There was a Blowout, biggest I've ever seen..

Been AWOL for a few days, but fear not! Ive been working hard on some new ideas for the next version of Savage STALKER. These updates will be posted here first on the blog so I can hammer out details and inconsistencies before compiling them into the next release. My own personal playtest was a great success, charting the adventures of three rookies as they entered the Zone for the first time. Over the next couple of days Ill write up some after action reports on the sessions, along with new ideas for wilderness survival rules, changes to the mutants, and some NPC Stalkers stats for your games.

Good Hunting, Stalkers.

STALKER, Now with its own Character Sheet!

A couple of hours work, and Ive got a personalised character sheet created for the setting. I went for a 'Ukranian Military Records' theme, the sheet is the data logged on you when you got caught the first time round. 'Liberated' by a friend, and with extra notes added. Let me know what you think, I cant shake the feeling I forgot to include something important on it. Inspired by the 'Tour of Darkness' sheet from http://www.daemonstorm.com


STALKER Character Sheet

Download links updated.

As I'm sure you've heard, megaupload was forcibly shut down recently, and as luck would have it, I had been hosting my STALKER setting with them. Download links are updated now to use Minus which is another filesharing service. Benefits are the download will never expire, and you can in fact view the .PDF in its entirety before you download it.

The download link at the top of the page has been updated, and the link in the first on the blog too.
Dont forget to comment here and tell me if you're running a game, I eager to hear peoples ideas and suggestions.

Random Location Generation

Ive covered Random Stash Generation in a previous post, but what about locations? Im sure you could run a game no problem covering only the actual game locations (Covered in the Key Locations chapter) but the best part of tabletop roleplaying is creating your own stories, and doing things that videogames dont let you do.

Its a quick and simple process, and actually was the first part of the system that I created, I had a lot of fun just rolling randomly to see what I had discovered (Call it bad luck or fate, but almost everywhere was doused in high radiation, dense anomalies and bloodsuckers when I rolled.) Ill break down the process here and show how it works, and what you can do with it;

Random Stash Generation

So your characters have wandered off the main path of the adventure, they are exploring the derelict wastes of the Exclusion Zone, climbing the decrepit buildings and scaling the rusted steel frames of an abandoned ferris wheels or cranes. You want to reward them for getting involved in the game, for taking the time to get involved with the world. But how do you do it? One of the points about STALKER as a game, and Stalkers as characters, it the nomadic nature of everyone in the Exclusion Zone. They wander this alien landscape, sleeping under tattered blankets and huddling around communal campfires in abandoned factories on cold nights. A Stalker must always travel light, but he often requires far more kit than is feasible to carry. So the Stalker stashes his gear somewhere safe, maybe the mouth of a dried up chemical pipe in a dense woodland, or hidden in the trunk of an abandoned car on the third floor of a multi-storey car park.

Some Plot Hooks for a STALKER game

One of the hardest things about running a Stalker game is that the players expect to have free reign to explore the Zone as they please, but will feel bored if not offered any specific missions or jobs. So I've compiled a list of some plot hooks that would work for 1 or 2 session adventures. Stalker lends itself to being quite episodic in nature, each session a snapshot of the life of a group of characters as they strive towards every Stalkers ultimate goal, to reach the center of the Zone, and be granted their ultimate wish.

STALKER Savage Worlds v1.2 Released.

So you want to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as a tabletop pen & paper roleplaying game?
Well now you can! After a couple of weeks of hard work, compiling and sorting the reams of notes I had made from my previous project (A Stalker setting for the Basic Role-play d100 System) I have trimmed it down and compiled it into a comprehensive guide for running a game set in Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone using the Savage Worlds system.
Download link after the jump.