I'm new to AtB but have been GMing Rifts for about two years now. I'm just going to share my musings on how I plan to run my upcoming campaign.
Firstly, the land o' North America will be much more barren. I want this to be very post apocalyptic, so many fallen cities and the like will be the norm. I plan to have irradiated areas, and procuring food and fuel will be dominating concerns for party members. Mutant lands with functioning governments will largely not exist. The sole government will be the land controlled by humans, and they will be what remains o' the right wing, economic elite. I'll also expand their technology by using some o' the vehicles and weaponry from Mutants in Orbit.
The game will be grim indeed. Mutants will exist in scattered populations, with those types that the players create will be norm, when they are found at all. Porcine monstrosities will have risen to dominate many o' the highways in this campaign (Road Hogs).
'The land o' North America is largely barren. Fallen cities attract scavengers hoping to gain some reprieve from the falling death. Avoiding irradiated zones and procuring food and fuel dominate the minds of survivors. The sole government is that run by the Friends of Humanity, and they seek to rid the world of mutant abominations. And they are perhaps needed, for rumours of porcine monstrosities dominating many o' the surrounding highways have risen in recent years, and there are even tales of mutant powers which can control the minds of men...'
truthfully, while you could advance their tech, I don't think it is largely needed. the empire of humanity tech is leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else, from what I can tell... well, other than weapons tech, which is honestly not that superior (much more advanced, granted, but not terribly superior).
but I mean, their armour is much better. their robot vehicle is massively superior. and while their guns aren't that much better, they have the resources to just issue everyone automatic weapons that deal good damage with every shot (and ammunition so that they don't have to count their bullets so much), plus they can call in air support meaning that if the fight goes longer than a certain amount of time they are going to get reinforcements or an airstrike (neither of which are good news for the people on the other side of the fight).
and honestly, while it seems like comparatively few people use them, animal psionics provide a *lot* of single-target lockdown... so no matter how good their tech is, it's really the pilot inside that is the weak spot. you want to make them tougher, try 2 things:
1) give them something that helps their saves against psionics. as it stands, most will have either a 25% chance to save, or a 50% chance to save if they're one of the lucky few.
2) numbers. in a patrol of 2 soldiers, if you have a group of 4 mutants and one of them has bio-manipulation:paralysis, you can pretty much paralyze one and then use entangle and throws to make sure the other can't do squat. if all 4 mutants have an ability that can shut down an enemy (paralysis, blindness, mind trap, really good chance to entangle, etc) then it is going to be a cakewalk.
in contrast, if you have a human soldier accompanied by 8 loyal mutant dogs, one or two of which are psychic, then locking down the human soldier (who is probably the most dangerous and therefore still the obvious target) is going to be impactful, but still leaves you with an extremely tough fight for those 4 mutants. in fact, it's a fight they probably still can't win, and which they should retreat from unless they have a very strong advantage (like getting an alpha strike with a bunch of grenades or setting up a pit trap).
plus, any tech you give the humans is ultimately going to be tech that can fall into the hands of anyone else, at which point there goes the tech advantage. numbers, on the other hand... well, if you give the humans numbers, that isn't quite such an easy advantage to steal.
Yeah, I guess my reasoning is that the humans don't need more powerful tech, but a wider variety. And I definitely want that tech to periodically end up in mutant hands. I just don't want the campaign to be cars and motorbikes; I want the occasional hover tank too, etc.
