GURPS: Aftermath

Aftermath was our game in the early 1980s, and it did everything we wanted in a hyper-realistic set of survival-focused rules in a DIY post-apocalyptic setting. This was "AD&D for survivalists" and the rules skirted the line between real-world Cold War survival manuals for nuclear war, and it had that "scary element" to it that put the fear of God into you.

This game is going in the bunker with me. This game could be very useful some day if the Soviets ever decided to threaten Western democracies.

Huh, I wonder why that is so familiar? 

These days, Aftermath still survives and you can still get this in print and PDF, but GURPS has replaced the game for me almost entirely. GURPS is the more complete, easier, less math, and more complete set of rules that can simulate gritty realities far easier than slogging through the flowcharts and fractional math of Aftermath. The Aftermath PDFs are great source books for the genre, too, and get you into the specific weirdness and world the game tries to create.

GURPS can get plenty detailed and gritty enough, and as long as I have hit locations, sectional armor, critical damage, and sever results for limbs I am fine.

I love the setting of Aftermath, the world was destroyed in 1980, so there was no "consumer Internet" and no cell phones. There is some advanced science fiction technology in here, but the baseline tech is that late 1970s post-Vietnam-era technology with M-16A1 rifles, UH-1 Huey helicopters, M-1911A1 0.45 pistols, and M-60A1 tanks. The highest-capacity commonly available 9mm pistol was the Browning High Power with 13 rounds, and the SMG of the day was the 9mm Uzi. Plenty of World War II weapons were still in use. The weapons were this 1970s retro-tech and iconic for the TV shows of the day. The game also had advanced laser weapons as rare finds.

 

The game does have intelligent mutant rats, killer AI robots, rad-zombies, wild zoo animals running around everywhere, androids, AI computers, and a selection of "Not the Ape Planet" humanoid apes. It also had "walkers" like from War of the Worlds. It was sort of like D&D in a way in that it pulled together common post-apocalyptic tropes and put them all in one game, creating the "fantasy" world with all the best options. Like D&D simulated any fantasy, Aftermath could simulate any post-ruin world pretty easily.

And the world hated you in Aftermath. An old ATM with security systems could try to kill you, before the bears sneak up on you, you are forced to run, you hole up in an old building, accidentally trip a grenade trip wire, and the building is so old it can't stand the force of the explosion and collapses on you. If you survive, you will be buried alive in the water filled basement, drowning, and the water is contaminated with cholera and radiation. Maybe there are rad-piranhas in there. The flamethrower and M-60 machine-gun equipped killer robots will be by later to torch the pile of rubble and fill it full of lead.

In D&D, the traps are usually in the dungeons.

In Aftermath, the whole world is a sadistic trap.

Even if you were lucky enough to be a super character frozen before the end of the world, you would wake up in a cryogenic pod and have to fight off laser-pistol armed war-bots with a rolled up copy of Playboy and a jar of Vegemite.

Get outside, and bandits are riding kangaroos and firing poison crossbows at you. You may find a box of sweaty TNT to throw back at them, but be careful not to drop it or fall down. The game ended when you stepped on a land mine. Finding a case of canned beans was a magic treasure, and you put those on a bandoleer on your vest as extra armor and a statement you were a bad-ass.

The world was like AD&D through the lens of the old Soldier of Fortune magazine, mixed in there with High Times. Everything could kill you, show no mercy, what is mine is mine, and always be prepared. As I said, there is a weirdness to the entire genre like a paranoid drug trip through the end of the world.

Trust is the best currency in the world. Just finding a survivor village where you could sleep was worth more than a magic sword or bag of gold in D&D. Often, you traded helping them out for food and shelter. 

We have solid source book support for the genre too, including the excellent After the End 1 and 2 books for GURPS. These books are like a "best of the best" of topics the Aftermath game covers, and are indispensable. The first book covers characters, and it a great resource and inspiration for building your survivors. We get barter and common gear tables, along with reloading rules.

There are rules for mutations here, but not the freaky superhero mutations that Gamma World has. Though, to be honest, you could do a Gamma World easily with Ultra Tech and GURPS Supers.

The second book covers worlds. They even suggest other GURPS books for "killer robots" or zombies, and have topics on diseases, gangs, survival, scrounging, repairs, and other post-apocalyptic concerns. This is all great stuff, and it goes beyond the original Aftermath rules in many areas. We get speculative tech in here too, like nano-tech disasters, and that is a great modern update for the genre.

Aftermath is a sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction from 1950-1980, everything from War of the Worlds to Planet of the Apes, and including the 1980s nuclear war movies like The Day After and Threads. Mad Max was not a popular part of the genre yet, as that is the start of the modern "hero era" of post-apocalyptic genre, but it is an influence.

There is a theme of the downfall of civilization, and the "original sin" of the Vietnam War serving as a catalyst for the punishment for the coming final judgment of mankind. This is mirrored today by the "original sin" of the Iraq War, and many internalizing that guilt and trying to destroy today's society in a subconscious guilt response.

Don't laugh, this is a larger societal shift that happened during Vietnam, and it is happening today and you see this manifested by population shifts and encouragement from enemies on the world stage who finance these destructive forces. Like the Cold War, this is a shrinking world pitting history and societies against each other.

You need the almost puritanical and quasi-religious guilt, along with the concept of overseas enemies of an almost alien society, to have this genre. Otherwise, we aren't being punished for anything, there is no "big bad" who caused this, and we might as well be playing opiate fantasy games to relieve the pain of daily life.

In contrast, today's zombie post-apocalyptic genre does this without the "overseas enemy" and "we did this to ourselves." This is why the Walking Dead genre intentionally makes humans worse than walkers, since "we did this to ourselves" and "we will keep doing it." Zombie stories have that self-hate of mankind, and you even saw this in the original 1950s Living Dead movie.

There is always an enemy responsible in these stories, be it the Reds, aliens, apes, nature itself, or ourselves. In Aftermath, it can be all of the above. Today, we can add AI to that list.

Another game close to Aftermath is the excellent Mutant Epoch (ME). this game leans into that weirdness of the genre, and is one of the best examples of that feeling of "strangeness after the end of the world" out there today. If you are not trying to simulate Aftermath in GURPS, this is also one of the best games in the genre today and worth your time. If you do not want the intelligent plants and holographic AI characters, and the X-Men like superheroes running around, you may want to stay more grounded in GURPS.

Aftermath walks a line between realism and strangeness, and GURPS does that very well. GURPS also does the aspect of "mental survival" much better than ME, with the internal mental disadvantages driving character motivation, where ME characters can be more collections of random skills and powers. GURPS does the "realism" very well, and the skill system is also much more detailed and flexible.

Plus GURPS gives you far more source books to pull from for the fantastic and strange. I could incorporate GURPS Horror in a post-apocalyptic game for a unique twist, and make the work beset by vampires and werewolves which brought down society. GURPS will have the greater range of disasters and strangeness to put into the mix.

GURPS is my choice here, the rules are modern, consistent, but have enough grit and depth to satisfy the deadly crunch and medical detail of wounding the genre requires. Aftermath itself is the inspiration of the  strange fantasy of that post-apocalyptic genre, and is one of the hallmark games in the genre. Gamma World and Mutant Epoch lean too hard into the fantastic and science fiction elements, where Aftermath and GURPS can do that realistic tone this specific genre requires.