Kids W Guns

I’m running a game set in a mix of The Warriors movie and a post apocalyptic Lord of the Flies situation. Ten years before the campaign is set the world experienced a series of bright flashes. Over the weeks that these flashes went on whose old enough to have gone through puberty was burned alive and everyone too young for it survived, gaining amazing super-powered abilities. Some adults did survive but they kept to the shadows, building a life with whoever they could save underground. The government, a horrid dystopian regime where the US came under control by an dictator, found themselves finally in a situation to clamp down on any protests to their plans. With a captive and needy audience they began a very 1984/Airstrip One situation, the public cut off from outside contact became easy to manipulate as fear of the outside world became too strong to ignore. Soon shit like the “five minute hate” became entirely too common. Thus mankind found itself under the thrall of those in power. Imagine a boot stepping on a human face for all eternity...

That said many children were left above ground. At first it was complete chaos, leaving children left to survive in the empty city streets is a bad situation no matter what, but as time went on the kids learned to survive and even thrive in the empty streets. These kids began making friendships between each other but even then the predatory nature of mankind without rules meant they had just as many enemies too. Thus they formed gangs, tribes of teenage kids with powers beyond anything a man could do. They got cool gang names, tags, nicknames...some even got spiffy jackets with their insignia on the back. Of course they weren’t the only ones who got “powers”. Some of the burnt adults mutated like the kids, staying alive but just barely. Completely out of their minds they aren’t zombies per se, more like wild animals with strange and erratic patterns. The kids keep themselves away from those guys (my players call them tourists cause they got a bad tan) but every once in awhile you’ll have to venture into tourist territory to scavenge for parts and food.

I got three forces that are changing the world the kids are living in. The first force is the underground society. The kids don’t remember much of what the world was dealing with, at best they were twelve when it all fell apart from the flashes so they only have a kids perspective. Food shortages, threats of war, and the use of religious extremism to target those who might rebel were everyday norms. With the move underground this has just sparked the fire to end mankind’s will to fight. A lot of places were connected via underground tunnels even before the flashes, mega-corps whose basement levels reached to prisons and statesman’s offices just for ease of use for the horrid experiments that went on in those places on those trapped in the prisons. Thus the move underground wasn’t as difficult as it may have been. Sure the poor proles live in subway tunnels like rats but those up top still have comfy bunkers to survive in. But recently there’s been a bit of an upset. After a few key members of the upper class have died those who rose to the top on their corpses have decided it’s time to take back the surface. Using their resources from those secret bunkers and labs they’re sending armed and trained soldiers topside to clear the way for the new world order. The thing is some of those soldiers still have nieces and nephews living in the gangland up top and many of the soldiers are kids themselves, “saved” after the flashes hit from the top side.

The second force is a frankly not well thought out idea of an intelligent tourist gathering his people and marching on the city en mass, taking it back for himself.

Third is (and if my players are reading this goddamn you) the creators of the flashes, a race of alien beings made of light who’ve been living in our sun since mankind’s inception watching us as if they were our creators. They believes that the world was corrupt so they cleansed it of mankind so the children can inherit the earth. Thing is they still think the earth is corrupt and are getting ready for a more personal approach to vaporizing everyone they think is evil. Obviously they’re not great in and of themselves due to being part of mass genocide towards the adults in the world. Haven’t thought out much more.

First session was yesterday and it went great. If anyone has good names for cool gangs I’d love for some help in that department. Criticisms and ideas regardless of their content are encouraged and I’m grateful for any! Thanks for reading