CRACKED!

Scenario.

CRACKED! is set in the not too distant future where the world struggles to survive after catastrophic natural forces combine with human stupidity and wipe out 95% of the people. The survivors are either Insiders (living in Domes), Outsiders ir LineRunners (working between the two worlds). Insiders live in luxury inside protective environments called DOMES. They have all the prosperity of the technology that has allowed them to survive. Outsiders are those who live outside DOMES, in the toxic world man has created. LineRunners are workers on The Train that runs between the surviving Domes and connects them physically.

Linking the DOMES is The Line. A massive underground and underwater rail system that connects all the surviving DOMES of the world and allows them to trade and exchange goods and ideas. Running with the Train are the Line Runners - the players - who undertake support and exploration missions supporting the DOMES. But Line Runners are outsiders also, they are never allowed Inside due to their contact with the Outside and the fear of plague. They live a good life on the Train, but they see the world as it really is.

Cracked caters well for episodic adventures. Each session or adventure can occur in isolated sections of The Line or in a DOME location, alive or dead, and can incorporate a large number of tropes. Missions along little used spur lines, expeditions using the Zeppelin or other vehicles as required, exploring cracked or lost cities, encounters in the new natural world. All of these are possible in CRACKED!

Timeline:

2040 - The third world industrialises with help from China and India. Africa and South America in particular begin to realise their potential as China and India begin to flex their economic muscles and challenge the old world powers. This is done without consideration for the environment and global warming grows in importance.

2050 - Rising industrial atmospheric pollution becomes as big an issue as global warming. Populations in nearly all major cities are wearing filter masks outside the home. Environmental sealing of buildings and cars becomes a standard feature as the atmosphere becomes more and more toxic. The first DOMED environments are built in Russia, using old open cut mines and sealing them over with a roof. The early environments use old fashioned roofing techniques but as the advantages of the concept become obvious alternative materials and construction techniques enter the field. Initial domes are constructed from large cells, joined together to form the roof (hexagonal cells were common). Others used pyramids or truncated pyramids. Eventually however techniques and machines are created that can construct a clear onepiece hemispherical dome in the classic style (with varying levels of height).

2060 - The size and number of DOMED environments grows swiftly with improvements in construction techniques and pressure from the failing environment.

2069 - The Earth's magnetic poles shift - it becomes called The Flip. Unexpectedly this causes a sudden surge in volcanic activity and most volcanoes around the earth become active and start casting massive amounts of soot into the atmosphere. New volcanoes erupt in active zones, including a really big one near Hawaii.

Because of global warming the amount of water in the atmosphere has increased, along with rising sea levels, combining with the existing heavy pollution and the new soot, the Earth's atmosphere turns toxic to humans (and most larger animals) without protective gear (lung and skin cancers rise dramatically). The growth of DOMEs accelerates and the world turns into people who are INSIDERs and OUTSIDERs.

2080 - As the rich and the powerful are safely protected inside their DOMEs they begin to abuse the Outside world with reckless industrialisation and little care for the people or the environment. Enviromental disaster looms closer. Eco-terrorists groups form and radicalise. Responses by Insider law enforcement agencies escalate.

2085 - The first CRACKING occurs. An eco-terrorist group called The Free Earth Protectors detonates bombs on a DOME in China and CRACK it (as it becomes known on the web sites). The resulting intrusion of polluted atmosphere against the unprotected population results in tens of thousands of deaths, and many more long term illness problems.

2090 - Two more CRACKs occur. The Insiders begin to unite to protect themselves against the terrorists and rising unrest by Outsiders, who are becoming an enslaved population in service to the protected few.

2100 - Insiders form a World Government - The Union (well about 60% of them do to begin with, but most of the rest join in over the next 20 years). Outsider rebellions grow in number until isolation of DOMED Cities becomes a viable option. To survive however the DOMED world realises it must have a means to trade and transport between each of the cities. They begin construction of The LINE, a mostly underground and underwater rail system that will connect all of the DOMED world. The MAINLINE takes 20 years to complete, initially connecting about 30% of the world's major DOMEs. OVer the next 20 years many of the other DOMEs are brought on-line.

2125 - The PLAGUE! breaks out in a European DOME. Before it can be quarantined it spreads to 30 other DOMES. The PLAGUE! is virulent and deadly, turning the infected DOMEs into graveyards. The afflicted DOMEs are sealed off from the LINE and the populations inside either die or flee to the Outside, where most of them die anyway. Strangely the PLAGUE! has less of an affect on Outsiders. Depending on your story needs the PLAGUE! can create zombies or cannibalistic throw backs of humans.

Global warming has dissipated due to the increasing forces of the nuclear autumn brought on by the increased volcanic activity. The volcanoes have subsided since The Flip and the atmosphere, still toxic to the unprotected human, begins to stabilise. It helps that most of the worlds heavy industry has collapsed due to conditions Outside and a lack of technology to support them (most of the technical class having been moved Inside).

The plague is Outside as well, no one is sure if it started outside and got in, or the other way around. Outside it spreads slowly, and is less deadly, as the means to move around in the outside world is by now quite restricted (no airplanes). The plague however destroys what is left of the cohesion of the Outsiders and they reduce down to feudal states under the control of warlords. Some bastions of the "Old World" survive via isolation but they are the exception.

The Outsider population falls drastically as the plague works it way around the world. At the time of The Flip the world population was estimated at around 9 billion people, after The Flip it began declining rapidly. By 2120 it had dropped to 4 billion, and by the time of the game setting (2169) it is estimated to have dropped to less than half a billion, with only 10 million inside DOMEs.

2130-2160 - As the Outside world descends into a new Dark Age they make last ditch efforts to regain the past. Warlords seeking the wealth and comfort of the DOMED cities, attack them. They use plague infected groups and push them through the breaches in the DOMEs. Once the plague enters the sanitised worlds of the Insiders it is only a matter of time before the city succumbs. Without a technical and scientific class to run the cities the Outsiders find no utopia and instead just loot, pillage and turn them into graveyards. During this time many DOMEs fall, until there are less than 100 remaining connected to The LINE. The remaining DOMES turn into fortresses with wide open killing grounds surrounding them where anything that moves is killed by automatic weaponry.

Outside the environment has improved. The atmosphere has cleaned up and the sun is now occasionally visible. Water levels are still high but beginning to fall.

2169 - One hundreds years after The Flip and the start of the game. Players are crew members of The Train - Line Runners. They live and die on The Train as they are not allowed into the protected world of the Insiders due to their contact with the Outside. They are not Outsiders either, although they are toughened from exposure, and there has been some degree of interbreeding that can be used to provide genetic strengthening.