hi! i am trying to run an rpg of some sort in a dystopian / light sci fi setting (think Wolfenstein, Homefront, Steelheart, etc.) and I have been having a lot of trouble finding a system. I want it to be relatively rules light, and I was really liking The Sprawl, but it has too much of a focus on cyberpunk stuff that I don’t totally want to get into. do you have any suggestions? thank you so much !!
The Sprawl is part of a family of games that use a set of rules called the Apocalypse Engine, so dubbed because it first appeared in a post-nuclear political soap opera RPG called Apocalypse World. You might also see such games under the imprint “Powered by the Apocalypse”, or PbtA for short. If you like the way The Sprawl plays, but not its specific focus, you might have a look at other PbtA games to see if there’s anything there that will do what you need.
The official Apocalypse World website maintains a fan-submitted index of PbtA games sorted by genre and theme. You can start there and see if anything catches your eye. I’ve unfortunately never used an Apocalypse Engine game to run dystopian military sci-fi, so I can’t offer specific recommendations.
http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/
If nothing you see there grabs you, let me know and I’ll see if I can dig up some suitable non-PbtA titles that are at least in the same ballpark rules-wise.
