A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Apocalypse

Apocalypse by Joseph Mohr is a role playing game supplement published by Old School Role Playing. This is an adventure for Cepheus Engine and, as such, is covered by the Open Game License with some parts considered to be Open Game Content as a result.

The supplement is available as a 38 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers, three pages are the front matter and three the Open Game License.

This adventure is located in the Frontiers of Space setting, although this isn’t explicitly stated. The characters are asked to head to an irradiated planet by a professor of archaeology. The planet used to be inhabited by a species with advanced medical technology, but they were destroyed in a nuclear war. There’s rumoured to be a cure for a current disease on the planet.

Complications has the potential problems that the characters could encounter. The patron is being honest, but doesn’t know everything.

The Effects of Radiation adds an additional level of danger.

Mutants and Mutations has a stats of creatures that can be encountered on the planet. All have been mutated by radiation and include what can only be described as giant killer rabbits. Some are more unfriendly than others.

Random Encounters on the World Map has an encounter table, including a couple of radiation-based encounters.

Random Encounters Within the City has creatures roaming the city.

Key to the Forgotten City covers the locations on the map.

Mutant Humanoid Roster has some stats for intelligent humanoids.

New Skills has a handful of new skills.

New Psionic Talents has a decent collection of these.

Random Artefacts has various items that could be found.

Finally, there is a labelled black and white map of the city and a colour map of the planet.

Apocalypse in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough that these would have been useful. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a single column format and some minor errors were noticed. Bar the cover illustrations, the only others are the maps; sadly, the city map doesn’t come with a player-friendly version. Presentation is adequate.

This adventure sees the characters exploring ruins in a potentially lethally hostile environment. There are encounters that they could have that might be dangerous, or at least unsettling, but radiation is one of the biggest dangers. They will simply search the ruins until they find what they’re looking for, perhaps picking up a few other valuable items on the way. Apocalypse is a decent little adventure and it can be found by clicking here.