Day 18 of the RPGaDAY 2025 Challenge and we have another vague prompt that reminded me of something from my past. The prompt is ‘sign’. Yes, I must try to avoid the “Here’s your sign” jokes. So here is the memory I have.
There was some movie (again with the movies) that I recall watching when I was younger. It was set in England during World War II. A transient type person was walking down the road and he came across an elderly gentleman paining the sign at the fork in the road. He asked which way a certain town was and the elderly gentleman refused to tell him saying “I’ve got to cover these signs just in case the Germans invade.” So the traveler didn’t know where he was going. I think it may have the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but I’m not 100% certain. I wonder if it may have started my interest in World War II history. Later I recall watching another documentary film where the interviewed British men in their teens and twenties who were going to be part of a guerrilla resistance if the Germans were able to successfully invade the UK. They were given sealed containers with instructions to only open them up if there was an invasion. One volunteer stated he had ordered his years after the war had ended and discovered that the first set of orders in the box was to kill the person who had recruited them in order to keep their membership secret. Again, I have seen so many World War II documentaries that I wish I could remember the name of it.
So with that image in my head, I started to wonder. What type of roleplaying scenarios could characters find themselves in if they enter a country that feared an invasion? If the player characters are outsiders to the affected country, they may be viewed with suspicion. Local volunteer forces made up of non-military citizens could harass the characters along the road. If the characters are from a friendly country, they could get recruited as mercenaries or a version of the French Foreign Legion. Perhaps the characters are already a part of a military organization and the eager volunteers are requesting training for their misfit squadron. Or perhaps they just need help building the defenses around their population centers. If the characters are from the country in need then there would be a bigger level of pressure put on them to help defend the homeland. Especially if the characters were not already in the military.
Two different feedback posts on social media came in from my post on Renew. LexTenebris on Mastodon suggested that a Logan’s Run inspired campaign could be run with a system called “On Mighty Thews“. While primarily a fantasy RPG, LexTenebris stated that it could easily be altered for a dystopian science fiction (or any other genre) if needed.
Chantel Jones on one of the RPG Facebook groups responded to my post with her preference for the Fallout RPG for Logan’s Run. But she also stated that she loves Gamma World.
Are there any other campaign options that I may have missed in this scenario inspired by ‘signs’? Do you recall the movie or documentaries that I mentioned above? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.