1. Getting Started

Introduction to the Wasteland Chronicle

The old world of humanity is gone, but enough of it remains to be useful. Computers, cell phones, and anything heavily dependent on microchips are effectively gone. The first waves of collapse included EMP events, grid failures, reactor accidents, electrical fires, and years of uncontrolled environmental radiation. Some devices died immediately. Others failed slowly as replacement parts disappeared, batteries degraded, storage corrupted, and surviving networks collapsed around them.

Most modern vehicles died with the electronics they depended on, leaving older and mechanically simpler cars, trucks, and diesel engines as the most reliable machines in the wasteland. Working vehicles are usually rebuilt, stripped down, and kept alive with mechanical parts, analog gauges, improvised wiring, and whatever can be repaired by hand. Newer vehicle shells still exist everywhere, but many have become barricades, shelters, or scrap unless someone has replaced their computerized systems with older technology.

Firearms still exist, but shooting them is far less common because ammunition is difficult to replace and every round matters. Shotguns and other simple, mechanically reliable weapons are more common because they are easy to maintain, tolerate rough conditions, and can use ammunition that is comparatively easier to reload or improvise from surviving components. The real problem becomes ammunition. Factories are gone, primers and smokeless powder are difficult to manufacture safely, and every cartridge fired consumes something that cannot easily be replaced. People can reload spent brass and maintain weapons for decades, but components eventually run out. In Wasteland Chronicle, this makes firearms relatively common while being able to afford to shoot one is not.

Even equipment that technically survived became useless without the systems that supported it. Cell towers went dark, satellites failed, server farms lost power and cooling, and precision electronics became almost impossible to repair with scavenged materials. By the time people began rebuilding, simple mechanical and analog technology had proven far more reliable. Radios, generators, engines, switches, relays, and hand-repaired machinery still have a place in the wasteland. Smartphones do not.

Most survivors live in Settlements that can provide some safety but cannot provide everything their people need. One may have clean water but not enough medicine. Another may have fuel but not enough food. Trade, travel, negotiation, and conflict are part of everyday survival. Outside the Settlements, the dead wander the roads, Raiders hunt travelers, contaminated ruins hide useful supplies, and simple problems like hunger or untreated wounds can kill just as effectively as violence.

The Infection is also changing the people who survived. Everyone carries some degree of it, and minor mutations have begun appearing among the living. Nobody fully understands what those changes mean yet. Most people are more concerned with whether they can make it through the next winter.

Even so, life did not end when the world did. People still build homes, fall in love, make music, throw parties, argue over stupid things, and protect the places that matter to them. Settlements are becoming cultures. Survival habits are becoming traditions. Temporary alliances may become permanent, while grudges can outlive the people who started them.

Players are living during the formation of the wasteland, when the decisions people make out of immediate necessity can become part of the world inherited by everyone who comes afterward. For the people living through Wasteland Chronicle, there is no established wasteland civilization waiting ahead of them. There is only the Settlement they are trying to keep alive, the people standing beside them, and whatever they can build from what the old world left behind.

Wasteland Chronicle is a standalone post-apocalyptic setting built as a spiritual predecessor narrative to the Dystopia Rising game world with lessons learned from the designers many other projects. Aspects of the world setting of Dystopia Rising, the combat system from Utopia Reborn, the narrative structure from A Series of Hauntings and American Excess, and the discovery and lore depth of Rocksalt. You do not need to know anything about Dystopia Rising or any of these other worlds to play. This experience has its own cultures, conflicts, characters, and rules, set during an earlier age when the wasteland is still becoming what it will one day be.

Settlements and Communities

Every character belongs to a pre-designed Settlement or Community. This is your team during the event and will be your primary event planning hub between events. It is the group your character represents, depends on, argues with, and works to protect. Your settlement gives you immediate connections to other players, shared responsibilities, and reasons to become involved in the larger story. You are not expected to agree with every member of your settlement, but your character should have a reason to care about its people and what happens to them.

Each settlement has its own aesthetics, symbols, resources, history, customs, and view of the wasteland. These elements provide a shared foundation for costume and role-play. Members should look and feel like they come from the same culture without being identical. Your settlement helps define how your character learned to survive, what their community values, and what they bring with them when dealing with outsiders. It does not replace your individual identity, Lineage, or personal history.

Each settlement is supported by two to three in-character leaders portrayed by event staff. These leaders represent different parts of the settlement and are not always in agreement. Their disagreements create choices, conflicts, and opportunities for players to decide what direction their community should take. They are not present to make every decision for the group. They provide structure while leaving the settlement’s players responsible for its actions and future.

Settlement leaders function as story points, mission providers, organizers, and representatives of their fictional culture. They help introduce new stories, direct players toward event content, maintain the genre of settlement spaces, and communicate information between participants and event staff without requiring players to step out of character. When the settlement needs work done, resources gathered, defenses organized, or political decisions made, these leaders provide clear points of contact. Settlement leaders also assist players in staying in character, keeping site decorations to genre, and keeping the immersion of the event high.

The settlement leaders are also available to help players find ways to participate and remain connected to the event. They may call meetings, assign missions, introduce visitors, share rumors, or help bring different groups together. Their in-character roles support immersion, but they do not replace normal out-of-character staff access. Safety, accessibility, consent, and conduct concerns may always be brought directly to staff without remaining in character. If and when needed, staff portraying settlement leaders are available for support.

Survivors and the Infection

Everyone in Wasteland Chronicle is still human, but humanity did not survive the end of the world unchanged. Its only been about 80 years since the Fall of mankind, but life is different. No technology, no infrastructure, no digital reference. In addition every Survivor carries some degree of the Infection that spread during the Fall. For most people it remains quiet enough that they still look almost entirely human. In others, it has begun leaving small physical changes that would have been impossible before the world ended.

Players may use minor mutations as part of their character's appearance. These changes should keep the character clearly human and fit a harder post apocalyptic setting. Eye discoloration, unusual veins, patches of changed skin (like scales), minor ear changes, altered teeth, strange scarring, small growths, or subtle changes in texture are all reasonable examples. You can have several small changes, but the overall character should remain overwhelmingly human.

As a general rule, mutations should not change more than roughly ten percent of the character's appearance away from human. If someone looks at you and immediately thinks "creature" instead of "mutated survivor," the design has probably gone too far. Animal ears, large tails, wings, full body fur, fantasy horns, dragon features, and similar designs do not fit the genre we are building. The goal is contaminated humanity, not fantasy creatures wearing wasteland clothes.

Infection and Survival

The Infection also helps explain why Survivors can endure injuries that would have killed people before the Fall. Bodies recover strangely. Trauma that should end a life sometimes does not. People get back up after wounds that should have kept them down. This does not make Survivors superheroes. Bullets still hurt. Broken bodies still need help. Blood loss, disease, hunger, and exposure can still ruin your day very quickly. The Infection simply means that the line between badly injured and dead has become much less reliable.

Near Death

The strangest effects happen when someone gets close enough to death that the Infection seems to react. A Survivor who reaches Death's Door may experience a strange liminal state before returning. These experiences can involve memory, fear, hallucination, unfinished business, or things that do not make sense until much later. What happens there is personal, and surviving it may leave the character with new information, compulsions, goals, or problems to carry back into the world.

Nobody fully understands what these experiences are. That has not stopped everyone from having an opinion. We encourage you to play around and discover what you can here.

Building Your Look

Your City should provide most of the visual foundation for your costume. The Infection is something you layer onto that character rather than something that replaces their identity. Start with a Survivor who looks like they belong in the wasteland. Then decide what the end of the world has started doing to them.