# Day 20: Wastewalkers - Vellum, Undercity Cunningman tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/wastewalkers > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice It's another beautiful day here in the Wastes, and believe it or not, we're probably going to go out walking in it. Want another super lightweight RPG with a few hexcrawl elements and an extremely lightly sketched out setting where you can go and get stuck in without spending half a day on character creation? You know, there seems to be a lot of these in my collection, and there's a good reason for it. Because they're interesting, don't cost a lot, and are easy to convince your friends to play with you. It's near zero commitment but provides enough of a framework for people to ask to do it again. What's on the podium today? ![[Wastewalkers (cover).jpg]] *[[Wastewalkers]]*. If you go looking for this game, you're going to find that it is literally four pages, and half of the first page is just your character sheet. You can whip this thing out and get people on board in under a minute if you're really trying. Under five minutes if you're being leisurely about it. Now, you do need a really strange set of things to play it. You need a standard deck of playing cards, a full set of polyhedral dice (but who doesn't have that?), and a copy of this pamphlet. Oh yes, and a couple of hours. I did **not** say that you need a couple of friends to play with because it runs perfectly fine solo, if you don't mind or prefer to play that way. Some of us do. It's a little bit odd that you need a full set of playing cards as well as a full set of dice, but they are actually integrated into the mechanics in a way which don't make them superfluous or just a waste, so I'm okay with it. One more thing to carry in your game pouch, I guess.[^1] ## Acts of Creation No need to dick around. We can just get stuck in. From a setting point of view, it is a rugged world with ramshackle outposts in a desolate landscape full of weird outlaws, from the nomadic tribes to the people that live in the old world undercities, or the people who had the good sense to get off planet to orbit before the apocalypse. We've got cool weapons, and some of the things are powered by the weird explosive blood of the creatures who hang out in the undercities. That stuff also powers our cars. If you hadn't picked up on it, and you might not at first glance, this is a *[[Powered by the Apocalypse|PbtA]]* derivative, though it's one that uses a mix of card draws and D20 to do resolutions. It's kind of neat, but it's also kind of strange. ### Attributes Perhaps predictably, we need to allocate our four attributes, which are **tough**, **fast**, **smart**, and **human**. The last comes across as a little odd. It's basically your ability to connect with people, to sway, command, charm, rally—all that good person-to-person stuff. Now, here's where things get weird. We don't pick those. We actually draw a card for each attribute, and we set its value based on the suit that's turned up. Hearts give you +2 to the attribute, diamonds +1, clubs 0, and spades -1. If we're not satisfied with our attributes, we can reveal another card. However, you have to take it no matter what turns up. You can only do that twice. Now I have to go find some sort of online playing card simulator because I don't have one built into *Obsidian* here.[^2] ![[20 - Wastewalkers - Cards 00.webp]] | Attribute | Value | | --------- | ----: | | tough | 0 | | fast | +1 | | smart | +2 | | human | +2 | Damn, maybe I should use cards to generate my random outcomes more often, because there's no way in hell that dice would have given me that nice a spread of stats. I'm not flipping any of those things. That's way too good to pass on. I fully expected to get a whole rack of -1s. ### Background This one we get to pick. There are four backgrounds which represent places that we could come from and you've largely heard me mention them already. The Orbiter comes from one of the survival bunkers in orbit, who's come back to the surface looking for signs that the world is ready to "welcome them back." I'm sure that you can imagine how likely that is. The Hollower survived by living in the Old World undercities and the tunnels therein. Apparently, they are somewhat inhuman, but they are built for survival. Duners live on the surface in a nomadic lifestyle, traveling across the sand dunes and scavenging the wreckage of what went before. Streeters don't have any connection to pre-apocalypse history. They built shitty slum cities, makeshift outposts, and they call it civilization. You know, I think this guy is from the Undercities. Huge dark eyes, pale skin, lank black hair, weirdly long-limbed and moves in a way that's reminiscent of a spider. Hollowers get to increase fast by 2 and tough by 1, and they have maximum endurance of d8+3. | Attribute | Value | | ---------- | -------: | | background | Hollower | | tough | +1 | | fast | +3 | | smart | +2 | | human | +2 | | endurance | 11 | Somehow, even the dice are with me today, and we managed to luck out and hit Max. I don't know what's going on. I suspect lightning is going to strike me later this afternoon from a clear blue sky. Actually, no, looking at the weather forecast, I think this just means there's snow on the way—a very particular kind of hell. Regardless, that takes care of our background. ### Armor & Weapon This is not the kind of world in which you want to run around without something covering your ass and filling your hand. Wait a second, that's a little disturbing. No matter how you read that, we start with D4 armor and D6 weapon of choice. Now, I'll bet you're wondering what those things are. They are not specified by the mechanics. However, since weapons and armor are rated in dice, it's probably worth noting that they can be damaged over time as a consequence of a miss/failure or partial success/complication, though you do repair them when you take a long rest. | Gear | Description | Value | | ------ | ---------------------------------------------------- | ----: | | Armor | Tattered leather probably made from cured human skin | d4 | | Weapon | Metal spear ground from a piece of subway track rail | d6 | There we go. This seems perfectly appropriate to the situation. Just imagine a charming, intelligent fellow showing up at your front door wearing human leather armor and carrying an intimidating shank of steel longer than he is tall, ready to talk about Amway or something. ### Name Well, damn, I guess he does need a name. It's not technically in the instructions, but it does make sense. - **Name:** Vellum If you're going to be educated and run around wearing human skin, you might as well play into the trope. ## Exunt That's it. That's the entirety of character generation. ![[20 - Wastewalkers - Vellum, Undercity Cunningman.webp]] Now there is an additional part of setup, which is the waste crawl, where you take a blank sheet of paper, roll a D20 on it, and draw a circle around it. That's your starting region. Then you flip a card to reveal the risk rating of the current area. In our case, I just turned up an ace of hearts, which continues the chain of weirdly lucky outcomes because that's a risk rating of 1, and it's a rare moment of serenity. If/when we travel to a new area, just draw another circle, flip a card, interpret the risk, and away you go. Yes, there are mechanics for looting, fighting, generally getting in trouble, but nothing too hefty. Basic resolution involves figuring out which one of your four attributes is applicable, the GM or solo system setting a difficulty rating based on the fiction. You turn up a number of cards matching the risk rating, and for every black card the difficulty rating goes up by two. Then you roll a d20, add the attribute modifier, and away you go. If you roll over the DR, it's a success. Otherwise, it's a setback, and you get a complication. If you get a success, you can take one of the revealed cards and stick it in your hand, which gives you the ability to burn a card later for advantage, but only if you didn't burn a card to succeed on that one. Frankly, I think this might be one of the best mechanical frameworks for doing *Fallout* that I've ever seen—way better than the actual [*Fallout* RPG](https://modiphius.us/collections/fallout-vault-33-sale/products/falloutrpg_core-rulebook), in part because it's fast, furious, over-the-top, and not tied to a particular background. You could just as easily do *Mad Max* and it would be just fine. Overall, I am very impressed by *Wastewalkers*. It does all the things you need it to and stays out of the way the rest of the time. What more can you ask? Tomorrow, we leave the wasteland and head to what's technically probably another wasteland, but it's cold rather than hot. It'll be fine. Trust me. [^1]: Which reminds me, I should probably put a poker deck in my game bag. [^2]: Turns out there's a very convenient one at https://deck.of.cards .