Apokalypse - 20th anniversary of the wargame that disappeared. NOW FINALLY BACK!

Panda4You

Lets go back for a bit. To 1996.
At this time Games Workshop had the wargaming hobby firmly in their hand. But things were mainly about WHFB back then, (2ed) 40k was a cartoon with crappy rules that was far from the end-all be-all of sci-fi miniatures (the "grimdark" rebranding was still years away) that WHFB was for fantasy, and Target Games' Warzone had started to pick up steam to challenge GW to become "the" wargame in a futuristic setting. There were perhaps a handful other games but they were so small, and unadvertised in the public eye, that I honestly can't remember them.

In this era something started to make waves in the circuit of scandinavian RPG conventions. It was an indie startup, Hardcore Media, that toured showing off their new 25mm miniature game (and their fucking awesome private battlefield sceneries and McGyver'd models, that shit was honestly the best and most realistic wargaming terrain I've ever seen...) they'd just released:
Apokalypse, or Apoka as what few people in the know shortened it into.

Curiously enough CJ Håkansson told me they were quite reviled in the behind-the-scenes of conventions, with organisers wanting to shut them out and magazines saying Apokalypse was a "blight on the hobby"... All because of how much their product stood out from the established (kiddy-friendly) branch of industry.

So what was it all about, eh?


To say the setting was unlike the ones other wargames ran with is an understatement.
Apokalypse was not about humanity fighting against aliens or demons, aided by comic book weapons and shoulderpads. It was a dark vision of world war, rwandan and ex-yugoslavian ethnic cleansing (both fresh in mind at this time) taken to a global scale, in a not too far-off future where some sci-fi advances had starting to appear but very much was all too familiar...

I hear you snorting about "90's edge". And there might be some point to a view like that, but Apokalypse was still some AAA distilled bleak shit casked in vintage bourbon barrels. The game really breathed that desperate vibe of gloom and menace into the both setting and gameplay.

And the rules were fairly complex, they gave almost the sense of being in a roleplaing game. Only instead of having one guy representing the player, you had 20-40+ misguided, decieved, fanatical or just plain desperate underlings trading their lives for whatever task you'd put them to. Because the lethality in Apokalypse, just as in real life when bullets start to fly, was high.

Much of the rules was wholly unlike any other game out at the time (and still is, if you ask me). For one thing, the game had a 'planning phase' where you, the mastermind behind the militia/warband/cult/panicked defense force, give your troops instructions in how to move and act on the battlefield.

Dicerolls were generally made with D20s, and in the case of rolling to hit with auto-fire weapons were made with a pool. You oftentimes added in a differently coloured D20 for an ammo check as the combatant unloaded on their target. Because if troopers ran out of ammo they were forced to hope they could make it to reaching the enemy with their knife, or whatever they had and defeat them hands-on, before being gunned down. Squad psychology, morale, instinct of self-preservation and the general irrationality of human behaviour, was included as well. :twisted:

Since the heart of Hardcore Media was a three-man operation with neither budget nor advertisement Apokalypse didn't have produced miniatures, you used whatever you could get your hands on that looked the part, grimy and rugged. Thus the game used "meters" as a measure of all game lengths and ranges, which were 1.5cm for 25mm minis, and could be adapted if using models from another scale.
But what Apokalypse had instead was a rich variety of troops and forces, of all kinds and qualities, available to the player. After all, everyone will be forced to take part in battle sooner or later, weapons drawn, at the end of the world.

Hardcore Media at least managed to sell all the pressings they made, and recoup the costs they'd put into the Apokalypse project. But the game never had too much of a distribution (I got my copy from one of the two RPG shops Stockholm had in the 90's, and they literally sold it under the counter...) and HcM closed down in...1998 I think? According to CJ Håkansson all none-core book material was obliterated in that process, so Tech Cultists, Robot psychosis, additional Landmate rules and Wormcarriers will never see the light of day.

In fact I believe this thread is the first time Apokalypse has ever had international proliferation and even though I haven't really done anything else than manage to track down and buy something Malin Rydén has had in her attic for the last two decades, and make a pdf out of it, I feel really proud to be the one passing this fantastic game on to you guys!
I just find it so sad and unfair, to say the least, that such an unique game with amazing production values and writing, the likes which Apoka had (you should see the book! pages were THICK), has been all but erased from the public conscious. The only goddamn mention I've found of Apokalypse on the whole internet (I looked for a quite while) was a thread on the forums of Sweden's national RPG hobby organisation. In it three dudes said "remember this shit?" "yeah I think so, it was pretty cool wasn't it?". That thread was from 2010.
Imo Apoka should have its proper place in the history of swedish RPGs and miniature games! :sad: i mean, Hardcore Media had to ban visitors from their offices since Target Games constantly tried to poach what little personnel they had...

But here it is anyway! A game that's been literally lost for so long.
Apokalypse Core Rules (the book is NSFW material, if that really needed to be explained...)
I've been in touch with all the developers and, aside from a "holy crap someone remembers that!?" reaction, I've gotten written permission from everyone involved to spread the material.
Apokalypse is freeware these days.

I hope you'll find it an interesting/horrifying read, and especially having the chance to try it out yourselves!
Because after all it was quite a fun and exciting game! Made by excellent people.

And who knows, with the world of today it might be a more current game than ever before... :hydra:

Thanks to

Carl Johan Håkansson, Malin Rydén and Ola Holmdahl for putting in all the time, work and effort they did on this one-of-a-kind gem, once upon a time!
To @LaOs for helping me make the pdf somewhat readable, couldn't have done it without ya! :heartbeat:
And to Meshur for wondering "whatever happened to those guys we chatted with on a convention, ~20 years ago?" back in june this year, which started all this.

Bucketman

Damn, this game looks brutal.

Panda4You

Yeah, this was the original GRIMDARK wargame.

At least the people behind Hardcore Media did pretty well for themselves after the project closed down:
CJ Håkansson had a bunch of other board game ideas, none published though, and is now an established horror writer.
Malin Rydén became a successful editor and a writer (horror!) herself. She's also writing a webcomic, for people interested in those: Breaks
Ola Holmdahl actually ended up in the gaming industry, working for DICE. And he seems to be doing alright currently.

Edit: Here's an online-readable download link btw: www78.zippyshare.com/v/ITEm2it0/file.html
Edit2: Oh and I said this game was ahead of its time, didn't I?