I've been playing a lot of Dying Light, Metro, and Mad Max, and it's got me wanting to run an urban post-apocalyptic game set in the ruins of a major city. I'm not necessarily seeing zombies, but some sort of mutants are a possibility.

The bulk of the conflict will arise from different opposed factions within the city, pursuing the same limited resources.

System: GURPS, using the After the End books. Familiarity will not be required. How well you write is more important than what books you own.

I can see a few scenarios right off the bat:

1. PCs as runners or agents for one of the factions, doing what they can to strenghthen their faction while weakening the others.

2. PCs as leadership of a minor faction trying to survive in the shadow of the big guys. They might be the entire faction, if there are enough players.

3. PCs as independent operators, selling freelance services to the different factions and making friends and enemies along the way.

4. PCs as agents of some outside force, masquerading as one of the above while pursuing some external goal. Maybe they're from another city, or the remnants of the government, or from the past just awoken from cold sleep, or aliens, or the first wave of Homo Superior.

Other Options, just to put a spin on things:

1. There is a spacefaring culture, but this particular planet is under heavy quarantine. Nobody is allowed to leave, care packages are sometimes dropped, aliens may be encountered. Some higher tech is present.

2. It was a superhero apocalypse. A big fight that just spiraled out of control, as in the comic Kingdom Come. Some of those wandering the wastes are superhuman. Maybe the PCs are. Even so, they avoid calling attention to it, because everybody blames them for wrecking the world.

3. Some mutants have special powers. Psychic powers.

4. Supernatural stuff either caused the apocalypse, or no longer feels the need to hide as a result. Evil cults abound, along with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Gives an edge of survival horror to the game, but I'm leaning more towards Omega Man than Walking Dead. Maybe it's lovecraftian.

Thoughts?

Sounds interesting, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

All of the scenarios have possibilities.

Of the Other Options: I don't much care for supers, aliens I don't have strong feelings either way, but the other two sound intriguing.

Sounds like fun. No real preference for a scenario. For other options I think 1 or 4 would be most interesting.

I personally prefer Option 3 as it gives some flexibility to the game.

Mainly the scenarios would depend on the players who join and their ideas for their characters.

I'm thinking of going with 4 with 3 as their cover, and the option to turn their backs on their employers should they desire to do so.

Okay, with said feedback in mind, here's the intro I've written:

Sixteen years after the end of the world, the United States government survives as a small council of legislators and a combined armed forces company led by acting President and Secretary of the Interior Rachel Norman.

The Government in Isolation works hard rebuilding the country from the inside out, based in the Midwestern United States. Over the past few years they have brought the survivors from scattered isolated desperates to small agrarian communities. They have done good work, improving the lives of hundreds, but something stands tall, casting a dark shadow across the farmland:

Chicago.

All of the Government in Isolation's efforts to recover the windy city have failed. Only a few tentative expeditions into the city have been made, but rather than grateful survivors scavenger parties have found entrenched and aggressive gangs uninterested in the salvation President Norman has to offer.

Direct attempts at diplomacy and conquest have failed. It's time for different tactics.

It's time to send you in.

Second City is a post-apocalyptic sandbox game set in the ruins of Chicago. Players are an elite group of operatives sent in by the remnants of the US government to infiltrate the gang-held metropolis as a sleeper cell. Once inside, communication with their handlers will be limited, giving the PCs free reign to establish themselves as they see fit... get to know the local power structure, play politics, build up the city, or even start their own faction.

The game is run in GURPS using the After the End books, but players don't need access to these or familiarity with the system to play.

Game is up here: link to another game