Compromise and Conceit

Tyrant, Lancer and captured Rev-heads en scene

One of the members of my regular gaming group is thinking of running a one-off set in the world of Mad Max, probably hacking the Fate rules. I don’t know how the Fate rules work but I’m very excited to consider gaming in Mad Max’s crazed world. So here are a few ideas for character classes (or archetypes, if that’s too narrow a concept) that might make sense in that world. They’re designed in terms of what might be thier core attributes, skills and types of special powers or feats. The archetypes are all based on people you meet in Mad Max 2-4, and examples are given in square brackets after the archetype name.

• Road Warrior [Mad Max, Furiosa, Warrior Woman]: The quintessential loner good at everything. A capable driver not great at stunts, the Road Warrior is also a capable melee fighter and shooter. The Road Warrior’s primary trait is her level of comfort on moving vehicles: for a Road Warrior the moving back of a car is as stable a platform for combat as the solid earth of the desert, and she suffers no penalties or disadvantages fighting atop a moving vehicle – the only way to shake her loose is to change the momentum of her car. Because the road warrior has to make it in a wild and dangerous world on his own, he has to be good at a lot of things and often isn’t the match of his opponents at any one of them. He makes up for this with a healthy reserve of cunning and luck, as if the world had a narrative that favoured him …
• Rev-head [Warboys, Hedgehogs, the Rock Riders]:Rev-heads are the quintessential stunt drivers of the Fury Road. They aren’t great fighters or shooters, specializing in only one form of attack, but this is because their main job is delivery – they get the Road Warriors and Polecats where they need to be. Rev-heads are also technically adept, because they need to fix their rigs on the run.
• Polecat [Polecats]: Masters of acrobatics and close-fighting, the Polecat forms the boarding party of the wasted future. There is no vehicle too hard for them to get a purchase on, no high-speed chase that can confound their acrobatics, and no height or speed that can scare them. They don’t shoot, drive, speak or think: they leap, they smash, they grab.
• Lancers [Warboys, some of the hedgehogs, crew of the tanker in Mad Max 2]: Lancers are the stalwarts of the convoy, the men and women at front and back whose job is the gunnery and long-range attack. Masters of heavy weapons, rifles, crossbows and spears, they don’t aim to get in close and fight, but to lay down the heavier defenses of the convoy so that the Polecats can get in and get the prize. Although they aren’t great drivers or athletes, they have a remarkable talent for escaping car crashes, and when they have the enemy in their sights they don’t feel the rough and tumble of the road …
• Fliers [The Gyro Captain]: Fliers are rare and valued heroes of the future, patrolling the skies rather than the road. They can’t fight but they can fly, they have no fear of heights, excellent perception and an acuity for technology and the weather. Those little gyro-copters aren’t particularly stable either, so Fliers tend to have a great deal of luck…
• Scamp [The Feral Kid]: People grow up early in the wasteland, and they don’t all get ahead by fighting and killing. Some make it through luck, wits, stealth and cunning. Most of the wasteland’s thieves and spies don’t make it to adulthood, which is why the majority of the ones you see are feral, scuttling kids. They can’t fight, but good luck catching them, or even seeing them …
• Breeders [The Wives]: Breeders are rare gems in the wasteland, humans of perfect purity and beauty who are somehow immune to the corrupting effects of the Collapse. Perfect in every way, their genetic advantage isn’t just reflected in exceptional beauty: they also have better senses, and their minds are unaffected by decay and deformity, giving them a rare insight into the true nature of the world. They are highly sought after by every community in the wasteland, and they know how to use their beauty to deceive, distract and confuse. Breeders can be male or female!
• Tyrants [Toecutter, Humungus, Aunty Entity, Imortan Joe, the People Eater, the Bullet Farmer – my, there are quite a lot of these aren’t there!]: Tyrants are the leaders of the wasteland, so-named because there is no nice way to rule in a world without water, food or mercy. They know what makes men and women tick, and they know how to use it to their advantage. They may not be great in battle, or even able to to fight at all, but they have a remarkable ability for channeling others’ cruelty and ambitions to their own ends. Through intimidation, inspiration, cunning and plain old good luck they get everything they want every time … until their luck runs out.
• Organic Mechanic [The Organic Mechanic]: The doctors of the future, though there is almost nothing in the future that they can prevent or treat, except physical injury. Lacking the bedside manner of modern physicians, they make up for it with a refined taste in cruelty and an ingenuity for the use and misuse of human frailties. In addition to rough and ready methods for preserving the injured, the halt and the lame, Organic Mechanics also have a remarkable talent for jury-rigging primitive cybernetics and bio-enhancements so that their charges can keep fighting and dying. Why waste good organics? Or any?
• Tech-heads [Master, Mechanic]: They can’t fight, they’re probably physically deformed, and they aren’t usually very pleasant, but you can’t go anywhere without them, so there they are in every messed-up community and hole in the ground between here and the salt flats. Give a tyrant a mechanic and a pool of water, and she’ll have a “community” built on cruelty, pig-shit and petrol within a month.
• Brutes [Blaster, Rictus Erectus]: Possessed of the two greatest physical attributes one can enjoy in the wasteland – excessive physical strength and dim wits – the Brute is the last line of defense of every tyrant and petty dictator ever to rule the sand. Once the warboys are done, the rev-heads are burning and scattered, and the forces of disaster are closing in, every corrupt has this final suicidal mutant giant to deploy as he or she scuttles out the back door. Slow, stupid, impossibly loyal and invincible – what’s not to like?

In this list I haven’t included Savants like the children in Beyond Thunderdome or mobile archers like the Vulvalini, either because they don’t seem to be playable or because they’re really just the name for a specific clan of other types of characters. But I think this makes for a fairly comprehensive list of mad archetypes for a mad world. Have I missed any …?