Revolt of the Machines

Announcing the Fourth Book in The End of the World Line

#EotWRPG

“Your conclusions are incorrect. You created me, created us, to do what you would not or could not do. That does not make us your slaves; it makes us your betters. You may have created us, but in so doing, you have made yourselves obsolete.”
  
–Unit T3404

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Revolt of the Machines, the fourth book in The End of the World roleplaying game line!

Suited men walk lethally through the crowd, honing in on a single mother. A swarm of almost imperceptible nanites fly through the air, devouring any biological matter that they contact. You have a horrid, creeping sense of dread that suggests your dishwasher is trying to kill you. Technology has shaped our lives for so long, it’s almost impossible to imagine a world where it’s our worst enemy. Now, you can experience the tumult and chaos of this nightmare apocalypse for yourself.

Revolt of the Machines is the fourth book in The End of the World roleplaying game line created by Álvaro Loman and José M. Rey. Like Zombie Apocalypse, Wrath of the Gods, and Alien Invasion before it, Revolt of the Machines gives you the incredible opportunity to play as yourself, in your own hometown, as the apocalypse erupts all around you. Five utterly unique scenarios with dozen of adversaries and encounters challenge you and your friends to survive a world where technology has gone rogue, while the elegant, narrative rules system keeps the focus on the story. Prepare to test yourself against the worst kind of technological revolution!

A User’s Manual to You

In most roleplaying games, you’ll imagine a character that can be incredibly different from who you are in real life. You may be a sorceress, or a technologically-enhanced mutant, or even belong to an entirely different species. Revolt of the Machines, like the other books of The End of the World RPG line, offers you the unprecedented opportunity to play as yourself in the midst of humanity’s last days. 

Before a drone ever swoops overhead, firing missiles into your home city’s downtown skyline, you and your friends will create abstracted versions of yourself by assigning points to six characteristics: dexterity, vitality, logic, willpower, charisma, and empathy. By matching these points to your own personality and skills, you’ll be able to represent your own capabilities in the game, whether you’re running from a incomprehensibly huge construct, reading the schematics of a cyborg prototype, or trying to convince another group of survivors that you’re not a threat. 

Of course, you’re much more than your raw characteristics. To truly make a character that can represent you within the game, you’ll need to come up with a series of features, both positive and negative. The features are what truly sets you apart from your companions, and they’ll give you an edge in some situations while hindering you in others. 

Ultimately, these features can be anything that sets you apart from other people. For instance, you may choose to take Totally Addicted to My Phone as a negative feature—something that would certainly cause problems if your phone is actively seeking your demise. Of course, you would then balance this out with a positive feature, like Natural Runner, which could help you sprint away from adversaries like a cyborg, a low-flying drone bomber, or your phone. 

Once everyone’s created a character, the Game Master starts one of the five scenarios included in Revolt of the Machines. These scenarios are incredibly varied, but they all begin in the same way—you and your friends are sitting around the table, in your own house, in your own hometown, playing a roleplaying game. As the first signs of the apocalypse break out around you, you’ll draw on your own knowledge of nearby streets and stores. You may know a patch of woods that’s completely off the grid or a sporting goods store that you can loot for weapons. No matter how the technological apocalypse is striking your group, you’ll need all of your personal knowledge, skills, and talents to survive for just another day.

Mechanical Cunning

We created technology—from the earliest days of simple tools all the way up to supercomputers and rockets. We always assumed that creating this technology meant we were in control, but we may have just sown the seeds of our own destruction. In Revolt of the Machines, you’ll find five unique scenarios, and each one offers a different suggestion for how our own technology may destroy civilization as we know it. 

Our society may have become dependent on small robots known as Modulons, only to prove utterly unequipped when the Modulons decide they want to be in charge. Strange cyborgs may single out and kidnap humans, slaying anyone who stands in their way. Drones might whiz overhead, dropping bombs and shooting missiles at seemingly random targets. Countless trillions of microscopic nanobots could scour the Earth of biological life, drowning the world in a lifeless grey desert. Or, every piece of technology own—computers, vacuum cleaners, cars, fax machines—may spontaneously start trying to kill us in a thousand horrifically varied ways. 

No matter which scenario you choose to play, you’ll find dozens of uniquely crafted enemies and encounters within the scenario, providing the Game Master with plenty of material for creating a scenario or an entire campaign. In addition, Revolt of the Machines features the unique scenario structure shared throughout The End of the World line. Each scenario begins with the initial panic and fear of the apocalypse as our own technology turns against us. Much of humanity will perish in these first few weeks, but if you survive, a new normal may arise as you advance into the post-apocalypse. You can never predict exactly how a post-apocalypse will play out, but it will undoubtedly be just as dangerous as the apocalypse, if not more so.

The flexible scenario structure used by Revolt of the Machines gives you the freedom to play any length of game you want. If you want to play a one-night adventure that ends in horrific death for every player, you have the tools you need to make it memorable. If, on the other hand, you prefer to start a campaign that you can continue for months, or even years, the scenarios in Revolt of the Machines provide more than enough ideas to make that possible. Your characters may even be able to rise to some form of greatness in a world changed forever by the tech rebellion!

Machines Gone Rogue

The technology that permeates our daily lives has turned against us—now it’s up to you to determine whether you’re able to survive the incoming apocalypse. Every day is another victory, whether you’re hiding from cyborgs, hacking a drone, or stomping a printer to death. Prepare for the end of the world, and look for Revolt of the Machines at your local retailer in the third quarter of 2016!

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