Camp Pain

Continuing my effort to develop one new game a month during 2024, this month I present Camp Pain, a post-apocalyptic wasteland campaign simulator. It's a dice rolling game in which you venture out into the badlands in search of weapons and food and meds. When you find something, you gain dice you can spend to help you find more stuff on your next mission. Of course, sometimes instead of finding loot you find environmental hazards and raiders. I've published the game on [itch.io]().

The first step in the game is to create a character. All you have to do to create a character is roll 2d6 on a name table. All characters start at 1 Health and 1 Combat. For your 1 Health and 1 Combat, you add 2d6 to your personal dice pool.

Mission

First, you roll a d6 to get a mission assignment. If your reputation is 5 or greater, you can choose your own mission assignment.

1. Food: Find food for the camp
2. Weapon: Find a new weapon
3. Ammo: Gather ammo
4. Trespasser: Look for threats
5. Spare parts: Scavenge for equipment
6. Meds: Scavenge for medical supplies

Once you're out on your mission, you roll a d6.

1. Environmental hazard
2. Raiders
3. No threat
4. No threat
5. No threat
6. No threat

Environmental hazard

Roll 1d6. Penalties refer to dice. For example, -1 Health means to remove 1d6 from your Health stat.

1. Acid rain: -1 Health
2. Quicksand: -1 Health, -1 Combat
3. Mutant plants: -2 Health
4. Sandworm: -2 Health, -1 Combat
5. Electrical storm: -3 Health
6. Nuclear fallout: -4 Health, -2 Combat

Raiders

Roll 1d3 to determine how many raiders are attacking you.

For each attacker, roll 1d6 for damage and line up the dice on the table in front of you.

For each attacker, spend one or more dice from Health or Combat and roll it to cancel out the damage. You must choose the total number of dice to spend before rolling. You may only use dice from one stat for each fight. Each result that's equal to or higher than any damage dice cancels that damage.

For example, if you are threatened with a 3 and a 6, and you roll a 2 and a 6, then you may "spend" the 6 to negate the 6 damage, taking only 3 damage total.

Discard any dice that rolled lower than than the damage dice. Add all negated damage dice, plus 1 bonus d6, back into the stat you used for defence.

If you reach 0 Health, your Mission has failed, and you limp back to Camp Pain in shame and lose -1 Reputation (minimum 0 Reputation).

Loot

For each damage dice you successfully negated during combat, roll 1d6 on the loot table.

1. Food: +1 Health, and Mission Success for Food
2. Ammo: +1 Combat, and Mission Success for Ammo
3. Trap: -1 Health, and Mission Success for Trespasser
4. Trap: -2 Health, and Mission Success for Trespasser
5. Weapon: +2 Combat, and Mission Success for Weapon
6. Meds: +2 Health, and Mission Success for Meds

Each result refers to dice in a stat. For example, +1 Combat means to add 1d6 to your Combat stat.

Mission success

Finally, roll 2d6 to find out whether you succeeded in your mission. If you encountered a Threat that satisfied your mission, you can skip this step because you've already succeeded.

2. Food
3. Weapon
4. Ammo
5. Trespasser
6. Spare parts
7. Meds
8. Spare parts
9. Weapon
10. Ammo
11. Weapon
12. Food

If your result matches your mission, add 1 dice to your Stash. You can spend Stashed dice at the Trading Post, between missions.

Trading post

After a mission, you can visit the Camp Pain Trading Post. You can spend stashed dice to purchase stat upgrades or temporary boosts. A permanent upgrade is permanent. You can use a temporary boost once at any time, and then it's gone until you buy another one.

Permanent .upgrades

• 2 dice: +1 Combat
• 3 dice: +1 Health
• 4 dice: +1 Reputation
• 5 dice: Power armour (reduce Threat roll by 1)

Expendable boosts

• 2 dice: Lucky day (re-roll Environment)
• 2 dice: Bribe (re-roll Threat)
• 2 dice: Backup (reduce Threat roll by 1)
• 2 dice: Flak vest (ignore 1 Threat)
• 3 dice: Shotgun (re-roll Combat)

Medic

If you reach 0 Health during a Mission, remove 1 dice from Reputation (to a minimum of 0 Reputation). Roll 1d6 to find out how you recover:

1. No more pain! Because you are dead.
2. Healed. Add +1 Health.
3. Healed. Add +1 Health.
4. Healed. Add +1 Health.
5. Healed. Add +1 Health.
6. The camp medic takes pity on you. Add +3 Health.

Reputation

Once you reach Reputation 10, then you've won!

Game

It's a tough game in the beginning. If you get attacked on your first mission, it's basically down to the luck of the die whether you survive. But as you progress and you've earned some extra dice to spend on defence, your chances go up.

It's a fun little paper game and it can be more or less RPG-like as you see fit. If you wanted to, you could combine the dice rolls with fictional journaling.

I've been enjoying it. Give it a try!