(TL;DR: Central repository for most of my thoughts and musings on my personal take on the Walmart Apocalypse setting. Feel free to gain inspiration from this as much as you like.




“ - Reporting another successful fiscal year with a 13.5% rise - “

“ - Always Low Prices! - ”

“ - happy to announce that we have completed construction of the Eastern Seaboard Mega-Centre- “

This is the Wal. A land of endless aisles and shoplifters.

“- Hundreds arrested and executed for shoplifting - “

“ - Why did you kill them all? - “

“ Black Friday, man. Black Friday.”

How did the Wal come to? No one knows. But, then, we all know of the Fall.

“ - Clocks frozen at 11:59 -”

“ For we swear by the oath of our cardboard encrusted ancestors - “

“ - Damn Smilers. I told you not to let them in -!”

Now, there is only one truth I know.

“March, for today we shall Exit and enter the Gates of Sliding - “

“ Get ready for a drop into the Bargain Bin, boys.”

The Wal is All.




Central Lore Primer


- Before the Fall, the world was run by Wal-Corp: a trans-national corporation which was the preeminent world leader in every industry and field imaginable. Agriculture, electronics, politics, genetics, electrical engineering, computing. Governments were replaced by branch management teams, internship academies took the place of universities and farms were replaced by vertical greenhouses the size of mountains. By the year, 2050, everyone became either an employee or customer of Wal-Corp.

- No one remembers when and how the Fall happened but there’s a few things we know. Long-term customers tell us stories of how an eternal eclipse fell across the land and the night grew teeth. They tell us of how the Parking Lots became full with the bodies of loyal customers attempting to seek shelter under the Wal. At first, life was peaceful under the Wal. Customers shopped. Employees worked. Wal-Corp reaped profits like never before. Then, came the Low Price Rebellion. Consisting of disaffected groups dissatisfied with the hypercapitalist screed of Wal-Corp, protests and riots erupted in the lower aisles. This eventually escalated into Bloody Friday, a chain of cyber attacks and thefts in an attempt to cripple and subvert Wal-Corp’s vaunted PA overseer systems. Instead; things took a turn for the worst as the Wal-Tomatons became berserk and turned on their former masters.

- There is no exit or entrance in the Wal. Legends tell of the Gates of Sliding where people attempt to checkout and leave the confines of the Wal. Many have tried escaping to no avail. The syncrete walls of the Wal are virtually impenetrable and few means exist to tunnel through them in time without alerting Security. Unholy leviathans past their expiry date dwell in the depths of the plumbing. Some have managed to eek out an meagre, sun-bleached existence of the Roofs but those who have managed to trek to the edge almost never survive the jump down.

- Almost everyone is a shoplifter and no one is a customer. Whatever went down on Bloody Friday revoked the status of everyone in the Wal into a bootleg version of hostis humanis generi. You cannot use free Wal-Corp health and safety auto-clinics because you are a shoplifter. You cannot legally buy any Wal-Corp product because you are a shoplifter. You are not officially allowed on the premises of Wal-Corp property because you are a shoplifter. All shoplifters will be punished appropriately according to Wal-Corp’s charter code with no quarter.

- Society is divided into departments who have embraced the madness of the Wal by adopting mad ideologies to survive. From the balkanized Free Sections of Grocery, the Stationary Shogunate, the Cleaning Crews and the roaming Brand Gangs, every inhabitant of the Wal is unique in their own way, carving out a unique philosophy suited to their section and their surrounding environment.
The employees are either dead or untrustworthy. The mass majority of employees including the Board of Directors died during Bloody Friday. There are rumours of hidden enclaves of employees biding their time or hiding amongst the general populous, disguised as customers.Becoming an employee is highly difficult with little to no reward and pray that Wal-Corp doesn’t find out that you haven’t been reporting to your manager….

- The Wal-Tomatons are inherently untrustworthy. Centuries of software erosion and a lack of essential firmware updates from Wal-Corp’s central systems have made them extremely prone to glitches. There is no rhyme or rhythm to their subroutines or directives, for they will singlemindedly seek fufillment of their tasks by whatever means necessary. Some individuals have claimed to be able to reprogram Wal-Tomatons but these measures are often always temporary as Wal-Corp’s electronic copyright countermeasures force a reversion back to factory mode…..

- Technology is an anachronistic mix of jury rigged equipment and Wal-CorpTM products which are functionally indistinguishable from supernatural phenomenon. From special sale halloween masks that transform you into monsters, the highly addictive life-extending drug known as Age B Gone, mutagenic puppy chow and nano-assembling kitchen knives; each department has a monopoly on a certain piece of Wal-Tech.

-Everything has a price or capital to be more exact. The exchange of capital for goods is a time-honoured tradition in the Wal. Charity is viewed as an utmost sin.

- The world outside the Wal, for all intents and purposes, is a mystery. Were it not for the horrors of what lies outside, most of the Wal’s inhabitants would be wiped out by hordes of security automatons.

Guidelines To Making Your Own Version of The Wal


1)The tenets of obsequious hyper capitalism must be observed within the setting to a satirical extent but never to the extent where it glamourises without retrospection. The Wal as a setting is both deeply amusing and terrifying. It is a nightmarish manifestation of not just America’s but an increasingly global fetishesm for consumerism, materialism and corporate culture taken to dire extremes.

2)Make the mundane ludicrous. The Wal is a darwnistic hellhole that forces you to either adapt or die. That hypochondriac in the pharmacy section who spends it all on placebos pills? Make him into a mad witch doctor who attempts to experiment with bogus prescriptions on unwary passerbys? That uber-competitive soccer mom in the sports section? Make her into a cult-like figure who recruits orphans from all sections of the Wal and brainwashes them into child soldiers to do her bidding. That tacky ass under-age vaper near the checkout. Make them into a guru shaman who gets ‘visions’ from smoking flavored cigarettes. The only limit is your imagination.

3)The 10 tips above are general things that I consider central to any Wal-Canon but you can alter them as you see fit.

4)There should always be an undertone of horror with the Wal. When you play with the Wal, you can’t forget how deeply fucked up it is and attempt to romanticize the idea of all of humanity being trapped inside a death world like environment.

5)When considering brands or franchises, either play it ironically or play it straight to a satirical extent.
There is always a world outside the Wal and it is in ruin but aside from that, not much else is clear.