Thursday, March 8, 2012

Morgan Ellis' The Spirit... of the SHATTERED EARTH!

Back in 2008 -- seriously, 2008! -- I posted this:
Finally played in Morgan Ellis's "Spirit of the Shattered Earth" game -- well, I say "finally," but it's only the second time he's run it at Strategicon -- which was a lot of fun. If you know your post-apoc references, you'll dig this game. Any game that explicitly acknowledges Kamandi and Thundarr is all right in my book. I caused a ruckus as Gorlla, the Mighty Crorc. I've encouraged Morgan a couple of times to get his act together and publish this thing in some form or other, so hopefully he'll do that.
This is sort of him doing that, via this blog.

Behold, the Shattered Earth!

What he's done is organize the scenario builder and the pre-gens he normally uses into a single, Blackbird-esque packet, so you can just download it and play it at a con or something. It's a totally no-prep game (other than all Kamandi reading, but you should be doing that anyway) -- like Danger Patrol and many other games of its ilk, it relies on player input to get the ball living radioactive boulder rolling.
I just love this map.
Here's what Morgan has to say about SotSE (and if you haven't heard this first paragraph delivered in his stentorian Saturday-morning-cartoon announcer voice, you're missing out):
Eons ago the world was sundered in a great cataclysm, the cause of which can never now be known. Humanity’s civilization was cast in ruins. In its place lies The Shattered Earth! A world of savagery, mutation, super science, and sorcery. But a few heroes still fight for freedom and justice against the forces of evil in a world gone mad! 
The Shattered Earth is a gonzo post-apocalyptic setting inspired by all sorts of post-apocalyptic media, the main inspiration is of course Jack Kirby's classic comic book Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth. But there are many other influences as well, like Marvel Comic's Killraven, TV's Thundarr the Barbarian, films like Planet of the Apes and The Road Warrior, and RPGs like After the Bomb and Gamma World. It's all about running fun, over the top, 1970s era comic book style post-apocalyptic adventures. I hope you enjoy it, and don't forget the Kirby dots! 
If you'd like to hear an explanation of how I run The Spirit of The Shattered Earth and FATE convention games in general, you can check out the Actual People, Actual Play Podcast: Episode 44 FATE for Convention Games: Hail to the King Baby.
(Definitely listen to that episode of APAP. It's pretty great.)

So there you go. Download it immediately. The Shattered Earth needs heroes!


8 comments:

Jeffrywith1e said...

Very cool. The other day I was trying to figure out what genre was left for FATE and thought of a FATE Kamandi which would be pretty darn cool.

Or Future Boy Conan.

MrkMllr said...

Morgan was kind enough to provide me with the materials for this setting a few weeks back and I ran it for my group as their first experience with FATE and it was pretty amazing. Tons of fun and both the setting and characters are great.

Mike Olson said...

Morgan has some other cool FATE hacks along the same lines as this one, with similarly iconic pre-gens to match. So... keep watching the ol' blog, because I expect at least one or two of them will show up here sometime soon-ish.

The Lord of Excess said...

There is no disputing that map perhaps is the most epic map of all time.

Morgan said...

Thanks for all the kind words guys. That map is one of the first things I found when researching this game and it totally the best inspiration for the Shattered Earth I ever found. I constantly seem to find new things on it every time I look at it. My thanks to Mike for including it.

Mark getting that packet together for you was another inspiration, or rather a kick in the pants to finally put the game up here. So thanks, I'm glad you and your group had fun with it and that it works with someone else running it.

I've got a few more of these Spirit of the [Blank] con games that I'm going to try and put together in a form fit for other people to actually use and see if I can't impose upon Mike to post them up here.

The next one goes far beyond even the Shattered Earth, across space to the blood drenched sands of a Red Planet.

badmouth said...

Could you fix the Shattered Earth Dropbox link? It’s not working for me. Thanks!

Mike Olson said...

I actually don't know if I still have the PDF of that anywhere -- I'm sure I do, but that Dropbox account no longer exists. I'll look for it and comment here again when/if I find it and put it back online.

Unknown said...

I stumbled on this blog post searching for a Thundarr the Barbarian RPG, and was wondering if you were able to find the PDF? I'd really like a copy if you did.