Mining: The Purge

 

Fezzypug here with another installment Mining.  In this episode, we will be digging into the world set up in the trilogy of dystopian horror movies that include The Purge, The Purge: Anarchy, and most recently The Purge: Election Year.  What can we dig out of these movies that we can use for our roleplaying purposes?  Let's find out.

The movie trilogy begins with The Purge.  This movie introduces the concept of The Annual Purge, and shows one family's tragic experiences during one Purge.  The world introduced is a dystopian near-future, where the US economy was on the brink of collapse until a party called "The New Founding Fathers of America" (NFFA) overthrows the US government and institutes a totalitarian police state.  They institute a series of policies to stabilize the government and society, including enacting the 28th amendment to the Constitution.  That amendment enacts "The Purge", an annual 12-hour period of time where all crime is legal, including murder.  Government officials above a certain level are immune and failure to comply with the rules of The Purge are a hanging offense.  The next two movies in the series expand the world and the story, as we venture out into the streets and see how people deal with The Purge, and the groups that are involved in one way or another.  Though not the greatest films ever, they are nonetheless worth watching, if nothing more than setting up the "what-if" conversations with friends.  Oh, and all of the game potential. 

So where do we begin?  A game set directly in The Purge world has quite a bit going for it.  A dystopian police state that rewards the rich and oppresses the poor and middle class is a perfect game setting for a group of Player Characters (PCs) that get caught up in struggle to unseat the government and bring the power back to the people.  The Purge event is a catalyst to action, providing ample motivation for the PCs.  Maybe they lost loved ones to The Purge.  Perhaps they were devoted Purgers until something changed their minds and now they are working to make amends.  Perhaps the PC is a foreigner intent on helping change the system they see as a crime against humanity.  Whatever the reason, there is plenty to mine here for character motivation. 

The actual Purge night scenario is rife with possibilities in terms of adventures.  This could be a great one-shot, or series of one shots, as PCs attempt to survive the night, either hiding, trying to complete a particular job only possible on Purge Night, or trying to help others make it through the night, either as body guards, or as part of an underground group providing emergency services while the official emergency services are offline (watch The Purge: Election Night for a great example of this, including an awesome example of a Purge-proofed ambulance).  In the world of The Purge, you have a number of groups not hiding behind reinforced walls and windows.  PCs are not those people.  Their adventures would take them out into the streets to fight and survive. 

Many people are out to Purge on Purge Night, so enemy-wise as a gm the options are endless.  The best part is that you don't have to make them faceless mobs.  You can make them a part of the PCs lives if you are playing a campaign.  People that they deal with or know throughout the year may put on a mask and become something less than human on Purge Night.  How would players feel when they get cornered by a blood-drenched pack of insane Purgers only to find out that it is led by their friendly neighbor or favorite bartender?  That helps to make Purge Night adventures into more than two dimensional survival quests. 

System-wise, the sky is the limit.  This world and scenario plays well with any system, as well as pretty much any setting.  You can go traditional and make a modern scenario.  You could drop this into a post-apocalyptic setting and system, either as is, or even as something more akin to Escape from New York, where there is a whole area called the Purge Zone, where nothing is forbidden.  You could even drop this into a fantasy setting.  Imagine the PCs venturing into a perfectly normal city for some other quest, then suddenly finding themselves in the middle of the Purge Night insanity.  That could lead to a meaty adventure to discover the reason for the event and help end it (or in a twist help keep it alive if you can give some sort of reason that it plays a greater good). Sci-fi has a place for this, as well.  Imagine your PCs docking on a station just before lock down and having to survive while trying to figure out what is happening. 

As you can see, there is quite a bit of choice gaming ore to be mined from The Purge movie trilogy.  There are countless stories to be had in the Purge Night alone, not to mention how that one night can completely change and affect society and the world around it, as well as the people involved.  Whether it is a frantic and bloody one-shot or a world-changing campaign to end the bloodiest night on Earth, The Purge offers you a wealth of gaming material that has the potential to keep you and your group busy for a long time.  Can you survive? Or will you Purge?