Game Style

Game Style:

The post-apocalyptic genre can support many different game styles, depending on how seriously you wish to deal with nuclear war and its aftermath. Characters can range from grim and gritty survivalists to supermutant action heroes. As a simplification, post-nuke RPGs can be rated as low, medium, or high wahoo:

Low Wahoo: It would be pretty depressing to play a straight post-apocalyptic RPG - there needs to be some heroic action to make it interesting. In such a setting, there would be only minor mutations (if any), no psionics, and very little weird science. Basic survival is the primary goal. Check out Twilight 2000 if you like this sort of thing.
Medium Wahoo: It's fun to play a bit fast and loose with realism. At medium wahoo, characters might have significant mutations and some simple psionics may exist. Extreme silliness (like mutant rabbit people or talking plants) is to be avoided. The Wasteland and Fallout computer games would be medium wahoo.
High Wahoo: Giant atomic ants. Brain-eating radiation zombies. Mutant animals that think, speak, and act like humans. At high wahoo, science takes a back seat to the imagination. This style of campaign looks and plays like the Gamma World.

(Note that I have not discussed supernatural apocalypse RPGs like Rifts or Shadowrun at all. I don't really count those as part of the 'post-nuke' genre - they are cross-genre games. Magic and the supernatural do not have a place in Ground Zero - the closest you'll get is paranormal psionic powers.)

Ground Zero definitely falls closer to the high-wahoo end of the spectrum. Science-fantasy is the most heroic sub-genre of post-nuke gaming, after all.

Ground Zero has more 'weirdness' than the Wasteland or Fallout computer RPGs, but tries to capture some of the mood from those games. Although many of the game rules have been 'borrowed' from Darwin's World, Ground Zero has few of the dark or grim aspects of that game's Twisted Earth setting. Ground Zero owes more to Gamma World (or Jonathan Tweet's Omega World) in terms of style.

A Note About Balance:

Ground Zero is meant to offer a different experience than presented in a typical d20 RPG. It's more random and less balanced. It's meant to be a lot of fun to play, with lots of good and bad things happening to the PCs in even a few sessions.

Ground Zero PCs advance quickly, gaining XP and relics to make them more powerful. But they also die at a relatively high rate. Rolling up your next character, however, is part of the fun; so don't worry too much about it.

Ground Zero characters might not be terribly balanced. You can get lucky and have good mutations that work together, and you can get unluckly and wind up with nothing to get excited about. For a campaign with a high death rate, this imbalance is part of the fun.

Game Style:

A Note About Balance:

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