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 handy someday if the Soviets ever decided to threaten Western democracies.
Why is that 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 offers a more complete, easier, and less math-intensive set of rules, making it easier to simulate gritty realities than slogging through the flowcharts and fractional math of Aftermath. The Aftermath PDFs are an excellent source book 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 results for severing 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. Many World War II weapons remained in use. The guns 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 features intelligent mutant rats, killer AI robots, rad-zombies, wild zoo animals, androids, AI computers, and a selection of "Not the Ape Planet" humanoid apes. It also had "walkers" like those from War of the Worlds. It was somewhat reminiscent of D&D in that it combined familiar post-apocalyptic tropes into one game, creating a "fantasy" world with all the best options. Just as D&D simulates any fantasy, Aftermath could easily simulate any post-ruin world.
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, traps are typically found in 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 that 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 sourcebook 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 is a great resource and inspiration for building your survivors. We get barter and standard gear tables, along with reloading rules.
There are rules for mutations here, but not the freaky superhero mutations that Gamma World has. You could easily do a Gamma World 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 also get speculative tech in here, like nano-tech disasters, which is a significant modern update for the genre.
Aftermath is a sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction from 1950 to 1980, encompassing works like War of the Worlds and Planet of the Apes, as well as 1980s nuclear war movies such as 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 the 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 internalize that guilt and try to destroy today's society in a subconscious guilt response.
Don't laugh; this is a larger societal shift that occurred during the Vietnam War, and it is happening today. 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 a nearly 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 portrays humans as worse than walkers, as if to say, "we did this to ourselves," and "we will keep doing it." Zombie stories tap into the self-hate of mankind, a theme you even saw 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 is worth your time. If you prefer not to have intelligent plants, holographic AI characters, or X-Men-like superheroes, consider staying more grounded in GURPS.
Aftermath walks a line between realism and strangeness, and GURPS does that very well. GURPS handles the aspect of "mental survival" much better than ME, with internal mental disadvantages driving character motivation. In contrast, ME characters tend to 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 world beset by vampires and werewolves, which brought down society. GURPS will have a 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 heavily into fantastic and science fiction elements, whereas Aftermath and GURPS can capture the realistic tone that this specific genre requires.
