The Morrow Project is a science fiction role-playing game created by Kevin Dockery, Robert Sadler and Richard Tucholka and published by Timeline Ltd. It is set after a devastating nuclear war. It was first released in the 1980s, and it still has a loyal following. The fourth edition was released as of December 15, 2013 by Chris Garland, the head of Timeline Limited.
History
In 1974, Robert Sadler wrote an outline for a post-apocalyptic adventure story. Richard Tucholka added a second chapter, but then the project was buried for a year or more. In 1975, they were introduced to roleplaying, and Tucholka suddenly realized that The Morrow Project could be an adventure background for a roleplaying game. He used Sadler's story as a guide to write that game background. Then the two joined forces with Kevin Dockery to flesh out the military portion of the game.
After months of playtesting, it was run at an early Michicon and was a great success there. At that point, Timeline Games was born and shortly thereafter, due to internal conflicts, both Richard Tucholka and Robert Sadler left Timeline Games and created Tacky-Tac Games, which later became Tri Tac Games.
In late 2012, after several years of development, a Kickstarter campaign was run to provide the funds to finish the 4th edition of The Morrow Project. The Kickstarter campaign easily exceeded its goal and finished successfully on January 3, 2013. The new edition was released on December 15, 2013.
Setting
The game is based around the idea that a group of American industrialists predicted the coming of an apocalyptic nuclear war, and began to create a plan for an emergency operations and reconstruction infrastructure that would survive that war. This plan is the eponymous "Morrow Project". A number of volunteers were cryonically frozen in hidden bunkers called boltholes. They were provided with substantial caches of supplies and equipment, intended to help the teams rebuild civilization -- once the war had ended, it was thought some places would be identified where the hazards such as nuclear fallout had diminished sufficiently.
The plan was for the Morrow Project to be coordinated by a central command post and record-keeping facility called "Prime Base." This is an immense self-contained bunker with various annexes, hidden underground in Nevada, in the canyons near Soldier Meadow. Its details are explained in the game book entitled "Prime Base." The facility's advanced life support systems and huge variety of other equipment were intended to allow the Project's leaders not to sleep through the war, so as to chronicle it and be in the best position to determine out what should be done next. The Project's "Phoenix Team," a highly secret Tier-I special operations unit of approximately platoon strength, was also here, but kept in suspended animation to be used only on the highest authority if there was no alternative.
Prime Base was built in isolation according to schedule, but just before it could assume its role it was sabotaged and bombed by a shadowy madman called Krell, sustaining serious damage. The sudden attack wiped out the Morrow Project leaders, but 150 years after the war, the damaged central computer at Prime Base finally began to issue one or more wakeup signals. This revived at least one of the Morrow Project assets -- the team that the player characters are part of. The status of other Teams is purposefully kept unclear, so that details can be worked out by the person coordinating the game, who is called the Project Director.
The game therefore centers around the question of whether the Project is hopelessly compromised, or whether its scattered outposts can reconnect and replace the non-functional headquarters. Must they try to confront huge reconstruction tasks alone, when it was expected that thousands of Project members would help them? Do they have the courage to try?
Initial scenario
The initial scenario may be played with nothing other than the game book, dice, paper and pencil. Expansion sets are available introducing further scenarios, weapons and equipment.
One hundred and fifty years after the Third World War, the members of the Morrow Project wake to a strange world. Instead of being part of an organized plan to rebuild their civilization, they find themselves isolated in a world where the War is only a distant legend, the people are ignorant of anything but the struggle to survive and strange mutated animals haunt their footsteps.