Darwin's World
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Post-Apocalyptic | |
Systems | d20 Modern d20 System |
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Website | http://www.darwinrpg.com |
Darwin's World, created by
The online e-zine, Post Apocalyptic Dispatch, continues to provide short articles that support game play for both gamemasters and players alike. The game is still heavily supported with new material coming out on a regular basis.
Mature Themes
Unlike many existing post-apocalyptic role-playing games, Darwin's World is often described as a darker and more "realistic" game system. In specific, its use of real-life deformities and genetic diseases to portray character defects, as well as issues like slavery, racism, and drug use give it a grittier quality than most post-apocalyptic RPGs, which often have a fantastic or "comic book" feel that requires a broader willingness to suspend disbelief.
Versions 2.0 and 2.5
While the original Darwin's World books clearly put forth a timeline and history, the second edition (and most recent edition, v2.5) has a broader focus intending to provide rules, suggestions, and guidelines for any kind of post-apocalyptic
Game Supplements
A wide range of supplements, sourcebooks, and modules are available for Darwin's World.
- Darwin's World 2: Survivor's Handbook. The current edition of the basic rules.
- Cave of Life. A low-level adventure detailing an abandoned missile silo.
- The Lost City/Return To The Lost City. A journey to a monster-infested city sunken beneath the earth.
- Death By Corium Light. High-level adventure detailing the corium mines of Little Vegas.
- The Foundationists. A sourcebook detailing the setting's premier technology-crazed faction.
- Metal Gods. Rules for robots and making androids and cyborgs as characters.
- The Lost Paradise. A regional sourcebook detailing the Pacific Northwest.
- Terrors of The Lost Paradise. A sourcebook presenting new monsters.
- Against The Wastelords. A low-level adventure involving a desperate race to find a nuclear missile.
- New World Order. A mid-level adventure that involves the characters in a war against a strange new enemy.
- The Last God. A high-level adventure pitting the characters against an animate and intelligent bioweapon that pre-dates the Fall.
- High Road To Hell. Gen Con 2004 adventure. A mid-level adventure utilizing a time limit mechanic.
- One Man's Garbage/Another Man's Treasure. Gen Con 2005 adventure. A mid-level adventure in which characters struggle to find the legendary "Mount of Thorns".
- Humanity In A Bottle. Boxed set sourcebook/module describing in detail a dystopiansociety long forgotten by the inhabitants of the world.
- The Broken and The Lost. A sourcebook presenting new rules for savagecharacters, tribes, and societies.
- The Ruin at The End of The World. A sourcebook/module detailing the ruins of Los Angeles; also the first Darwin's World supplement to make use of supernatural story elements.
- Bad News In Bugtown. Gen Con 2007 adventure. A low-level adventure set in the ruins of Amarillo.
- Halidom. Boxed set module detailing an epic campaignagainst a notorious raider army, the "Doomriders".
- Secrets of The Mind Masters. A high-level adventure pitting the player characters against the super-psychics known as the "Savants".
Real-Life Inspiration
Numerous adventures written for Darwin's World either briefly feature, reference, or center around real-life places and events. These include:
- The adventure, Cave of Life, describes an old and abandoned Titan missile silo, accurately detailed.
- In The Last God, the real-life town of Center, Colorado, is re-imagined as a covert biological weapons plant disguised as a small backwater town. The map used in the adventure is precisely modeled on the actual town.
- The "Mount of Thorns" that is the object of the player character's quest in Another Man's Garbage is the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
- The Ruin at The End of The World features numerous Los Angeles landmarks. The Hollywoodare now home to a fledgling empire of half-man, half-beast creatures.
- The monument at Mount Rushmore plays a major role in the campaign adventure, "Halidom".
- Certain details of the Philadelphia Experiment are mentioned (and play an important role) in Secrets of The Mind Masters.
Related works
- Darwin's World was originally based on a play-by-email("PBEM") game titled Necropolis (on which much of the material in Ruin at The End of The World is based). A second pbem game (Shadow of The Savants) further fleshed out some of the background material for the game's Twisted Earth setting.
- Burning Lands is a science-fiction novel set some three centuries after World War III, making use of the "Twisted Earth" setting.
Reception
Darwin's World won the 2002 Gold
References
- ^ "The ENnie Awards -- 2002 Awards". www.ennie-awards.com. Archived from the original on 3 August 2009. Retrieved 19 April 2022.