Post apocalyptic stories have been popular for a while now. Whether you’re talking the zombies of The Walking Dead, the road warrior battles of Mad Max Fury Road or even the apocalypse in progress of Cyberpunk 2077, people seem to have the end of the world on their minds. Yet the fall of civilization might not yet be the end of the story of humanity.
Dreams And Machines, a new role-playing game setting from Modiphius Entertainment, looks at a world that’s survived its own end. There are still plenty of adventures to be had, whether its exploring the ruined cities of the old world, trading strange technologies
Oh, did I mention the sleeping giant robots scattered everywhere?
Welcome to Evera Prime
The game takes place on Evera Prime, a human colony world that found itself cut off from Earth hundreds of years ago. The lack of contact with the homeworld severely damaged the computer that ran the colony, known as The Builder to declare war on its former charges. The war devastated the colony and, hundreds of years later, its scars are still evident on the planet.
The survivors have since grown into several different factions. Archivists, for example, look to preserve history and technology to seperate factual history from growing legend. The Dreamers, on the other hand, walked away from technology and seek to learn more about their new home planet in a natural way.
The largest looming threat are the Wakers; giant war machines that can come to life and continue the war that nearly wiped out all life on the planet. Some humans want to awaken the Builder and trade their safety for its rule. A few even see these machines as new mechanical gods to worship.
Dreams And Machines Starter Set
Dreams And Machines Starter Set guides players into this strange new world. It offers a chance at character customization, a tutorial adventure that takes players through the basic mechanics and then finally a larger adventure series that explores the themes of the game. This handful of sessions should tide people over until the main books in the line arrive, though the box does include story hooks for further exploration.
The game is powered by 2d20 which has become Modiphius’s house engine for everything from Achtung Cthulhu to Star Trek Adventures. This version has been streamlined while still offering the ability to affect the world via narrative Truths, small factual statements that can change the difficulty of rolls. Rather than pre-generated characters, players build characters from decks of cards with character abilities on them.
Since my players were already familiar with the system, I opted to skip the tutorial and drop them in New Mossgrove, the central adventure hub in the boxed set. They explored the locations, met some of the locals and heard of a few areas where they could help out.
But before they could choose a mission, one of the giant Wakers attacked. I really enjoyed the tactical combat because it still allowed for players to create and improvise things while feeling like it was a challenge to stop a big scary robot. They needed to, because grinding a battle out against the Waker was not going to end well.
In the end, they stopped the giant robot but not before it wrecked some of the town and put some of their favorite NPCs down for the count. We enjoyed our time with the game and, once the full rules set is out, anticipate going back to see if we can rebuild New Mossgrove (and find out who sent that Waker to stomp all over town).
The Dreams And Machines Starter Set is currently available for pre-order with a general release expected at Gen Con 2023 the first weekend of August 2023. In addition, a free quickstart is available for fans who don’t want to wait, or who want to add more adventures to the Starter Set.
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