Barbarians of the Aftermath

It is time I expand on my previous post about Barbarians of the Aftermath:

I think it is pure-strain awesome!
Or:
It's the bomb!
Or:
Earth destroying goodness.

OK, enough with the bad puns.

Barbarians of the Aftermath expands the rule-set presented in Barbarians of Lemuria to include the post-apocalypse genre. It is a toolkit, not a standealone game. The rules for Barbarians of Lemuria are required.

As a toolkit BotA allows you to create nearly any sort of apocalypse you can imagine. And also some you perhaps didn't. This book is full of random tables. The book (I have the pdf version) starts out with a set of table to create a random world that has gone through some sort of catastrophic change. This ranges from natural disasters to man-made catastrophes to alien invasion to divine wrath. I grew up rolling up random worlds and characters with Traveller. I spent hours doing this. I loved it. And I really like this. These tables will set the nature, time frame, types of available characters and tech level for your destroyed world. Truthfully, I like to use a semi-guided method of world creation. So, for example, I dislike and have no interest in playing in or running a world destroyed by supernatural powers. So if I roll that as a result, I simply re-roll. But it is great fun. And this is just the first chapter.

The second chapter covers character creation. It has new or modified careers and character types. By character I mean mutants, aliens and various types of humans.

Chapter Three covers the new rules added to BoL by this supplement. Amongst the other things it introduces firearms. This is a very important addition for a post-apocalypse world and it does it in a way that is both simple but adds a necessary bit of complexity. Instead of having the players count every round of ammo, it has an integrated dice mechanism. It is random so you are never quite sure when you will run out. Hope you have some reloads. I like this. It minimizes record keeping, which is in the spirit of BoL, but still makes ammo an important resource. There are also rules for mutations and a nifty vehicle creation section. Road Warrior, here I come. Or Toxic Avenger. Whatever floats you boat.

Chapter Four is equipment. The aforementioned firearms, energy weapons, and various and sundry other gear.

The fifth chapter is entitled "Flora, Fauna and Other Foes." This is pretty self-explanatory. Once again, there can be a random element if the GM wishes.

And chapter Six. Chapter six contains a random adventure generator for those who need an adventure quickly or lack inspiration. I'm usually a victim of both so this is a great help.

The last portion of the book is a Game Master's kit. It contains many of the tables and charts used throughout the book. A very handy tool indeed.

I realize that this has been a rather sketchy review but this resource is filled with such an abundance of material it is hard for me to do justice to it. Suffice it to say that if you like Barbarians of Lemuria and have any interest in post-apocalyptic game play, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

-As a sidelight I discovered a book that is both inspirational and amusing. This is Field Guide to the Apocalypse by Meghann Marco. It is subtitled Movie Survival Skills for the End of the World.