The Wampadu

A Bonus Wampadu Card for your collection!

In part two of the playtest, characters traveled from "The Downs" (Marked by a star on the map), to the hex "zone" known as R-E-NAH, to the SouthEast.  Instead of choosing a night of rest, they decided to engage in an "Amateur Hour" event, hoping to score four coupons for one night of "LUX" in the lowest level of The Downs.  LUX is luxury living, the highlife, the stuff every wastelander dreams of but few every possess the credits to realize.  Characters that rest in LUX gain a 1 hour "around the table/ meta game" bonus of -2 to all rolls.

They faced off against the fearsome Wampadu, an oversized mutant, and just as they were checking their ammo, realized it was a melee-only fight.  Too late to back out, they fought for their lives amidst a stream of phlegm that left most of them fairly debilitated for half of the fight.  Were it not for the Wampadu's extremely low intellect, most or all would surely have perished in the fight.  They all survived the night and grabbed the prize.  With an army of angry ratlings waiting for their return to "The Downs", will they live to redeem their coupons?  It's hard to say at this point.  They pushed on through a third hex between two mountainous regions filled with mutants, and snuck passed the fallen stronghold known as "Smitherine", encountering only a small band of weak "Muties".  Bubbs Diner, and some serious wasteland weirdness still await the party, until the final playtest session in a few days.

Playtest Adventure to become first "Module".

Cover art for the adventure.

The playtest adventure went really well, so well that it has bumped out "The Trouble With Gerald" as the first adventure I am going to put out.

"Bubb's Diner" is a first level adventure that begins in a ratling compound in the first level of "The Downs", a subterranean outpost and "starter home" for the party of adventurers.

The adventure shifts locations to the scrub wastes, and eventually the eponymous diner, filled with fanatical Lizard-Folk.

Players begin in the middle of a firefight, and flashback cards given each time they enter a new room explain how they ended up knee-deep in ratling murderers.

The adventure is designed for the "soon to be released" Wasted Hack, but will work with any game that uses "The Black Hack" core rules.

To the left, you can see the cover illustration freshly slapped into InDesign.

Marvelous Items (Wasted Hack Update)

Marvelous Items are the Wasted Hack equivalent of "magic items", and come in several varieties.
To the left is the illustration for a Mutagen Canister.  Mutagens have various effects (similar to powerful potions) up to, and including, greatly increasing the chance for a character to develop a beneficial mutation. Infected Class characters that use this particular type of mutagen (MTG-4TM) will gain a new mutation automatically.

Characters can also discover schematics that can be taken to a Sage to be interpreted and crafted.  The ( +David Johnston +David Johnston ) Johnston Submachine gun featured to left is the product of one such schematic.  It combines two SMGs into one more powerful weapon.

Relics are another category of Marvelous Items.  Relics are extra-dimensional in nature, and were pulled through rifts in dimensional barriers during the End Times War, along with all manner of terrifying beasts.  The "Third Eye" relic to the left embeds in a character's forehead, granting them a permanent +1 bonus to a randomly determined attribute. They can be removed from defeated foes, but a character can only every have one "equipped" at a time.

Future-Tech items are also among the Marvelous Items characters can discover while crawling through the rubble of the Great Ruined World.
The Laser Pistol to the left requires an energy cell for ammo, and can be overcharged to deal an extra die of class damage at the risk of shorting the gun out and requiring its repair by a Sage. Other Future-Tech items, such as the Phase-Belt, allow the character to mimic spell effects, such as teleportation, at the cost of an entire energy cell.

"Lost Marvels" are the final category of Marvelous Items, and represent the pinnacle of normal technology at the time the world fell apart.  These would include powerful sniper rifles that can take an enemy out in a single shot. suppressors for firearms, and night vision goggles.

Corner Painting

By making and releasing Waste-Land Beasts and How to Kill Them before I completed putting together The Wasted Hack, I sort of painted myself in a corner, as least as far as monsters are concerned.  My Initial thought was to just pull down Wasted Beasts and fold all those monsters into the Wasted Hack rules, as there are a lot of "standard" monsters that I would have liked to have included with the "core" rules.  The biggest problem with this is that The Wasted Hack was already becoming gigantic, and in need of some serious editing without adding 20+ pages.

The solution is far simpler... Just create some more monsters.
This little creep to the left has been included in The Wasted Hack as the token "One Hit Dice" monster.

"Muties" are weaker versions of Mutants. These runts are run out of Mutant enclaves and band together in the wastes out of desperation.  They are particularly hateful and bitter, and use pack attacks to extract their revenge on everything they meet.