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If you’re like me, your news and social media feeds have been packed with stories about Mad Max: Fury Road for at least the past week. There are commentaries, reviews (here’s mine), and articles pointing out that THE DOOF WARRIOR IS THE AWESOMEST THING EVER!!!!! There are also a handful of misogynists whining that the movie includes a badass female protagonists and paints sex slavery in a negative light, but fuck those guys. Even though the movie wasn’t the non-stop high-speed murderchase I was hoping for, it was still really cool and it made me really want to play a game about post-apocalyptic freaks killing one another with crazy dieselpunk machinery. I had to turn in my games for OMGCon a couple days later, so needless to say I’ll be running a Fury Road inspired game there. That being the case, I figured I’d better start thinking about how to make it work.
A lot of the rules for Sword & Sorcery are appropriate to a Mad Max game, especially the ones about the characters being extremely competent and the stuff about world-building as you go, so I’m going to carry over the rule from there that every character has at least one Number at 15 and nothing less than an 11. These people live in a harsh and unforgiving world where the weak end up dead or enslaved, so every character is at least somewhat competent overall and really good at one thing. Since character design is a huge part of the Mad Max franchise, starting Yum Yums are based on how cool your character looks and how well his abilities fit into the character design. If you can describe how character design elements (clothing, haircuts, mutilations, whatever) fit into the mythology or culture of your tribe or social caste (and you’re not just swiping something from the movies), you’ll get even more bonus Yum Yums.
Stats for weapons and equipment are based entirely on cool factor. The more awesome it looks, the better it works. In a race between a normal-looking Dodge Charger and a Ford Pinto on monster truck wheels with a bunch of unnecessary smokestacks and roll bars and skulls and shit, the Pinto has the advantage. There are several different sets of car rules for QAGS (Spy Racers, Cops & Robbers, J.I.N.G.O.), but at least for the one shot I’ll probably just give cars a holistic Cool Factor bonus that adds to the driver’s Success Degree on car-related rolls, some Hit Points, and maybe an Armor Rating. Weapons and other stuff attached to the vehicle contribute to the car’s overall Cool Factor, but get their own stats or rules as needed. Demolition derbies will use regular combat rules, more or less.
As far as set-up, there are basically two ways to go: either the PCs are a roving band of murderhobos or they’re a raiding/scavenging/whatever party for their tribe (ie, murderhobos with a mission). Either variation works fine for a one-shot, but if I was running a Mad Max campaign I’d go with the tribal set-up. In addition to giving the characters a home base with lots of room for colorful characters, it gives everyone a chance to develop the tribe’s culture and mythology and makes them have to worry about more than just their own survival (unless they want to be sent back to working in the Mines of Sorrow, that is). It also allows for a more mission-based game early on while you’re feeling out the characters and figuring out what else is out there in the wasteland.
I believe a good Mad Max game should play things pretty fast and loose, but there is one absolutely ironclad rule I would impose: No Doof Warrior PCs. The Doof Warrior is a wonderful, magical being whose main appeal is his mesmerizing oddness, so he must be allowed to simply exist on his own terms. Any attempt to explain, characterize, or contextualize a Doof Warrior would rob him of his Doof Warrior-ness. That would be unforgivable.
