In the year 2069, after the planet Earth has been ravaged by countless calamities such as wars over dwindling natural resources, comical levels of climate change, and white trash rapping demons emerging out of Hell at a worrying pace, what little remains of humanity have either mutated beyond recognition or turned to anarchy. In an attempt to create order in the world, the militia known as H.U.M.M.U.S (Humans Under Mutation or Maybe-not United to Serve) was created out of the ashes of the U.S Military. The once-proud group, which was initially composed of human super soldiers and specialized combat-trained mutants, quickly degenerated into a ragtag group of rugged mercenaries, bandits, and bloodthirsty mutated monsters. But they're gonna need all the help they can get against the two prevalent groups of humanity's adversaries; the Cybrogs, who are Ax-Crazy, machinery-encased resurrected teenagers with liquified food products substituting for blood that were once programmed to do menial service jobs but gained sentience and rebelled, and the Skumm, a strain of algal infection which formed a hivemind with the help of nanobots built for medical purposes and promptly created monsters out of a good deal of humanity.With H.U.M.M.U.S's president mysteriously assassinated without a trace of evidence, and with the Cybrogs and Skumm both taking responsibility for the murder and arguing over which of them did it, it appears that yet another war is imminent. With the three major factions of life on Earth up at arms, each will send their most elite soldiers to fight over key areas of the world (like Gary, Indiana) in a bid for complete world domination.
A Tabletop Game that has been in the works for over 2 years, Rebel Skumm is a PVP Adventure Board Game, structurally designed to resemble more of a board game version of a Hero Shooter. The game and its components will be downloadable for free once it is in a finished state. While the game will get official add-ons and balance changes, players will be heavily encouraged to create their own characters, items, custom rulesets, and maps for the game.
Rebel Skumm provides examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: Of over-the-top After the End settings like Fallout, Mad Max, and Nuclear Throne.
- After the End: Of course.
- Alien Blood: The Cybrogs have this. Their biological batteries, reanimated corpses, are filled with a liquid-like food product (for example, nacho cheese or coffee) through use of a special blood-transforming device. Because their hearts are incapable of creating this blood, they regularly need blood transfusions to stay alive, which is one of the reasons a good deal of them are either Glass Cannons or Fragile Speedsters.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Why the Rebels are fighting in the first place. The two teams have already set up camp on opposite sides of the map, and are fighting for total control over the area.
- And I Must Scream: It's everywhere. Humans that have been made into Skumm zombies are still alive and aware of what is happening to their bodies and can't really do anything about it because of the nanobots, the reanimated human batteries that power the Cybrogs are turned into Ax-Crazy killing machines against their will because of their semi-cybernetic brains exaggerating their teenage angst, humans possessed by demons are typically incapable of dying at all...
- Anti-Hero: H.U.M.M.U.S is practically made out of these.
- Banana Republic: Hawaii, after being near-completely flooded, turned into the New Republic of Hawaii, which is one of these. Roshaad the Brigand Admiral hails from this place.
- Big Bad: Skumm Lord, the leader of the Skumm zombies, Jonnyscout, the accidental inventor of the Cybrogs, and Purple Drank, a monstrous demon who is leading his army on a conquest of Earth.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Many mutants that align with the Skumm are this.
- Blob Monster: A good deal of the Skumm, including its leader Skumm Lord, are these.
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Caffeine is the equivalent to mana or energy points from other games. It's hand waved by explanation that every Rebel wears a device that turns the caffeine in one's body into raw power. The same technology is also what enables Cybrogs to have their human blood replaced with liquefied food product.
- Chaotic Stupid: The Cybrogs, being teenagers that have an oft-malfunctioning A.I in part of their brain, are this.
- Confusion Fu: Sebastian's playstyle revolves around controlling his many clones and using his ability to transform them into billowing, fast-moving clouds of smoke momentarily to confuse and overwhelm his opponents.
- Crapsack World: Most of the remaining human population are either bandits, thieves, perverts, or over-zealous H.U.M.M.U.S officials who brutalize anything or anyone who could come off as "un-patriotic". The rest of the world is crawling with the degenerate, bloodthirsty Cybrogs (who have the mindset of actual teenagers, with their built-in weaponry giving them the capability to fulfill their lust for wanton violence) who kill most humans on sight, and the Skumm, which is slowly killing off mammalian life on Earth and covering the world with an uninhabitable toxic wasteland. Earth itself has mostly transformed into an arid wasteland due to climate change, severe tornadoes and hurricanes are a daily occurrence, and major cities have either been bombed into dust long ago or overgrown to the point of becoming a Hungry Jungle. However, a good portion of the playable characters are perfectly content with the situation they're in.
- Ditto Fighter: Patient Zero is one of these, able to copy the ability of any enemy Rebel on the map.
- The Dragon: Each faction has one.
- Deputy Parker, the cowardly Mook Lieutenant for H.U.M.M.U.S's more militaristic side.
- Cybrog J, the first Cybrog ever built and Jonnyscout's best friend.
- Patient Zero, the first Skumm zombie and a particularly ruthless strategist. The Cold, Skumm Lord's Kid Sidekick, also counts.
- Do-Anything Robot: Cybrog J was built to be one of these, and as a result of his plans being stolen and mass-produced, every other Cybrog is one to a degree. The people who stole the plans, even though their intention was to market them as food service workers and menial task-preforming servants, decided to keep all of the built-in weaponry in every model.
- Edible Ammunition: Cybrog J's special ability is to build turrets that fire scalding-hot nacho cheese.
- Faction Calculus: H.U.M.M.U.S is Balanced, with a roster of Jack of All Stats fighters that fit a wide array of roles, but don't typically specialize in any of them. Cybrogs are Subversive, calling on summoned units, powerful damaging abilities and their ability to move around quickly to make up for their flimsy durability. The Skumm is Powerhouse, filled with either Mighty Glaciers that tend to have Status Infliction Attacks that don't deal much damage, or powerful specialists that have ridiculous drawbacks. Typically, however, a team is not forced to pick exclusively from one of these factions - which is why the playable characters are called Rebels.
- Future Food Is Artificial: Technology has advanced to the point where food is readily able to be grown from scratch in "food cloning" devices. Unfortunately, most of the food created this way is rather unhealthy and mostly disgusting, as most of it is grown out of special chemical slurries and stem cells. Regardless, they're the reason that the world actually has an abundance of food during the apocalypse, and how the Cybrogs get enough of their food-based blood.
- LEGO Genetics: The Skumm nanobot has achieved sentience, allowing to harness its conspicuous body-melding powers (which primarily includes re-writing DNA) to transform humans into repulsive monsters. The fact that it's bringing a rather nasty mutated algal infection along for the ride doesn't help.
- Gameplay and Story Integration:
- Caffeine, the game's version of Mana Points, is transferred into raw power by devices every Rebel has attached to them. This is how they power their gadgets and how they have enough energy to preform their powerful special attacks.
- Each team has a limited number of lives, which is powered by a resurrection machine that each team possesses. They run on a very rare kind of Applied Phlebotinum that each team only has a limited amount of. When a team runs out of lives, the machines have run out of fuel and stopped working, leading to permadeath if a character dies.
- Cybrogs, being cheaply mass-produced, are made of rather flimsy materials, explaining why a lot of them are Glass Cannons.
- The Skumm nanomachine was made to augment the human body by erasing genetic flaws and reinforcing body parts, which is why so many of them are extremely durable.
- As mentioned above, teams usually don't have to all pick characters that align with their factions, which is why the playable characters are called Rebels.
- Greater-Scope Villain: OZYSIS, a highly advanced mass of nanomachines not unlike the Skumm, is this for the entire game. It is the entire reason why the events of the game are happening in the first place. It destroyed most of the US Military singlehandedly, plunging America into a state of chaos and anarchy, it propagated the ideas for the Skumm nanobots into its inventor's brain, it disguised itself as the "corrupt investors" who stole Jonnyscout's ideas for the Cybrogs and sloppily mass-produced them to deliberately perpetrate a massive uprising, and finally, it was the being who murdered H.U.M.M.U.S's president, kicking off the war. It is almost always invisible, formless, and is not present for most of the gameplay, save for a select few items.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Samoflange, an extremely expensive Wave-Motion Gun only obtainable late-game, able to one-shot a sizable chunk of the roster without armor.
- Kid-Appeal Character: The Cold, a very
annoying snowman-like Skumm zombie who is Skumm Lord's loyal sidekick, is a parody of these. - Mana Shield: Patient Zero is the flimsiest character in the entire roster, but its passive ability makes it lose caffeine instead of health when it's attacked. When it's out of caffeine, it's likely that a single hit will kill it unless it buys armor that increases its maximum HP.
- Mascot with Attitude: Nigel Nukey, a Totally Radical sentient nuke with perpetual Wingding Eyes.
- Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: The first Cybrog ever built, Cybrog J, was made to serve as nothing more than a lab assistant and a friend to his inventor, being jury-rigged out of spare parts, a teenager's corpse as it's living battery, and a "food-to-blood converter" that his inventor created on a whim one day. When the Cybrog idea ended up working a little too well, he decided to pitch the idea to some investors...who promptly stole his half-finished idea and mass produced them to a great extent, leading to them taking over a good third of the earth.
- Meat Moss: Skumm landscapes spread by transforming humans into this.
- Nail 'Em: Thorns, a mutant made entirely out of nails, can fire them at nearby enemies at the cost of movement speed.
- Powered Armor: Worn by H.U.M.M.U.S's most elite soldiers.
- Psychic Powers: People with telekinetic powers exist, and are fervently seeked out by both H.U.M.M.U.S and the Skumm to fight for them. Unfortunately a good deal of them are criminals who abuse their power, known as "Psychopsionics". Doesn't stop either of the factions from wanting to recruit them.
- Punch-Clock Hero: A lot of the former criminals fighting for H.U.M.M.U.S are only there because the Cybrogs and Skumm threaten their way of life.
- Science Fantasy: Demons exist in this world, and possess magical powers, the ability to possess humans, and are really awful rappers. Other than that, the setting is mostly sci-fi.
- Shining City. Gary, Indiana. Yep.
- Space Station: Colonies dotted around various regions of space still exist, and are populated by humanity's remaining elite who fled when things started to get ugly on Earth. These colonies are where a lot of the more powerful weapons are produced.
- Spike Balls of Doom: Thorns is a living version of one of these.
- Super Serum: Riptide, an experimental military drug used in the 5th Water War, infuses its user with an unnatural amount of willpower and adrenaline, at the cost of only working when they are grievously injured. Roshaad the Brigand Admiral uses this as his passive ability.
- Underground City: Reno, NV has been bombed so hard over the years that it has become one of these. Force field technology, mining equipment and extremely durable building materials have allowed the city to remain relatively intact, despite being shoved a few thousand feet into the ground. Somehow.
- Taking You with Me: Nigel Nukey's passive ability causes him to explode on death, dealing massive damage to nearby enemies.
- Turns Red: Roshaad the Brigand Admiral's passive ability lets him use an additional Attack action when his health is dangerously low.
- Was Once a Man: Every faction is filled with these. Mutants make up a good deal of H.U.M.M.U.S's ranks, the Cybrogs are mechanical monsters controlled by reanimated corpses, and the Skumm creates monstrosities out of human hosts who are most likely still alive somewhere in there.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Because the coding that dictates Cybrog J's allegiance to Jonnyscout was never wiped from the mass-produced Cybrogs, Jonnyscout is just about the only human that Cybrogs won't kill on sight. He's simply taking advantage of this and is forcing the Cybrogs he does run into to protect him through any means possible as he attempts to find a way to get him and Cybrog J off of Earth and onto one of the numerous space colonies scattered throughout the universe, where he can pursue a more peaceful lifestyle on a world that isn't actively dying.
