The World After is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game formed through collaborative sessions across the UK, specifically influenced by the wildlife and landscape of Canvey Wick; a post-industrial nature reserve located on Canvey Island in Essex, UK. The project aims to create a game space where community is created through diversity in a post-human world, challenging the euro-centric vision of conventional high-fantasy. Taking on the lessons from the worlds of Ursula Le Guin, particularly the Earthsea saga and the Left Hand of Darkness, North European Male is not the default character choice. Instead, The World After offers a wide range of societies, ethnicities and genders to roleplay, as your characters strive to rebuild a world torn apart by catastrophic man-made ecological collapse. Working with a diverse group of roleplay gamers in Essex, white and POC, with a range of gender identities, the game is being built around an open world, called Fain, where danger lurks in the form of magically enhanced flora and fauna and a shadowy “Corporation” that seeks to exploit its untapped riches.
The World After will be a full-colour hardcover book packed with rules, setting, art, bestiary and a starting adventure, set to be published in October 2019. The World After brings together a range of influences to create a unique table-top RPG.
– Designed to be intuitive and accessible, but with deep options for customisation and simulation, the d6 system models almost any action that could take place in the intricately designed world.
– Five distinct Societies present a wide range of opportunities for character creation
– A character development system reminiscent of tactical videogame RPGs.
– Suitable for both epic narratives and small-scale campaigns, the diverse world of Fain has been built from the ground up to be open to all.
This is a world that feels familiar, but gives a new perspective on current global turmoil, imagining a world after humanity, where the emerging societies must cooperate to face new threats from old foes.
Have you ever wanted to play a game where you could…
– Create a character that can change gender every Lunar cycle?
– Be part of a lost underwater civilisation founded by People of Color?
– Play with magical Essence, letting you manipulate Blood, Bone, the Elements and Time itself?
– Set the world to rights while learning about a fascinating deep-future version of our world, where our flora and fauna have adapted into incredible and terrifying forms?
The World After offers a new gaming system that veteran players will feel familiar with while approaching core fantasy mechanics in a new way. In our ruleset, you will find:
· Diverse Societies – Will your character come from the Safeer Haven, a society that has evolved to define their own gender with every passing of the Moon? Will you come from the Matriarchal Dahra, the males compelled to undertake the treacherous harvest of magical Shah (a foodstuff that has made every Dahra shimmer with Essence) while the Female Royalty control all aspects of society?
· Deep, Easy to Learn Rules – Instinctive core gameplay based on d6s, modelling a huge range of potential actions in this fantasy world. Define your Physical and Mental Attributes and the system gives you your full range of Ability scores.
· Character Creation – Build a unique character from five distinct Societies, all with rich history. Every choice at this stage defines possible future Evolutions, with multiple routes along the way. Do you want to be able to eventually transform into a hulking behemoth, or end up piloting a Mecha powered by magical Essence and Clockwork? Decide your route through the Evolution system.
· Unique Initiative Mechanics – In The World After, your choice of action helps define your Initiative in combat. Rigid turn orders will be a thing of the past as the combat ebbs and flows to reflect every participant’s choices – whether you want to run across the battlefield, cast a devastating spell or dive into cover and shoot an arrow, your adversary may just get lucky enough to react more quickly than you can. This organic, free-flowing combat system accurately reflects speed of thought and action in every moment.
· Experience System – With every successful roll, you build up a pool of experience which you can use at any time to increase your abilities as defined by your choice of character backgrounds. Once all increases have been applied, you can move onto your next Evolution. This creates a sense of constant improvement through your adventures, and the knowledge that you are entering into a potentially epic character journey.
· A Game Born of Community – The game has been created and tested by a dedicated group of gamers in Essex, re-imagining the world around them, drawing the societies and monstrous denizens of this future world.
· A Rich Set of Adversaries – From outsized Arachnids and Humanoid Ant societies, through to the shadowy off-world Cryo-Gen Corporation who are seeking to enslave the planet, The World After caters for many campaigns’ worth of different scenarios.
· A New Magic System- Magic in The World After is made of and referred to as Essence, a substance that can be found in concentrated form and also imbues the very air of the world of Fain.
The World After is a labour of love, created by tabletop gamers from Essex headed by artist David Blandy and games designer Matt Goulson. We wanted to create a game that was open to everyone, both embedded in a specific place, Canvey Island, yet reimagining fantasy through the work of fantasy authors Ursula LeGuin and Octavia Butler, where race and sexual orientation were acknowledged as integral to the gameplay experience.Inspired by the site of Canvey Wick, where nature has reclaimed the site of an oil refinery, everything in the game springs from nature, from the “Essence” magic system to the enlarged organic forms of the flora and fauna.
