Mad Max
Overview
Mad Max remains one of the strongest templates for kinetic post-collapse play. Its central design value is the road as battlefield and economy: routes, fuel, engines, and moving settlements create constant tactical and political pressure.
Reusable Design Patterns
- Mobility is sovereignty: whoever controls vehicles, fuel, and route chokepoints controls life.
- Settlements are fragile logistics nodes, not stable states.
- The protagonist can be a transient catalyst rather than a regime-builder.
- Visual identity is faction doctrine: armor, vehicle silhouette, and ritual are strategy signals.
- Scarcity makes every mission multi-objective: survival, transport, and deterrence overlap.
Referee Uses
- Build campaigns as chained convoy operations with pursuit, ambush, and extraction phases.
- Use fuel and parts as strategic currencies, not mere equipment bookkeeping.
- Let warlords, civic enclaves, and scavenger clans form shifting compacts.
- Stage set-piece vehicle fights where terrain and weather are active actors.