Item Driven Narrative

One of the things about post-apocalyptic stories is that you don't know what will be valuable, or what might drive the narrative.

However, there are a few key things to consider when deciding what types of items might become more valuable. I've already mentioned the idea that useful items will probably play a significant role in the story, but quite often in post-apocalyptic stories the key items that have sentimental value.

In Walkabout, one of the key ideas I had from the beginning was that trade only tends to occur on a local scale. Most settlements are generally self-sufficient, scavenging what they need from if they can't make it. However this limits available options. If a car needs tyres, and there's no more tyres of the right size, someone will need to modify the car to fit the tyres that are available. If someone wants a cup of coffee, and there's no more coffee around, there aren't many coffee plantations in Australia, and imports are no longer common. Tyres and coffee really become luxury commodities... so does anything made from plastic, any kind of electronic equipment, anything made in China (which makes numerous things suddenly unavailable, and many post-apocalyptic communities who had lost knowledge of the old world might start wondering about this strange and magical "China" which seemed to make variants of everything in the world).. anything "not from here" becomes uncommon... anything manufactured "here" but using parts "not from here" becomes hard to maintain. (The whole trade economy collapsed virtually overnight, so even that mythical place "China" isn't immune to these issues, because it imported vast amounts of iron ore, bauxite, and coal from places like Australia... I'm pretty sure the Chinese import a lot of oil for their petrochemicals and plastics too). Available work hours and manpower also become an issue... especially when more than 75% of humanity (and most of the industrialised centres) were wiped out in days...and most of the remainder died in riots during following darkness, and famine as the supply lines were no longer replenished, the final slow death came with the cold of the long dark winter which lasted years...

But how does this tie into equipment driven narrative?

Many of the items that drive a narrative in a post-apocalyptic story have sentimental attachment to people. An item from the before time that has been passed down through a family, but which no longer works because the parts aren't available. Maybe someone wants to repair the item and they charge the characters with the job of finding parts that no longer exist (or which might need to be crafted by hand with whatever materials are available). Maybe someone has stolen the item, and even though it was once common, it's now irreplaceable. Maybe there's a feud over the item, with two different families or communities claiming the rightful ownership of it. The item isn't important to the characters, it's a macguffin, it doesn't have any immediate use, maybe something like some seeds, a family photo from the before times, a doll (or action figure), a delicate piece of glasswork, but there are people who have an interest in it. There are probably other people who have their own agenda for it...

• This person wants it for themselves.
• That person doesn't want them to get it.
• This person wants it intact in it's current form.
• That person wants to destroy it.
• This other person wants it repaired.
• This person wants it on display for everyone to see.
• That person thinks it's too dangerous to show and wants it hidden.
• This person wants to make a copy of the item.

The players come into this situation, and there are no right answers that will please everyone. The aim is to work out why people have their desires about the item, rather than simply taking action to enact those desires. This is mean to be a game of difficult choices, where violence is rarely the answer (and will often make things worse).

Example 1:

Grandmother is a scavenger, she's always been looking for tyres of a certain size. She has a car that had been out of action for decades, but she remembers when she was young during the dark times, when her father drove her down the motorway to find the last sweets in supermarkets at the abandoned towns down south. She has become obsessed over the last few years, but these tyres are nowhere to be found. Dozens of grandmother's grandchildren have started raiding parties, claiming vehicles and their tyres... but nothing fits. The car has actually fallen into decay anyway, but grandmother is such a powerful figure in the local community that everyone wants to please her. In the end, grandmother might be appeased by providing her with some of the sweets that she remembers from her youth, but it will take quite a bit of investigation and research to uncover this motive. Fighting the raiders will just make people think that the characters have something to hide, maybe people will think they've got the tyres Grandmother needs, or maybe they'll establish themselves as enemies of Grandmother had her descendants. Maybe the player characters do know about some suitable tyres, but they'll have to do a other job for someone else before they'll be able to trade for them. Nothing is ever easy.

Example 2:

Jack is picking all of the blue flowered rushes along the edge of the river when the characters encounter him. This is probably only notable to characters with a neo-tribal cultural connection, or similar, the rushes are related to a coming of age rite for one of the local tribes. Jack may be picking the flowers to disrupt the ceremony, but he claims it is for his mother who loves their scent. Stopping him will cause him to call in extra friends, fighting him will cause new disruptions and the local town raises forces against the characters. The key is to work out why he might want the coming-of-age ceremony disrupted. The flowers are just the hook that lures the characters into a deeper story. If Jack and the flowers are ignored, other problems will develop, and those problems will lead back to the scene where the flowers were picked.

Items certainly won't be the only way to drive story in Walkabout, but they'll be a good way to add new twists and ethical dilemmas to the narrative.