[Fallout Florida] Starting My Retrofuturistic Postapocalyptic Alt-History Florida-Based RPG Campaign

[jordangreywolf]

The Wood Dragon
At last, Dungeon Crawl Classics is behind me, and frankly, good riddance. We had fun, sure, and I have much to thank the players for that -- but I felt that was largely despite the system (and the prefab adventure modules).

Anyway, this was a 3D-printed mini that Goober_Chris provided and that I was considering using as a proxy for a DCC adventure encounter, but we wrapped up the campaign before we got to that point. As much as I'd love an excuse to use this mini, I think it was better that we found a good stopping point for the campaign as Digital_Rampage, who was originally the cheerleader for using the system in the first place, was clearly running out of enthusiasm.




Florida Touring Map (for RPG Campaign)
The above is a hyperlink tag, because the full-sized image is HUGE.

At February 1st, I started a new campaign, set in an alternate version of Florida. Although there is a planned route across the state -- largely following I-27, once known as "Florida's Backbone" before other major highway routes began to crisscross the state -- I realize that players are players and something might capture their imagination and lead them elsewhere. Thus, it would be helpful to have a map of the "sandbox" area, rather than just presenting the PCs with the "encounter of the week." Even if they decide to largely stick with the caravan, they might pitch the idea of a detour here or there, or strike off on their own to scout out a slightly-off-course location that interests them while the caravan is camping out at a spot for a while (AKA taking part in prolonged scavenging/looting at a fruitful and relatively safe location).

This campaign map was zipped together from scans of an old touring map from GULF circa ... 1930s? 1940s? I'm not really sure, but it shows a State College for Women in Tallahassee where past 1948 that should be co-ed Florida State University. I had searched for a map showing Florida in the *1950s*, and so this was billed, but I didn't catch this discrepancy until I'd already zipped the whole thing together and done a lot of work on cleaning it up. I decided that, sure, my guideline for the alt-history aspect is that this is set in a future that could be imagined by someone in the 1950s, but perhaps a few changes to history happened earlier than that point. I changed the branding from GULF to the imaginary UP (United Power), ratcheted up any prices and population counts by a couple or more decimal points, edited some of the cartoons (switching an old biplane to a more futuristic-looking cartoony C-wing, removing a "this won't age well" depiction of a Georgian eating watermelon, and adding in a few original doodles), and adding in markers for some of the locations I imagined for the campaign as possible sites of interest. Up toward the top, the smiling cartoon gator atop Lamont, FL represents FLORIDALAND, my first "big" theme park location for the campaign.



Floridaland Park Map Brochure
This started with a Bing Image Creator image of "a map of a theme park shaped like the State of Florida," which gave me a suitably Florida-shaped piece full of amusement-park greebles, and surrounded by ... WATER, with lots of boats on it. This was a bit of a fixer-upper. Through some Phothoshoppery, I extended the thing to the left and right to add some vertical panels with "corporate sponsor" logos on the left, and a list of attractions with a map key on the right. I added in text, cleaned up various bits of AI garbage, worked on details for particular attractions (but blurred my work out a bit in hopes that spots of detail wouldn't be TOO jarring against all the texture/greebling around it), etc.


Floridaland / Gabby Gator Billboard
I've got a plastic "billboard" frame that I've been using, wherein I can swap out various 8"x4" "billboard" designs. While I was still prepping for this campaign, I used some of my own older artwork and some Bing Image Creator images as the starting point for some "roadside billboard" designs, intending to swap them out so that I could keep reusing the same billboard terrain piece, but representing a different location each time because, hey, the billboard design is different. While I was still running DCC games, I would put the billboard frame up on the buffet counter (next to the gluten-free offerings for one of my players, kept separate from the not-necessarily-gluten-free snacks at the stovetop) and swap out a different image each week as a sort of "sneak preview" for the campaign. Not everyone noticed. :/

Partly this was just for the aforementioned purpose of changing up a terrain piece, but the whole process of making faux billboards for faux attractions was a bit of a process helping me to "flesh out" the setting and figure out what sorts of locations might either be along I-27, or perhaps to be found if the PCs went off the beaten path.

If I ever decide to "release" adventures from the Florida-based campaign, I will likely have to redraw any billboard designs if they're used at all. (I could use the designs, I suppose, as /inspiration/. I'd just feel a lot better about using MY ART -- even if it's derivative -- vs. churning out something with AI and being unable to give a good account as to how much of it I can claim was my work, and how much the computer just did for me.)



Supermutant Keep-Away
A scene from the first session of my "That Florida Glow" tabletop RPG campaign, with some super-mutant suiciders from Modiphius. Where do they get all those fat-man bombs? Why do they blow themselves up with them (and occasionally their allies when they're a little too enthusiastic)? Who knows?

By and large I don't plan super mutants to be a factor in this campaign (IMHO they're over-used and overly-present for what was originally supposed to be a very local threat on the West Coast) but I had the minis and figured they had to show up at least once -- so I had an encounter while the PCs were still on the border with Florida. It was also a bit of a stress test for some house rules. If we had a TPK because it was too much? Well, the players had just written up their characters a half hour ago so they (presumably) weren't too attached yet (no custom minis yet, either), and the NEXT band of heroes could be suspiciously like the previous batch if necessary.

The brahmin and bald guy in the foreground are 3D prints (source uncertain). The Vault-Tec van is a Modiphius STL. The "RobCo" box in the background is a Reaper Miniatures "weapons locker" piece. The gas-masked survivor is (I think) a Brother Vinny "Nuclear Sandbox" wasteland survivor mini. The town is made up of assorted railroad model kit buildings donated by Urson, with some thrift store finds mixed in. The ground is the paper poster playmat from the Fallout Factions Nuka-World Starter Kit. All figures are painted by me with assorted acrylics and a few Army Painter Speed Paints, and Citadel Contrast Paints. (The speed paints / contrast paints are kind of like slightly watering down acrylic paint in a semi-wash, but with more surface tension so it doesn't flow quite as wildly out of the painted area.)




Agent Orange Sasta Billboard (Pre-War and Post-War Versions)
I tried to get Bing Image Creator to give me a billboard design with Sasta, but there were just too many things it couldn't handle. (Trenchcoat and fedora? It wanted to get rid of the hair and give me a male character. Eyepatch? No way. Sunglasses? It would displace the eyes horribly, or put EYES in the lenses. And holding up a bottle of soda was a bridge too far as well.) So, I basically just looked for INSPIRATION for Sasta, compositing the elements I wanted, and doodling something for a retro cartoony look. Having a mascot with an eyepatch didn't make much sense given the context (it would perhaps if the character was supposed to be a PIRATE), so I skipped that part and just "hinted" at the eyepatch in the distressed version by having a destroyed area over one eye.

Originally this was going to be "Orange Alert," my idea for a locally-branded Florida-based drink that national brands like Nuka-Cola would be trying to crush, but then I got the oddball idea to call it "Agent Orange" for the LULZ. Why "Agent?" Well, it's not meant to be (IC) a 'Nam reference, but the mascot is a "Florida secret agent" (who just happens to be a Florida Panther because ... FLORIDA).


Welcoming Committee at the Frosty Bar
In addition to my creepy "Masbots," I figured I could go with some crazy raider/psycho types wearing mascot mask heads. (I was inspired by a "Mr. Fuzzy" costume from Fallout 76.) Similarly to how I did the masbots, I used Clix models for the body, and then some Oyumaru "plastic clay" to make two-part push-molds of some little chibi animal toys from the thrift store, then made some epoxy putty "casts" for new heads. They came out a bit distorted, as tends to happen with this process, but it's supposed to be less-than-pristine, so I can roll with it.

In the background is an old Plasticville "Frosty Bar" kit (I scrubbed/shaved the embossed "PLASTICVILLE" lettering off of it to genericize it a bit), and also some plastic cockpits from the old Tehnolog/Robogear miniatures game (distributed via Airfix in the US circa the 1990s/'00s, I think) -- repurposed here to be defunct theme park ride cars.

...


And, meanwhile, totally unrelated, but Goober_Chris had some miniatures from the "Stranger Things" board game that I painted up for him. Creeeeeeeepy.