Salvage Union — Scrap-built mechs in the wasteland

"The wasteland doesn't forgive an empty cargo hold. Build a mech from junk and bring the scrap home."

Diced20 (five-result table)

Players3–6

Prep~30 min

Foundry VTTCommunity

Complexity

What is this system

Salvage Union is an RPG about salvager pilots who roam the wasteland in mechs built from scrap, hunting for anything worth hauling home. Under the hood is the Quest RPG engine: a single d20 with no modifiers, read off a five-result table. There are no stats. Pilot abilities, mech systems and how much scrap you drag back to your Crawler decide everything.

Is it for your table?

Pick it if

you want a crew of scrap-mech pilots hauling salvage across a wasteland
your group likes a single d20 roll with no stats or modifiers
you want a shared walking home base to upkeep and upgrade together

Skip it if

you want crunchy mech combat with modifiers and precise stat math
your players want levels and XP rather than scrap-based progress
your group dislikes managing upkeep and a base between missions

Setting

A world after the corpo wars: corpo-states hide in their arcologies, and outside lies a wasteland strewn with the wrecks of old machines. Your community lives aboard a Union Crawler, a huge walking settlement that wanders the wastes. The scrap your pilots bring back feeds and repairs this home on legs.

What it looks like at the table

Your mech opens fire on a raider scout. d20: 4, a Failure, and the shot misses. You Push your reactor and re-roll: 14, a Success, so the shot hits for full damage. You still pay for it: +2 Heat takes you to 7, and you make a Heat Check right away. d20: 12, over your current Heat, so the reactor holds. A 7 or lower would have sent you to the Reactor Overload table, whose worst result blows the mech apart.

Playstyle

Combat Survival Exploration Post-Apoc

Key mechanics

One d20, five results

No modifiers. 20 is Nailed It, a bonus of your choice; 11–19 a clean Success; 6–10 a Tough Choice, success at a cost the Mediator offers; 2–5 a Failure; 1 a Cascade Failure. Initiative, morale and salvage run on tables of the same shape.

Heat and Pushing

Systems and Pushing heat your mech up. A Push buys a re-roll for +2 Heat and a Heat Check: roll d20, and if it's equal to or under your current Heat you roll on the Reactor Overload table, which runs from a free extra action to full meltdown.

Scrap instead of XP

No levels: progress is scrap, graded across six Tech Levels. You spend it to craft chassis, systems and modules (cost equals Salvage Value, paid in scrap of that Tech Level or higher), to repair and to trade. Area Salvage costs the pilot's Ability Points or the mech's Energy Points.

The Union Crawler

Your walking home base is the group's shared character. In Downtime you pay Upkeep, repair mechs in the Mech Bay, heal in the Med Bay, train new abilities and gather Cantina rumours. Upgrading the Crawler unlocks better bays but raises the Upkeep.

What people say

Salvage Union is a strong game and a pretty compelling use of the Quest mechanics.— Aaron Marks, Cannibal Halfling Gaming

It makes me want to run it, and my players want to play it.— Iain McAllister, The Giant Brain

Art & materials