If there was a downside to The Day After Ragnarok it's that there just wasn't enough of it. I loved the book, and there's certainly enough there to run a campaign or three, but I wish there was more. In the very near future, there will be.
Atomic Overmind has announced that Tehran: Nest of Spies -- the first supplement for The Day After Ragnarok -- is releasing November 30, 2009 as a PDF source book for Savage Worlds and HERO 6th Edition.
After a few years away, the Blackazor Guild and I returned to MEPACon last weekend, our local gaming convention held near Scranton, Pa. every spring and fall. We used to be regulars at the local convention scene, but over the last few years we been running our own howngrown Nuke(m)Con instead.
We decided to return to MEPACon after Origins, when we had the realization that our local convention might provide the perfect opportunity to run games that we don't normally play in our weekly game. Stuff like Savage Worlds, Mutants & Masterminds and Call of Cthulhu, which we love, but never seem to get to play.
The Ruins of New York is a scenario for The Day After Ragnarok, a campaign setting by Ken Hite published by Atomic Overmind Press and written for the Savage Worlds role-playing game. This scenario was run at MEPACon Fall 2009. You can read my playtest notes and learn more about the adventure through my Week After Tomorrow feature on Nuketown.
The scenario is available as Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader format. It includes a 7-page adventure and six pre-generated characters (with character sheets and backgrounds).
Major Simon Cartwright is a globetrotting spy who’s traveled to all the surviving major cities in the world … as well as most of the ruined ones. He’s a debonair spy, one who revels in the glamorous aspects of the world of espionage: fast cars, high stake gambling and beautiful women.
At the same time though, he also loves the thrill of the mission. Be it smuggling Russian ophi-tech plans out of Hong Kong or extracting a double agent from beyond the Serpent Wall, he finds the challenge of pulling off the impossible exhilarating.
While Cartwright has spent much of his professional life adventuring on his own, in recent years he’s come to appreciate the value of working with a team. As such, he puts his insights and experience to good use in making sure his fellow agents get out alive. That said, he’s not an arrogant commander – he listens to what his colleagues have to say, and works with them to come up with an appropriate plan. It’s just that when that plan inevitably falls apart, he’s got the skill -- and the experience – to pull it back together again.
Jason Freewalker is a second-generation lawman, his father having become a Texas Ranger just after Serpentfall. In the early days after Serpentfall, he rode with his father, battling scaly monsters crawled out of the Rio Grande to drink the blood of children and the Serpent cults arose from the Gulf looking to spawn realms of madness.
He’s been riding and shooting since he could walk, and he’s wanted nothing more or less than to walk in his father’s footsteps. Tragically, he’s done just that; the year he became a Ranger, his father died at his side, fighting an infestation of ghouls in Houston. He now proudly wields his father’s gun – a pearl-inlaid, silver-gilded Colt .45 – and wears his steel-toed, Serpent-skinned boots (their skin being about the only good thing to come out of those Fallspawn).
In another life, Ollivander Ellis might have been a physicist or astronomer, but instead he grew up in the world of the Serpentfall. It’s lead him to dedicate his life to understanding its arcane secrets ... and fighting them when they’re unleashed upon the world. He’s battled latter-day Nazi mystics in Argentina, negotiated with the dwarves lurking in the Alps, and even ventured into the corpse of the World Serpent itself in his quest for knowledge. His quests have left deep wounds in his body and mind, but he refuses to stop because he knows that his opponents – those who embrace the horrors of Serpentfall – will never stop.
He’s technically a professor at Rhodes University, and he maintains and office at that institution. He’s only on campus for three months out of every 12, spending most of the rest of the time conducting field research or special operations for the British Empire.
Coromir is a modern barbarian. Born outside of Pittsburgh, as a teenager his family was slaughtered by the Black River Cult. He barely escaped the culling, and spent the next few years living on his own in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania. He swore an oath to avenge his family’s death, and when he was 19, he succeeded in finding and killing the naga behind the cult.
His desire for revenge was not sated however, and rather than return to civilization, he pledge his life to hunting abominations. His travels have taken him throughout the ruins of the United States. He has been consistently disappointed with the people he’s found there, cowardly, manipulative bastards all too eager to pay someone else to solve their problems, obsessed with returning to the Old Ways. As though technology can save them. As though a gun can help you when you’ve used up the last of your precious bullets.
He’s taken their silver and beer ... but he’s refused to live with them.
Jules Drake is the epitome of the dashing rocketeer; brave to the point of reckless, utterly loyal to the cause and his cohorts and unwilling to back down in the face of danger.
He's been extraordinarily successful in his endeavors, fighting for king and country and doing his part to ensure that the British Empire survives in the shadow of the Serpent. As such, Jules has often been tasked with special operations teams directed by MI6, and is on permanent loan to that agency.
Jules believes in getting the job done, and isn't overly concerned with how the regulations say it should be done. He counts on his abilities to cover any shortcomings that might be in a given plan. This confidence has served him well, but it's only a matter of time before his reach exceeds his grasp.
The Boundless family have long been adventurers, scouring the earth for new challenges, and using the knowledge and treasure they looted to found a dynasty. That dynasty was nearly ended when the Serpent fell, crushing London, but fortunately Andrea's father, Richard Boundless, was abroad in India when it happened.
Andrea grew up with the best of everything, but in her case that meant the best schools … and the best rifles. She attended university at the famed Rhodes University in South Africa, but she found academic life didn't suit her. "Why read about exotic locales when you can actually go there?" she told her father, "That's what you did."
When I heard about Ken Hite's The Day After Ragnarok (a postapocolyptic Savage Worlds camaign setting in which the Nazis awoke the Midgard serpent ... and America killed it with an atomic bomb), I had to buy it. And I had to find an excuse to run it. To that end I'll be debuting my scenario "The Ruins of New York" at MEPACon Fall 2009 in Clarks Summit, Pa (near Scranton, Pa.).
To prep for it, and because my online friends asked me to, I'm going to be blogging about Ragnarok all week. I'll be posting a character or a two a day, links to resources I'll be using, and the scenario itself. Click through to see the full list of articles.