I’ve been getting into RPGs a lot lately so I thought I would take a moment to try and create one so here it is, Red Dust: An Outback Survival RPG. This game is based on my years of travelling to the NSW Outback and the hours of driving through and to various towns on my way to Cobar, NSW. These trips are long and exhausting sometimes, so I came up with the idea what if you and a group of players were travelling and your car broke down? What people would you meet and how would you go about surviving?
So I’ve created the Red Dust Outback Survival RPG.
This is based in the 1980s-1990s and allows a group of players to work together to survive the outback in the a rules-lite role playing game a little like Dungeons and Dragons. This RPG is a tabletop game, but is lite on the rules so the DM and players can focus on the adventure and stories rather than being consumed by the complex rules in games like D&D.
I wanted this to be a story-focused survival so player would work to, say fix their broken car, while working on a bigger objective allowing them to explore and meet people and villains throughout the towns.
Setting the game in the 1980s-1990s meant that there was a focus and restrictions based on the time period. For example, no mobile phones, or mobile internet to help the characters, they need to explore or work to survive.
As I was developing it, I started with the focus of using a Holden Commodore but then throught that the players could select whatever time appropriate car they wanted, or use the CountryLink Bus to travel.
Full disclosure, a portion of this was developed with the help of ChatGPT which has helped me work out rules and different ways to develop the game seeing as though it’s my first time writing this, but I have then gone and added a lot to the game to give flavour and authenticity to the material from my own experience. For example, the CountryLink bus mechanic is something I’ve personally experienced on one of my many trips to Cobar NSW.
If you play it and have feedback, please leave a comment and discussion on my itch.io page for the game. Otherwise, check out some of my other gaming articles.