Presented here are a few sample locations you can quickly and easily tweak and drop into most games.
They also serve as good examples of what you can do with settlements you create, and how much detail you may want to create for major sites of adventure. Where options are presented, just pick which one you like the best, be it A or B.
Iron Ring
Settlement Type: Bartertown Produces: Small craft goods Self-Sufficient: Steam power Imports: Everything
Attitude to Mutants: Tolerant Population: 976 (215 mutated)
Notable Individuals: Rictus (Tyrant of Iron Ring, Former Raider Warlord), The Gimp (Reigning Champion of the Pit), Old Tess (All-Seeing Crippled Beggar), Marie Szubra (Local Healer and Leader of the Secret Resistance)
Appearance: Bristling with watchtowers, cobbled on panels of metal, wood, and plastic, and surrounded by carefully placed wreckage and blocks of concrete, Iron Ring is a large Before Times sport stadium turned into a heavily defended bartertown. A haze of smoke and steam surrounds the town, belched out by its hodgepodge of steam boilers and engines.
The interior of the stadium is a large open area cluttered with market stalls during the day, but cleared for the popular nighttime pit fighting events. Clustered over the stands of seating are crude huts forming a sprawling maze where most of the populace
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dwells.
Primary Defenses: Reinforced structure, multiple watchtowers equipped with a wide array of different weapons, strategically located obstacles to easy entry, small number of disposable slave warriors, and a ruthless gang of motorized raiders who serve as muscle and militia.
Notes and Secrets: Iron Ring is a particularly rough and violent bartertown run by a raider warlord, Rictus, and his gang of miscreants. Not only does it serve as a nexus of trade, it is a major slave market as well.
Rictus is known to purchase particularly exotic mutant slaves for his personal menagerie, and rumor has it that he is secretly a mutant himself, despite the second-class treatment mutants in Iron Ring receive. Some of the normal citizens of Iron Ring are covertly meeting and forming a resistance to Rictus and his gang.
Markstown
Settlement Type: ‘Stead Produces: Oil, gasoline, diesel
Self-Sufficient: Electricity, seafood, water Imports: Everything else
Attitude to Mutants: Friendly Population: 143 (113 mutated)
Notable Individuals: Greybeard Gunn (head of the settlement, Lore Keeper), Liz O’Keefe (Amphibious mutant and Sentinel leader), Pat (aged Aviator or Road Warrior)
Appearance: A) An inland oil well and refinery, heavily fortified with walls of rusted metal sheeting surrounding scattered huts of concrete, stone, and rusted iron, marked by two watchtowers, and an oil-covered water-filled moat.
B) An offshore oil rig and refinery, ramshackle in appearance, jutting up above the waves on four rusted, mesh and barbed-wire encrusted legs. A flotilla of old sea vessels are chained together around it narrowing approach by boat to a single entry point overseen by a pair of watchtowers.
Primary Defenses: A) Exterior and interior metal walls, flamethrowers in all watchtowers, moat can be set ablaze, one battlecar.
B) Elevated above the waves on reinforced concrete legs covered in razor-mesh and barbed wire,
watchtowers equipped with flamethrowers, flotilla of chained sea vessels form a sea wall, one armed speedboat, and an armed autogyro.
Notes and Secrets: Defenses are constantly assaulted by A) raiders, B) pirates, and these frequently attempt to intercept movement to and from the ‘stead.
A) The settlement is secretly being undermined by morlock excavations.
B) One of the supporting legs of the oil platform is close to collapse.
Salvation
Settlement Type: ‘Stead Produces: Nothing
Self-Sufficient: Building materials, poor quality vegetables, water
Imports: Everything useful it can Attitude to Mutants: Friendly Population: 86 (12 mutated)
Notable Individuals: Pastor David Wrens (calm, steadfast community leader of middle years)
Appearance: A small settlement in the heart of a nuked city’s ruins protected by a high, thick wall of reclaimed concrete and stone. A couple dozen humble shacks and gardens struggle to produce meager crops of stunted vegetables. An immaculate old church stands at the heart of the settlement.
Primary Defenses: Surrounding wall, every able-bodied individual is armed with a melee weapon or crossbow in time of need, its extremely positive reputation in the local area has reduced hostilities against the ‘stead.
Notes and Secrets: Formed around a church that miraculously escaped the nuclear destruction of the city in which it stood, Salvation is a deeply religious community. It has a reputation for being willing and able to heal and nourish the needy, turning away no one in need, and this means it has become neutral ground of sorts, visited by raiders and travelers in need. Donations are, of course, always gratefully received.
Secretly, one of the core religious tenets of the community is the belief that cannibalism is divine; it’s a shame that sometimes the sick and injured die despite the community’s best ministrations...
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ROADKIll
ROGuEs’ GAllERy & BEsTIARy
Characters can expect to meet many potential friends, foes, threats, and opportunities in their adventures, most of which are fellow humans and mutants. This bestiary provides a selection of ready-to-use characters, humans, natural animals, and mutant horrors.