Hey guys, later today I'm going to be running a post-apocalypse game set in the aftermath of a more devastating WWI...

Hey guys, later today I'm going to be running a post-apocalypse game set in the aftermath of a more devastating WWI. I've got everything set up, but I'd appreciate any suggestions for encounters or set pieces you guys can think up.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vegetarian
youtube.com/watch?v=_qApXdc1WPY
warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/this-red-zone-in-france-is-so-dangerous-100-years-after-wwi-it-is-still-a-no-go-area.html/2
smithsonianmag.com/history/legends-what-actually-lived-no-mans-land-between-world-war-i-trenches-180952513/
worldwar1.com/itafront/marmolada.htm
firstworldwar.com/atoz/rats.htm
firstworldwar.com/features/slang.htm
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2015/07/d100-strange-encounters-in-or-under-no.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2016/10/d100-greater-hauntings-for-weird-war-one.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2015/07/d100-whats-in-thet-hole-in-no-mans-land.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2015/07/weird-war-1-no-mans-land-scenery.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2015/07/d100-no-mans-land-encounters.html
suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1034444/
youtube.com/watch?v=G0KQYHJ6K_s
youtube.com/watch?v=mUdXceY4GuQ
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Baltimore
amanacer-fiend0.deviantart.com/art/The-Green-Death-636955966
youtube.com/watch?v=O9AGVARpqdk
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

That sounds cool OP
I don't have any suggestions but your game sounds like fun

Got anymore details OP?
Maybe then I can help with what you're looking for

How did WWI escalate into an apocalypse? What are the super weapons?

not OP but chemical weapons or biological weapons would be cool.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vegetarian

Trench ghosts might be fun.

> The characters have to traverse a minefield, or area with loads of enexploded ordinance
> Deep running bunker system or pre-war fortress as a dungeon
> labyrinthine mess of trenches and tunnels in a hotly contested area, full of lost supplies and the dead

> wrecks from a naval battle stranded on a sandbar near denmark or dogger bank, accessible at low tide to those brave enough
> anytihng from this movie- youtube.com/watch?v=_qApXdc1WPY

Final Blackout has a cool WWI trench warfare vibe even though it's set in the future.

Cartoon needs moar Vickers or Maxim guns.

The gun of the future is the Ruger Mini-14 lol

A group of hyper-competent soliders who still think the war is on because they haven't left the trenches and occasionaly an "enemy" runs towards them and they kill him. In reality thes "enemies" are messengars sent to tell them to go home.

The Germans do not collapse in 1918 and hold out over the winter. In spring of 1919, the entente resume the offensive. after a month or two everything collapses as a more virulent and deadly variatey of the Spanish flu rips through the world, killing millions. The players are a british tank crew stranded in belgium.

if you want even more global unrest have the various colonial nations start revolting due to europe essentially collapsing, maybe have a soldiers rebellion against the USA trying to force them to get them out of the virus ravaged wasteland of europe to spread the war there, have the warlords of china spiral completely out of control and maybe the russian civil war last a heck of a lot longer as various communist bastions get wrecked by the flu etc etc

what if all countries devolved into civil war when the germans refused to sign anything?

It would be like Russian Civil War: Europe edition, with a million factions all vying for their own power.

I remember a lot of memoirs stating that people were getting close to revolution towards the end there... the war was pushing everyone pretty hard and leaders were getting worried their people might snap. Especially after the Russian revolution

>In the grim darkness of the distant future, there is only war
>The year is 2917
>The war has raged on for over a millennium
>Britain has changed dynasties seventy times, now they're ruled by a Japanese family that barely even speaks Engrish
>France has had twenty revolutions with five different froms of republic, 4 Bourbon branches and 3 competing Bonaparte claimants that eventually settled for an elective Bourbon-Bonaparte duumverate that devolves into another war of succession/revolution whenever one of them dies [The French government pretends everything is fine, claims it's target practice]
>The German Kaisers have become more inbred, more handicapped and more agressive with every passing generation
>The trenches have been built up to the point where they've become giant fortresses perpetually shooting at eachother
>The participating countries have forced breeding programs in place to bring ever more soldiers to the front
>The average private is now aged 12
>If you somehow manage to live past age 20, you're almost certainly at least an NCO
>Due to rapid natural selection, the soldiers at the front have evolved to the point of having superhuman reflexes and increased resilience against bullets
>The Americans still aren't involved but claim they're winning the war singlehandedly
>Cute musclegirls on both sides

'Murica!

It's a solid rifle, to be honest. Not too dissimilar to the AR-15 in fact.

Have them go through a fresh red zone:
warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/this-red-zone-in-france-is-so-dangerous-100-years-after-wwi-it-is-still-a-no-go-area.html/2
In which the scavengers aren't a legend anymore:
smithsonianmag.com/history/legends-what-actually-lived-no-mans-land-between-world-war-i-trenches-180952513/

And have you read about the fortresses built inside glaciers?
worldwar1.com/itafront/marmolada.htm

Have hungry rats crawling into their faces during the dark:
firstworldwar.com/atoz/rats.htm
They are running away from something, probably hungrier sikhs.

Use trench slang:
firstworldwar.com/features/slang.htm

For inspiration.

If the German 1918 spring offensive was more prepared to exploit its success this is a very real possibility.

Fuck it, let's add in an underground bit too, where they're trying to dig under enemy fortifications. In the meantime the other side is doing the exact same, all stuck underground in the dark, silent, trying to hear a German while armed with TnT.

You hear a Hun? You leave and blow up your own shaft, only to start all over the next day.

this is very interesting OP, but I have some questions:
is the virus still an issue or is everyone left, for the most part, immune?
Is there any official government responses to the outbreak, were any areas gassed or shelled to prevent infection?
is the illness immune to the gas?
did the governments actually collapse or are they still existant but in hiding?
how much devestation are we talking about here, is it like ten percent of the world population or are we talking like huge parts of the world are left emptied out?

Right here nigger

elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2015/07/d100-strange-encounters-in-or-under-no.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2016/10/d100-greater-hauntings-for-weird-war-one.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2015/07/d100-whats-in-thet-hole-in-no-mans-land.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2015/07/weird-war-1-no-mans-land-scenery.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2015/07/d100-no-mans-land-encounters.html

The virus is no longer an issue
Aside from the obvious quarantine methods commonly used for illnesses, no
Viruses cannot be killed by gas
almost total collapse. any government that remains controls a small area
black death scale devestation

damn good resources user.
hope op uses them.

L RON HUBBARD WAS A BLACK MAN!
HIS REAL NAME WAS L RON HOYABEMBE!

>more devastating
How about ash? Lots of ash.

Nothing more is really necessary. Just lots of ash tiles and rocks

would OP be opposed to the idea of plague zombies? Not like, reanimated or anything, just incredibly sick people who stumble around in search of warmth and meat. couple this with nurgle like resistance to pain and an at least slight ability to use some tools when not holding themselves for warmth.

Have you considered mustard gas weather conditions?

So much of it could have been released during the war that caused the apocalypse it's almost part of the eco system in some areas.
Ground water always has to be tested and usually purified as best a drinker can.

On occasion, when the conditions are right, it coalesces enough to become a main component of either rain, fog or a storm.

other effects would be seen through the animal kingdom.
Creatures developing deformities and, in some rare cases, immunity via mutation.
perhaps even adapting to the gas so much they not only rely on it, they thrive in its presence.

Consider the problem of rat swarms with all the death and decay.
huge, hungry rats, red of eye and foaming at the mouth, always on the edge of turning on each other unless some unfortunate food source wanders into their territory.
then?
then they home in on that warm, edible thing with a laser like intent.
a carpet of glinting red eyes, scraggly brown mud caked fur, lashing rope like tails and of course the teeth. the yellow, gnawing teeth.

Now consider those rats festooned with yellow pustules, mustardy coloured foam fleks around their mouth, eyes glinting with a yellow sickness and still ever so, ever so hungry.
each one you stomp down on erupts in a small burst of burning, toxic gas.

I don't know why, but I always pictured the Creepy Wall Campaign in a WW1-esque world.
>suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1034444/

Shit, wrong pic.

1. The deadly gases are more deadly, and more persistent than ever imagined.

2. The Spanish Flu arrives early, and is more deadly.

3. The dead are active, and vengeful.

Thanks!

>3. The dead are active, and vengeful.
So, do they turn on the living in general or do they still fight according to national allegiance?

Everyone was angry after the war.

The Germans were angry they lost, and had to pay reparations to the winners, eventually leading to the rise of Hitler.

The Italians were unhappy, even though they were on the winning side, and gained lots of land. Mussolini gained power promising to make Italy great again.

France and the UK were unhappy that they lost a lot of men. This led to them backing down whenever Hitler made a demand of them because they didn't want another war. Even when the war broke out, there was very little fighting on their part, and a slogan in France asked why die for Danzig.

The Americans were unhappy even though they stayed out of the war for the most part, and joined two years after the Lusitania was sunk. They were angry that Europe dragged them into the war.

Both, like an Iron maiden cover

>and gained lots of land
Nah. As far as I know they only gained South Tirol (and Istria?), when they were promised pretty much the entire Adriatic coast. Albania as a country exists solely because the Entente wanted to keep it out of Italian hands, because they believed Italy didn't push its weight enough (due to its atrocious performance against Italy. Who knew that trench warfare isn't such a hot idea when you're fighting uphill?). Hence Italy's slogan being "mutilated victory". Because that's what it was to the Italians: they sent their men to die in a war they could've easily remained out of (the Triple Entente was a defensive alliance against France, the moment Germany declared war on France (and not the other way around), Italy's obligations became null and void) and got only leftovers for their sacrifice. If I'm not mistaken, Italy being a joke and needing to assert itself also played a role. They needed France for their independence and they needed Prussia to win Venice, so they had no real victory of their own under their belt.

Saying Italy got lots of land is pretty unfair. They got a pittance compared to what they felt they deserved, and it wasn't like they asked for a whole lot of land in the first place.

actually, lets run a little further with that last point.
The poem flanders fields sort of implies that the dead want us to stop this petty bullshit fighting. Mix that with the thematic elements of post war dadaism, it's belief that mankind doesn't deserve art because we're so shitty that we took a genuinely awesome era and ruined it with a world war, and you get something awesome.

The war dead arise to fight both one another and to get revenge on the living. like they genuinely despise the living. they view every living human as playing some small role in this great tragedy, by allowing the war to start, to continue, etc. and so they will attack anyone. I mean, obviously they'll ocasionally be sympathetic to living draftees and conscientious objecters but overwhelmingly they feel "you didn't do enough". not that they can voice any of this. they rarely retain enough flesh to speak.

Gonna say it again OP: semi-sentient homicidal mustard gas cloud.

My great-grandfather got gassed in WW1 and it fucked his shit right up.

I feel like this movie needs to be mentioned
youtube.com/watch?v=G0KQYHJ6K_s

oh my god that's terrifying

>>The Americans still aren't involved but claim they're winning the war singlehandedly
Salty britcuck detected

your welcome for saving you twice

You're forgetting the angriest of all: Hungary

Not OP, but so did my Great-Grandfather. Lost a lung, survived on a chocolate ration until the medics arrived.

Prior to the war, he planned to be a priest. After the war, he decided that humankind should die out, and didn't want to have anything to do with them (hence becoming a farmer).

The Cloud's a cool visual at least.

i like the idea of the cloud being a partial manifest of the nihlism of the war dead. like, those who had their whole bodies destroyed and cannot come back as corpses to destroy the living will often do so through this gestalt miasma of gloom and misery that is the cloud.

Gas Spirit
As if the terrors of chemical warfare aren’t bad
enough, some units have reported gas clouds that
don’t drift with the wind and disperse as they
should. Instead these clouds move, hiding out in
shell craters to emerge at night and enter dugouts
or waylay men in the dark. They seem alive…and
hungry.
A gas spirit looks like a compact cloud of mixed
poison gas, with swirls of green and yellow vapor
within an area as big as a Medium Burst Template.
At the very center a perceptive person may notice
a sinister red pulsation. Gas spirits do not speak
and cannot manipulate physical items larger than
a piece of paper.
Area Appearing: Western Front after 1915.
Attributes: Agility d10, Smarts d6, Spirit d6,
Strength d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Notice d6, Stealth d10
Pace: —; Parry: 2; Toughness: 5
Special Abilities:
• Elemental: As a being of living gas, a gas
spirit takes no additional damage from
Called Shots, is Fearless, and immune to
disease or poison.
• Ethereal: Gas spirits can pass through any nonairtight
barrier and fit through any opening.
• Flight: Gas spirits fly at Pace 6, with a Climb
rate of 3. They seldom rise more than a few
yards above the ground, however.
• Invulnerable: Invulnerable to all nonmagical
attacks except fire.
• Poison: Characters within a gas cloud must
roll to resist gas (see Battlefield Hazards,
Gas, in the Weird War One Player’s Guide). The
type of gas is left to the gruesome whims of
the War Master.

Depends on the man. The real patriotic men and maybe those later in the war (knew what they were getting into) could arise in times of need or operate independently but in favor of their nation. The cowards, madmen, and those feel they've been betrayed would just be mad ghouls lashing out at everyone.

I WANT THIS THREAD TO LIVE GODDAMMIT. WHERE IS OP. THIS IDEA IS GOOD.

OP might be running his game now cause he said he was running it later today.

Oh shit. It's not a mustard gas cloud.

It's a Ghost Cloud. A Wraithstorm. Literally the physical manifestation of a million shrieking dead soldiers who can now only gather up handfuls of their own bonedust and whip it into a hellish storm of despair and disaster.

I fucking love Veeky Forums somedays.

youtube.com/watch?v=mUdXceY4GuQ

for some set pieces.

Could be unrelated. Maybe a megavolcanic eruption or string of asteroid impacts. Men fighting in trenches amid the ashes of a dying world.

If he decided mankind should die out, how did you come to be, COMRADE?

Warm pussy is still warm pussy, user.

>Men fighting in trenches amid the ashes of a dying world.

God damn, you have sold me on this setting in one sentence, man. That is beautifully well said.

Wonky scientist sets off yellowstone due to his experience in the war and becoming a misantrope. BAM, the USA at least and the northern hemisphere/world is smoldered.

Cthulhu or [insert cosmic horror] wakes up.

>Ctrl + F
>Not a single cue for Iron Storm

OP, you want to get yourself familiarised with that game and its setting. It's pretty much exactly what you want, with all the implications you want for it. Too much stuff to cram into 2k sign post

>Group encounters trench scavengers back from a fresh run
>They've found goodies such as ammunition and a few valuables from corpses
>They invite players on a run, but they seem shifty
>Get to the trenches, it's just barren and muddy, nothing in sight
>It was just a trick to get the players alone and in the middle of nowhere
>Eventually betray the players, attempt to kill them in the trenches
>Inner trench fighting with handguns ensues
>Players come out on top and get a sweet little stash of goodies

I'd need more details about the world but I can think of plenty. Like, are the Belgians hostile to the players because of the war or has the apocalypse changed the primary concern of nations into mere survival? Are there settlements or population centers cropping up after the devastation of the Spanish flu? Migrants?

>>you're welcome for saving you twice
You mean being late for the wars you don't start?

If they had even semi competent commanders they could have reduced the war by several years by knocking AH out. Sadly they probably had the worst commander of the whole war

There aren't really nations anymore. It's every man for himself now.

a machine/undead man who has been working alone to bury the dead from a single battle since it ended years ago.
a trench with a nasty boss fight against a wolf-sized rat with a mustard gas breath weapon who was protecting her nest and pups.
a beautiful field of poppies, seemingly untouched by the end of the world. is it mined? haunted? options abound
a massive deep-tunnel complex dug out by deserters who hoped to find a place to hide from the war.
mud-skeleton fights. lots of em

Valkyrie.
Raiders who float the wastes in an outpost made of lashed together zeppelins.
From above they look for signs of settlements or recent conflict.
On spying it they dispatch a single zeppelin, by night if possible and from it they rappel down en masses out of the looming dark above.
They take anything they can lay hands upon and tie rope to.
Yes, they also claim the dead and dying.
Like their namesake.
Clean soil and good fertiliser is hard to come by and Being above the clouds allows them some meagre areas with which to grow produce on dedicated sections of the zeppelins.
Of course when the harvests are lean, the protein of an untainted corpse can come in handy too.

There you go.
Skybandits who are drawn to conflict, can just appear out of a dark night sky with no warning and have a just reputation for cannibalism.

Cool. I'm getting ready for the game right now.

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Baltimore
>humanity cancels WW1, interrupted by vampire (the properly monstrous sort) apocalypse

Also SCP-186.

This but toxic rather than radioactive.
amanacer-fiend0.deviantart.com/art/The-Green-Death-636955966

>a massive deep-tunnel complex dug out by deserters who hoped to find a place to hide from the war.

A gigantic 30 foot wall that stretches from the lowlands to the swiss alps, it has the occasional breach in it here and there, it is manned by a skeleton crew of the kaisers most loyal soldiers and general staff.
They act as if the war is still properly going and attempt to stop anyone from going through the wall, they forcefully conscript people into their ranks

>Sadly they probably had the worst commander of the whole war
That's a tough competition.
>Luigi Cadorna
>Enver Pasha
>Conrad von Hutzendorf

>The party enters the trench, trench knives, clubs, and shovels at the ready. The Aussie pushes up his head and levels his shotgun, taking point.
>The party sloshes through the flooded trench, every step rewarded with a strength sapping suck and splash. The early morning fog drifts from the corpse littered No-Man's-Land, chemical poison still tainting the air with acrid malice.
>The trench is empty thus far.
>Eventually they reach the bunker, a crashed Jerry fighter smouldering atop it. Paranoid the American rolls perception to detect a trap or signs of an ambush.
>He succeeds the roll.
>He hears a cackling cry from the no man's land, far too high in pitch to be anything...human. The toxic Fog begins to drift back, the party hurring into the bunker, shutting the bulkhead behind them and donning their gas masks in a hurry. The Italian fails his roll and doesn't get his mask on in time, taking minor damage from the Fog before succeeding the next roll.
>A latern dimly lights the abandoned bunker. Through the flickering lamplight the party sees Kraut corpses smeared across the floor and walls, bodies smashed apart and gathered in a macabre nest in the rear of the room. The Frenchie recognizes one of the Jerry commanders in the pile, and searches his mutilated person. The documents that they're after are found his his breast pocket, coordinates to an old weapons cache.
>The howl rolls in on the dread mist, closer, louder, more unnatural. The American makes a sign of the cross and chambers a round. The Italian hefts his machine gun. The Aussie grits his teeth from behind a battered mask, aiming his shotgun at the door.
>Galloping footfalls can be heard echoing from across the No Mans Land, coming in like a freight train. The party gathers together in the center, weapons readied at any entrance.
>A moment of pure silence passes.

>The bunker floor explodes in a plume of dirt and concrete, the hideous dog like horse thing screeching and braying and swiping claw like hooves, needle teeth snapping. It frees itself from the tunnel breach like a Paddy digger and lunges at the Italian. He empties his Lewis into the beast, it's chemical burned hide cracking like brittle bone and blood showering out from its pale flesh.

>The rest of the party rolls for initiative, and prays to God.

FUCK I wasn't sold but now I am. Time to go draft a campaign.

Holy shit. That was amazing.

Got anymore?

TURN THAT POOP INTO WINE

Meddling time travelers using the local nations in a proxy war. Largely future non-european nations trying to get their enemies to wreck each other and their colonial empires.

>We're living in the timeline where they win

Sure, what's the tone?

>The average private is now aged 12
>Cute musclegirls on both sides
pedo pls go

He didn't say anything about womankind.

Heroic?

Look up wild deserters. Its one of the things that never really happened but at the time a lot of the troops "Knew" was happening because the guy from the next trench over swore his mate had seen it or something.
there are a few good stories written after the war and accounts of rumours that circulated at the time.

The gist is that groups of soldiers from both side deserted and went feral in no mans land, tunnelling into the earth to get away from the shells, only surfacing to pull down bodies and later attack living soldiers to feed on.

the stories at the time were things like sappers (the guys who dug tunnels into enemy trenches ending up being swarmed by them or accidentally tunnelling in to what they think at first is an enemy sapping tunnel accept there's no light, just piles of gnawed bones and scuttling sounds coming towards them.

that and accounts of charges across no man's land where all around people are disappearing into vast wholes opening up in the ground, only everyone's so deafened from the shelling around them it takes people a while to realise the "shells" landing the nearest to them aren't making any sound, and the poor bastards caught up weren't disintegrated, they're at the bottom of the holes screaming as something drags them beneath the mud.

>It's a solid rifle

Have you ever owned one? They're fucking shit. It falls apart.

The real horror is that there never were and feral people.

It was all just rotting corpses, rats, and the muddy soil turning into quicksand.

>there were never any feral people

that we know of

America is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.

I like this idea.

Every platoon has their own myths and legends surrounding the mysterious men that live in the clouds. Their massive airships that haunt the skys of No Mans Land, looking to scavenge scraps left by the rest of us. They send out their gas-mask-men who never move quite like the rest of us, and they snatch up the wounded.

Lord only know what happens to them.

>haunt the skys of No Mans Land
>No Mans
>skys

When is OP coming back? I want to hear about the session.

>more devastating

A more devastating influezna outbreak? Or a strain of plague for some medieval vibe?

bump

I like to do a theme or title before every game then have a PC recap it to the rest of us in their words.

During WW1, a great and mysterious power was loosed on to the battlefield that tore across Europe. To combat this new breed of unworldly foes the Allies created the "Recon, Assassination, Information gathering, and Discovery" company. These brave men, brought together by undescribable circumstance, would join forces to investigate, combat, and halt the strange happenings during WW1 by any means possible. Under the supervision of a powerful, secretive, and unforgiving leader, the volunteer soldiers of R.A.I.D. Company would conduct missions against enemies both known and unthought of. Though armed with weapons of the "Great War," these men would experience a new and horrific type of fight during these missions. This fight will be for their countries, their sanity, and their lives. This is their story!

Not only do the Bolsheviks win in Russia, they do it quickly, with the whole Russian Civil War wrapped up by the first anniversary of Red October, in 1918. With a less damaged country the would be commies turn to exporting their specific Bolsehvik (tm) brand of communsim to the world. The Red menace was much stronger worldwide, with socialist dissidents in every street of every city from England to the heart of Central Asia to deepest Amazon. Riots and civil wars sparked by the rising of workers revolutiosn everywhere contributed to the chaos of the apocalypse.

Though governments world-wide have collapsed the communists remain connected, an informal Final Internationale of gangsters and bandits who've abandoned the true dream of communism, or rallying the workers. Beware angering them, for the commies have friends everywhere, from the little village to the remains of the great cities. Or perhaps you might turn to the commies if you have been ostracized by everything else, a last chance for the oppressed of the earth. The Internationale unites the gangs in song

> Written by L. Ron Hubbard.

I wonder who *REALLY* wrote it... Cause it almost certainly wasn't Ronny.

L. Ron Hubbard was pulp fiction writer before being a cult leader. He used to be a fairly prominent one too, and hung out with people like Harlan Ellison, the guy who wrote "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." He got into being a cult leader because writing pulp fiction didnt pay well enough, according to Ellison.

youtube.com/watch?v=O9AGVARpqdk

Lots of people don't get their start in what their most famous for

Right, I need your guys help. How would I stat a anti-tank rifle? Specifically the T-Gewehr.

Please tell me this is an actual conspiracy theory.

>It got posted on Veeky Forums. If it wasn't a real conspiracy theory before, /pol/ will be trying to weaponize it into one by the end of the week.

Maybe the Spanish Flu epidemic managed to be even worse