just choose an appropriate conversion rate, like 1 credit/dolar/whatever equals 1 GP), but that doesn't really reflect the post-apocalypse economy.

Prices should never be completely reliable - this is not a modern economy with MSRP printed on everything. After determining the base price of an item, the GM should roll 2d6 on the table below, add the buyer's social interaction bonuses (negative=good) from Skills or Attributes, and subtract the seller's. Add 2 if the area is heavily-travelled, subtract 2 if the area is little-travelled. Business Management, Intimidation, and Seduction are the most common skills for this, depending on your personal style... You should assume that most merchants will have Business Management at level 3 or higher (roll 1d6 if in doubt).

Of course, everything isn't all shiny and bright and new and wrapped in original hermetically-sealed plastic packaging, either. Anything you buy is usually used, and has probably seen better days (double the price or more for a new item, and even then you may not get what you expected). Roll on the table below when the item is tested or carefully examined; most merchants will try to make customers buy items as-is without testing, and will refuse to accept any blame for a defective item without persuasion. This table should also be used for artifacts and loot.

Experience

After each session, the GM should rate PC performance from 0-3 on the following scales:

Participation:

0 points for not being there, 1 for being there but contributing little, 2 for average participation, 3 for enthusiastic participation.

Cleverness:

0 points for foolish actions that cause the party problems, 1 point for competent play, 2 points for helping to solve problems, 3 points for clever ideas that save other peoples' lives.

Action:

0 points for doing nothing, 1 point for subtle actions, 2 points for significant actions, 3 points for intense actions, worthy of a violent post-apocalypse movie.

Quest:

Only awarded at the end of an adventure or quest (which will probably take several sessions), 0 points for total failure, 1 point for partial failure, 2 points for partial success, 3 points for total success.

The total is the number of Skill Points the character gains from the session. Characters can save their points, and trade 10 Skill Points for 1 Attribute Point.

1 saved Skill Point can be spent at any time to reroll one die roll. This is very expensive, and a player who does it regularly should instead consider buying Divine Relationship, but it can save your butt.

Improvement costs are normal for BESM, except that improving any Stat, Attribute, or Skill above the campaign level limit listed in Character Creation costs double.

Insanity

Madness is a constant threat in the post-apocalypse environment, from stress, radiation-induced brain damage, and psychic trauma.

Rather than produce a long catalog of insanities, the player should choose an appropriate insanity, either reflecting the cause of the trauma or the surroundings at the time it was caused. Insanities can be represented with Easily Distracted, Phobia, and Recurring Nightmares; a character normally gets no character points for these.

If a character has more levels of insanities than levels of Soul, the character goes totally insane, and becomes an NPC.

Radiation

There are two kinds of radiation: high-intensity and low-intensity. Both are rated by levels, 1 to 6. Every turn a character is exposed to high-intensity radiation, or every hour a character is exposed to low-intensity radiation, a radiation check must be made. The player rolls 2d6 and adds the radiation level. If the unmodified roll is 12, the character mutates. If the total is less than or equal to the character's Body, the character resists the radiation. If the total is greater than the character's Body, the character takes 5 damage per point over, which cannot be stopped by any armor or other defenses, unless they specifically protect against radiation.

When a character mutates, roll 1d6:

Once a mutant has maxed out Marked 2 and Physically Unappealing 2, additional levels cause insanities.

Dice Odds

Last modified: 2002Nov07
Created