History Main / DarkFuture

* CrapsackWorld: And how. Distilled elements from JudgeDredd, Robocop, MadMax combined with a ruined environment, corrupt government and privatized police forces. Throw in resource shortages, evil corporations and a whole subculture devoted to being AxCrazy and leave to simmer gently. Oh, and Racial Equality? Never really happened. Slavery? Still legal...sort of. It's been renamed indenture and it's more wage slavery, but it's still heavily slanted against black people.

The game was successful enough for GamesWorkshop to commission a series of novels based on the setting. These started out with the short story anthology ''Route 666,'' and was relatively short-lived; the best-known and remembered being the trilogy of novels written by horror novelist and film critic KimNewman under the pen name Jack Yeovil. These expanded significantly on the background and setting provided in the 1988 rulebook and mixed in elements from horror and played with various well-known dystopia tropes while mixing in a healthy dose of pop-culture references, [[AlternateHistory alternate-history]] jokes and cameos from well-known fictional properties. Although GW have never done anything with the game, Newman's novels (much like his Warhammer works involving Genevieve the Vampire), remained popular enough to survive beyond the lifespan of the game and have been republished by Black Library, though the final installment of his ''Demon Download'' series, ''United States Calvary'' remains unpublished.

The game was successful enough for GamesWorkshop to commission a series of novels based on the setting. These started out with the short story anthology ''Route 666,'' and was relatively short-lived; the best-known and remembered being the trilogy of novels written by horror novelist and film critic KimNewman under the pen name Jack Yeovil. These expanded significantly on the background and setting provided in the 1988 rulebook and mixed in elements from horror and played with various well-known dystopia tropes while mixing in a healthy dose of pop-culture references, [[AlternateHistory alternate-history]] jokes and cameos from well-known fictional properties.

[[caption-width-right:300: "A tongue-in-cheel kaleidoscope of [[CyberPunk cyberpunk]], [[HPLovecraft Lovercraftian horror]]...and ninja nuns." - '''Alex Stewart''', ''Vector'']]

* TakeThat: The Church of Joseph are a fairly widely-aimed swipe at Christian Fundamentalism in general.

* CrapsackWorld: And how. Distilled elements from JudgeDredd, Robocop, MadMax combined with a ruined environment, corrupt government and privatized police forces. Throw in resource shortages, evil corporations and a whole subculture devoted to being AxCrazy and leave to simmer gently.

* Troperiffic: see above.

* {{Cyborg}}: Chantal Juillerat and Jessamyn Bonney both have a variety of cybernetic augmentations; relatively minor in Chantal's case but much more extensive in Jessamyn's.

* AlternateHistory:

The game was successful enough for GamesWorkshop to commission a series of novels based on the setting. These started out with the short story anthology ''Route 666,'' and was relatively short-lived; the best-known and remembered being the trilogy of novels written by horror novelist and film critic KimNewman under the pen name Jack Yeovil.

* CrapsackWorld:

* Alternate History:

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture:

''Dark Future'' was a tabletop miniature wargame produced by GamesWorkshop and originally published in 1988. Initially developed by writer Marc Gascoigne as a CyberPunk RolePlayingGame, he combined his concept of the titular dark future with fellow GW employee Richard Halliwell's idea for a car-racing game, using mechanics which Gascoigne had originally developed for the JudgeDredd RPG in the supplement ''Slaughter Margin.'' The game came in a box set containing several cardboard sections of road, plastic vehicles and a rulebook. The car miniatures were roughly 25mm scale. Players took on the role of a Sanctioned Operative, a licensed bounty hunter whose job was to clear out highway sections of the vehicle gangs causing trouble or that of a Renegade; one of the gang members.

Gameplay took place on the cardboard track sections; simulating the high-speed chase along the roadway. Road layout was generated randomly from a starting point of three straight sections, until a total of ten sections had been placed. Various non-mobile hazards such as mines, sand drifts, rubble and so on could also be placed on the road, and the game had detailed rules about speed, manoeuvring around obstacles and corners; with a higher speed adding significantly to the risk factor of a given manoeuvre. Vehicles in the initial release were limited to cars and motorbikes; divided up into the generic classes of Renegade and Interceptor, reflecting the vehicles of the road-gangs and the Ops respectively. Each vehicle had a number of weapon hardpoints, top speeds and maximum payload.

The game was successful enough for GamesWorkshop to commission a series of novels based on the setting. These started out with the short story anthology ''Route 666,'' and was relatively short-lived; the best-known and remembered being the trilogy of novels written by horror novelist and film critic KimNewman under the pen name Jack Yeovil.