Where To Begin

## Starting Guide

Hello and welcome!

The Wasteland is an alternate universe roleplaying game set in the same world as the Mad Max movies: a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world where the end-game is simply survival.
The game was created to provide players an opportunity to create their own adventures while immersed in the world of cooperative writing.

Visit our roleplay subreddit to read the current story. If you decide that you're interested, character application begins on the community subreddit! Feel free to come by our IRC chat to meet your fellow Wastelanders or to ask any questions.

## Important Information

### Chronology

The Wasteland is set after the events of Imperator Furiosa's road
war, which for our intents and purposes, occurs after the events in
Beyond Thunderdome--which is pure speculation on our part as even George
 Miller hasn’t stated when it occurs with 100% certainty.

Taking the chronology found here into consideration--granted, it’s
not an official chronology because such a thing doesn’t exist, but it
suits us just fine--it’s still difficult to set an exact year to the
game.

This is what we’ve come up with instead:

* **Characters aged 60+:** *The Wise Ones* - have the Knowing of the world in the Before-Times. These are the only people who were still alive as [young] adults before everything as we

know it came to a grinding halt. They may have fought in the Final Wars.

* **Characters aged 27-59:** *The Children of the End Times -* these are the portion of the current population who were children at the time of the Great Collapse. They will only have faint recollections of the Before-Times, but will recall in far greater detail a time of

shortages, the collapse of government and law enforcement, breakdown of
long-distance communication, an exponential increase in crime rates with
 the rise of outlaw gangs, and the true dangers of long-distance travel
as attacks on supply trains become more and more prevalent.

* **Characters aged 1-26:** *Those Born after the End* - the current world is the only one they have ever known.

### The Setting

The Wastelands, otherwise known as the Wasted Lands to those that
live within them, were once known as the Australian Outback, or the
wilds. Following the world collapse, more and more people began
abandoning the cities along the coast and moving further inland. When
the nukes fell, they hit the most populated areas, leaving the
once-proud metropolises shell-shocked and too full of radiation for
anything to thrive within them.

These people banded together in factions or tribes in attempts to
cling to their culture, building small colonies or becoming part of
larger ones. Warlords rose to power with the support of their warrior
gangs, claiming control of the largest settlements and the resources
they offered. But they soon realized that no one man or woman had it
all. No one out there in the wasted lands had everything they needed to
survive.

And so it was that an uneasy peace was made between the Citadel with
their green stuff, the Reservoir with their uncontaminated water
supplies, the Bullet Farm with their armories, and Gas Town, who had
control of all of the guzzolene, for the sake of supplies; for the sake
of trade.

Bartertown offered a mid-point between them all, a hub for commerce
as well as a place to find entertainment and company in an otherwise
barren world.

Please consult this map for a visual picture of where places are generally located in the Wasteland.

### Government

There is no one world order. Government, in the loosest of senses,
exists in some places at the colony level over the settlement as a
whole, while in others it is based purely upon the tribe’s
organization--if it is organized at all.

At the head of each of the five largest settlements exists an NPC
overlord/warlord/chieftan. They maintain control of the primary resource
 produced within that settlement with the support of the faction that
they head.

The rest of the population may be divided into smaller factions or
tribes led by others, but in order to remain within the protection that
the larger settlement provides, they must adhere to the policies/laws
created by those that rule the settlement. Refugees, meanwhile, exist as
 unorganized forces in every one of the settlements and are used
primarily as laborers if they are of use at all.

This is left in broad terms to allow players the freedom to
world-build; to create those tribes and smaller factions that may either
 exist within the larger settlements or survive out in the waste on
their own as scavengers or the like.

The Factions and Clans
 sheet offers specifics with regard to which people occupy which
settlements or areas, who their leader is, how many are in the tribe, as
 well as what resources they are in control of if any.

### Currency

No longer is a man’s worth measured by how much money he has. The
real currency in the Wastelands is trade--either in terms of what items
you’ve managed to collect, steal, barter for, etc., and physically have
to offer in trade, what knowledge you may have that others do not, what
skills you possess, or what resources you manage to control.

### Climate

The Outback has always been arid, but thanks to climate changes
followed a short nuclear winter, the Wasted Lands currently experience
very erratic changes in weather patterns.

The ozone layer has been greatly depleted, and as such, UV rays are
more harmful than ever. At night the temperatures drop with the sun, and
 during the day, they skyrocket again. Good clothing is essential in
order to afford some protection from exposure the sun’s radiation.

Windstorms tend to be very violent if/when they do occur, with
cyclones that tear through ramshackle settlements with ease, carting off
 and or destroying necessities. These winds tend to kick up or bring in
radioactive dust from the cities; goggles and masks or handkerchiefs to
cover mouths and noses in an effort to filter out the harmful particles
are important.

Black rainstorms occur infrequently and are just as unpredictable as
any other kind of weather to be found in the Wastelands. They are so
named due to the colour of the precipitation, which contains toxic
particles that tend to burn and sting when they come into contact with
people or animals.