Atomic Trauma Dogs

Atomic Trauma Dogs is a 32 page RPG zine detailing a pack of small dogs which have outlived us, the people. These dogs have confidence, they know about people stuff, and they each understand their current status in the pack. They may each be less than thirty pounds, but as a group they can create a new, beautiful society for each other.

The zine has just enough pages. It describes :

• Nine Atomic Trauma Dogs
• the three Traits of Atomic Trauma Dogs (Confidence, People Stuff, and Pack Status), their numerical scales, and challenges to those traits.
• a deck of Twelve Encounter Cards. presenting a brief travel campaign across the new, people-less world.
• Blank Character Sheet (for your own Atomic Trauma Dog)
• a hex map of downtown Oak Ridge, TN, where a pack of small smart dogs might start to build a new way to live.

In the spirit of Homeward Bound, The Plague Dogs, and The Road, the book structures a road trip towards an ideal destination, a story of survival and migration on a planet cracked apart by climate change, nuclear devastation, suburban ennui, global disease reservoirs, reckless science, and narrow human vision. None of this, of course, is their fault. But it is their responsibility.

Each Atomic Trauma Dog has a foundational trauma, an event when they were puppies which has had a great impact on their outlook. Tucker Davis, for example, is hounded by the hands of the grabby girl, once the unwilling test subject of a favored, manic granddaughter. 

In the fallout-rich fields of post-human North America, the Grabby Girl looms in a way that might be real to all the dogs, not our man Tucker. Whether these dogs are able to project their best selves onto the world as it is, or succumb to the terror of their past's projections, is up to you, the reader, and those who read with you.