Jury-Rig

The Zone is your own personal promised land. Everywhere things from the Old Age lie about, things you can use to build something new. You constantly pick up odd bits of scrap, and at any point in time you can sit down for a few hours to Jury-Rig a working contraption. Some examples:

• A scrap gun.
• Four arrows.
• Scrap armor, Armor Rating 3.
• A shield, made from a road sign. Armor Rating 3.
• A Rot suit. Protection Rating 3 against the Rot.
• Cold suit. Gives you Gear Bonus +3 to Endure severe cold.
• An explosive charge, Blast Power 6.
• A flaming torch.
• A lamp, lit by booze (one dose per hour) or the Battery artifact.
• Binoculars. Gives you Gear Bonus +1 to Scout.
• A foghorn. Can be heard for miles around.
• Destillator. Produces D6 doses of booze in a few hours.
• Camouflage. Gives you Gear Bonus +2 to Sneak.
• Scrap raft. Can carry up to five mutants over water.
• A cart. Can carry plenty of scrap and gear.
• Balloon. Can lift one person a few hundred meters through the air, until the hot air runs out.
• Scrap cannon. Every shot requires an explosive charge.

Components: Before rolling to Jury-Rig your device, you must describe what parts you use and how you put them together. Choose freely, as long as you use simple, broken items from the Old Age. To hold the device together you can use steel wire, string, duct tape or rusty nails and bolts. What your device is made of has no technical effect on the game, but describing it creates immersion.

Requirements: Some things are harder to build than others. For more advanced devices, The GM can set one or more requirements:

• The device will take several days to finish.
• You need a particular piece of scrap, that you don’t have. But you know who does…
• You need a certain artifact to make the device work.

Failure: If you fail the Jury-Rig roll, bad things happen. The device will fall apart when you really need it, or even blow up in your face. You can’t roll for the exact same device again, unless you find new scrap to use. Alternatively, the GM can set a new precondition.

Success: If you make the roll, your construct works – once. Most Jury-Rigged devices are temporary, made to solve a problem here and now – but not to last. Normally, your device will only last for one action or use, then it will fall apart (the Gear Bonus automatically drops to zero). You can use a stunt to make it last longer (below).

Stunts: For every extra you roll beyond the first, you get to choose one stunt. Some examples:

• The device is durable and can be used more than once. It breaks down according to the normal gear rules.
• The device’s Gear Bonus is increased by one.
• If it’s a weapon, its weapon damage is increased by one.
• A gun gets an extra barrel and can be fired a second time before you need to reload. You can choose this stunt several times for a multi-barrel gun.
• The Armor/Protection Rating of an armor or a Rot suit is increased by one. You can choose this stunt multiple times.
• The Blast Power of an explosive charge is increased by 3. You can choose this stunt multiple times.
• You fit deadly shrapnel to an explosive charge, increasing the weapon damage to 2.
• A scrap raft can carry twice as many people.

Repairs: You can do more than just build things – you can also fix things that are broken. With a successful Jury-Rig roll and few hours work you can repair an object with reduced Gear Bonus. If you succeed, the Gear Bonus is completely restored. If you fail, the Gear Bonus is permanently reduced to the current value. You can repair an object whose Gear Bonus has been reduced to zero – but if you fail the roll, the object is permanently destroyed.

If you find a vehicle in decent shape, you can repair it with a successful Jury-Rig roll. With a second, separate roll, you can custom build the vehicle in a number of ways. For every , choose one stunt below. Each of these stunts be chosen several times:

• Souped-up engine. The Gear Bonus of the vehicle is increased by one.
• Spikes and blades. The weapon damage of the vehicle (normally 1) is increased by one.
• Armor. The Armor Value of the vehicle is increased by 3 (only for cars).

You can only roll once to improve a vehicle. If you rework it again, all stunts from the previous roll are lost.

Mounted Weapons: You can fit a scrap cannon or any other weapon to a vehicle. It requires no die roll, beyond building the weapon itself.

The Gearhead Naphta wants to build a sled to help her group escape across the frozen waters of the Zone. The GM decides this construct doesn’t have any special requirements, so Naphta can roll right away. She has Wits 5 and

skill level 2, so she rolls five Base Dice and two Skill Dice. She rolls two and gets to choose a stunt. She makes the sled durable – robust enough to last for a few rides.