Here’s the pitch for something I’m thought-noodling about: Last Monster on Earth.
Two years ago, humanity was wiped out in some hideous and entirely fatal manner. Plague? Zombies? Aliens? Divine intervention? Eco-disaster? Who knows– what matters is that you survived.
Are you the last of humankind? Oh, no. For that, you would have had to be human in the first place….
The Bible almost got it right, though.
The “freak” shall inherit the Earth.
In Last Monster on Earth, you play a monstrous being in a post-apocalyptic wasteland of what was once Earth.
As a group, the players determine what caused the extinction of humanity, and whether there are any human survivors (and if so, how the monsters relate to them).
They also identify one or more external threats that loom over the monstrous PCs. For example, if zombies took down humanity, those Zeds might not be too picky about eating werewolf brains. What killed the humans might be ready to pick off the monsters– and may have already started.
There are also the environmental threats– vampires have lost their ready source of human blood, for example. Werewolves no longer have the “hunt” to rely on. Cyborgs will eventually have a fuel or parts problem. Monsters once accustomed to lurking in the shadows and relying on humanity to give them cover are now thrust into the open, to sink or swim. PCs come up with the environmental challenges that the others must grapple with in the course of the campaign.
And of course, there are a few truly clueless ones, who believe they’re the sole human survivors of the disaster. And who don’t realize, or won’t admit, that their strange new powers might not be caused by the apocalypse, but might have been there all along.
The poor, deluded fools.
I’m thinking this will be an Apocalypse World hack, very close to AW in its mechanics and even setting. Really more like a hack/setting rather than a whole new game. But I’m also considering using the Fate framework, which would allow for much stranger aberrations of monsters in the world. All I know is that I dreamed this idea last night, and I really, really like it.