Gaming SyStem Advice

I want to run a post-apocalyptic campaign, but I have no idea what would make a good system.

The basic premise is that in the year 2011 some insane cultists finally did what they do and opened up some huge rifts between our world and the Other. Many different kinds of demons, and entities and magical forces came through in a surge, killing most of humanity. When they saw that they had one the real bid bad guys left, leaving weaker demons behind to enslave the remaining humans and gather natural resources.

The PC's start play in the year 2061 in a rebel village, so all they've known is this demon controlled wasteland. But they have heard stories. There job is to now survive. Maybe even free some slaves if they can manage it, and are so inclined, or find some valuable loot that's been over-looked in all that rubble. They'll surely have to do something about all those rebels agitating for a war.

The game is supposed to be dark and gritty and kind of scary with a distinct possibility of player death if they're not careful, and magic and technology is very rare.


I'm looking for a system that would go well with this. I tend to be a fan d20, but I wanted to try something different here. What do you guys think?

I'd heartily recommend Apocalypse World, with the caveat that it doesn't play nice with the level of GM backstory that you seem to want to set up beforehand... so maybe it's for some post-apocalyptic games, but not for yours.

System has a lot to do with what you want out of it, and mostly what you've said is about setting. As far as that goes, you could go with almost anything - d20 if you want a fairly old-school vibe, Gamma World if you want Apocalyptic Action Heroes, Apocalypse World if you want to focus on interpersonal relationships, etc.

If you want something fairly generic and with a strong GM role that's not d20, I would suggest taking a look at FATE. There's no "generic" version of the FATE 3.0 engine out there right now (i.e., not tied to some setting), but for what you're describing your best bet might be to take a look at Starblazer Adventures and "localize" it for your game. Though, Diaspora has a more detailed system for squad-level combat if you really want to get all gritty about them organizing rebels. FATE is fairly traditional in structure in some ways, but is much more free-flowing than something like d20, and the mechanics are focused more around player-defined narrative labels than "stats."

If you want something more rules-light and combat-focused, you might look at Barbarians of the Aftermath.

Frankly, there are a lot of ways you could go with this (want them to be "normal" people investigating how the horrible world came about? You could try Trail of Cthulhu...). What do you imagine the players *doing*? That will drive a lot of system choice.