I’ve never been a big fan of the post-apocalypse, and I can take or leave open world games, so Rebellion’s Atomfall was never going to be for me in the first place. I had hoped that it would at least add something new or unexpected, but its combat, exploration, and story are all things I’ve seen many times before.
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While I don’t discount others’ potential enjoyment of Atomfall (my colleague Ben Sledge gave it an impressive four out of five in his review), it’s the kind of game I would play once and then forget, if not for one thing: it reminds me of Ravenloft.
Bunkers & Beasties
Castle Ravenloft, better known to modern D&D players by its 5e title, The Curse Of Strahd, is one of the most pivotal Dungeons & Dragons campaigns ever. Originally written by Tracy and Laura Hickman, it traded in D&D’s usual medieval fantasy for gothic horror, and thrust players into the open, expansive realm of Barovia.
The campaign was designed so that, upon arrival in Barovia, players could explore however they liked, piecing together clues and finding magic items that would help them in their ultimate goal of storming Castle Ravenloft and destroying the vampire lord, Strahd von Zarovich.
Compared to most other adventures, which usually involved a comparatively linear dungeon crawl, Ravenloft offered players a real feeling of agency as they chose their allies and their path through the adventure, and it’s even designed to be slightly replayable with randomized artifact locations.
Atomfall follows the same structure; you awaken in a bunker, you’re given brief, mysterious instructions to “find the Interchange”, and then you’re set loose in the Quarantine Zone to do as you please. Your goal is to reach the Windscale Plant, described as the heart of the disaster, and find a means of escaping. To do that, you need allies and artifacts (in this case, Atomic Batteries to power the equipment inside the interchange).
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Roll For Initiative, Mate
Ravenloft serves as an excellent model for tabletop campaigns, and Atomfall follows its structure almost to the letter. It’s got random encounters in the form of wandering enemy patrols throughout the Zone. The optional dungeons, abandoned bunkers left behind by the British Atomic Research Division, tie into the main story with clues, lore, and equipment. Perhaps most importantly, there’s a central goal, but how you reach it is up to you.
Even Atomfall’s jankiness gives it a tabletop feel. Imagine playing with an earnest but inexperienced DM. They’re fair, but a stickler for the rules; the Players’ Handbook says you’re on fire, and it takes a full action to apply Burn Salve, so you’re taking that fire damage even if it kills you.
They also insist on using Encumbrance rules, the tyrant.
Atomfall’s NPCs aren’t particularly memorable; the only one with any degree of subtlety or depth is Vicar McHenry, and even his veneer of civility drops pretty quickly if you don’t take his side. It’s easy to imagine our theoretical DM trying to personify every new character with a different accent. That explains why combat robots sound like Daleks, why Captain Sims sounds like John Cleese. The DM is running out of voices; we can’t all be Matt Mercer, after all.
Atomfall Made The Right Call
From a financial standpoint, Atomfall will do much better as a video game than it ever could have as a tabletop game. The market is far larger, even with the increased interest in TTRPGs over the last few years. Artistically, though, I can’t help but wonder if Atomfall could have been the next Ravenloft if it had been written for tabletop.
Many of Atomfall’s shortcomings are a direct result of its chosen medium. The player character is a blank slate; you can use your imagination to fill in the gaps, but the game won’t do any of that lifting for you. In a pen-and-paper game, players could create exactly the characters that they want to experience the Quarantine Zone through.
For all of Atomfall’s freedom, it also runs into the same limitation as many open-ended games; your choices ultimately boil down to stealthy or loud, helpful or confrontational, violent or peaceful. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 has this problem. In the broadest sense you could say that’s true of tabletop games as well, but the extra nuance added by in-person roleplay lets you bring depth to those axes.
Ultimately, while Atomfall still wasn’t the game for me, it helped me find renewed appreciation for my longest-standing creative hobby. Tabletop RPGs are an exercise in collaborative storytelling, and templates like Ravenloft – or Atomfall – are a key means of ensuring that there’s plenty of story to tell, and fun to be had while doing it.
