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Presumably, either the survivors put it out themselves, or the internal automated systems handle it.

strange_person wrote:

In either case, where do they get the resources to do so? If they don't, which parts of the store's structure might be permanently damaged? What are the larger repercussions?

How could it be made into an adventure hook?

The water for the sprinkler systems, and the power to run the system, comes from water storage facilities, and power plants, which could be located either inside or outside a martropolis depending upon your take on the campaign setting. These facilities are maintained by robots like everything else in Wally World.

The shelves could be warped, perhaps even melted, by the heat as could the rafters thereby destroying one or more rafterfolk communities, depending on the size of the fire, as well as potentially weakening the support structure enough to cause a localized collapse of the roof. In sections of certain departments like automotive, hardware, housewares, and garden supplies there may be large chemical explosions as shelves full of combustibles go up. The ceiling panels may catch fire (I'm not sure what they're made of and how combustible they are) which could be very bad given that they are above the sprinklers and wouldn't be put out by them though perhaps they'd warp the plumbing enough to cause water leakage that might. The outer walls, being made of stone, would probably survive assuming the fire reached any of them. If the sprinker system went out throughout an entire martropolis I would imagine the whole thing would probably burn down leaving only the soot-covered husk of the outer walls standing.

Something may have gone wrong at some point in the water supply network (anywhere from the water treatment facility to the water storage facility to the local plumbing) that may need to be discovered and repaired by the heroes. Perhaps someone is deliberately causing the problem for some reason: to destroy the world; as an attack on a hated cult, tribe or community; to extort payment from others through the threat of such destruction; etc. Perhaps a localized roof collapse due to the fire intrigues the heroes with the promise of unexplored territory (the rooftops) or results in a series of raids by brigandeer rooftoppers who now have ready access to the floor below. Perhaps the fire flushes out some carnivorous predator that was laying low among the shelves, up in the rafters, above the ceiling panels, or on the rooftop, driving it out into more populated areas right at the throats of the heroes, the juicy, succulent throats... *ahem* Well, you get the idea.

I apologize if this has been mentioned already. There's a lot of material here...

Shadowrun Third Edition had a book that reminds me a lot of this. Renraku Arcology: Shutdown was a fantastic book that had a similar feel to it. Shutdown was a kind of super-adventure that could be grouped with the adventure anthologies Brainscan, which was the events leading up to the shutdown and System Failure, which was a sequel of sorts that took place a few years later.

Hi there all!! remember me?

Although this is a Wal-Mart theme this is still a fantasy setting so exaggeration is ‘’legal’’.

This is what I did in Walmartropolis 14 (my setting)
Water for the water sprinklers is always available even to this day because natural rain water is gathered in special cistern: some are in the rafter area others are artificial lakes on the roof area (remember that 80% of Walmartropolis 14’s roof level is a gigantic golf terrain gone wild since the death of the Board Directors.)

Chemical sprinklers on the other hand must rely on the various bots to be replenished.

Walmartropolis 14 is built like a pentagon but the size of New York with in the center a gigantic wild life area _4 times the size of central park open to the sky. That said each section of the pentagon is self protected. No fire can transfer from one section to the next. Exception being on the roof: if the grass is long and dry enough. Of course each section is city size so other precaution had to be made.

In my campaign the building size shelves are made out of concrete similar to today’s condos so fire have a hard time spreading to different shelf-floors.
Of course nowadays not everything works properly so cataclysm can occur. But to keep the feel of a shopping center I always find a way to bring back the setting to its near original state. (Usually with bots, stopping at nothing to ‘’clean’’ the mess.)

Perhaps I missed something in this epic thread, but I was under the impression that the Walmartropolis spanned the globe. Not necessarily the oceans, but the land mass was all WalMart. While the major population centers would be centered around each sector, such as your Walmartropolis 14, there would have to be industrial sectors in between that would employ some of the inhabitants and require a sizable robot workforce. I could see fully automated factories as well as hydroponic food sectors that would have some human overseers, and of course the Soylent Green processing plants ,that could all still be within the WalMart, just not in the main shopping areas. It would require a trek beyond the loading docks to see where everything comes from. It's possible that the parking lots were left over from before the roofing over the whole mess, and there was a scheduled reconstruction of the areas for something like mass transit tubes or more housing for Walmartians or something, but then the collapse and the Board of Directors never signed off on it. It doesn't hurt to have some of this as background info for yourself even if your game is set only within W-14, because if I know anything about players, they're gonna try and see the man behind the curtain. At some point they'll break into the superstructure, have to negotiate with the guys on the roof or in the rafters, and then they'll explore. Think of the scenes in Logan's Run or THX-1138 when they get out of the main areas and see the guts of their world around them. Everything from fully automated machine factories to run down areas barely functioning to ruins of equipment that's just broken or overgrown with nature trying to claw it's way back.
I'm going to be introducing my Gamma World players to W: PA here soon, by having them fall through the "ground" and into the industrial superstructure, as they were rooftoppers the whole time and had no idea of the world below their feet, and eventually they'll find their way to the main areas. :D