Traiders

Surviving and Thriving after the Collapse of the Global Economy

Rising sea levels, 4th generation warfare, crop failures, the new tribalism, plagues and famine, the collapse of civil society, mutants and zombies. It's not like you couldn't see these things coming. People simply lost faith in the MCGods (Multinational Corporations) who protected humanity and provided us with everything we needed. Most people stopped believing in business and technology altogether. Now too many people are trying to live off of the land. Billions have died and the global population is still shrinking. You have traveled far to find a place where you believe you can live the best possible life in this new world. Good luck. You will need it.

Traiders is an RPG setting inspired by collaborative fiction developed by readers of Lance Miller's Progressive Positive blog, including Seth Galbraith and B. F. Galbraith, authors of the Mano a Mano role-playing system. Traiders is a post-apocalyptic setting with cyberpunk elements which re-examines popular assumptions about the future of civilization, sustainable lifestyles and the end of the world.

People

• Cults - communities dominated by new religious movements.
• Elfs - anarcho-primitivist eco-terrorists working to erase the last traces of civilization.
• Han diaspora - chinese communities around the world and their influence.
• Pacifists - weakly defended communities provide tribute and prey for other groups.
• TLDs - remnants of today's nation-states and international agencies.
• Traiders - modern-day Vikings whose lifestyle includes both raiding and trading.
• Warlords - armies and gangs fighting for finite resources in the great zero-sum game.
• Zombies - the walking dead, the infected, cannibals, posthumans and living robots.

Planet

The social situation across the surface of the earth is fairly uniform. The formerly poorest countries are still poor, and so are the countries that used to be rich or at least not so poor. The quantity and quality of trade goods is the most obvious difference, with many people wearing homespun cloth and using mediocre goods produced locally from recycled materials. Less obvious but more disastrous is that most people have few alternatives to working the land or joining an army to go fight for more land against other people in the same situation.

The World

• AlohaNet - a communication network spanning the Pacific Ocean.
• Gola Republic - a trade network in the South Atlantic and Carribean.
• Hyperborea - legendary polar empire of Iceland and Svalbard.
• Ibero-American Cooperative Corporation - the world's only multinational corporation.
• Unified Islamist Caliphate - not unified, not islamist, not a caliphate.

North America

• United States - the northern and northeastern parts of North America.
• Christian America - the southeast and middle of North America.
• Hive States - the Rocky Mountains from Alberta to Sonora.
• SoCal - Southern California and Baja California.
• Cascadia Bioregion - NoCal, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

Communities

• The Dalles - a technologist traider enclave in Cascadia.
• UnityVille - a Hive State community in rural Utah.
• New Jerry - a cultural center of Christian America in the Midwest.

Prospects

seeds in the bank

Your community is suffering from a devastating blight which makes it impossible to grow the staple crop regional farmers have depended on in recent years. Experts in evolution and ecology suggest that blight-resistant strains might be found elsewhere, but time is running out. There are rumours of a vault containing thousands of varieties of seeds in the semi-mythical land of Hyperborea at the North Pole. The Hyperboreans do in fact have a seed bank with crops from around the world, but to make a withdrawal from this bank, the Hyperboreans require trade in kind: you must be able to provide seeds that they need.

the pale blue dot

The Earth is a lonelier place without a global economy supporting space development and exploration. There are no more space stations and few satellites, even for communication. The space elevator plans of the past seem like Tower of Babel stories from some ancient myth. A few scientists still keep track of a few amazingly rugged probes which are still operating in the solar system, and they have even outlined an ambitious project for launching an array of swarming space telescopes to explore the universe through interferometry, which might be possible with the resources of many of the more prosperous communities working together.