Right, so I'll just get right to the point.  I'm working on a Deadlands: Hell on Earth RPG to play with my cousin and some friends next week.  Usually creativity is not my weak suit, but for some reason my brain has went well beyond brain-fart into.. well.. You get the idea.  So here I sit, the days ticking down, trying to get some fresh ideas for interesting perimeters.  Buildings are easy..  Some corrugated tin here, some pre-war brickwork with plywood for patch-up there, adobe buildings and mud huts, re-purposed scrap mostly.

Now, I know defenses could be run quite the same way.  But I'd love some fresh insight on what KIND of scrap could be used.  In the past I've used the following (and feel free to steal them if you like the ideas):

Piled cars.  I know, Junk Town from Fallout beat me to that years ago.  (Also Scrapheap.  Anybody remember the very first FO demo?  Showing my age here..)

I had one small settlement built around an old train station, and the train cars themselves had been painstakingly dragged off of the tracks to make a wall.  They were chained shut in case you ask, and defenses came in the form of very crudely cut-out 'gun ports'.  Most of the inner walls of said train cars were filled with mounded dirt and debris to slow bullets and prevent something (big) from just ripping its way inside.

I've had one settlement in an old middle-school in a small town that used the buses, turning them over on their sides to prevent windows from being crawled through.  Similar to the [train cars], dirt was heaped where possible to keep the baddies out.

One place used old semi tractor-trailers much to the same effect, reinforced with chain link and aluminum siding to keep peeping toms from knowing where the week points were.  (It didn't work, but hey.)

Had trenches built around one settlement.  That went very badly when the walkin' dead came up on one of the posts after dark and wiped the whole trench.

But, for some reason, I've exhausted my ideas. :\  I'm sure I could think of more if I found some random inspiration of sorts to jog my brain housing group.  I'd really appreciate some more ideas if anyone would care to share.


Edit:
Also hesco.  Hesco is a great defense in modern times, and works well post-apocalypse too.  All you need are four solid walls of chain link or chickenwire.  Set it up about 6' high and 4" in diameter.  Use something to line it (tarp, leather, plywood, even cardboard might theoretically work) and plenty o' dirt.  Viola.  One giant sandbag.  Wish I'd come up with it, I'd probably be rich.
This message was last edited by the user at 10:58, Fri 15 Aug 2014.

Why not place your settlement next to an abandoned windfarm? Most of the turbines have ladders inside them so that you can climb up to the gondola and they have a hatch on top so you can climb out onto the roof. They would make an ideal look out post / watchtower combined with some defences around the perimeter to prevent being traped inside.

   Don't just use your barricades of Hesco, junked cars, or whatever to stop the varmints from entering.  Use them to funnel your attackers into kill zones.

Not certain of the setting, I really don't know Deadlands.  Defenses I do know though.  I can give you a quick run through and you (or anyone) is welcome to ask me questions here or through rMail.

1.)  Layered Defenses - What this means is don't make a single wall.  Have a secondary wall, possibly a tertiary one.  Have fall backs.  Another thing that can be done is different fortified buildings linked by tunnels.  If a building starts to fall, you blow the building and the connecting tunnels.  Preferably with the enemy in them.

2.)  Plan ahead - What happens when your community grows?  Farms especially will have to be outside the wall.  Create plans for everything, have backups for those, and backups for the backups.  Train in those plans.

3.)  Defense in Depth - Similar to the first one, this means having different types of defenses.  Clear field of fire.  Open pits.  Closed pits.  Mines.  Wire.  Trenches and moats.  Some of these you want visible, some you don't.  You DO want paths CLEARLY marked through the killing field, have these through the areas most easily targeted.  It helps your own people get through in an emergency and if the enemy uses them, you have them laid out where you can provide a withering field of fire.

4.)  Fire Lanes - Overlap your fields of fire.

5.)  Ease of Access - Make sure there are multiple access points to your defensive wall and a way to walk around it.

6.)  Guards - Use fixed and roving guards.  No one position should EVER be out of site of another.  Multiple guard posts should be used on the inner ring JUST to watch the guards.

Now as to WHAT to use?  It depends on what you have at hand.  In a post apocalyptic setting you have a variety of materiel.  Depending on how close you are to the apocalypse you might have working vehicles.  Semi trailers and especially cargo containers are wonderful for you.  Not only do they possibly have goodies inside them, they are a prebuilt wall, only needing some strengthening.

If you are close to a former port, it will be worth it to go to the port and retrieve them.  Not only will you have your defenses, whatever goodies they contain, but also there are almost always small fuel reserves for the trucks.  You will need an operating crane, both at the port and at home.  A good engineer can build you one.

Cars are another good wall materiel.  Remove EVERYTHING out of them.  Crush the body, flip it on it's side, drive stakes through it into the ground (have extra stakes that go up for cars above it and other defenses), fill it with rocks and dirt, and layer and overlap them.

Find a use for everything.  Engines are good for thick and hard defensive walls along with heavy catapult ammo if they don't work and good for MANY other things if they do.  Strip off all the parts and just use the block for the non working ones.

Tires have SOOO many uses, both defensively, as personal armor, in construction, etc.  For defenses, anchor them, and fill them with dirt.

Wheel rims.  These are especially important for building cranes and locks.

The electrical bits.  Congratulations, you now have power.  Use the wires and various bulbs to string up lights.  Alternators, will generate power.  Any electric motor will actually do this, you just work them in reverse.  One decent river, a couple of wind turbines, even some guys on bicycles can provide the input.

Glass.  Crush it and use it as filler in place of rocks.  You'd be surprised at how resilient auto glass really is.

Seats.  More armor or as just seats.

Soo many more things.

The real key is to set up basic defenses as soon as possible.  Then start working on better defenses.  Always have work going on the defenses.  Always improve them.  Anything you have in abundance can be used.  Everything is a resource, it's just finding a use for it.

I have no knowledge of your game system/setting either. However, I will toss in my two cents worth. In your list of defenses you've used, it sounds like you used trenches like they were used in WW2. in other words, you dug trenches and put your guards in those trenches.

this puts them out of sight of the enemy, but also out of sight of your allies and friends. I would suggest a slightly different approach to trenches. namely, go old school. build a moat. if your wall material is less than perfect, you can improve it by protecting it with a moat.

now, you can use the moat in various ways. first, you can fill it with water. if this is your choice, I would recommend going a step further and adding some form of dangerous wildlife into the mix. although, this requires that between attacks you feed said wildlife. maybe someone in the town/city happened to breed piranha? since flesh eating fish are not all that common in great numbers, you might consider alternatives for your moat. one that comes to mind is oil soaked ground at the bottom with wood. if attacked, you can always toss in a torch. this doubles for light to help night fighting, assuming you're not dealing with ranged attackers. if your enemy is not capable of climbing for some reason, you can just dig a really really deep moat, add in some supports to keep the walls up if necessary, and just leave it empty.

hopefully this helps spark some other ideas for you.

In reply to Karack (msg # 5):

No, you don't use the trenched for guards.  It's to slow and/or damage the enemy.  It's killing field, trench, then wall.  You can also have other trenches in the killing field.  You can fill the trenches and create a moat (and depend on your adversaries and local wildlife possible dangerous animal as you suggest.  Spikes and other traps are another potential.

It sounds like you are looking for some 'extreme alternative' defenses.  Not just stock wall, moat, whatever.  The above are most likely VERY effective, but perhaps instead of using the presumption of a flat ground with modifications you consider use of strange environs.

Image an underground subway station or line.  Or a freeway tunnel.

Perhaps the top of a skyscraper.

Look into cliff side fortifications.  Built right into walls with a narrow path going upwards.

What about a community on a giant raft made of boats tied together?

Maybe a community built on a mesa only accessible by a gondola or rope ladder/pulley for big heavy things.

Cities surrounded by a swamp that floods nightly into 6 foot deep water with only a narrow safe path to it.

"Tree houses" are a possibility, think about large towers kind of like the Eiffel Tower with housing hung up amongst the girders.

Classic nuclear shelters could be something to look into.  Like a complex a la Fallout.  There are some real things like this.  You could also use nuclear silos for extra interest.

Maybe someone got their hands on a blimp or other ridiculous and exotic long term flying device.  Consider a giant one for a very small community with fuel and stuff being retrieved by smaller balloons?

Throwing in 'magic' as the undead do imply throws in an almost unlimited number of combinations with these, but the above could have some interesting results.

In reply to Dark Devine (msg # 1):

The best route is to think about what sort of survivors and what sort of society this defensive settlement has.

All that stuff about "fields of fire" and "defense of depth" is all great and believable if the people of the settlement in your game are armchair commandos or military veterans, but your average Joe probably won't have that kind of knowledge.

Take a look at photos from modern day war zones and places with lots of civil unrest, and you'll get an idea of what makeshift defenses can be put in place by 'average' citizens in an 'apocalyptic' situation. They use a lot of buses, cars and even just using regular old buildings. Schools and churches often end up serving as makeshift fortresses in such situations.

Since it's for an RPG, I'd worry more about making the place memorable and interesting, rather than purely realistically defensible. Sure, perhaps a rusted old shipwreck wouldn't make for the best fortress, but it makes for an iconic and more memorable adventure location.

Actually even people who are not arm chair generals, history buffs, and military minds will still have interesting ideas on defense.

Moats: Everybody knows about them and that they don't need to filled with water.

Ramparts: Basically stacked and packed earth one dug up making the moat.

Barbed wire: there is loads of it every where and people will make fences of it.

Tree Stands/Tree Houses: in forested areas the best defense is living in the trees.

High ground: Putting your fortification on top of the hill is just good thinking.

Burn Fields: Making the easy way in through high tall and dry grass makes a wonderful defense, one torch and you're looking at cooked enemies.

I have a small suggestion, it's not much but it might help.

I am in this scenario assuming the settlement is isolated and not part of a nation, you will see why in a minute.  The only way into this settlement is through tunnels which lead down under a ring of mountains or something. Making approach any conventional way impossible.

It goes like this:


 |   |
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/   |
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 |   \
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/   |
|_  |
 |   \
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/   |
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 |   \
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/   |
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The enemy has to enter from the bottom, and the defenders take cover behind the flat spots, but when the attackers get into each flat spot they get shot by the defenders because of the slanted walls. And if the defenders were to lose the tunnel the same things that made it hard for the enemy to take it make it easy for the defenders to retake it. Anyone with firearms or military experience could easily think of the same thing.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Mershfresnin blergle, goramit: JASE!? WHY did you have to implement this 'easy tables' "Feature"? Screws with all my ASCII maps!
This message was last edited by the user at 21:56, Fri 15 Aug 2014.

Either I've found a few other vets, or some darn good military buffs. ;)  Ya'all are great.  Some of these suggestions are brilliant.  I haven't read them all just yet, working through them, but this is far more of a turnout than I expected.  Thank each and every one of ya.

Edit: So I'm seeing a whole lot of defensive suggestions for combat purposes.  Most of them I knew, some of them I forgot, and some of them I honestly hadn't even thought of.  Not a single bad suggestion here.

Some of the most brilliant key points I've seen are:

Glass.  My old man has installed windshields for as long as I can remember.  Would you believe I knew all about the film between the layers and how hard it is to break it out, but never once thought of using it as filler?  It'd even make a really good 'liner' for makeshift gabions.  It'd crack and web, but with the right effort it could easily overlap in such a way as to do the job every bit as well as fence.

Catapulting engine blocks (honorable mention) because... Really?  That's... That's twisted but awesome, not going to lie.  As much as I would like to use those as a defensive wall (Tried to shoot through a few, didn't work.. not with a 5.56 at any rate) I'm afraid they will now be reserved for catapults whenever the chance arises.

Trenches that double as moats.  Instead of filling them with water, and since oil would be fairly scare (deadlands h.o.e. is post-apocalyptic) you could fill it with rusty scrap and glass, with occasional stakes made out of metal fence posts and such.  Nevermind the sharp and pointy aspect, if you used it as a 'human waste' dump the enemies wouldn't live long enough through the diseases to worry about tetanus.

Skyscrapers might collapse, depending on how bombed out the city is, but people might be willing to take the risk.  Hmmm...  It could even be a very interesting 'terrify the players' moment when the building, already leaning, shifts several feet (a loud and rumbling affair, I'm sure) and they think it's going to fall 40 stories.

Cliff-side fortifications.  Nuff said.

Wind turbines doubling as watch towers.  Also water towers, obviously.  Old metal billboards would make a darn good lookout point as well, now that I think of it.

Mesas, since there's a great deal of 'em in the wasted west in some form or another.  Especially handy if you cut the ropes and drop them to the ground just before they reach the top of the ramped rope bridge.

Shipwreck, because it'd be memorable.  Harder to defend, but memorable.

Floating settlement is brilliant, considering you can make certain types of junk float very effectively.

Ramparts are handy.  They could also reinforce other forms of defense, as they did in past wars.  IE: ramparts leading up to the inside of a wall, making it virtually unbreakable to most vehicles including most tanks (which are so rare nobody's going to risk driving through a wall, surely).

That underground tunnel access.  It could be ESPECIALLY useful if combined with something else defensive.  Take, for example, a very solid structure such as an old cement walled building.  All the doors and windows are made completely inaccessible, even if that means you have to collapse the entire second floor (obviously not collapsing the supports if this is your plan) against the insides of them.  If a person can't get in any other way than a tunnel (either pre-existing or made post-war) you have an instant choke point and only one place to defend.  Now, how to light it?

NOTE: Magic is taboo.  But there are definitely some very fantastic elements that are pretty much magic, the writers just didn't want to call it as such. ;)  Your classic weird science (steampunk flamethrowers, laser weapons) fits in that realm in my opinion.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:07, Fri 15 Aug 2014.

Not exactly sure what the depiction really means.  I'm kind lost.  But I believe you are saying that the settlement is above the entrances yes?  If so, it's relatively easy to kill off the whole settlement.

You find all the entrances you can.  Take the entrances only.  You don't bother fighting your way up.  Find some dry brush or wood and a lot of debris.  Start yourself a fire at each entrance and then start throwing all the crap you can on it.  The idea is to create as much smoke as possible.  Any defenders close above will quickly either be forced to retreat or get overcome by smoke and heat from the chimney effect.

Unless they have a LOT of openings above them (and if they do there are other things to do then), they'll all be quickly overcome by smoke inhalation.  Pouring water down the shafts would be a poor (pun intended) way to put out the fires.  Most of it would be hitting the upper defenses creating a 'rain' effect.  If you've built the fire big enough, it will have little effect, creating only steam that harms the inhabitants.

Edit:  Now I see.  And yes my idea would nastily kill them off.
This message was last edited by the user at 21:54, Fri 15 Aug 2014.

In reply to Dark Devine (msg # 11):

Yes, to both.  Vet and buff.  And you're welcome, I love this starfruit.