Here are two pitches I put before my group. Apparently, they think that "dudes, it's like the apocalypse and you can play all these badass bikers and brain-tearing psychics fighting for survival and beauty" isn't enough.
1. A caravan of refugees makes its way across the endless desert. It is made of several hundred men, women and Others who somehow managed to escape the slave-lords of the Bad River. At the centre of the trail are a few rusted trucks with precious supply stolen from their masters. They are led by a column of dust from the biker vanguard, even though most of the refugees are moving on foot, at a painfully slow pace. The prophet leading them keeps retelling again and again the old legends about a land of milk and honey, with huge cities full of unraided gas stations and convenience stores. He knows they'll get there; the maelstrom told him so. Too scared to leave, too hungry to stop and too desperate to turn back, the caravan presses onward. Before them await the cruel and barren landscape, the (literally) Red Sea, the smoking craters and the fierce desert tribes.
Eerie fluorescent clouds cover the sun. Something is going to rain down on their heads, and it sure as hell ain't gonna be mana.
2. A worn-out Jeep, made out of at least five different cars, reaches the gates of Nov on the last drops of biodiesel. The people travelling inside that Jeep have stolen something valuable, killed someone important or hurt someone influential. At any rate, they have a damn good reason to try and build new lives for themselves in Nov, a city of refuge, a place where a well-respected tradition dictates that no old scores may be settled between its sheet metal walls. The problem is that Nov is full of what passes in this lawless age for outlaws, thieves and killers hiding from well-deserved retribution, a population much more cruel and perverse than the common crooks and thugs that inhabit most hardholds. Living costs are high, accommodations are downright nasty, even by today's lousy standards. In Nov, no one will hesitate to take the little you have left. Making it through the month and enjoying a diet composed of something besides green mud and megaroaches is the most lofty goal most people here aspire to. Do you?