Nuclear Beasts

My current writing project is an RPG that I hope to release (probably in PDF format) someday. Nuclear Beasts is a post-Apocalypse anthropomorphics game originally inspired by the Ironclaw RPG.

I've transfered my newly created Design Blog to this site!

Hopefully this will encourage me to keep working on the project and it'll make it easier to get feedback.

After the Last War wiped out the race of Man, God opened the gates of Eden once more. He brought the body of the Last Man to the Garden, and gave the Tongue of Man to the Beasts of the Garden, so that Man's wisdom would not be lost.

Then God gave the earth into the care of the Beasts and sent them forth from Eden to restore the land. But the death of Man had shattered the world, and let loose terrible monsters from the black pits. The hills were filled with poisons and strange ills, and not one in ten lived to see their first cubs born.

Some of the first Beasts went back to the Garden, to beg aid from God, for the dangers of the world beyond were indeed great. And God was moved by their plight and gave them the Thumb of Man, that they might walk upright and wield the ancient tools with which Man had ruled the world.

Those were the first of the High Beasts.

---the creation story, as told by the Beasts of the Southern Kingdoms

So far, Nuclear Beasts has made it through five major revisions and consists of about 200 pages of material. I figure that it'll probably hit about 300 pages before it's complete enough to release. I've written a lot of homebrew RPGs over the years that I playtested and then discarded, and Nuclear Beasts has made it further than anything else I've ever done.

I'll try to put up the occasional excerpt or something here as the work progresses. I'd love to get it all done before 2004 rolls around, but there's still a heck of a lot to do. I've got my fingers crossed.

• 5/21/2003: Started working on the descriptions for major areas. So far I've written up 3 towns around the Verde (a crescent of fertile land centered on Zuba City), all using the same general format. I've uploaded the Tanglewoods entry for comments. Looks like the Western Lands are going to have to be a different format though; the Verde is oriented around built up settlements, but the western lands are largely inhabited by nomadic tribes whose location varies according to the time of the year.
• 5/22/2003:I've decided to concentrate on three major types of campaign. The "Sophisticated Beasts" campaign, set in the relatively advanced civilization around the Verde, the "Nomad" campaign, set in one of the ever-moving nomad tribes that roam the western coast, and the "Fallout III" campaign, which involves an isolated group of Beasts sheltered under the care of a benevolent AI and its robots. I could also support a high-tech "Caretakers" campaign, but that'll probably have to wait for the supplements (if I'm that lucky).
• 8/16/2003: Innumerable updates since this point. I'm putting them in my Blog instead of here, though.

Design Journal:

I started up a design Blog recently and transfered it to our website! I'm hoping to use it for brainstorming and soliciting comments on the game.

Preview Material:

• Area writeup for the Tanglewoods (now in HTML; the PDF was having problems)
• Katrin the High Beast cheetah scanning the horizon for danger.
• Nuclear Beasts character sheet (PDF format, may require Acrobat 5 or newer)
• The setting map (1159x1050, grayscale GIF)
• Douglas the High Beast rat and Garrick the Low Beast bear, traveling cross-country.
• I've put up some other pics in my gallery at the VCL. Warning: VCL hosts a lot of adult galleries, too.

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