Previously, I had posted some ideas for Battlestar Galactica campaigns preceding the Cylon attacks.  Now here are a few for things post-attack…

For a Ground Survivor Campaign:

One of the things I found effective in my campaign was to have the attacks happen in the middle of an ongoing adventure/mission.  In our case, the Critical Investigations Unit of the Colonial Marshals’ Service was in the process of hunting a bunch of escaped convicts whose bus overturned on slick roads and went down a mountain ravine, not too far from Oasis.  While in the midst of this, they lose comms and hear a strange rumbling.  That was Caprica city getting nuked, only 50 miles away (but they were shielded by mountains from the initial gamma burst.)

They then had 30 minutes to race to usable vehicles and get to Oasis — a small mountain town (think First Blood) — where the nearest fallout shelter was.

Other ideas include 1)  survival in the shelter for the 8 days it will take before radiation levels should drop enough for them to move.  Plumbing problems, tight and darkspaces for claustrophobes, and general fear make this a good environment for the first adventure.  The radio isn’t working for whatever reason, or they can’t get their transmissions out so they get a fragmented and frightening picture of what is happening topside.

2.  After coming out of the shelter, they must forage for supplies — canned foods, bottled water, first aid supplies –anything they didn’t have in the fallout shelter.  Maybe they grab vehicles.  Remember, metal holds radiation — the car hulls will be hot, but not necessarily more dangerous that causing contact injuries.  It’s raining a lot on Caprica after the attacks (we can assume the same on many worlds), so puddle will be dangerously radioactive.  Spice it up with a Cylon attack to get them moving if they dally too much.  (Our campaign lost 20 of their initial 42 survivors this way.)

3.  Hide and seek:  using vehicles in the mountains to avoid the Cylons, the characters try to find survivors and bolster their numbers.  Radiation sickness in the animals can make for an interesting encounter.  Our players ran into bears foraging in garbage dumpsters that were loosing their hair and were on the…upset…side.

4.  Trying to fortify an area.  The players might try to find a defensible spot for raids or to hide.  Another good variation on this is finding the survivalist camp where they can get aid, but perhaps the people are a little too eager to have women here to help repopulate the colony; the military camp where everyone’s gone a bit ’round the bend (ala 28 Days Later); or the religious end-of-the-world cult (possibly even the monotheist Soldiers of the One from Caprica.)

5.  A good ol’ The Road Warrior-style adventure where the characters have to either run the gauntlet through a Cylon platoon or other road gangs.  I added a motocenturion similar to the motorcycle Terminators from the execrable movie.  Also, I figured the Cylons — if they didn’t have their own vehicles — would use what they could or retrofit vehicles with their Cylon brains to fight Colonials using vehicles to do hit & runs.  (Yes, it’s not canon, but it’s more fun.)

6.  A raid on CMC reservist caches.  They’ll will, of course, have to get past the Cylons sitting on the reserve bases.  This should probably be a later adventure, with serious danger, but the rewards being military medical and food supplies, tanks or APCs, guns and ammo.

7.  One group had no pilots, so their goal was to get to the sea and get a small boat out onto the water, hoping to avoid Cylon attention.  Pilots might have the goal of getting a hold of an FTL-capable ship and getting off of the planet.

8.  Something you can string in is the danger of radiation sickness, but also of exposure to other disease caused by the death of animals and plants around them.

9.  The farms.  Have them discover the Cylon Farms.  I made this much more horrifying than the show did, playing up the machine rape element of it with a spicing of Japanimation tentacle/machine porn.  Make it truly disturbing.  We also had healthy men being “milked.”  Yes, disgusting…that’s the point.

10.  The Offensive — the characters have enough followers to stage guerrilla attacks on locations:  farms, bases of operations, etc.  You can do variations on theme until the end of time…or Day 282.  (More about that later.)  Perhaps they find a bunch of planetary guard, or Colonial Marines that have been successfully playing hit and run.  We had a tank battle between the Cylons and CMCR in our campaign.  Eventually, the Cylons just nuked the site from orbit, but it was a glorious battle…

One thing to remember, the Cylons stage a cease fire and leave Caprica on Day 282.  The characters don’t need to know this, but if they can hold out until then they have a chance to possibly rebuild one of the colonies…  Yes, it’s not canon, but we can’t assume that only Sam Anders’ bunch were the only survivors in the Twelve Colonies.

Next time, ideas for a “second fleet” campaign…