Ruby Ridge

While I tend to prefer well developed rules, I am not particularly gamist. I'm not sure about turning the social elements into actual game mechanics - that kind of defeats the acting part of the collaborative telling. Most of my early Rifts games had a winning condition, and not much connectivity, so it was really just the same thing over and over till the group got rather turned off on the idea. If I could find a new game, I'd love to play it again, in a more mature fashion.

Technically, "Dead Ex" and "Radiation Hazard" are sample adventures with zombies in general, rather than Anarchy Zones specific. D&B's rules were written before I had the AZ idea complete, and I wanted potential players to have something to go on. The scenario I'm testing with my friends revolves around them on a cruise ship when pirates take over and release a biogenic sample in protest of GM foods.

I tend to make my rules sorta generic, and leave the setting out of them to avoid confusion. Creating a NB Inquisitor with an EVENS would be rather confusing, if you knew nothing of the city states or that this was in the future. Instead, the example character in the rules is a teenager who won a Counter-Strike Tournament - definitely stuck in the here and now, not 2060.

Each city state is on a theme of sorts.

• NEST is a heavily populated area under siege.
• Birmingham is a nightmarish theocratic utopia.
• Ruby Ridge is a collection of survivalists, militants, conspiracy theorists, and pretty much anyone who has something against big government - where the fringes come together.
• Central Gulf is an incomplete arco, and the warden of numerous resources NB is willing to use force to take. Including a functional naval facility.
• Las Vegas is a military junta, and more about people with too many weapons and not enough enemies.
• A henceforth unnamed commune is a place where humans and aliens live together, which introduces human characters to the problems the Planetary citizens face.
• The anarchy zones are a place fee of outside influence where one is free to become a Nitzcheian Ubermench self-actualized individual living on their own terms. Provided you can survive the undead. (That's something you don't hear everyday)

None of these places are all bad. RR is natural, has some accord during the day, and does have stores, prepared forts, diners, and at least one radio station carrying the daily news. However, it has a bit less tech than normal, less protection, and generally antagonistic residents. Think more of a Holnist camp from "The Postman" Its free of central government and far more self reliant than the other city states.

As to the wife's suicide attempts, I wanted to illustrate some of the conflicts of before times. Imagine if our society was suddenly catapulted back to the 1940s. There are still stores, books, movies, telephones, electricity, and a place for our touch-typing skills. Yet, I don't believe that we would handle the transition very well. No TV, Penicillin is new, (many of the other drugs we take today don't exist.)no computers, no highways, OSHA and polarized plugs doesn't exist yet.

It would probably be wise to include some mechanic where older individuals (Age 20+) have some penalty adapting to the world as they remember, an have used the Sphere for some time. Younger people (the implants can't be used until about age 19 - fiber optics don't grow with your body) have less skills, but no longing. I haven't tested the lucidity rules, so I don't know how well they would handle social conflict.

There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.

The idea of humans and aliens setting up a commune seems odd. Yeah, sure, there would be the people (and aliens) that felt that way, but what are the odds that they congregate in one place? Then again, if enough time has passed I guess it's possible. Still, I couldn't see Vegas, RR, or Birmingham (or maybe the aliens?) letting that slide. The word would have to get out or no one would be there. Surely someone would have the goal of destroying that community.

As for the 20+ group getting anachronism penalty...it would seem its either that or there is no community of humans and aliens. If a community has set up (and these acros have been built) it would seem the people relient on old technology would have been Darwin'd (made-up word) out of existence.

On the subject of themes...since areas seem to host a certain type of group, where are the terrorist factions who hate group "x"? Vegas, due to abundance of weapons, seems like a great location to start.

To some extent, the various cites are taking ideals to the extreme to make a point. It would probably make a bit more sense with some more of my design notes. The difficulty is making it intelligible when I'm not sitting there with my constituents.

One thing to point out, is that the first element of D&B to be written, was the combat system. One day, just out of the blue, the KD system occurred to me, I wrote it down, and then needed to create a game around it. It was a rather elegant way of managing combat in one roll, without the difficulties imposed by the N-WoD and similar systems. (Bigger weapons = more dice in pool, thus greater chance to hit.) D&B was initially intended to be a bit more of a shoot 'em up post apocalypse where the player's wanted to get out of the stifling cities and hunt for the lost treasures. (Ok, so its a classic Gamma World/Mad Max Scenario. Its gotten a bit deeper since then. Sorry to burst the high minded bubble.)

As to the commune - well, yes, it is a little hard to believe. The catch is, the Citizens really are of the Gian mindset, and don't want to go so far as to wipe out species. And then there is the problematic "Mutually Assured Destruction" threat - humans are not going to go silently into the good night, and are notably poor losers. Boomer ballistic missile submarines still patrol the depths, and since they can't be targeted from orbit...

Since they are stuck here, they need to assimilate somehow, but to what degree is of some debate. So its either have community or accept alien player characters to approach that angle. Given that its a rather grainy 1-5 system, portraying dog sized shrimp (Albeit warm blooded ones with high intelligence) is a bit problematic. Finding people who would want to play one, more so.

Feel free to leave it out of the cannon. I have yet to decide where it even is yet. At the moment, it might either be in California (of course...) or somewhere in Africa or middle east(those deserts are rather like their home planet).

When it comes to terrorist factions, everyone has their own. No border patrol, lost of decimated military units litering the countryside, and plenty of abandoned towns and cities to set up in. I haven't even begun upon combat cyborgs and advanced solder prototypes. Nor the fact that cybernetics are a somewhat common feature of society. (And in turn, of reanimates)

Well, NB has its detractors who don't care for extreme religious dogma. To some extent they hide in the city itself, though there are mostly abandoned towns in the area. The Louisiana swamps are a good hiding place as well. RR is pretty much like the Hamas/PLO situation at the moment, or perhaps Iraq ("We don't know what we want, but the government isn't it...") NEST just has its society falling apart and those who take resources or work the black market. Vegas has soldiers, civilians, and of course, people who are willing to use the nuclear forces to attack human cities, so they remain the only existing human government. (The US government and the president still exit in one of the NEST arcos, but they have no control over the rest of the country.)

NEST has been standing for the past 30+ years, its not new. Central Gulf was started 10-15 years pre-invasion, but these are massive projects. The tech still works - Sphere access is still possible in many areas, though quite a bit of data has been lost, and its heavily watched in NB. (Not censored mind you. Adult content is still there, but if you go to it, expect jail time.) We already have people who go into blackberry withdrawal, will continue cell phone conversations while driving, and teens with repetitive motion injures from text messaging. Now imagine those devices being subdermally implanted. Finding the old micro-facs and such is one of the goals of those who leave the city.

No story is going to really get this across. Its the old observation in sci-fi, people don't just sit around casually discussing how cars work. Nor would they casually bring up such things in conversation. Star Trek residents accept replicators as we accept laser printers. by putting most of this in story format, I leave it to the readers to fill in as they wish. A secondary "Cold Hard Truth" document puts numbers and explanations behind it. As you've noticed, my comments and descriptions run longer than the stories themselves.

There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.

A game that is mainly about golfing with zombie heads while searching ruins for treasure may be a bit lowbrow.

But D&B and Anarchy Zones is still way better than Rifts.

In D&B damage slows a target, so if something is hard to kill, its because its hard to fight, unlike Rifts where you can spend ridiculous amounts of time beating on villains who couldn't really go fast, or hit back quickly, but who could take serious amounts of damage.

And Anarchy Zones is more thoughtful and interesting and socially plausable, unlike Rifts whick can be downright racist. (The Africa worldbook was embarassing. And they have no problem mocking real life Zoroastrian, Chinese, or Indian beliefs but they strongly advise against depicting Christianity at all for fear of offending white Americans since they are the only ones who seem to matter.)