Archetype Origins: Gearhead

Other than getting sidetracked by a dinosaur origin, I’ve been working on more non-mutant origins for post-apocalypse archetypes.  In particular, I’ve been focused on the Gearhead and Medic origins.  After a few draft versions, Gearhead is ready to share and I’ll hopefully have Medic finished before the end of the month.

The biggest challenge that I ran into working on the Gearhead concept was that I kept veering towards the Road Warrior archetype that I had originally listed as a separate origin.  After finishing an early draft of Gearhead, I looked over its powers like “Rev the Engines” and “Run ‘Em Down” and felt that what I had written was a good fit for the Road Warrior.  At that point, I was really tempted to combine the two archetypes into a single origin.

Instead, I started over from scratch on the powers with a tighter focus on the mechanics and machinery aspect I had in mind for Gearhead.  I started with a mental picture of a grease-covered, wrench-wielding mechanic and brainstormed what such a character would do in a fight.  After that reboot, I was pretty happy with the new set of powers and glad that it leaves room for a separate Road Warrior origin (which will probably have to wait for Gamma World vehicle rules of some sort).

You can download the Gearhead origin here.