Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Pack

Author

Roberto Bisceglie

Published

July 31, 2026

Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Pack

Setting Information

  • The world died fifty years ago when the Eden Protocol failed — a biotech energy system meant to end scarcity instead ruptured, flooding the atmosphere with mutagenic particles and radiation no suit could stop.
  • The setting is North America’s heartland — the old Midwest — now a scarred landscape of ash-choked forests, bone-dry riverbeds, and ruins half-swallowed by creeping vines that glow at night.
  • Cities lie cracked and hollow, their cores too toxic to enter without shielding. Rural zones fare little better — twisted by fallout storms, plagued by beasts that once were cattle, wolves, or people.
  • Survivors cling to the margins — makeshift settlements in old silos, cave networks rigged with solar foil, rail depots turned into barter forts. Nothing is safe, but some places are quieter than others.
  • Society is shattered into fragments — scavenger bands, trade clans, poison cults, and survivalist militias — each clinging to power by hoarding fuel, clean water, or working tech from before the collapse.
  • Trade is blood and risk — vaccines for bullets, batteries for meat, clean water for everything. Currency is whatever keeps you breathing one more day.
  • Technology is half-magic and half-dead — patched drones, solar rigs, hand-pumped railcars, and relics scavenged from zones no sane person enters twice.
  • Radiation is not just poison — it breeds new ecologies, new instincts, new terrors. The land mutates, and those who walk it too long often change with it.

Character Traits

Concepts

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Ash-Eater Prophet Bonepicker Scavenger Wasteland Sniper Glow-Touched Mystic Railcar Nomad Chain-Gang Escapee
2 Radiation Forager Solar Tech Salvager Dustborn Raider Iron-Voiced Preacher Plague Mask Alchemist Hollow-Eyed Sentinel
3 Scrap Surgeon Stormrider Outcast Scar-Marked Gladiator Doom Whisperer Tunnelborne Smuggler Rotborn Cultist
4 Gearwitch Mechanic Crater-Faced Tracker Tox-Runner Junkyard Warlord Blight-Reaper Revenant Drifter
5 Mushroom Druid Blood-Bonded Mercenary Acid-Burnt Bard Ghost of the Highway Sand-Skulled Scrounger Cracked-Circuit Cyborg
6 Memory-Lost Hermit Skyglass Collector Beastspeaker Vagabond Feral Hive-Witch Pipe-Town Trader Vaultborn Exile

Skills

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Scavenging Survival Instinct Marksmanship Tracking Radiation Sense Melee Brutality
2 Tech Jury-Rigging Herbal Alchemy Beast Communication Shadowing Toxin Brewing Urban Navigation
3 Foraging Improvised Traps Firearms Handling First Aid Cryptic Lore Explosive Handling
4 Night Vision Lockpicking Mutant Handling Trap Disarming Bartering Stealth Movement
5 Salvage Appraisal Mutagen Resistance Psyche Manipulation Cooking from Scraps Hacking Old Systems Riding (Mount or Rig)
6 Metalcraft Ambush Tactics Intimidation Language of the Olds Shelter Building Ritual Channeling

Frailties

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Radiation Scars Tainted Blood Mutation Addiction Paranoia Flashbacks to the Fall Self-Destructive Urges
2 Cracked Psyche Flesh Rot Claustrophobia Addiction (Spore Dust) Night Terrors Obsessive Scavenger
3 Haunted by Voices Illness (Chronic Cough) Insatiable Hunger Tech Dependency Chemical Sensitivity Rage Blackouts
4 Burned Nerve Endings Water Anxiety Delusions of Immortality Hallucinatory Episodes Unstable Mutation Trust No One Instinct
5 Hoarder’s Compulsion Isolation-Induced Twitch Guilt over Past Acts Fear of Sunlight Aversion to Firearms Constant Itch
6 Memory Holes Bounty on Their Head Phantom Pain Compulsion to Preach Terminal Diagnosis Glows in the Dark

Gear

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Gas Mask Rusted Crowbar Bio-Filter Canteen Map of Forbidden Zone Machete of Bone Geiger Sensor
2 Rebar Spear Cracked Sniper Rifle Bandit Cloak Lighter & Scrap Fuel Solar-Patch Blanket Handmade Crossbow
3 Vault Medkit Duct-Taped Armor Glowvine Tonic Insect Jerky Rations Nailgun Collapsible Tent
4 Signal Flare Gun Detonator Bricks Bone Dice Oracle Noise-Trigger Mines Rope with Hooks Rat-Cage Backpack
5 Flash Goggles Rainwater Catcher Hand-Crank Radio Scavenger’s Toolkit EMP Spike Barbed Whip
6 Spore-Breath Mask Broken Drone Eye Chainblade Chitin Shield Magnet Compass Voice of the Ancients (Recorder)

Names

Female Names

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Mags Rella Juniper Ada Caia Nix
2 Sela Brynn Vega Petra Ashra Miri
3 Fallon Rue Danya Talin Ona Briar
4 Zadie Lark Edda Moren Hala Kez
5 Syl Echo Tamsin Arla Cyra Fern
6 Nyla Jex Thorne Imra Pax Ilsey

Male Names

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Rigg Thorne Cass Bram Lex Jaro
2 Flint Corven Dax Halden Vorn Elric
3 Silas Boone Jett Maddox Ren Colm
4 Asher Talor Brin Vex Orin Merrik
5 Zev Nilo Garrick Kade Drex Harlan
6 Roen Sayer Quinn Moss Fen Lio

Surnames

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Ashvale Burnside Varnell Crossley Hollowick Trask
2 Bramble Thornell Creed Gallows Mirelow Falco
3 Shard Quade Tiller Draven Laskin Vale
4 Roach Wexler Kern Fallow Brinley Rask
5 Soot Harker Fenwick Omeral Crane Hush
6 Slade Vexley Grinn Cask Ember Dorran

Nicknames

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Cinder Knuckle Scorch Dusty Nails Flinch
2 Spark Ghost Biter Crook Stitch Glare
3 Echo Vex Dagger Crank Pit Rattle
4 Jinx Thump Snare Wick Blight Scab
5 Stray Fang Sly Wretch Brick Grit
6 Moth Hex Grub Snipe Wasp Shrike

Special Rules

The Eden Fallout

Radiation isn’t just background noise — it’s the air you breathe, the dust on your skin, and the voice in your blood. Any time your Protagonist lingers in a red zone, digs into old biotech ruins, or crosses a fallout storm, ask the Oracle: Does the exposure leave a mark?

  • A Yes means you gain a temporary or permanent Mutation Tag.
  • A No, but… may mean sickness, weakness, or hallucinations.
  • Treatments are rare and unreliable. When you attempt to treat radiation symptoms, ask the Oracle if the method is effective — most “cures” are pre-Collapse myths or poison in a vial.

NOTE Mutation Tags should reflect the unnatural evolution of life in the wasteland. Examples: Bioluminescent Veins, Bone Bark Armor, Photosynthetic Skin, Echo Sense.

Survival at the Brink

Resources are not tracked — they’re story drivers. You have what you need until the world says you don’t. Whenever your character uses up food, water, fuel, or ammo in a risky context, ask the Oracle: Do you still have enough?

  • If the answer is No, narrate what went wrong — spoiled rations, burst canisters, power drains — and improvise a new plan.
  • Certain Tags (like Scavenger Instinct or Jury-Rigged Solar Still) may give you Advantage.

EXAMPLE You fire your last flare into the night, hoping to blind the oncoming beast. Ask the Oracle: Do I have more flares? No — and the pack is already circling.

Faction Instability

No one rules the Wastes — but many try. When you interact with a faction (militias, trade caravans, cults, etc.), ask the Oracle: How do they respond?

  • Consider your Tags and theirs. If you’re branded by a rival clan, expect hostility.
  • Roll again if the faction is internally split or operating under stress — betrayal and negotiation often go hand in hand.

NOTE Faction Tags are optional but useful. Examples: Water Tithers, Bullet Gospel Evangelists, Sunfoil Syndicate, Cracked Dome Alliance.

EXAMPLE You meet a trader with a Sunfoil armband and offer them half your ammo for clean water. Ask the Oracle: Do they agree? Yes, and — they warn you of a nearby fallout storm for free.

Factions

The Rust Saints

  • Concept: Devotional scrappers who worship the decay of the old world.
  • Skills: Scavenging, Tinkering
  • Frailty: Obsessive relic hoarding
  • Gear: Icon-welded armor, relic detectors, oxidized blades
  • Goal: Unearth and sanctify lost pre-Collapse tech
  • Motive: Fusion of faith and survival
  • Nemesis: The Gutterkin

The Verdancy

  • Concept: Symbiotic cult devoted to mutated flora and fungal enlightenment.
  • Skills: Herbalism, Mutation control
  • Frailty: Vulnerable to fire and cold
  • Gear: Spore-robes, mycelial salves, symbiont spores
  • Goal: Spread the Green Gospel across the scorched earth
  • Motive: Evolution through fusion
  • Nemesis: The Blister March

The Enclave Remnants

  • Concept: Heirs of a pre-collapse government bunker, still clinging to authority.
  • Skills: Engineering, Bureaucratic command
  • Frailty: Rigid protocol blindness
  • Gear: Old-world uniforms, biometric scanners, ration stockpiles
  • Goal: Reassert order and reestablish a “civilized” chain of command
  • Motive: Restoration through control
  • Nemesis: The Radiant Front

The Blister March

  • Concept: Nomadic war-clans hardened by fallout storms and endless raids.
  • Skills: Guerrilla tactics, Firearms
  • Frailty: Blood-feud conditioning
  • Gear: Scrap-mounted bikes, heat-flare bombs, bone-masks
  • Goal: Scorch rival holdings and claim the ruins
  • Motive: Strength is the only law
  • Nemesis: The Enclave Remnants

The Radiant Front

  • Concept: Revolutionary fanatics infused with controlled mutations.
  • Skills: Propaganda, Bio-enhancement
  • Frailty: Unstable genetic shifts
  • Gear: Glow-serums, neural injectors, living tattoos
  • Goal: Overthrow the old world’s hierarchy through forced evolution
  • Motive: Mutate or die
  • Nemesis: The Enclave Remnants

The Gutterkin

  • Concept: Underground traders and thieves operating out of collapsed city ruins.
  • Skills: Infiltration, Barter
  • Frailty: Light sensitivity
  • Gear: Sensor visors, smoke bombs, dermal lockpicks
  • Goal: Maintain dominion over the black markets and buried tunnels
  • Motive: Control through scarcity
  • Nemesis: The Rust Saints

NPCs

Sister Kembra

  • Concept: Mutant healer of the fungal enclave
  • Skills: Spore-medicine, empathy under pressure
  • Frailty: Slowly mutating mind
  • Gear: Myco-kit, bone-thread sutures, whisper mask
  • Goal: Cure the incurable before her body turns fully
  • Motive: Redemption through healing
  • Nemesis: Surgeon-Colonel Brannick (Enclave biologist)

Rigs “Cinder” Malhoon

  • Concept: Ex-demolitionist turned scorched-earth preacher
  • Skills: Explosives, persuasion by fear
  • Frailty: Pyromaniac religious visions
  • Gear: Det-cord rosary, flareblade, incendiary sermons
  • Goal: Reduce the Dam to ash and write scripture in smoke
  • Motive: Apocalyptic catharsis
  • Nemesis: Archdeacon Reese (Water-hoarding priest of the Flow Union)

“Barter” Vex

  • Concept: Charismatic trade broker with a silver tongue and lead soul
  • Skills: Negotiation, tactical deception
  • Frailty: Can’t resist a wager
  • Gear: Relic chips, encrypted trade-coin, sawn-off dealmaker
  • Goal: Establish a neutral trade node in contested ruins
  • Motive: Wealth, influence, survival
  • Nemesis: Syndicate Collector “Bleed” Malraux

Issa Vorn

  • Concept: Warpath tracker turned reluctant justice-seeker
  • Skills: Precision marksmanship, mutant tracing
  • Frailty: Blinded by vengeance
  • Gear: Scorch rifle, claw-tag shackles, broken oath pendant
  • Goal: Hunt down the escaped raider-king who killed her crew
  • Motive: Closure and quiet
  • Nemesis: The Flayed Wolf (Raider warlord)

“Glass” Marlo

  • Concept: Vault-scanner and whisper-thief of lost tech
  • Skills: Espionage, radiation mapping
  • Frailty: Believes they’re being watched by the ruins
  • Gear: Dead-zone goggles, crowbar harp, vault signal prism
  • Goal: Uncover and unlock a sealed Eden Protocol chamber
  • Motive: Obsession with forbidden knowledge
  • Nemesis: The Archive Custodian (AI defense remnant)

Brakk “Husk” Juno

  • Concept: Hired gun with half a mind and too much armor
  • Skills: Heavy weapons, siege defense
  • Frailty: Memory void from biotech trauma
  • Gear: Railminigun, breach shield, stimulant spool
  • Goal: Guard the settlement of Thornepost from mutant incursion
  • Motive: Contract and revenge
  • Nemesis: The Glimmer Host (bioluminescent hive-beast swarm)

Denizens of the Wastes

Glowback Coyote

  • Concept: Bioluminescent predator
  • Skills: Silent tracking, night ambush
  • Frailty: Hyperreactive nervous system
  • Gear: Glowing veinstalk hide, fused jawbone fangs
  • Goal: Stalk contaminated prey through the night
  • Motive: Hunger sharpened by mutation
  • Nemesis: Pack-hunters and high-frequency pulses

Ironclatter Beetle

  • Concept: Shrapnel-shelled scavenger
  • Skills: Burrowing, plating resilience
  • Frailty: Overheats in direct sunlight
  • Gear: Vibro-mandibles, scrap-sense antennae
  • Goal: Harvest metal to construct secure nests
  • Motive: Instinctive hoarding of conductive salvage
  • Nemesis: Sudden temperature shifts, sonic blasts

Bloomspite

  • Concept: Carnivorous bloom mimic
  • Skills: Toxin release, regenerative bloom cycles
  • Frailty: Susceptible to frost and desiccation
  • Gear: Petal-lined trap maw, pulsing spore core
  • Goal: Lure and digest warm-blooded prey
  • Motive: Territorial instinct rooted in survival
  • Nemesis: Fire, salt, and anti-fungal wash

Miremaw

  • Concept: Toxic sump predator
  • Skills: Ambush, venom secretion
  • Frailty: UV-sensitive membranes
  • Gear: Siphon tongue, sludge-coated hide
  • Goal: Defend and dominate chemical lairs
  • Motive: Bio-filtration instinct linked to hunger
  • Nemesis: Droughts, predatory swarms

Bramblecarver

  • Concept: Tech-burdened scrapyard scorpion
  • Skills: Armor resilience, mechanical detection
  • Frailty: Magnetic interference vulnerability
  • Gear: Arc-welded stinger, scanner-core optics
  • Goal: Absorb and assimilate salvage into its body
  • Motive: Territorial maintenance through augmentation
  • Nemesis: EMP bursts, magnetic mines

Tinker-Rat

  • Concept: Augmented junk rodent
  • Skills: Stealth, mimicry
  • Frailty: Skeletal fragility
  • Gear: Retinal flash memory, mechanical jaw pin
  • Goal: Build semi-functional nests from scavenged tech
  • Motive: Compulsive tinkering driven by instinct
  • Nemesis: Traps, loud noise, plasma discharge

Locations

Vault Theta-7

  • A fractured biotech military facility buried beneath a collapsed hill range.
  • Still echoes with malfunctioning security drones and containment anomalies.
  • Possible encounters: Defense remnants, relic hunters, mutagen leaks

Glowfen Market

  • A geothermal spring-turned-trading post, surrounded by glowing vine-lattices.
  • Its warmth draws both barter caravans and parasitic fauna.
  • Possible encounters: Traders, resource cults, water rustlers

Thornepost Bastion

  • A repurposed rail hub, now a scrap-metal fortress bristling with solar arrays.
  • Controlled by a militia faction obsessed with purity and control.
  • Possible encounters: Patrols, inquisitors, smugglers in disguise

The Pale Expanse

  • A dead, sun-bleached stretch of fallout desert crusted with bone-pale ash.
  • Tech warps in the dust storms; time seems to skip or stall.
  • Possible encounters: Wanderers, ghost cults, terra-warped predators

Underdrift Warren

  • A labyrinth of silos, drains, and vault-burrows repurposed into a thriving black market.
  • Lit by fungal glow and solar foil, it’s a haven for the desperate and the clever.
  • Possible encounters: Info brokers, rogue biotechs, hive-gangs

The Crimson Verge

  • A twisted forest of red-barked trees, mutated roots, and phosphorescent undergrowth.
  • The air pulses faintly; things grow even when unwatched.
  • Possible encounters: Spore-beasts, gene-scientists, Verdancy pilgrims

Adventure Seeds

Adventure Seeds

D66 Adventure
11 Infiltrate a relic vault guarded by spore-bonded monks who believe the tech is divine.
12 Track a missing scavenger whose last transmission ended with the sound of chanting and fire.
13 A radiant child with photosynthetic skin escapes the Verdancy. They want protection — or power.
14 A dormant terraformer reactivates. Now the air turns sweet — and wrong. Something is coming.
15 Sabotage a water tithe caravan before it reaches the Cracked Dome — or escort it, for a price.
16 A geomagnetic storm opens a sealed crypt beneath the Pale Expanse. No one remembers building it.
21 Recover a vault-core chip buried beneath a war zone. One side wants peace — the other, extinction.
22 Your own name appears on a kill-order scroll sent from Underdrift Warren. Who paid for it, and why?
23 The Glowfen Market is sealed after a sickness spreads — the infected bloom with glowing vines.
24 A fissure beneath Thornepost exhales heat and humming voices. The militia denies it’s a threat.
25 Verdancy pilgrims seek help retrieving a fungal relic growing from a bunker ceiling. It weeps light.
26 Bramblecarvers are swarming tech rigs near Vault Theta-7. A bounty goes to the one who clears them out.
31 Escort a solar-patched caravan through the Crimson Verge — if the trees let you leave.
32 A swarm of tinker-rats has stolen a voice-recorder from the Sunfoil Syndicate. It may expose them.
33 A glowback coyote pack is growing too intelligent. The Gutterkin want one captured — alive.
34 Scouts vanish near a signal tower. It’s still broadcasting — from within a collapsed ruin.
35 Salvagers request aid retrieving a sealed Eden device. The last crew returned mutated beyond speech.
36 A false prophet of the Radiant Front preaches in your name. His followers carry your sigil.
41 The Pale Expanse shifts — an entire outpost has disappeared beneath bone-white dunes.
42 The Rust Saints request an escort to sanctify a newly uncovered AI shrine — with molten oil.
43 A settlement’s water turns thick and gold. The people claim it’s a blessing. The Verdancy disagrees.
44 A dream repeats: the Underdrift flooded, fungal lights drowning the corridors. You wake coughing spores.
45 The Enclave sends a peace envoy. Half arrive. The others? Their suits were empty on arrival.
46 A Bramblecarver nest pulses beneath a trade route. Traders vanish. Their gear resurfaces — rearranged.
51 A spore-storm rolls in. You have six hours to evacuate a town before the storm births a forest.
52 Someone found a working drone in Vault Theta-7. It recognizes your voice. And calls you Commander.
53 The Radiant Front wants a living mutant delivered to Glowfen — but won’t say why it must stay breathing.
54 A burnt map marks a forbidden silo. The silo hums louder each night, and pulses with heat.
55 A hunter went missing in the Crimson Verge. His pet came back alone, with human teeth in its belly.
56 The Gutterkin auction a memory-crystal tied to the Eden Protocol’s collapse. Everyone wants it.
61 A heatwave twists metal and minds near a sunken crawler. Entering may unlock your past — or erase it.
62 A ghost town rewakes each dusk. Lights flicker on. Radios play static hymns. You’ve heard one before.
63 Vault Theta-7 emits a new code. Translated, it reads: “I am not alone. Neither are you.”
64 An oasis dries overnight. Those who drank from it now dream in binary — and bleed rust.
65 The Enclave lost a convoy carrying a sentient weapon. It’s learning — and testing new hosts.
66 A tunnel beneath Underdrift breathes. It never used to. You’re told the tunnel wants to speak.