Hello everyone,

Over the last couple of months I've been toying with the idea of running a post-apocalyptic survival game inspired by the TV series "the 100" and the PC game "This War of Mine."

The premise of the game would be a the last remnants of humanity are housed in a space station (Lifeboat) 150 years after a nuclear war (possibly or an asteroid strike). Due to many factors they are forced to send group of young adult delinquents to the surface of the earth and let them fend for themselves (sort of like guinea pigs to test if earth surface can support life).

The game itself would be more or less a sandbox game. I have several campaign secrets in mind (to be discovered through the game) and a broad brush phases of the game (phase 1 - learning to survive, phase 2 - meeting the locals etc).

While PC are free to do as they please, they would be the protagonist of the story and thus they have the leadership of the group (if they chose to do so).

I considered two systems atm:

Mutant Year Zero - has a nice system for colony development and for survival
Millennium Ends - very realistic and simple system

Both would require some tweaking to fit my concept.

I'd like to know if there is any interest in such a game and what system you think would be best to run it. Please consider the following:

1. I'd like to keep the system in the background as possible (a black box system).
2. Simple is better
3. Gritty system
4. Based on RL (Lifeboat foundation is a RL group aiming to build a space ark)
5. No FATE or its variants
6. Since it will be a black box system, so less metagame control for players (Fate/luck etc points).

I'm a fan of Mutant Year Zero and not a fan of Fate, so you have my attention. Never touched Millenium Ends, so can't say if one would be better than the other. That said, MY0's mutations are pretty integral to the system, so you'll probably have to do some pretty strong tinkering on that front, assuming the Lifeboat kids would be pure-strain humans.

I love the concept. I'm in no matter the system.

I always suggest Savage Worlds. It's plain, easy to use, and with one or two system tweaks (which are suggested by the game itself), it can be pretty bloody.

Also, I have a house rule for Acing which greatly tones down the wonkiness of the mechanic.

I don't know how well Savage Worlds would function as a black box system, though, since Bennies are fairly significant. Otherwise, yeah, I like me some Savage Worlds.

Well, Bennies are not so much of a problem (They're not like Fate points). 90% of their use is rerolls or Soak rolls.

You can simply ditch them altogether if you don't like rerolls, the game will run fine.