GRIDSHOCK'D!

I had a conversation with my friend Paul Vermeren recently about his 80s-veneered, post-apocalyptic superhero game, GRIDSHOCK 20XX available on drivethru in pdf and in hardcopy from Exalted Funeral. Here's the first part of that conversation:

What's the secret origin of GRIDSHOCK 20XX?

GRIDSHOCK 20XX was born from my then-local gaming group's attempt to return to playing Rifts, a game we had loved as teens, 20+ years after we had left it behind. Though we knew there were things about Rifts that were going to be difficult for us to work with, we still had a lot of enthusiasm for the world and our characters, and we wanted to give it another shot as adults. We eventually ended up replacing the Palladium rules with Fate, and then ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying (when we wanted something Fate-like that could handle all the crazy powers and characters). While we enjoyed it for a while, it eventually fizzled out. Despite all the elements in Rifts that didn't work for us anymore, I felt strongly that there was something worth exploring further. 

For me, the genius of Rifts was that it's a post-apocalyptic game which still seems to include every single thing its creator thinks is cool, sort of like Dungeons & Dragons is a hodgepodge of every variety of fantasy. So, I decided I should try to make my own "spiritual successor" to Rifts. I stumbled at first, but it began to take shape once I realized that rather than starting with the real world as the starting point, I could create a post-apocalyptic setting that included all of the elements I wanted if the world was a superhero setting before everything went wrong. Since the superhero genre already contains elements of every other one, I could include whatever I liked.

As I tinkered with what I was calling GRIDSHOCK, it became less of a Rifts tribute and more of its own unique thing - though the influence of Rifts is pretty clear if you look for it. After several years of tinkering, it dawned on me that I could keep on tinkering forever, so I decided (on the spur of the moment) to publish what I had written as a set of small zine-style booklets, using ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying for the system. Lo and behold, GRIDSHOCK 20XX was born.

As currently conceived, is it in your mind more a "post-apocalyptic superhero setting" or "post-apocalyptic kitchen sink setting?" Essentially, is it more like Rifts where anything goes and it can be played in different ways or is it more focused and aimed as supers?

I've occasionally called GRIDSHOCK 20XX a "post-superhero" setting. It's a superhero world that went terribly wrong in 1986 is very important to understanding its present day, 20XX. Many of the player character templates (called Vectors in the setting) riff on established superhero archetypes. In its current booklet incarnation, it uses a superhero RPG system, because ICONS is relatively light but can handle the full array of powers and characters the setting includes. 

The game can played in many different ways, but the default mode of play in GRIDSHOCK 20XX assumes that you're heroic characters standing up to a villainous status quo. That's not usually the case in the traditional superhero genre. 

If you called the world of GRIDSHOCK 20XX a "kitchen sink" or even "gonzo" setting, I'd say that's probably fair. Those terms are often used to describe Rifts, but while Rifts was apparently a cyberpunk-esque world when its apocalypse happened, GRIDSHOCK 20XX was a comic book superhero world. As a result, I've put a good deal of work into unleashing many of the wilder elements of the superhero genre in ways that I think make for an interesting post-apocalyptic, kitchen sink setting where civilization has been radically reshaped, if not destroyed. 

Are there any particular superhero comics you'd point people to for inspiration?

There's a whole page of inspirations (seinen manga, European comics, British comics, movies, video games, toy lines, cartoons, etcetera that were on my mind in addition to American superhero comics) listed on the back inside cover of the fourth zine, Reference.

But to your question, the "Days of Future Past" storyline from Uncanny X-Men #141-142 is the first exposure I had to the idea of a superhero world gone disastrously wrong - though since it does have all those other influences, GRIDSHOCK 20XX is perhaps not quite as grim. It's still something I would recommend. GRIDSHOCK 20XX also has things in common with "deconstructed" superhero comics like Watchmen or Squadron Supreme, and with "alternate future" stories like Earth X, Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, and maybe even "Age of Apocalypse."