NUKED! Revised Edition
There’s been some rumblings, and not of the apocalyptic kind (well at least not to my knowledge). Rather, rumblings of the creative kind.
NUKED! was written and designed by myself and my friend and collaborator T. Thomas Giant (a.k.a. NondairyGiant) back in 2020-2021. We had both dabbled in a bit of game design in the past with a variety of different hacks and even a few systems that were largely original. I really like the post-apocalyptic genre and Giant really likes telling me when my ideas are almost good enough to use. It was (and is) a good match!
But we’ve both learned a lot about game design since getting together and writing NUKED!. I reworked Bullets & Bourbon, created Rangers of the Midden Vale (which did see the light of day first, but was written mostly after NUKED! was conceived), and played a whole of other games that blow mine out of the water. Giant created As Above, So Below, wrote a few adventures, and also played a whole of lot of other games that he’d probably say are better than what he and I have done.
Suffice to say we’ve learned a lot in the last 5 or 6 years. NUKED! does a lot of things write and we’re proud of 99% of it, but there are a few glaring spots that in hindsight needed a little more attention back in the day (*cough cough* plasma weapons *cough cough*) and some additional content and rules were created as we started publishing adventures. For example, there are now 100 Perks & Mutations across NUKED! and The Skrapper’s Handbook, the number of relics has doubled or tripled, and our adventures have hexcrawl exploration rules at the front of each issue - something we didn’t include in the O.G. book. Now add the occasional bit of vague or confusing language (remember, it was our first game together) and the fact that we have a third writer on-board, our buddy Panko! Together these give us a number of reasons to consider another pass at NUKED!.
That’s what this blog(?) post is ultimately about. NUKED! Revised Edition. Maybe we’ll come up with some snappy name or settle for 2nd Edition, but as an avid Magic: the Gathering fan, I like the thought of “Revised” so for now that’s the working title.
So what’s in store? Welllllllllllllllll, I’ll tell you!
Clarify some of the vaguer rules (ex. how initiative works isn't spelled out super clearly).
This one’s easy. Clearer rules are just good business. Fortunately there aren’t a ton of vague or poorly-defined rules in the game. This also ensures that our intentions are more clear.
Consolidate the Perks/Mutations and new Relics from Skrapper's Handbook into 2e book.
Putting everything together into a single list makes it easier for the players and GM to look up what Perks & Mutations do. Plus it’s all in one book, so people don’t need multiple zines or PDFs around. Additionally, future adventures won’t need to tag Perks & Mutations from the Skrapper’s Handbook specifically, since it’ll be in one spot.
We’ll also take advantage of this opportunity to clean up some of the writing.
Codify ruin (dungeon) exploration rules.
In our own games we were using the standard 10-minute dungeon turn and in reviewing NUKED! adventures written by other folks it seemed that most of them assumed the same procedure. But we never actually stated this as the intention, not even in the adventures we wrote! Getting these into the game will make things easier for future NUKED! GMs.
Codify wilderness exploration rules.
NUKED! has a quick section about point-crawl rules, but it’s not super fleshed out. Then we went and wrote a bunch of adventures that assume a hexcrawl. The adventure zines have the “Wastekrawl” rules listed within a few pages, but getting them into the main rulebook puts them in front of the table from the get-go, and frees up page space for future adventures.
Rework XP and advancement.
This is a big one. Neither Giant and I are a big fan of how “Hauls” turned out. Conceptually I like the idea of being able to assign a category and overall value to “a bunch of stuff you found” vs. having to determine the value of 16 broken alarm clocks, but as it is the system results in too little XP. While NUKED! isn’t about characters gaining levels and becoming super heroes, making sure players feel like they’re progressing outside of finding new toys is still something we want to address.
In addition to changing how much XP different hauls are worth, we’re also considering carousing rules and gaining XP for recovering from Wounds (more on that in a moment).
Rework NPCs.
Currently NPCs don’t have stats beyond HD, Weapons, Armor, and maybe a listed ability or two. As it stands an NPC has to roll under 10 + their HD to succeed on an attack or Test. While the threshold is capped at 18, that means it’s very easy for NPCs to just succeed all the time.
This one will require some more thorough testing, but right now the idea is to change it to HD+10 for things the NPC is good at, HD+5 for things they’re okay at, and HD+0 for things they’re bad at. This allows us to continue using the same style of statblocks for NPCs, with future statblocks being a little more explicit regarding where NPCs excel or stumble.
It’s very important that whatever the change may be that it doesn’t force GMs to look up errata for published adventures. They should be able to run Horrors from the Black Bog with either the NUKED! rules or the future NUKED! Revised rules.
Hit Protection and Wounds.
Currently Skrappers get d8 Hit Points at 1st level and if they roll a 1 or 2 they’re probably turbo-screwed. After playing a bunch of Cairn, some Into the Odd, and Giant’s As Above, So Below, I’ve really come to like the “Wounds-as-Items” system. If the Skrappers run out of HP, they start taking Wounds, those Wounds eat up item slots, and if they fill all of their slots with Wounds, they die. Makes Skrappers a bit more durable without going overboard. Additionally, recovering from Wounds can award small amounts of XP, giving the Skrappers a little bit of incentive to turn raidahs into slag.
As a result we might drop the Skrapper Hit Die to d6 if it turns out that d8 + Wounds makes them too durable, but that’s what playtesting is for!
Review and Update Relics.
Most Relics are fine, but plasma weapons explode like crazy, allowing characters with them to kill shit way too easily. It’s really fun when the players have the plasma weapons, but kinda sucks when they don’t. Frankly, this was something we failed to test properly because no one picked up a plasma weapon during our playtest campaigns.
Rework Combat.
Dodging and counter-attacking as written is a little clunky and in my own experience (both as a GM and as a player) it often times gets ignored in favor of keeping the game flowing a little faster. While not a major concern, we’re gonna play around with the idea of a counter-attack or dodge being a “once a round” feature.
Stunts are another item that may get a revisit. Right now a character can perform a stunt in combat (ex. bull rushing or shoving) in lieu of damage and the target can either suffer the effects of the stunt or ignore it and take damage instead. I’m considering changing it to forcing the target to make a save to avoid the stunt instead.
And finally (for this bit), we don’t explicitly state that trying to operate a ranged weapon while in melee combat has drawbacks. It’s hinted at in the a ruling about advantage/disadvantage and I’m sure most GMs impose disadvantage in that scenario, but a brief clarification should help make it easier to adjudicate.
Generative Tables.
NUKED! has one table for random encounters in it and that’s it. While working on Under an Atomic Sky, we’ve written more tables and after reading Cairn 2e I remembered how much I enjoyed coming up with random generators in Rangers (that game is basically all tables). While it won’t be as intense as Rangers (or Cairn for that matter), adding some settlement generators, faction generators, random encounters, and point of interest tables should make it easier for GMs to come up with scenarios on the fly.
Anyway, these are some of the ideas we’ve been considering for NUKED! Revised Edition. If you have anything you’d like to share, feel free to comment. There’s no timeline on this project, as Panko and I are working on our Godzilla-inspired Raging Lake of Fire adventure for ZineMonth 2027 and we’re always tinkering away at Under an Atomic Sky, but we’ll keep you posted!
