[7:33 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
Thank you. My name is Scott Colin McDonald, and I am the author and creator of Wasteland Degenerates, a Mork Borg and Cy_Borg compatible tabletop RPG set in a sort of 1980s retrofuture where six different cataclysms vie for the privilege of destroying life on Earth. The themes are anticapitalistic (please send $$$ though), survivalistic, and darkly humorous.
[7:35 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
I wrote a 160 page book that roughly mirrors the Cy_Borg layout, though I have significant differences in lore, gear, and systems, including a vehicle road combat system based on Mad Max: Fury Road (and now Furiosa, I suppose).
[7:36 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
Unfortunately this 160 page book is not what is going to crowdfunding on June 12, but what will be coming is a 64 page zine with all of the character creation and vehicle rules, ripe to be plugged into your Cy_Borg or other ‘Borg style game.
[7:36 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
(the hardcover is still coming, crowdfunding is just complicated)
[7:37 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
I tell you all this to say that it’s a fully realized universe and I’m planning on many supplements over time. My primary inspirations were Gamma World (RIP James M. Ward), Car Wars, and Mad Max movies.
[7:37 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
(done)
[7:37 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Thanks, @Scott C. McDonald! The floor is open to questions!
[7:38 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Can you give us an overview of the setting?
[7:38 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
Sure!
[7:41 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
The setting is a sort of not-United States that has been blasted by nukes, meteorite hits, rifts opening to reveal horrible abominations under the earth, and inscrutable alien gods hungry for human minds. Gas Hog gangs control the roads, Federal Remnants still control significant but dwindling military and energy resources, and Postalists (a new religion that formed out of the Post Office) control the food supply, which are protein chips that double as the wasteland currency.
[7:42 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
There are mutant clans that band together due to similar mutations (not really family-based), androids, called RADBORGs, that have broken their shackles and started their own supremecist movements, two types of zombie plagues, and sinister sell-outs that serve the alien gods.
[7:42 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
(done)
[7:43 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
(No need for the (done) after the intro anymore. Thanks, though!)
[7:43 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
(okay, sorry )
[7:44 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Are the PCs all human, or can they be mutants, RADBORGs, etc.?
[7:46 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
The character classes in the upcoming zine will all be human, though you can start with mutations on the random starting tables, or from various class features (for example, the scientist class can start with a mutation, and uses Knowledge instead of Toughness to activate it, because they use it in the spirit of experimentation). Should I be successful enough to go to full hardcover, full-on mutants and RADBORGs will be added to the class list. If I’m successful even after that, the first expansion/block crawl campaign will have intelligent bears.
[7:48 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Intelligent bears are an ursine that trouble’s bruin.
[7:48 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
One of the lessons of the game is that alien gods might be ruining the world, but humans started it; I want to keep the focus on humanity for the most part.
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)Intelligent bears are an ursine that trouble’s bruin.
[7:49 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
I spent a lot of time thinking of the rights of armed bears.
[7:49 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
One of my Gamma World characters back in the day was a six-armed bear.
1
[7:49 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
The bear clan is called the Sign of Ur, and I may or may not have a Winnie the Pooh reference in there somewhere.
1
[7:50 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
Gamma World was good that way
[7:50 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
What sorts of mutations can PCs have?
[7:50 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
James M. Ward knows that the world needs more six-armed bears.
[7:51 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
Can I share a spread from our game that lists the mutations?
[7:51 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Sure!
[7:51 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
[7:52 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
When a PC gets a mutation, they’ll also get a complication, which has an aesthetic effect and also a worse effect when a PC gets a fumble when using their mutation.
[7:53 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
So say I want to sprout spider legs to climb walls and move fast, and I roll a 1 (or higher based on the number of times I’ve used the power today), I could accidentally spread zombie mushrooms or have my evil twin start controlling my actions
[7:55 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Will there be more mutations in the full game?
[7:56 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
The mutant character class will have unique mutations, but this is the main list for the game. I based the number of mutations on the Nano-Powers from Cy_Borg, of which there are 12.
[7:57 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
I also have 12 CosmOS interfaces, which are sort of mass market reality-altering devices, and 12 Tothtec relics, which are evil alien artifacts sent in meteors to spread chaos and doom.
[7:57 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
So there’s going to be no shortage of weird powers going off.
[7:57 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
And of course these are great areas for later expansions
[7:58 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
What sorts of things can the CosmOS interfaces and Tothtec relics do?
[7:59 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
I should also mention RAD implants, which are sort of nuclear prosthetics that have some bonus abilities and allow you to keep playing even after your arm gets ripped off or whatever.
[7:59 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
But back to CosmOS and Tothtec…
[8:02 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
CosmOS are sort of commercially useful things. There’s an invisible drill that can shred doors and vehicles, or dig a tunnel, of course a laser, there’s healing items, and one of my favorites is SaveGame, which allows you to save your current health status and then return to it later. One of them can even raise the dead.
[8:03 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
Tothtec is all pretty sinister stuff like creating zombies, draining life force, karma linking, and such. My favorite is a black beam of disaster that, once fired, will send one being beyond time and space; if it misses all the enemies, you have to target your friends; if you miss all your friends, you are yourself removed from the universe.
[8:05 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Wow.
[8:05 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
I also like the Mutator, which gives someone a mutation and complication permanently, as well as radiation sickness.
[8:06 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
CosmOS and Tothtec are roughly equivalent to Sacred and Unclean scrolls in Mork Borg, though they draw ultimately from the same physics-defying power; the creation and marketing of CosmOS is one of the reasons the Toth found Earth in the first place, and started sending relics in meteors.
[8:06 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Apocalypse(s) notwithstanding, it sounds like the tech level is pretty high. (Or was, pre-disaster.) How advanced was society before everything went sideways?
[8:09 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
It was a sort of retrofuturistic based on the 1980s, the same way Fallout is retrofuturistic based on the 1950s and 1960s. So the robots are sort of Terminator like, for example. The actual year I haven’t made clear (especially since I’ve been vague on where it’s actually set as well), but I’d place it maybe 50-70 years in the future if we keep letting AI dictate the direction of our culture, with some somewhat improbable scientific advances based on messages from space.
[8:10 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
The apocalypse was about 10-15 years ago… placing it in the Lord Humungous era of Mad Max: Road Warrior.
[8:10 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
So unlike Fallout or Gamma World, the PCs were mostly alive before the fall.
[8:11 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
This is built into each character class, with a “history roll” that often says what the character was doing when everything went to hell.
[8:12 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Speaking of which, did all the disasters happen simultaneously?
[8:15 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
More or less. The creation of CosmOS drew the attention of the Toth, and the meteors hitting kicked off nuclear war, which itself caused a fair number of other catastrophes. Let me list them: War
Famine
Fimbulwinter (nuclear winter, but I like the norse word)
The Rift (something is gestating inside the earth)
The Cluster (mushrooms! Think Last of Us)
The Toth (alien gods reach out and steal minds)
Unlike Mork Borg or Cy_Borg, which has Miseries or Miserable Headlines, Wasteland Degenerates has six Cataclysms that progress at roughly the same pace. When you roll a 1 at the start of the day you roll d6 to see which cataclysm gets worse
[8:16 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
There’s 6 events for each cataclysm, and when you get to the 6th event for one of them, that’s basically how the world finally ends.
[8:17 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
For Famine, we just run out of food and everyone starves. For the Rift, the damn thing hatches and the earth cracks apart, venting atmosphere into space
[8:20 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
I have a variety of effects for each of the events on each cataclysm; I am not sure if I’ll keep most of them when we finally do the hardcover; some things are best left to GM interpretation.
[8:21 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Is there anything that the PCs can do to keep the world from ending?
[8:24 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Maybe? It’s not identified in anything I’ve written so far. I think that this would make a great campaign for individual groups; there are some Mork Borg adventures that talk about preventing the seventh misery, but I don’t want to get into that, at least not soon. The inexorability of the doom I think is important to the themes of the game: Once you’re stripped of the future, only the present is important. My artist, Matthew, always reminds me that one of the guiding principles of Mork Borg-style games is that we “make data not lore” and to not burden GMs down with my setting details. I like to think that the setting is broad enough to encompass everyone’s idea of the post-apocalypse while still giving hints on where a stumped GM could go.
[8:26 PM]Scott C. McDonald: The adventures I’ve written so far are more personal. The core book adventure is a sort of classic “PCs are sent to rescue a princess” only in this case the princess is a Gas Hog road-warrin’ badass that can mostly save herself. The PCs can help out or just save their own hides.
[8:27 PM]Scott C. McDonald: The Block Crawl I’m writing is meant to be run after a TPK, where the PCs wake up on the outskirts of a misty city and need to find their way downtown in order to escape, or simply learn what happened to them.
[8:29 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I have a mission generator in the full book, which will let the dice decide what the job is, where it’s happening, for whom, who the fixer is, what the payment will be, and what sorts of crazy complications happen during the mission
[8:29 PM]Scott C. McDonald: But again, these are not world-changing events unless the GM makes it so.
[8:34 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Since it got quiet all of a sudden, I’m going to share another spread.
[8:36 PM]Scott C. McDonald: These are the nuclear powered prosthetics I was mentioning before. One of their traits is that they can be implanted without surgery. While I state in the page that you’re best not thinking about how this happens, I did watch the Fallout TV show recently, and all I can say is, “Jim’s Limbs.”
[8:36 PM]Scott C. McDonald: (me when that scene happened)
[8:37 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Moving on… I have other spreads I can share…
[8:38 PM]Scott C. McDonald: The first introductory lore page. Basically tells you everything you need to know if you skip over the rest of the boring lore pages
[8:39 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): My apologies. IRL distraction.
[8:39 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Here’s the awesome vehicle page
[8:39 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I love the art!
[8:40 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Matthew is fantastic, actually. His fingerprints are all over this thing, in many cases his influence is stronger than my own.
[8:41 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Does the game address why some tech is so advanced and other (like vehicles, apparently) is not?
[8:41 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Nah! 1
[8:41 PM]Scott C. McDonald: It’s retrofuturistic. Does Fallout spend a lot of time explaining why culture stopped in the early 1960s?
[8:42 PM]Scott C. McDonald: When the apocalypse happens in like 2177?
[8:42 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Fair enough.
[8:42 PM]Scott C. McDonald: My thought is that style and data trumps lore, as I was discussing earlier. If the GM wants to explain why the RADBORGs look like terminators, more power to ’em.
[8:43 PM]Scott C. McDonald: (the main radborg here is based on a friend of mine, who wanted to be a villain in the game)
[8:43 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (Nice!)
[8:44 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): How prevalent are mutant flora and fauna, and do you include a bestiary?
[8:46 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (brb)
[8:47 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Well, for flora we have the Cluster, which is, as mentioned, basically Last of Us zombie rules. I make some wry jokes about their legal distinction because the fungus is violet instead of whatever it was in TLOU. There’s also the Red Forest, which is the red-barked and leaved trees that grew up around the Rift, and is where the ampulex are… Right, the fauna. The ampulex are cat-sized ruby wasps that are based on the IRL wasps that basically lobotomize and zombi-fy ants. Except these will turn you into a zombie egg sac.
[8:47 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I also have skraelings, which are basically humans and animals that have become too mutated to continue in polite society.
[8:48 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Most skraelings are weak, but animals that go skrae are more powerful, and sometimes you get huge, Tzimisce war-ghoul-style skrae called Skraewaymen, that are fast and powerful enough to chase down your car and wreck it.
[8:49 PM]Scott C. McDonald: And yes, there are two seperate zombie apocalypses happening.
[8:50 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I wanted to draw from the things that make zombies in nature, i.e. fungus and wasps, and extend them to their horrible conclusions.
[8:50 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): And really, why wouldn’t you?
[8:50 PM]Scott C. McDonald: No reason at all.
[8:51 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I figure, with six apocalypses, nobody can accuse me of being too derivative.
[8:52 PM]Scott C. McDonald: One game might end with nukes scouring the wasteland, and another may result in eternal night and the world freezing
[8:52 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Oh, before I forget to ask: Were you tempted to stick with the “Borg” naming convention that other Mork Borg-based games use?
[8:53 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Heck to the no. I started collecting Mork Borg and its various offshoots, and decided very early on that I would not use the naming convention. I took my note from the great Frontier Scum, from the irreplaceable Karl Druid.
[8:54 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Matthew at first thought the title was too long, but I wore him down with absolutely terrible alternatives, which I no longer remember.1
[8:54 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Credit where credit’s due, he managed to make a great logo even with the length
[8:55 PM]Scott C. McDonald: The only thing I’ve used the naming convention for is for the Noun Borg Game Jam.
[8:55 PM]Scott C. McDonald: But that was mandated.
[8:56 PM]Scott C. McDonald: (If you’re curious, it was “The One Borg” and was a very funny take on The One Ring if I do say so myself)1
[8:57 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Can you give us an overview of the classes?
[8:57 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Sure!
[8:58 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I’ve released spreads for three so far… Would you like those?
[8:59 PM]Scott C. McDonald: The classes are: Exiled Grease Monkey: the Mad Max class. Mechanic, smart and capable, has a cool car with a proprietary mod
[8:59 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (Your artist just arrived. )
[9:00 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Hi Matthew! Shortwave Evangelist: A face character, and Matthew’s favorite, I think. They have a cult following, of which you can have one summoned at a time. There are a variety of minions that you can have serving you until they die, run away, or are exiled.
[9:01 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Itinerant Scavenger: A hobo in the old world, but now has extremely valuable skills. One of the most variable and versatile classes (they have 8 potential special abilities instead of 6).
[9:02 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Very cool.
[9:02 PM]Scott C. McDonald: The Jilted Survivalist: A prepper whose plans came to naught because a single person can’t outwit six cataclysms. They still have skills and a little bit of extra gear.
[9:03 PM]Scott C. McDonald: The AWOL Conscript: An ex-soldier who ducked out when they stopped getting paid. A strong fighter, but varies greatly in style and weapon.
[9:04 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Finally the Baffled Researcher: A scientist who brings the smarts. SMRT, smarts.
[9:05 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I like the scientist because they have a field of study that they’re the best at, but none of it means anything if there’s no more tenure to be had.
[9:05 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Very true.
[9:06 PM]Scott C. McDonald: And then there’s the Genetic Desperado and the Unleashed Sapience I mentioned earlier, which will come into play if the hardcover ever gets printed.
[9:06 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Those would both be great band names, btw.1
[9:07 PM]Scott C. McDonald: This is actually the first time I’ve named all of the classes in a semi-public forum.
[9:07 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I am honored.
[9:07 PM]Scott C. McDonald: It’s not that important; I just didn’t want to get scooped by those vultures over at MAD Borg.1
[9:08 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
[9:08 PM]Scott C. McDonald: (MAD Borg’s authors are great, don’t think I’m serious… I really look forward to mixing and matching their stuff with WD)
[9:08 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Do you have a character sheet that we can see?
[9:08 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I sure do
[9:10 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I think we need to make one small edit; cars have a number of “spaces” that describes the limit of guns and turbos and whatever you can cram in them. I think we need that mentioned in the lower car section.
[9:11 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Pretend there’s a cardboard box in the flatbed next to the tire that says “max spaces” or something
[9:12 PM]Scott C. McDonald: These will go on opposing pages of an A5 sheet of paper; I’ll be including character sheet pads with the campaign, in case people want them
[9:15 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I should also mention that there will be a highway combat system so people can actually do things with the fancy hot rods.
[9:15 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): For those unfamiliar, can you give us a brief overview of the system?
[9:16 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Yeah! Basically there will be a 3×3 grid, with the PCs’ car (or the main car, think the War Rig in Fury Road) in the middle row. All the other vehicles will be on the grid in relative positions that only change if they move.
[9:17 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Each turn the enemies roll a die to see what they do… either move closer to you and try to ram or board, or stay where they are and shoot.
[9:17 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Each turn we also roll for obstacles in the road, and move back any current road impediments (which can include wrecks, pedestrians, clouds of mutating space dust, etc.)
[9:18 PM]Scott C. McDonald: The goal is not to make a Car Wars, hyper realistic road map, but sort of mimic how road battles happen in movies.
[9:19 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Further, I played enough Starfinder space battles to realize that players don’t like it when their personal character’s abilities aren’t available in vehicle combat. Therefore, all PC abilities are valid during a road chase.
[9:20 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Can you describe the game’s basic task resolution mechanic?
[9:22 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Yeah, it’s the same as Mork Borg and Cy_Borg. You roll a die and add or subtract your ability (which starts between -3 and +3 and can go up to +6). If you roll equal or higher than the task’s Difficulty Rating (DR), you succeed, if you roll under, you fail… or at least your success comes with some complications (I don’t like pure pass fail mechanics as a GM and usually throw the players a bone, like, they still succeed, it just takes longer or uses more resources).
[9:22 PM]Scott C. McDonald: In Wasteland Degenerates, your vehicle also has stats, specifically Power and Edge, which further modify rolls when you’re using vehicular systems.
[9:23 PM]Scott C. McDonald: This is meant to represent vehicle combat being faster and more significant.
[9:23 PM]Scott C. McDonald: So you’d roll Agility+Power to ram someone
[9:23 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I notice the lack of skills. Is everything attribute-based?
[9:24 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Yes and no. Tasks are skill based, but I have a table of Hard-Earned Survival Skills that modify certain rolls. Here’s some examples:
[9:24 PM]Scott C. McDonald:
Martial Arts: You may do d6c damage while unarmed. If you have an unarmed attack or natural weapon that does the same or more damage, you may add cleave to it.
Acrobatics: You can roll with the punches and are considered to have -d2 armor if unarmored or -d4 armor if wearing Tier 1 armor (with no penalty).
Vehicle Fighting: You do not fall off of a moving vehicle on a fumble and can automatically test Strength DR 10 to Saddle Up (see pg. XX) without using an action once per round.
[9:26 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Hard Earned Survival Skills (HESS) are gained by certain characters, or sometimes on level-up
[9:26 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I see. Cool.
[9:26 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): In the time remaining, is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to bring up?
[9:27 PM]Scott C. McDonald: You know, I could go on about this all day. I would say that if people are curious about the setting, I have released a free solo RPG on itch.io that is set in the Wasteland Degenerates setting and previews some of the mechanics and ideas. It’s called Enter the Dismal Armory.
[9:28 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Matthew, is there anything I should add?
[9:28 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Oh yeah, support us on BackerKit on June 12th!
[9:30 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Feel free to post the link!
[9:30 PM]Scott C. McDonald: https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/e29ba2a7-c31d-4485-a048-da04afab3085/landingScott C. McDonaldWasteland Degenerates: Jumper Cable Edition, a [Cy_Borg] and [Mörk …From Scott C. McDonald – Wasteland Degenerates: Jumper Cable Edition, a [Cy_Borg] and [Mörk Borg]-compatible game of being miserable, radiated scvm!
[9:30 PM]Scott C. McDonald: also: https://dracomicron.itch.io/enter-the-dismal-armoryitch.ioEnter the Dismal Armory by Scott C. McDonaldExperience a FREE first glimpse into the world of Wasteland Degenerates in this cartographic solo dungeon crawl!
[9:31 PM]Scott C. McDonald: And the general webpage for WD: https://wastelanddegenerates.com/Wasteland DegeneratesWasteland Degenerates
[9:31 PM]Scott C. McDonald: Thank you, kind sir!
[9:32 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Absolute! Thank you for joining us, @Scott C. McDonald!
[9:32 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Usual reminder: If you’ve enjoyed this Q&A and would like to treat me to a coffee or two, you can do so at https://www.ko-fi.com/gmshoe. Anything’s appreciated! Ko-fiBuy Dan Davenport a Coffee. ko-fi.com/gmshoeBecome a supporter of Dan Davenport today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.
[9:33 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll get the log posted and link you!
[9:33 PM]Scott C. McDonald: I appreciate the opportunity! I’ll definitely look into the coffee thing.