Designing A Defensive Works in a Post-Apocalyptic Game World

Are you armed to the teeth w/ rusty weapons? Are you incapable of saying anything other than three canned phrases that are the exact same thing all of your friends also say? Are you wearing a bandana w/ a skull on it? If your answer is yes to these three questions, congratulations! You are an enemy NPC in a post-apocalyptic game world. Get your buddies together. It is time to build yourselves a defensive works.

First things first, let's get some old shipping containers. No defensive works in a post-apocalyptic game world is complete w/o at least a few shipping containers. While you're at it, pick up a couple old school buses, some corrugated metal, I-beams, oil drums, ladders and some old suitcases to stuff full of medical supplies and ammunition. Really, just gather as much old garbage as you can find. It is all defensively viable in a post-apocalyptic game world. Bonus points if it's kinda half painted/half rusted. That will look really cool.

Alright, now that we have raw materials assembled. Let's chose a location. You have a few choices, all of them are excellent. Lots of post-apocalytic defensive structures are build in sunken swamps. This works great because it provides opportunities for player characters to fall into the water, which is totally annoying. Also, being lower than ground level gives player characters a chance to kill you from on high w/ their sniper rifles. Hilltops work great too but try to find one w/ a satellite dish because, Jesus Christ, do I even have to explain why? If you don't have many old shipping containers, you may want to find a bombed out building and just put the shipping containers you do have out front.

When you are putting this thing together, there are a few things that are pretty critical. For starters, your main entry needs to be under heavy guard w/ mines, snipers, and, ideally, flamethrowers but you need to have a secret, undefended entryway for the dipshits who do stealth builds. Yeah, I know, fuck those guys but their money spends the same as normal people's so we have to throw them a bone. Once you have this taken care of, make sure that there is no easy way to traverse the encampment such that you can easily amass a solid defense at any one point. There must be choke points between all open spaces even if that doesn't make any practical sense. If you have staircases, makes sure some of them lead to nowhere and, for God's sake, put some fucking ammunition underneath them. Anyway, the most important thing is that each space is discreet such that the player character can clear it out and move on to the next one w/o thinking about it again.

Once you have your structure assembled go and get that random garbage I mentioned earlier and throw it about everywhere. It is especially important to have some garbage on top of the mattresses you sleep on. You are an enemy NPC, not Martha fucking Stewart! If you have some sort of food, place it on the ground, preferably near where you sleep but anywhere random is fine as long as it's not on a table. The tables can only have spare parts, cash money and ammunition on them. No exceptions. Kill one of your buddies and leave his corpse decaying somewhere. They key is to give the joint atmosphere. If the player is given the idea you are anything but a bunch of psychopaths, they might question whether killing rooms full of random dudes is wrong and that would be a total bummer.

At this point, you have a completely impractical defensive works that looks cool and is clearly inhabited by maniacs. This is exactly what we want so don't fuck it up by standing in the wrong place! First of all, even if you are expecting an attack, you and your buddies need to be in small groups such that you can be picked off piecemeal. If you get more than five to a group, make sure to stand near an oil drum or something explosive. Failing that, be near enough a door so that the player character can back through it and make you attack him one at a time. Ideally, you'll have some guys hanging out w/ their backs facing doorways or even sleeping through a firefight for those stealth build assholes. Honestly, at this point, if you could feasibly defend your structure, you've really gone off the rails but anything can be salvaged through poor tactical choices so go ahead and make those whenever possible.

Okay, nice work! You should be surrounded by rusted metal, garbage, explosives and usable ammunition. If your friends don't have their skull bandanas yet, now is the time to distribute them. This, my friends, is what a post-apocalyptic game world defensive works looks like. Take a deep breath and spend a moment appreciating your handiwork. You earned it! If all goes as planned, everyone you know will be dead by the end of the day.