Rise from your grave

Funny how things work. I've completed my second ebook of paper minis for Hidden Treasure Books, and I'm just waiting on DrivethruRPG to OK it. Unfortunately, I didn't get it to them before the weekend started stateside, so I'll have to wait a bit for them to approve it and then I can start advertising it.

To tide me over (and because I can type on my tablet while outside with my son, but not work on digital image manipulation), I've started rebuilding Presidents of the Apocalypse from the ground up.

Part of the inspiration to go back to it was my ideas for re-vamping Flying Swordsmen. There's some overlap of ideas in the new Wu Xing system and PotA. Part of it is getting off to a slow start with Hidden Treasure Books. If I've got more material for sale, I stand to make more money, right? Finally, of course, was watching Mad Max: Fury Road.

People on DeviantArt get this game.

It was almost a decade ago that Paul and I came up with the idea for PotA. And I've mentioned it before, but the original version we hurriedly came up with was a bare-bones resolution system, and three charts (each d100) of crazy ass powers. But the powers were names only, no description. Part of the fun of the game was rolling up a random President. Part was trying to find ways to make the random names of powers into useful things to do. And part was being able to beat the tar out of Ronald McDonald, Kim Jong-Il, Teletubbies, David Hasselhoff, and Morning Musume (a J-Pop band) all in the same game.  Hell, in the same session!

Paul and I have made so many more detailed versions of the game over the years, but they've all been somewhat incoherent. This time, I've started by ignoring most of what came before, only bringing it back in when I see a need for it. And I'm looking at the game as what it truly is - a Supers game with a wacky post-apoc setting, rather than a post-apoc game with wacky characters.

Yes, they really get this game!

So hopefully, this version will be more coherent. Why are resurrected (or cloned, or unfrozen, etc.) mutated (cyborged) former presidents beating up historical and pop culture icons in a devastated wasteland? That's not important. They are. And the more "presidential" they are, and the more "American" their actions, the faster they will advance.