Bears Will Attack

Perilous Tales of the Garbage Barge

There's a great RPG called 'You Got A Job On The Garbage Barge' by the esteemed indie game designer Amanda Lee Franck. It's a lightweight game set on a gigantic floating post-apocalyptic garbage barge. It's weird and punk rock and I recommend picking up a copy.

I was really taken with the setting, but I wanted to run it using Apocalypse World - no shade to the OSR-style rules included with the original game. But once I started tinkering a little - Apocalypse World lends itself beautifully to tinkering - I ended up making a whole new set of custom playbooks and also some basic moves which are a little different from the standard Apocalypse World moves. The playbooks are extra fun, because my daughter Elliott, age 14, illustrated them for me. They turned out great and we had a lot of fun playing.

So here's a link where you can download the whole thing.

Perilous Tales of the Garbage Barge

As you can see from the playbooks, I've drifted a fair bit from Amanda's vision of the garbage barge. Mine has magic, for one thing, though it's a vaguely-defined thing.

I've also strayed quite a ways from core Apocalypse World rules. If you've played Apocalypse World or other Powered by the Apocalypse games you can probably figure it out. The stats and playbooks are different and harm works a little differently.

I'm sharing entirely for personal use for anyone who's interested. If you end up playing it and posting about it, feel free to tag me. And you should definitely pick up a copy of Amanda's original game. I would encourage you to pick up a copy of Apocalypse World as well, but I assume you already have it and love it.