Stand back, because this one is going to be big.
Like most settings that have been kicking around in somebody's head for far too long, the Hodgepocalypse has accumulated influences from just about everywhere.
Some inspired the world. Some inspired the tone. Some taught me how adventures should work. Others contributed one weird little idea that got thrown into the stew twenty years ago and never left.
And some things probably influenced me without my realizing it until much later.
There is absolutely no way I'm going to remember all of them.
So instead, let's start with the greatest hits.
These are the influences from which you can draw a reasonably straight line to what Hodgepocalypse eventually became.
Rifts
This is probably the big one.
Rifts started me down this road.
I loved the sheer audacity of a setting where almost anything could exist over the next hill. Magic, technology, monsters, robots, dimensional travellers, dragons—you didn't have to choose one.
It gave me permission to put all the toys in the same sandbox and see what happened.
Hodgepocalypse eventually became something very different from Rifts, but that fundamental idea never went away.
There can be a dragon in the mountains.
There can be a Faustian Mechanic driving down the highway.
There can be a dimensional portal underneath the abandoned gas station.
None of these things invalidate the others.
The world is big enough for all of them.
Still Standing
If Rifts explains where Hodgepocalypse started, Still Standing may be the best explanation for where it eventually ended up.
In Still Standing, Jonny Harris travels to small Canadian communities, meets the people who live there, learns their stories and finds humour in communities that have survived hard times.
Its tagline could almost be the philosophy of Hodgepocalypse:
Laugh in the face of adversity.
The apocalypse happened.
Terrible things happened.
But people survived.
Generations have passed. Communities have rebuilt. People have families, jobs, neighbours, rivalries, traditions and local things they're ridiculously proud of.
Now let's get off the highway and see what they've been building.
That's Hodgepocalypse.
James Burke — Connections
One of my biggest influences, although not in the obvious way.
Burke taught me to look for connections.
One idea leads to another. Technology changes society. Society finds uses for technology its inventors never imagined. Something happening in one place can create consequences somewhere seemingly unrelated.
More importantly, if you keep following the thread, you can end up somewhere completely unexpected—and when you look backwards, every step makes sense.
That's pretty much how I build worlds.
Hodgepocalypse is full of things that sound ridiculous when you describe the endpoints.
Then I show you how I got from one to the other.
And suddenly the psychic cats, Prairie pirates and motorcycle-riding suburban knights seem perfectly reasonable.
Those are the big three
Rifts gave the ingredients.
Still Standing gave the heart.
James Burke's Connection taught me how to connect them.
The rest are other parts.
Terry Pratchett
Pratchett is one of my largest influences as a writer.
The Discworld can be ridiculous without being meaningless.
The joke doesn't prevent people from being people, and absurdity doesn't mean that nothing matters.
That's enormously important to Hodgepocalypse.
A psychic cat can be funny.
A Prairie pirate can be ridiculous.
A knight riding a motorcycle through suburban Edmonton can make you laugh.
But when somebody needs their help, the story takes that seriously.
The absurdity makes the world colourful.
It doesn't make the people living in it disposable.
The A-Team and Knight Rider
I'm putting these together because somewhere between them is the basic Hodgepocalypse gaming loop.
The heroes get into their vehicle.
They hit the road.
They arrive somewhere.
They meet people.
There is a problem.
They get involved.
Things happen.
Possibly things explode.
Eventually the problem is dealt with.
Then everybody gets back into the vehicle and heads toward the next adventure.
Knight Rider reinforces another important part of this:
The vehicle matters.
It's not just the thing we handwave between adventures.
The road matters. The journey matters. Every destination can contain another story.
You don't have to save the universe every week.
Sometimes you just drive into town and discover that somebody needs help.
Put that on a Canadian highway and you're surprisingly close to a Hodgepocalypse campaign.
The Real Ghostbusters
I have described The Real Ghostbusters as:
The greatest monster manual never published.
I stand by that.
It pulled ghosts, monsters and supernatural creatures from folklore, mythology and pure invention and wasn't afraid to let them be genuinely strange.
More importantly, supernatural creatures didn't all have to follow the same rules.
You couldn't necessarily solve every supernatural problem by pulling out the same weapon and shooting it until it stopped moving.
First you had to figure out:
What is this thing?
Then:
How does this particular thing work?
And finally:
What the heck are we going to do about it?
That philosophy has followed me directly into Hodgepocalypse monster design.
The monster isn't just a stat block.
It's part of the world.
Phule's Company
Competent weirdos are still competent.
That's probably the shortest possible explanation for this influence.
A military or mercenary organization doesn't have to consist entirely of interchangeable grim professionals.
It can contain eccentrics, misfits, specialists and people with wildly different personalities and backgrounds—and still be extremely good at its job.
That idea is buried pretty deeply in Hodgepocalypse.
You can see it particularly clearly in groups like the Arsenault Angels.
Being colourful doesn't require being incompetent.
Being funny doesn't require being stupid.
And being professional doesn't require being boring.
Death Road to Canada
I mean...
Look at the title.
Road trip.
To Canada.
Apocalypse.
A car full of weirdos.
Things go badly.
Keep driving.
Yeah.
Canada
And then there's the biggest influence of all.
Canada.
Not an idealized Canada.
Not a tourism-commercial Canada.
And not a generic post-apocalyptic wasteland with a maple leaf stuck on it.
The strange, enormous, multicultural, contradictory place itself.
Small towns and big cities.
Indigenous nations and immigrant communities.
Oilfields and fishing villages.
Suburbs and wilderness.
Hockey arenas, grain elevators, shopping malls, mines, highways, coffee shops and roadside attractions.
People surviving weather that clearly doesn't want them there.
People driving absurd distances and considering it normal.
People helping their neighbours.
People arguing with their neighbours.
People building things.
People telling stories.
People laughing when everything goes wrong.
And an enormous landscape where you can drive a few hours down the highway and find yourself somewhere that feels completely different from where you started.
Somewhere along the way, Hodgepocalypse stopped being my Canadian answer to Rifts and became something else.
It became a love letter to Canada.
Just with wizards, psychic cats, Prairie pirates, Faustian Mechanics, monsters, dragons, dimensional portals and heavily armed pickup trucks.
You know.
Canada.
And those are just the greatest hits.
I haven't even gotten to Saturday morning cartoons yet.
That's going to require another post.
#Hodgepocalypse #TTRPG #TTRPGDesign #Worldbuilding #GameDesign #CanadianRPG #PostApocalyptic #ScienceFantasy #AppendixN
