Turning Point
What is it? It's an original setting which utilizes the Warhammer40kRPG Percentile System.
It is an alternate history world. It is Earth, but about a hundred and fifty years in the future shortly after the end of a time period known as the Era of Endless Smoke - a time where much of the Earth was blanketed by pollution. The skies were dark and most of mankind retreated to self contained cities known as Megatropolii, amalgamations of the extant mega cities of the world which were then cordoned off, quarantined, and self contained for protection against whatever was happening beyond their walls. Two such mega cities in the setting are the Texaplex - we know it today as the Texas Triangle (you can look this up on Wikipedia) and Vector, which is all the urban sprawls of the Great Lakes region combined into a single metropolitan entity.
Others who could not or would not enter the cities found a way to survive on the surface. These would later become the Earthfooters. Imagine Native Americans mixed with gypsies and bedouin nomads but with the survival training of special forces.
It was literally a second dark age. Mankind's technological levels before the Era of Endless Smoke was roughly 1970s-1980s level. Personal computers were not yet common place, but they were around.
We're not sure why it happened, but we know we're the ones that caused it. Some people talk about how we got too accustomed to our consumer life style - we over produced to the point where you'd have more cars than there were miles of road.
---
When the smoke cleared, Earth was different.
Turns out mother nature managed to find a second wind while we weren't looking, and she took a lot back that we had taken from her. Towns and cities that we left empty are infested with green overgrowth. Huge predators live in them, harley wolves (named because they're as big as a Harley Davinson), raknids (big spiders), and other things like that.
The party is a group of people known as Thrifters. They're that crazy bunch of folk looking to explore the ruins of the past, make some money off what they find, and maybe help people along the way.
There's no big evil here. Just people with people problems, trying to survive.
And a world of junk to sift through.
But how do they go about exploring the dangerous wildwastes of the world around them? There are a few options, but first let's talk about Sponsorship. This ties back to what I was hinting at regarding the large companies and corporations in the setting.
---
n order for a thrifter band to do their job, they need to be able to get around. In order to get around, they need vehicles, either a fleet of small ones and a base of operations, or a big one with crew and stuff in it.
In order to get those... they need money.
Now here's the thing /tg/. In this setting, one of the things which managed to survive through the second dark age (if the first one was the Medieval Dark Ages) was a non-physical medium of exchange; stocks, shares, trusts, accounts, that kind of stuff. Problem is, only the really rich people have it; companies or aristocratic families who paid for a cushy life inside the megalopolii.
Thrifters tend to be people who are not part of that class. They do have skills though, and companies and rich people want things all the time. There's plenty of those out in the world. You need financing to have any of these adventures because all the stuff money pays for helps protect you from the dangers out there.
In effect, the Sponsorship is the Turning Point equivalent of the Rogue Trader Warrant of Trade which gives you access to the Profit Factor and acquisition system.
The difference is... with a Sponsorship, you cannot technically do whatever you want.
---
The Sponsorship does come with it certain caveats, or clauses, which the new thrifter group (sometimes called a Discovery Management Team by sponsors across the world) is beholden to follow. However, to ensure things are fair, the Sponsorship also has a Benefits Package (provided by their attendant company or investor) and Initial Signing Perk, a required Sponsorship standard since the Commissioning & Services Fairness Act of 2136.
What exactly do players do for their Sponsor? That's up to them and the GM. There's profit in everything these days...
With the acquisition of a sponsorship, the players are granted access to a Credit Rating, the stand in for the percentile value of how much they are worth and how much they can purchase.
They are also granted Construction Points which let them buy and furbish a home base (an abandoned warhouse or factory, for example) with equipment, defenses, and a fleet of small vehicles like trucks, cars, and propeller aircraft.
But, for more enterprising thrifter groups and sponsors who want to carry their operations on a more global level, they may spend their C.P's to buy a large vehicle. Currently I only have one example for purchase.
The electro-levitation engine assisted airship.
Also known as the Aerolofter.
---
The rockstar of Turning Point is the Aerolofter. No matter the class, type, or make of the vehicle, aerolofters of Turning Point all share commonalities between them. This is largely in part due to the innumerable selection of standardized parts used to construct their hulls and internal components; a result of over a century of unending industry in the years leading up to and throughout the Era of Endless Smoke.
In short, the vehicle is essentially a heavily armoured steel hull wrapped around a variety of components, the most essential of which is the lofter engine, a device which allows the damn thing to fly around with all that metal and all those guns. There's a lot more fluff about them but I don't want to flood you with anything unnecessary.
---
The Iron Congress owns one military force in the form of the Congressional Aero Navy. Imagine if the Air Force and the Navy of the United States were folded into a single organization.
They get around in flying battleships and air carriers. The numbers of ships in their fleet are few, but any one of them could easily flatten or destroy an entire city with their main weapons. Operations like that are called information management plans.
This is because when they do this, they are trying to contain renegade scientists who are carrying out unsanctioned research.
Oh, I forgot to mention. The Iron Congress is big on technological regulation. This is primarily because they are one of the few factions still around which remember what started the whole Era of Endless Smoke to begin with.