Escape from New York as an RPG Setting

Be honest, this movie kicked ass and you've watched multiple times. 

I know I did. 

"Call me Snake..."

Escape from New York is one of those movies that just feels like a role-playing game waiting to happen. I mean it oozes it!

You’ve got a sealed-off island turned maximum-security prison. No guards on the inside, just the worst of the worst left to sort it out among themselves. Gangs with their own turf, their own rules, and their own hierarchies. A President who crashes into the middle of it. And one man: Snake Plissken, dropped in with a ticking clock and almost no support. The whole thing is already structured like a mission brief.

What makes it sing for an RPG is the pressure. Everything is against the clock. Resources are scarce. Trust is a liability. The map itself is hostile. You can run it as a pure extraction job, a longer campaign of surviving and carving out power inside the prison city, or something in between. The tone stays grim, cynical, and a little absurd in that early-80s way — which is perfect.

It also scratches the same itch a lot of us got from older Warhammer and dystopian games: a world that’s already gone to hell, and the only question left is how you move through it without becoming just another body on the street.

System recommendations (in my order of preference):

1.  Twilight 2000 (especially the Free League edition) The strongest pure fit. Collapsed society, scarce resources, armed factions, and small groups of competent but very mortal people trying to finish a job and stay alive. You barely need to hack it, just turn Manhattan into the wasteland and keep the ticking clock.
2. Mothership (or a light hack of it) Fast, brutal, and excellent at making every decision feel dangerous. The stress and panic mechanics would map cleanly onto the constant threat of the island.
3. Shadowrun (older editions, stripped down) Good if you want more gear, street politics, and faction play. Tone down the magic and cyberware and lean into the scavenged, jury-rigged tech of the film.
4. Old-school D&D / OSR with heavy house rules Sometimes the simplest systems get out of the way and let the setting do the work. Treat the gangs like rival warbands and the city like a massive, hostile dungeon.
1. A sub thought of sorts here, perhaps Top Secret. I'm not entirely sold on that but it has merit. 
5. Year Zero Engine (Mutant: Year Zero or a Forbidden Lands-style hack) Strong at resource management, faction play, and the slow grind of survival in a ruined environment.  

Any of those could work. The key is keeping the session tight, the clock visible, and the city itself as much of an enemy as the people in it.

Snake Plissken never asked to be a hero. That’s exactly why the setting works. Expand it out, if NYC is turned into a massive prison and an a Alliance between the USSR and China in a war against the USA is going on? To say nothing of crime being up 400%? Twilight 2000 might just win as a system by default in a walk off...

As a one off, or maybe a mini campaign if the PCs escape the island? Escape from New York provides a great starting point. Sounds all kinds of awesome.

NOTE: from time to time I pose these as questions about settings, like with Late Rome or Middle Earth after the Fall of Sauron to name a few here on the blog.

The New Shadow: A Middle Earth Campaign Setting Idea

One of the things I noodle around with from time to time is campaign world concepts; I sometimes draw maps, jot notes or otherwise brainstorm. So it was in that vein that I came across Professor Tolkien's ideas on New Shadow.

Before getting to the main idea itself consider the story we know: after Frodo and Sam haul the One Ring to Mt Doom and Gollum does his part in the story the tale is essentially over; everything that comes after is wrap up. While I like the Scouring of the Shire it's not vitally important to the story as a whole. While the interaction after the Downfall and the crowning of the King is interesting, it's also epilogue.

Considering the publication history of the Lord of the Rings trilogy the only thing the good professor would (nearly) finish afterwards (in the major book sense) is the epic Silmarillion (published in 1977 four years after his death). I say nearly as his son Christopher had to edit it a lot to make it into a story.

Before the Silmarillion however he contemplated a story about the transience of good and the flawed nature of Man, he called this idea The New Shadow. Again, to me the idea has some merit which he apparently wrote in the 1950's and again near the end of his life in 1968. In this we have the Professor's own words on the matter:

I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall, but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless — while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors — like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going around doing damage. I could have written a 'thriller' about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would have been just that. Not worth doing.

I bring this up because with the proper fleshing out this could actually be a very good campaign world, consider:

• The New Shadow story line eliminates the "War of the Ring Problem" as I call it. It's the issue of THE event hovering over the world. Dragonlance also suffers from this problem. The New Shadow means a familiar world, but not encumbered by the War of the Ring per se.
• A world likewise far enough into the future means that none of the "personages" of the Third Age and specifically the War of the Ring are going to be around with the possible exception of Gimli and Legolas. This is a new, wide open tableau to work with.
• Along with very few if any of the main characters there is going to be very few elves left, and the dwarves retreating further into the mountains. That leaves humans and hobbits. For evil a reappearance of orcs and undead (like skeletons and barrow wights) works for evil.
• Middle Earth isn't all that of a clerical world, at least in the D&D sense. Because of this it makes undead that much more of a fearsome foe.
• The New Shadow Cult could be greatly expanded upon and taken in any number of directions.
• The High King of the Reunited Kingdom is Aragorn's (Elessar) son Eldarion. Going with some of the points above it allows for a great latitude as Tolkien didn't write too much about the Fourth Age. Plus due to his elven parentage through Arwen it's possible to place Eldarion's reign even further into the future. A small but added bonus is he's not "really" in the movies other than the dream sequence of Arwen.

In short, I think a Middle-earth a few centuries after the Downfall could be a very viable campaign setting for your favorite RPG, it doesn't necessarily have to be AD&D, I simply used it as a guide. ICE MERP could work as I think 1st or 2nd edition Warhammer role-play rules would work very well. Clearly overall it needs to be made much more grim for most people's taste but there are some good hooks there to build upon.

I've also since acquired the Lord of the Rings rule set by Decipher heavily influenced by the movies, obviously that would work well. 

For more info on the New Shadow story begun, but not finished by the Professor click here.

For more info on the New Shadow story itself look here. The actual text appears in The History of Middle-earth, specifically the The Peoples of Middle-earth I have only ready excerpts and it is on my list to read this year (at least sections.)

How about you, do you think that a campaign set in the New Shadow would work?