WASTELAND’S
BEST BARS and RESTAURANTS
Valhalla: Worselands roadhouse run by a retired road warrior; rough as a badger’s arse and most of the liquors double up as fuels, but the battledome out back is a thrill.
Aunt Betsy’s Cannibal Buffet: Charming rustic buffet with folksy decor and welcoming atmosphere. Only problem is the revolting buckets of lukewarm human flesh.
Doctor Bozzler’s: This bonobo-run cafe is the only vegan food establishment in Wasteland.[27] The food is great even if it’s been prepped by chimps, but prices are – predictably – a complete rip-off.
Big Hongo’s Taste of the Beforetimes: Luxury restaurant serving delicacies from the old world for elite warlord clientele. Worth it if you’ve got 500 barrels of oil to spend on a tiny tin of caviar.
The Dog & Neural Net Processor: Traditional cockney-style robot boozer. Drinks are shit because the Robots can’t taste, but the piano-side singsongs are rollicking.
Airbar Hierarchia: Swanky joint for Hierarchian socialites, where you can pay dizzying sums to take gulps of fragrant air then blow them in the faces of passing scum while shrieking with laughter.
Burgerfry Godpalace: Part temple, part fast-food restaurant devoted to the worship of the terrifying chthonic deity known as the Burger Lord. The chips are superb if you can forget the fact that the deep fryer[28] is also used for human sacrifices.
Currency
While some communities have their own simple currencies, such as human ears, VHS tapes or remembered dialogue from pre-apocalyptic sitcoms, for the most part Wasteland runs on the barter system. And when the inhabitants of the Wastes aren’t stealing from each other, do they ever love to trade. If you come with enough technological trinkets, canned food and bullets, you can get whatever you might need for your onward journey.
DAILY SAMPLE COSTS
Costs given in Barter Units (BU), where 1 BU is equivalent to:
Half a string of creepy plastic dolls’ heads
Three big bullets
1 square foot of rat pelt
A mouthful of petrol
BUDGET: less than 10 Bu
Overnight stay in a one-person dog-leather tent, shared with a dying cyborg: 1 BU
Transport on the bonnet of a marauder’s buggy: 2 BU
Sundried tunnel fungus, sautéed with cat-cheese curds: 2 BU
Groundling’s ticket for a re-enactment of an ancient soft-drink advert: 3 BU
MIDRANGE: 10–25 Bu
Bunk in the barracks of a mid-sized death cult (weapon rental included): 3 BU
Transport on the back seat of a souped-up motorbike with a skull on the front: 5 BU
1 lb nameless meat, grilled over burning plastic: 5 BU
A night at the battledome (comes with a strimmer to hand to a combatant): 7 BU
TOP END: More than 25 Bu
High Priest’s quarters in a towering citadel, including mutant butler service: 20 BU
Transport on the gloating dais atop a warlord’s tank-tracked slaughter yacht: 15 BU
Ancient tin of hamburgers in brine, with human milk cheese and hydroponic lettuce: 10 BU
Hire of twenty berserkers and two armoured buses to conduct your own raid: 50 BU (plus fuel costs)
Don’t Forget to Pack …
A chainsaw: If you can’t see how this would come in handy in Wasteland, I don’t know what I can say to help you.
Drugs: Either to guzzle for your own entertainment, or to exchange in an ancient oil refinery full of nihilists for tinned meat and/or your life.
That’s it.
Manners and Etiquette
Don’t try to save the world
After arriving in Wasteland, you’ll probably make it half an hour before you see an act of such appalling injustice that you feel you simply must intervene. Don’t bother. Wasteland’s whole thing is that it’s broken; it doesn’t want to be fixed. Even if you get swept up in binning a dictator, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can stick around to implement lasting social change. The brutal truth is, the Wastelanders like things the way they are, and will always wrestle things back into bleakness.
Feel free to litter
I mean, you can’t make the situation any worse, can you? In fact, you’ll probably start a devotional sect if you drop something with a good enough logo on it. Wasteland is altogether no place for neat freaks,[29] and tourists should – if anything – make an effort to be more generally wasteful, boorish and untidy than they are at home. Throw things away half-finished. Set fire to things for a laugh. If you liked a meal, belch in the server’s face. Hell, take a shit right there on the floor, nobody cares.
DRESS TO AGGRESS – WASTELAND FASHION
More than in any other World, Wasteland is a place where you need to dress to fit in. Show up looking like a tourist and you’ll instantly be singled out for a battering with a length of rusty chain. But fear not! Considering almost everything here is made from literal rubbish, it’s really not difficult to get together an outfit that’ll be the height of fashion.
When considering your overall aesthetic, try to aim for something in between ‘medieval infantry’ and ‘motorcyclist with heavily implied erotic appetites’.
New clothes will stick out like a sore thumb in the Wastes, so distress anything by putting it in a tumble drier with a handful of charcoal and some old meat for an hour.
A rummage in a hospital skip should provide you with all the padding, used bandages and support braces you need to properly accessorise.
Rags are your friend. By ripping up old sacks and bin bags, you can make an outfit for casual nights out or a comfy underlayer to mitigate tetanus risk from rusty armour.
Think automotive! Tyres cut in half make superb (if unwieldy) shoulder pads, while hubcaps and
