After the Bomb

Overall score:

After the Bomb started life years ago as a series of adventure supplements for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles role-playing game. They took place in a post-apocalypse Earth full of more mutant animals than people, and each book dealt with a different area of the world-east coast U.S., west coast U.S., southern Mexico, Australia, Great Britain, and the space stations orbiting the planet. I have them all. It's surprising, giving the highly ninja-oriented nature of the game, that they never got to Asia, and I would have loved books about Africa and the oceans, but it was not to be--TMNT became less and less popular as the turtles became more and more a "kid" thing, so Palladium stopped producing books for the series and focused on Rifts--allegedly the "adult" post-apocalypse game.

In a stroke of genius so brilliant I want to kiss their collective foreheads, Palladium has decided to re-release After the Bomb as a stand-alone RPG, and they even brought back Erick Wujcik, the man who wrote the first ones, to write the new incarnation. Though it only covers the east coast U.S., After the Bomb is back with a vengeance, and the promise of new supplements is heady brew indeed. Much of the book is an overhaul of the mutant creation system, with several very clever new additions.

You start, as you do in all Palladium games, with the 8 attributes. You then roll up your animal type, and already you'll spot a number of big differences from previous After the Bomb books--the animal list is a little more complete (though generally limited to North American animals and a few zoo animals), and includes a section of purebreds and throwbacks, which are both new additions. Purebreds are an interesting idea in the After the Bomb world--communities of mutant animals that all have the same mutations and characteristics. Some of these are pretty normal, like the Texas Longhorn, while others are very wacky indeed, such as the flying pigs and the spider goats (if you think spider goats are a little too unbelievable, you need to stay up on your current events--they've already produced some rudimentary versions in the real world). Throwbacks are even more bizarre--in short, they're what happens when ancient genes somehow manifest themselves again. The most prominent of these is the allosaur chicken, based on the idea that if birds came from dinosaurs, then they must still have some dinosaur genes lurking in there somewhere. My favorite throwback is the Okefenokee Swine, a tusked behemoth that rules the swamps like some kind of Oligocene proto-pig.

For old-timer fans like me, they also include a table of all the animals from all of the old books, but in general I'm much more impressed with the new ones. To explain why, I need to explain how the animal creation system works: every animal has a list of stats, including size level (1 through 20) and humanoid development, with subcategories for hands, speech, biped, and human looks. An alligator, for instance, is large at size level 12, and starts with no hands, no speech, no human looks, no bipedal ability (for those who don't know, a biped is one who walks on two legs. The majority of this site's readers are bipeds). Based on these starting levels, it is determined that an alligator gets 30 BIO-E, or Biological Energy. You use BIO-E to build your character.

Using our alligator example, we can buy him full speech for 10 BIO-E, full biped for 10 more, and full hands for 10 more (after all, I want him to be able to use weapons and stuff). That uses up all 30 of my BIO-E, so I'm done--but what about all of the other cool powers? In the original version, alligators had access to only a few extras, like deadly teeth and natural body armor. In the new version of the rules, the alligator has access to thirteen different weapons and powers, all of which are very cool. Under the old rules you only had two options: give up a few size levels in exchange for extra BIO-E, or cut back on your human development by taking only partial speech (for example) instead of full. The new system is far more exciting--every animal now has access to a number of disadvantages, called vestigial traits, that can give you more BIO-E to play with. The Alligator can gain more BIO-E by choosing to become color-blind, or restricting himself to only a carnivorous diet. With vestigial traits you can make the character you really want without having to sacrifice size or coolness, and they make for even better role-playing opportunities (what would a peace-loving sheriff be like if he was an alligator whose brain was hard-wired with predatorial instincts?).

The animal types range all over the zoo, from badgers and moles to lions and elephants. One of the best parts of the game, in fact, is the randomness of the animal tables-you know you want to make a cool tiger warrior, but then when you roll up a chipmunk, what do you do? It's almost like putting a puzzle together as you carefully build your chipmunk (starts with size level 1, partial hands and speech, advanced vision, and 70 BIO-E) into a lethal killing machine as scary as any tiger. Nine times out of ten, you'll have more fun with that chipmunk than with any old pipe-dream tiger of death.

But, technically speaking, you shouldn't build your animal just yet. Step 3 is to determine background, education, and skills. This being a post-apocalypse world, you get typical stuff like frontier bumpkins, simple villagers, guerillas, bandits, runaway slaves, the rare academics and the always-amusing feral animals (the ones who raised themselves in the wilderness, and act like, well, animals). Your background can give you bonuses to your attributes, BIO-E, and even skills. The new book introduces the idea of apprenticeships, which smoothes out skill selection a great deal. Once you have a good idea of who your character is, you can build a better mutant, and the world will beat a path to your door (or something. Whatever).

The only thing lacking in the book is world information. Wujcik makes a quick run-down of the world, leaving most to future supplements, but gives very little info on the basic setting of eastern United States. Most of what's here is ripped straight from the old book, which is too bad because the old book never really got specific enough for me. The basic setup is a big nation of human supremacists (the aptly named Empire of Humanity), surrounded by vast reaches of uncivilized ruins full of mutant animals. Not much to work worth, and hardly an original setting for a game. Still, even without a lot of world info, the book is worth it for the updated animal lists and skill system, and an imaginative GM can find plenty to do for his games--aided by an outstanding encounter table and some very clever scavenging tables. The adventures included in the book, disappointingly, are straight reprints from the original book--first-time players will love them, but I wanted something new.

What else can I say? After the Bomb is back, and it's better than ever.

Written by Fellfrosch on January 29th, 2002