I am a regular guy, just like many of you, and have always loved creating homebrew worlds for my friends to adventure in. Nomads and Tribulation Apocalypse started out that way, but after a while I decided to turn them into table top RPG’s for everyone. I have over 40 years of gaming experience and have been a DM/GM more times than I can remember. Hopefully that has translated into role paying games that you will all enjoy!

Will you be a hero, mercenary, or villain? No matter your choice, through love or fear, the universe will respect your name!

Nomads is a roleplaying game designed by someone with forty years of gaming experience. It is intended to focus on small squads of giant, piloted robot combat as well as player character combat and interaction with an endless possibility of galactic adventures for them. There are several gaming systems in existence in the genre but in this designer’s opinion none of them have the total package of cool and easy character generation along with a user-friendly combat system for both player characters and their robots, not to mention aerospace combat. Here is my attempt at just that. I hope you find your experience enjoyable.

HUMANS

TELARAUNS

ZINTHAMITES

VARGIS

TRIXELS

DUSKARIANS

GREYS

NEPHILIM

STARTING FACTIONS

Your group decides together, along with the GM, which faction you will be a part of. Here is a brief overview of each.

CONGLOMERATES

The Brennan Conglomerate: Run by President Andrew Brennan. Focuses activities mainly on exploration and the discovery of lost or ancient technology.

The Dumas Conglomerate: Run by Chancellor Myriam Dumas. Focuses activities mainly on colonization of new worlds.

The Alita Conglomerate: Run by Emperor Ameer Alita. Focuses activities mainly on covert subversion of the other conglomerates.

The Hansen Conglomerate: Run by President Royce Hansen. Focuses activities mainly on asteroid and planetary mining.

MERCENARY COMPANIES

Parker’s Paladins: Honorable. Only takes jobs that they deem as a service of good.

Giroir’s Company: Moral free. Takes any job, anytime, no matter the risk or challenge.

Schenck’s Irregulars: Carefully takes jobs to remain as neutral as possible.

Independent: Characters can start their own mercenary company.

PIRATE FACTIONS

Nash’s Marauders: The worst of the worst. Pillages and kills without compunction.

The Red Hand: The most feared and bloodthirsty organization in the galaxy.

Armand’s Assassins: Organized crime syndicate. Their activities are far reaching and dastardly.

Welcome, to another edition of Nomads! The original Core Rulebook was meant to be a bare bones way to get our game started. You’re in giant, robotic, piloted war machines and you can also travel around the galaxy fighting space battles, exploring planets and engaging foes, inside and outside of your Nomads. I developed and got a good character generation system up and running, along with easy methods of creating Nomads and Spaceships. I fleshed out a smattering of creatures and NPC’s to encounter so that everyone could start playing quickly. It was a good start but we all wanted more. As I write, I hope that this book satisfies us with the extras we crave. One note of caution though; Everything in this supplement is optional and has the ability to unbalance the standard game. Use with caution, tweak and house-rule as you see fit.

Originally, I planned to have four new, smaller supplements; Psionics, Alien and Advanced Tech, More of Everything and Bishops. I have decided to combine all of these into this book which includes an adventure module titled Lost Horizon, with a future book detailing one of the Brennan Conglomerate’s secondary worlds, to include in-depth adventuring locales and NPC’s.

Nomads Magnum Opus is the third installment in the Nomads universe. It has much of the original material, from Nomads and Nomads More of Everything, streamlined into a better format. Tables have been combined and reworked for quicker reference and creatures have been revamped with new abilities, and a more reader friendly informational layout to make things easier for the players and Gamemaster. The planet Valorus, and especially its frontier city, Deep Orleans, have been fleshed out in great detail to provide a fun and exciting locale for character downtime as well as adventuring areas, a plethora of encounters, NPCs, and things to do while in town and on the mostly untamed planet. Deep Orleans can make a great base of operations for your player characters as they navigate political intrigue, dangerous assassins, planetary exploration, and so much more. You’ll be able to run an entire campaign based there if you choose, with your players able to get into new and different forms of excitement and trouble every game night.

PREFACE

Most remaining trees are dead, petrified, and lifeless. Their skeletal, leafless frames stand at ominous angles, as if they can reach out and grab you at any moment. Grass, fruits, and vegetables died off years ago from the lack of sunlight. Some plants, vines, and weeds still grow but giant, mutated mushrooms, and other fungi, have become the prevalent flora, and food for herbivore animals. Many species have dwindled or become extinct, and carnivore animals struggle as well, often hunting each other, since their normal food is in short supply. Cannibalism is rampant among all creatures, including the playable races.

Screeches, and sounds of battle and terror, can be heard in the distance more often than not. The sun is black, and casts no light, but its heat can still be felt. A blood red moon shines down, granting the darkness an evil, otherworldly pale. Earth Motes of varying sizes float overhead, a product of gravitational disturbances from energies that came through dimensional portals. Fault lines ruptured, fissures opened in the ground, and new mountains formed overnight. Continents were changed forever.

Tribulation Apocalypse is set in the year 2080. Your characters live in a world that, thirty years previous, was devastated by modern and alien weaponry, as they fight to survive against nightmarish enemies. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and very few places to find lasting respite. Demons, angels, beasts, paranormal entities, undead, dragons, aliens, and all manner of creatures hunt humans, and each other. There are no sprawling cities, or bastions of defense, where your characters can lay their heads down for a relaxing night’s sleep. Safety is not in numbers, as large groups attract unwanted and overwhelming attention. You can become stronger and fight though, but stay low, stay hidden, and keep moving. If you manage to find or carve out a safe space, keep it guarded, and secret, or it may be destroyed.

INTRODUCTION

The Vokari came, not from space, but through scores of interdimensional portals, both in space and on Earth itself. Their attack was swift, strong, and merciless. We fought back hard, with every weapon at our disposal. Their ships, troops, and portals were nuked, just as they hit us with singularity missiles, dark matter bombs, and other advanced weaponry. In those seven days, Earth was decimated.

The portals became morphed and perverted, each one leading to a dimension, or planet, more sinister than the last. Gravitational disturbances caused huge swathes of land to be torn from the ground, floating hundreds of feet in the air, resembling upside down mountains. The Vokari tried to leave, but many of their ships and forces were lost, destroyed by whatever lied at the other end of those changed portals. They were trapped here, with us.

Then the first seal was broken, and the second, all the way through the sixth. In a matter of minutes the four horsemen were upon us, not as a metaphor, but as reality. Plague and famine struck instantly and massive earthquakes devastated our planet. Old mountain ranges shifted, new ones arose and continental outlines were redrawn. The sun darkened, but its heat still bathed the Earth. The moon convulsed in an oblong spasm, almost breaking apart, and afterward it turned blood red, casting a sickly glow over a world plunged into astronomical twilight. The stars fell from the sky in the form of meteorites, some small and some large: not planet killers, but big enough to ruin a city’s day. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. The biblical timeframe was all wrong. This wasn’t prophecy. This was something else.

Many surmised that the combination of nuclear, dark matter, and singularity weapons created distortions in the portals, making their destinations shift to other dimensions and planets, and causing them to remain open. It is believed that one led to heaven, prompting an abnormal opening of the seals. Another assuredly led to hell because demons came forth, roaming the Earth, killing indiscriminately. Angels walked among us, fighting the demons, and sometimes killing us if we were deemed unworthy. Other portals let in all manner of creatures, beasts, aliens, paranormal entities, undead, and transformative energies. If you could imagine something, it was probably among us.

In five years the portals closed. We don’t know why, or how, but everything that came through was cut off from their realms. Some had no direction, opting to follow their last commands, or acting as they normally would with no oversight. Others adapted, over twenty five years, forging their own paths. Powerful entities began carving out small fiefdoms, enslaving lesser beings into forced servitude and worship.

After thirty years, humanity is still here, barely. We scrounge for food and rummage through the wastelands, just trying to stay unnoticed and alive, while it seems like everything on Earth is out to kill us. Some of us are strong though, transformed, mutated, and endowed with gifts. We are the heroes, or at least, the ones who can fight back.

Welcome, to Tribulation Apocalypse.

This game runs on a simple, skill based percentile dice system.

DOD: Difficulty or Defense. A rank, from 1 – 13, that can be a measure of armor class, skill challenge level, or hazard difficulty. The higher the number, the harder something is to hit, overcome, or gain a success against. See the MAPS chart.

MAPS: Matrix Associated Percentile Success. The go-to chart for nearly every action in this game. Characters will make MAPS checks to attack, utilize skills, and overcome hazards.

You can choose from many races including, bunker humans, revenants, surface humans, demon spawn, machinations, nephilim, vokari, and mutated human animal hybrids such as cheetah, lion, panther, tiger, bat, eagle, falcon, owl, black bear, brown bear, polar bear, bull, hippo, rhinoceros, wolf, chimpanzee, gorilla, deer, elk, cobra, crocodilian, python, great white shark, and hammerhead shark.

there are 13 classes to choose from, each with unique abilities that will add to your skills and enrich game play. The classes are athlete, beast master, brute, combat, delver, leader, medic, omega mutant, priest, rogue, scholar, technician, and trader.

THE STATE OF THE CITY

The Vokari portal over New York City opened roughly one thousand feet above the Upper Bay, between the Statue of Liberty and Battery Park. In a desperate attempt to destroy it before additional Vokari forces could emerge, the United States military detonated a small, ten kiloton tactical nuclear weapon directly on the anomaly. Military strategists hoped the lower yield would minimize devastation while still collapsing the portal, but the detonation created a nightmare of partial destruction across the entire metropolitan region. The high altitude detonation allowed the blast wave to travel outward with horrifying efficiency.

Liberty Island, Ellis Island, and Governor’s Island were destroyed down to their foundations, just below the water line. Jersey City was annihilated almost instantly. Everything south and east of Interstate 78 became a smoldering wasteland of collapsed towers, pulverized concrete, overturned vehicles, and burning industrial ruins. Entire neighborhoods vanished beneath mountains of rubble. Further from ground zero, damaged high-rises and shattered residential blocks still remained standing like hollow tombs overlooking the harbor. Downtown Brooklyn suffered catastrophic devastation, particularly through Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, and the surrounding waterfront districts, where entire blocks collapsed into burning ruin. Massive sections of the shoreline’s shipping industry melted and twisted, leaving giant, metallic, skeletal fingers protruding from the harbor.

Southwestern Manhattan fared little better. Everything from Battery Park north to Canal Street was obliterated. Further north, destruction gradually lessened, though fires, collapsing structures, and shockwave damage extended well beyond 14th Street. Countless buildings suffered severe structural trauma, yet many of Manhattan’s skyscrapers stubbornly remained standing. Central and Upper Manhattan survived the initial blast comparatively intact. At first glance, some districts appeared to have escaped with only cosmetic damage. Broken windows, blackened facades, twisted steel, and leaning rooftops concealed the deeper truth: the city had been mortally wounded.

New York was built upon strong metamorphic bedrock capable of supporting some of the tallest structures on Earth. Advanced engineering techniques such as shear walls, tuned mass dampers, flexible steel frameworks, and deep foundational anchoring prevented widespread total collapse when the tectonic upheavals began during the Great Fracture. However, hundreds of older brownstone buildings crumbled into the streets. Entire blocks folded inward where the bedrock beneath them proved unstable. Fissures opened throughout the city, some plunging hundreds of feet into darkness before filling with black, contaminated water. Others emitted geothermal steam, strange radiation, or things far worse.

Staten Island, the Bronx. and everything west of Interstate 95 and north of Central Harlem sank beneath the waters. Long Island suffered catastrophic collapse as well, with everything east of Williamsburg eventually claimed by the Atlantic. Floodwaters poured into the subway system as entire tunnel networks vanished beneath black seawater. Some lines remain completely submerged, while others are only partially flooded, creating vast underground canals winding through darkness beneath the dead city. Strange things now dwell within those tunnels, awaiting adventurers foolish enough to enter.

Every tunnel leading into Manhattan either collapsed outright or flooded beyond use. Only the RFK and Queensboro Bridges remain stable enough for vehicular travel, though only suicidal creatures dare venture onto Randalls Island via the RFK. The Williamsburg Bridge can still be crossed on foot, but sections sway violently in the wind, and travelers must carefully navigate collapsed spans, exposed beams, and unstable walkways high above the East River.

New York still stands, but it is no longer a city. It is a vertical graveyard filled with dangerous creatures, flooded caverns, desperate survivors, mutants, scavengers, cults, and things that should not exist.