NUKED! - A Post-Apocalyptic Knave Hack

The rulebook cover of NUKED!

The Stat Sheet

The Snapshot

• Someone's digging up bodies in the local graveyard
• We find an old airstream in the middle of the swamp
• Found a mad scientist in an underground bunker
• Frankenstein experiment on the dug up bodies
• We help the scientist finish the experiment
• Murder the expiriment and one of our party members died
• We Frankenstein HIM and take the doc to town

The System

NUKED! is a rules lite system set in a post-apocalyptic world. It takes inspiration from systems like Knave and MÖRK BORG. The layout of the rulebook shows the inspiration it takes from media such as Fallout and Mad Max, among others.

There are no classes, and skill tests use a d20, requiring a roll under to succeed. Grit is a special stat that can be used to reroll dice. They felt similar to Omens in MÖRK BORG. There's a lot of good stuff packed into this 40-page rulebook. The last one I'll comment on is that like any good post-apocalyptic world, there's plenty of items lying around. Aside from the slot-based inventory system, each item has a usage die. When using an item relating to an ability, you roll that item's usage die and on a 1 or 2, the number of uses drops by one. When you're out of item uses, the item breaks or is consumed.

The Brief

We start in the town of Bilgewater at 2 PM on a Tuesday where we overheard there are bodies missing from the graveyard. Guards saw them take bodies into the swamp, and they couldn’t catch them. Bilgewater is a terrible company town, so people don’t have much here. There’s a bounty of 300 scrap if we can figure out who is stealing the bodies and what they’re doing with them. Water Merchants Union owns this town and are the ones who put the bounty up.

We decided to head to the graveyard and inspect the scene of the crime. Bridges and docks connect this soggy/marshy area. The graveyard is on the outskirts of town. There’s someone who looks like a caretaker (Dante) of the space and lives in a shack next to the graveyard. Caretaker reveals the bodies are usually taken the day after the body is put in the ground. There’s an old uranium mine that’s causing a lot of death around here. Three months ago, he noticed the first body disappeared. We ask him to show us where the most recent graverobbing occurred.

Dante takes us to the most recent death, a guy named Baxter who died of radiation sickness. We notice a blockier set of footprints. Doug, having been a Junior Ranger Scout, deduced there are two sets of footprints. The first are robot feet, while the second are humans perhaps in a larger environment suit of some kind. Dante also tells us about how the swamp is seriously radiated. He suggests some rad pills or a gas mask.

With zero preparation, we march into the swamp. The weather is clear as we progress. We continue without breaking for camp. It starts to rain, and we start to lose the trail. We continued the same way we were heading and found an airstream on a slightly bigger island in the swamp. There’s an old dirt road we can see that goes to the south. No lights are on in the airstream, and midnight is approaching fast. I try to lockpick the airstream which has an electronic keypad on it and fails. The radiation is high here, and the group backs away to recuperate for a little bit before returning.

As we return to the airstream, there’s the smell of exhaust and burnt meat. We didn’t hear any noise as we approached, and I lockpick the electronic keypad successfully this time. We explore the airstream and find a secret door that leads further down. After climbing down a ladder and going through a decontamination process, we enter a lab where a man admits to taking the bodies and trying to pull a Frankenstein. In the end, we agree to allow the doctor to continue his experiment (and even help him) to bring one of these zombies to life. We agree that after he’s successful, we’ll take him to Bilgewater for his crimes.

The experiment was a success (obviously because we were involved), and it immediately tried to attack us. We try to tranquilize the abomination, but it ends up killing Father – Gas 4 Coin. In the end, the Frankenstein was electrocuted and charred to pieces. Since Frankenstein did a clean break of Father – Gas 4 Coin’s head by snapping his neck, the party, along with the doctor, decided to resurrect him. It was successful, sort of, and he must wear a neck brace for a while. We return to town and get the 300 scraps.

The Takeaways

Pros

• Rules lite Knave/Fallout vibes
• Enjoyed the importance of stats
• The environment has a big impact (e.g. weather, radiation)
• Item usage is a cool mechanic that I want to explore more

Cons

• Hard not to compare to Fallout
• Unsure if I got the full experience of the system from a one-shot

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