#the ZONE

[blueribbonbaby]

[theresattrpgforthat]

The computer game Pacific Drive has the player driving a supernatural station wagon and delving ever deeper into an abandoned exclusion zone in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, dodging anomalies, scavenging for resources, exploring, and seeking answers to what events caused the creation of the zone. The game takes heavy inspiration from the art of Simon Stålenhag, which has its on TTRPG in "Tales from the Loop", but can you recommend any other games that would recreate the experience of Pacific Drive?

THEME: Pacific Drive

Hello friend, so I looked up Pacific Drive and one thing that I found out about it was that it was inspired by media such as Annihilation and Roadside Picnic, so first I’m going to send you to my Fucked Up Settings Rec post, especially to the games titled Trespasser and The Zone.

What I’m getting from Pacific Drive is that it’s focused on travel, exploration, an interesting story, the ability to improve the one thing that you survive with, and experiencing a world that fundamentally doesn’t care about you. So let’s see if we have anything that hits any of those tangents.

The Last Caravan, by Ted Bushman.

In this cozy, melancholy post-apocalypse, the aliens came less than a year ago. The war lasted two months, but nobody won. Now, with an alien army rising from the ashes of war, you will have to make a dangerous journey across a shattered North America in search of a new home.

You are normal people finding heroism in extraordinary circumstances. You will explore transformed landscapes, search abandoned towns, discover otherworldly technology, negotiate with newly-formed factions, outrun alien pursuers, and — and all you’ve got is a car, your fellow travelers, and the road.

The Last Caravan combines the survival-horror genre with the fiction-first ethos of Blades in the Dark and No Dice No Masters. Each character has a list of prompts called triggers that reward you with a narrative resource that can open up abilities as you tell your story. The alien apocalypse has come, but the story isn’t over, as a some kind of threat shows signs of growing as you travel across a cold, frozen highway. If you’re interested in The Last Caravan, but missed the Kickstarter, you can check out the Quickstart while you wait for the final release.

24XX-D: Aftertime, by xiombarg.

As a volunteer for the  private paramilitary group Project Aftertime, your health was altered and your brain preserved so you could be revived after society collapsed. 

You awoke in an unfamiliar base filled with unfamiliar technology, with even stranger ultratech outside. 

The Event the wastelanders describe makes no sense. "The gods left us."

I feel like I’m missing something when I look through my folders because the 24XX system feels perfect for these kinds of ‘exclusion zone” games but Aftertime feels the closest to it, and it’s definitely not perfect. There’s too many people milling about, and there seems to be too much pointing towards some kind of answer about the alien event. However, I think in general, 24XX is a great system to root around in if you want to make something for yourself. A lot of these kinds of games have great roll-tables for events, locations, and missions, and inventory (which seems really important in Pacific Drive) is simple to track but absolutely necessary.

Aftertime is different from other 24XX games in that it uses a pool of resources rather than dice rolls to determine what you can or cannot do. You could stick with that, or mash this game together with some other 24XX games like PREDATORS to incorporate dice rolls, and vehicles. What I like about Aftertime is that it includes a base that you can upgrade over time, similar to how your car in Pacific Drive gets better as you find upgrades for it.

Crush Depth Apparition, by amandalee.

February 1902, somewhere on the North Atlantic. Mountainous waves blot out the horizon, and the wind and thunder roar too loud to tell one from the other. But 200 ft down there’s only still cold darkness and the submarine.  

No one has ever dived this deep before, so far from shore and safety. Maybe no one was ever meant to try. The submarine is 170 feet of dripping pipes and fogged up dials, levers rusting stuck in the damp. It was two weeks into the voyage when things started going wrong.  Little accidents, inexplicable mistakes. Someone heard a noise, like tapping, soft against the hull last night. Bright paint flakes off a torpedo and underneath there is a story scratched into the metal. The Captain turns down a hallway that can’t be there,  into pipes and steel and miles of ocean.

The one thing keeping you safe down here has turned into a labyrinth. 

Crush Depth Apparition is an eerie survival horror stand alone adventure zine for 3-5 players and a GM by Amanda Lee Franck. It  includes rules for running and repairing a state of the art (of 120 years ago) experimental submarine, a map of the ocean, an unnatural labyrinth,  ghostly encounters,  hundreds of things that can go wrong, and a crew that depends on you.

Because you are depending on your submarine for survival, much of the focus of this adventure is going to be on keeping it running. You’ll need to manage your fuel levels, the submarine’s battery, and how deep you go, all while trying to find a way home. The setting is very different from Pacific Drive, and I think the horror amps up a little bit because there are more personal details that will likely worm themselves into this game. You’re also less likely to survive the entirety of this game; but the weirdness that happens the further that you adventure may mirror some of the strangeness of Pacific Drive.

ZONE, by Iron Cutler.

ZONE is a genre-agnostic TTRPG , heavily inspired by Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, though adaptable to a wide variety of settings. It is about trespassing in a bizarre and dangerous area—the Zone—and becoming changed by what you find inside.

ZONE is a GM-less ttrpg that uses collaborative worldbuilding to design and deepen the strangeness of the world around you. Each session will contain an expedition of Trespassers, people who enter the Zone without permission, and thus destined to be permanently changed. Your Trespassers will not usually survive from one expedition to the next; this place will change them, and that is why ZONE is described as “un-winnable” by its designer.

Unlike many of the other games on this list, ZONE is very abstract because it doesn’t expect you to succeed. Your characters are destined to fail once they incur too much shock, so managing resources is not really something worth doing in this game. Character creation is also rather simple, and I think that is because the main focus of this game is on the place you are exploring, rather than the character themself. If you want a game about the horror of being changed by something alien and ultimately uncaring about you, I’d recommend ZONE.

RAD, by ¡Hipólita!

We don't know who broke the world, but we know what weapon they used.

In the year 1990, the United States of America fired a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, immediately killing millions and poisoning the land, air and water for years.

The scarce few survivors were forced into hiding. About 50,000 people fled to the relative safety of the Moscow Metro, with smaller numbers following suit in cities like Novosibirsk, Volgograd, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Samara and others.

RAD is a game full of radiation-induced body-horror and all about survival. You have four core stats, and the rest of your character sheet is all about resources and inventory, including three resources called Bedroll, Rations and Battery. The game mechanics are inspired by systems like Mausritter, which means that player creativity and smart item use will take you far. It’s all about a delicate balance of resources, so if that’s what you liked about Pacific Drive, you might want to check out RAD - as well as an adventure for it titled The Technicolor Forest.

Other Games I've Recommended Before

Nibiru, by Araukana Media.

Apocalypse Roadtrip, by Mynar Lenahan.

Roadspire, by Glempy.

[cryptonaut]

Eirik Johnson - BORDERLANDS

[evilminji]

New Question Haunting Me

Is the ENTIRE Zone Green or just the region Danny got spat into?

Cause we know Ectoplasm can change colors.

And the Zone IS literally Infinite.

The Caribbean ocean and the Arctic ocean look different, despite both being sea water. And Carbon sure can make ALL SORTS of funny shapes. Does the Zone have Regions? Actually, yes. We know it does.

Better question. Does it have Nebula? Like, WELL beyond plant sized areas. So big, that even with unobstructed view, you can't really see the edge of the color shift?

My brain is telling me? That the most LIKELY scenario? Is because it's Infinte? It's both There and Here. Just? The Zone, Repeated. With this being the Green One. A specific SHADE of many. Countless.

You just? Go 90 at a degree angle while standing still, maybe a little to the back-up-down-turn-left aaaand? Now you are in the Red Zone. Do it again, everything's monochrome. Etc.

Each place has its own Vibe. Probably it's own Monarch.

Likely just one Clockwork.

But? So far? All the Ectoplasm has come from, effectively This Specific Pool? The own closest and easiest to access from their universe. Which happens to be Green.

It could very well be like different gasses, per color. Different energy waves. Pulling different personality types towards different Zones of THE Zone. You very well COULD turn a corner, metaphorically, and find what to the ancients eye looks like Heaven.

Drifting clouds, endless bliss, soft light. All seen through some temporary portal. While another? Holy SHIT. Everything's on FIRE and people are tearing each other apart! Scary and bad! That must be some sort of punishment!

You see enough glimpses of the alien and untranslateable? It gets hard to explain REAL fast. But you become certain of what you know. Filter it through the lense of your experiences and cultural understandings.

Would be interesting to figure out how those glimps even HAPPENED. Was it the metaphysical "weight" of humanity? Slowly sinking Realm in the sea of the Zone until it reaches the correct ectoplasmic density? A way too support the expanding number of Souls being created?

What must, then, they have been able to see? When Humans were new? If the population keeps increasing, will the Portal in Fenton Works start to disconnect? As Reality is dragged down a layer? What effect does that have on the collective subconscious?

If Danny became King of the Green, would he have to stay THERE? Negotiate with the Monarch of where comes next? I have QUESTIONS! I want to STUDY THE GOO! Somebody let me poke the radioactive substance with a STICK!

@the-witchhunter @hypewinter @hdgnj @ailithnight @nerdpoe

[little-punk-ass]

[tardis-ghost-blog]

Pacific Drive - Ironwood Studios (2024)

[filmjet]

Stalker (1979)

[monstertsunami]

what if you were a morally dubious scientist and i was the dangerous anomalous territory you were researching. what if you experienced a metaphysical death inside me and stopped aging and returned to your field with a newfound devotion. what if the experience changed you so fundamentally that you built your entire extended life around researching me. what if i was an impassive and unstoppable force and you personified me and became obsessed with me and claimed to enact my will. what if you enacted atrocities in my name. and we were both girls... what then?

[pafl-confessions]

actuallly. the zone calls temoava mom my

so true

[pafl-headcanons]

the zone is a lesbian.

yeah it is

[dopening]

The Zone: Survival Mission Season 2 (2023) Gif

[little-punk-ass]

[herrorgrafico]

[shebadfuckk]

Jealous of the sun/ that gets to wake you up tomorrow never comes

I’ll keep my eyes shut

(I’ve finally come alive)

(I feel it in my gut)

I can’t open my mouth

I tried to run I’m stuck

And he’s all that I wantBut I want him to give me up

Cuz Daddy

Showed me things

About myself I kept tucked

I’m begging him to breathe

But he tighten, lift me up

(I’m begging him to come x2)

really tied me up

And threw me in the trunk

Fucked me like I never realized

That’s how you touch

He punish me a bunch

Cuz He love it when I blush

My heart is screaming please

I’m scared

Its being crushed 🖤

I wonder if for him

He feels it when it crunch

He drops it like the leftovers from tacos in his lunch

Maybe I was fine

Maybe it’s too much

✨(Come here and touch me right )✨

Im begging you don’t leave me with the terrors in night

I’m staying up awake

Just to stay alive

[poptartportfolio]

STALKER gift art for a @amadchief, featuring Poptart!

[disease]

FORT ROMEAU // THE ZONE [SINGLE, JUN 2023]