I’ve been thinking about a Metro 2033-style campaign set in Toronto. Maps would be easy enough, as TTC and PATH maps are available on line, and there are city maps with subway and PATH entry points marked.
As I mentioned, I have a game (unpublished) that I would run this with, but what about games already out there? I would honestly be tempted to hack Old School Hack. Kirin did a great job of replicating Star Frontiers with OSH. A Metro game would require a bolted on resource management mechanic which would certainly mess with the simple elegance of the system.
So there’s Savage Worlds and True20, both of which I am relatively familiar and both of which already have resource management as part of their core. I’m not the kind to run gritty survival games, so a pulp or action port of the Metro aesthetic would suit me fine.
For the setting, I wouldn’t have nuclear post-apocalypse. I’m thinking of an eco-plague event, in which a comet collides with the Earth and airbursts somewhere above Russia. This allows the schockwave to dissipate enough that Toronto is not totally destroyed but could plausibly cause nuclear war-level devastation. The Earth’s orbit is shifted slightly messing with our climate, and the comet released something into the atmosphere so that the air is toxic. Something else came along with the comet, creating “Others” similar to the monsters of Metro or even Monsters.
I wouldn’t follow the storyline of the books or the computer games. I think I would start it out very lowkey – maybe a Yojimbo-style game, where the group enters a small station/habitat, like College, and messes with the gangland détente established there. Following this, a Searchers-style game, in which a family member of a PC is taken by slavers from some other part of the Cursed Path and the team has to track the slavers and release the captive. Throw in a Dredd/the Raid-style action porn episode.
And then comes the “Dark Ones” storyline, in which the Others are really threatening the stations, and the PCs set out to find a way to end the threat permanently. Because Canada doesn’t have conveniently stationed nuclear deterrents, there would need to be a different climax and sequel.
This would be easy enough to port to any major city anywhere in the world with a sizable underground infrastructure.
You can learn more about Metro 2033 here.
You can learn more about Metro 2033 Redux on Steam here.
You can find TTC maps here.
You can find a map of the PATH here.
You can find a Toronto city map here.
You can find Old School Hack here.
You can find Savage Worlds here.
You can find True20 here.