Game Expectations

We're still deciding on the rules here. Might use a prototype system based on the Ghost Wax Podcast, might use the Backbone system originally developed for Backwater, might use something else entirely. We're mostly interested in doing something light and focused more on playing out the scenario over mechanics.

Characters are expected to have approximately the sort of know-how that a late 19th century American might with the exception that late 21st century ruins have provided occasional Technological Marvels (and Horrors.) You likely have no idea what a computer is, much less how to use one, but you may have heard that the butler at the Beauregard estate is rumored to be a Machine Man. You've never held a weapon more advanced than a 1887 Winchester rifle, but your great grandmother said she once saw a man turned to dust after being shot with a "queer bright light." One way or another, however, you are a professional at dealing with...problems. Maybe you are a professional soldier or a paid mercenary, a priest from one of the New or Old Religions, a doctor with their trusty bone-saw and whiskey , an "inventor" rediscovering what the Old World took for granted, a hunter whose trophies include two headed alligators and a set of rougarou teeth , or perhaps an occultist versed in one of the many facets of the supernatural.

The Wards (what's left of the American states, reorganized into larger, less densely populated regions) are largely self governed, though nominally unified from the Capital at Providence-- the mysterious blasted ruins of Washington DC exist only as a source of fear and rumor or as a sacred lost holy land for the delusional Cult of the Founders. You don't need to know much about the state of the world beyond the local Backwater ward to play-- a place of feuding old families, pirates. and religion still hold sway while the rest of us just try to get on with our lives.