Apocalyptic Settings and Breaking Settings

The few times I have enjoyed an apocalypse as part of popular entertainment is when I read Stephen King’s* The Stand, watched the movie The Day After and a precious few others, including some zombie movies. On the whole, dismemberment of society does not appeal to me a great deal and I have never participated in a game where the setting is apocalyptic, either during or post-apocalyptic.

This includes apocalyptic events in established settings. In fact, they usually turn me off considerably. For example;

• I stopped following the expanded Star War universe once Palpatine came back in the Dark Empire books.

• I stopped following Dragon Lance when it moved into the Fifth Age.

• I stopped following Star Trek after they killed Data – while this does not qualify as an apocalyptic event, it was a silly bit of pointless destruction. I know there have been no more movies, but there have been books and the Enterprise series, none of which I bothered with.

• I will stop following the Forgotten Realms in 4E, now that it is, in many ways, a post- apocalyptic setting.

I prefer to play characters that can accomplish things, even if they are only small things. I do not enjoy playing characters that endless run in circles. Yet that is what playing in an apocalyptic setting is… it is not possible to accomplishing anything and the characters are essentially (if not literally) running in circle.

Dismembering an established setting does this – forces characters into situation where they can accomplish nothing and endlessly chase their own tails – and adds insult to injury by making this the state of affairs in a world where people previously could accomplish things and did not run in circles. That was a significant part of the attraction of those settings.

So, why then the apocalyptic treatment of these settings? Why is it assumed that dismembering the settings is sexy and appealing? What do people see in a setting of failure and defeat?

*He once wrote that Hell is all about repetition.

For me it is somewhat opposite when it comes to post-apocalyptic.

For me it is taking what is left of civilization and culture to try and build something, create something, do something you can't do in a non-apocalyptic setting which is be the foundation of a new society.

I personally find it "sexy" also in that feeling of the unknown and also the known. Your heading off into the unknown and uncover things once known, a city, a technological device, etc. Your essentially building both a current history and finding out about the past.

I don't particularly enjoy FR, but I would have fun DMing the new one for those that do. So they can re-experience and re-discover those things they once knew so well.

Plus lots of post-apocalyptic settings are just cool and fun, with whats in it. Like how someone likes the look of say Japanese culture and others Medieval.

Fallen Seraph said:

For me it is taking what is left of civilization and culture to try and build something, create something...

Click to expand...

That is the opposite of my experience. The apocalyptic settings and breaking settings are favored by GMs who like beat down and torment players (rather than the characters) and call it fun to destroy what they've done and spit in their face and deride them as weak if they don't eat all the crap like it was candy.

They elevate "the journey" to the point they reject any meaningful goals or accomplishments and so it all runs in ugly circles.

Then they do it to your favorite settings and demand money, time and thanks for what they did.

The Grumpy Celt said:

That is the opposite of my experience. The apocalyptic settings and breaking settings are favored by GMs who like beat down and torment players (rather than the characters) and call it fun to destroy what they've done and spit in their face and deride them as weak if they don't eat all the crap like it was candy.

They elevate "the journey" to the point they reject any meaningful goals or accomplishments and so it all runs in ugly circles.

Then they do it to your favorite settings and demand money, time and thanks for what they did.

Click to expand...

Now this is coming from someone who is thinking about picking up the new FRCS due to the fact it seems more like reading a game setting than a full time job now, but It seems you may have more of a GMs who like beat down and torment players (rather than the characters) and call it fun to destroy what they've done and spit in their face and deride them as weak if they don't eat all the crap like it was candy problem than a setting reboot problem.

The "breaking" happens because new creators come onto a property and either want to (pick one or more):
"shake things up" to boost interest
transform the property into something more interesting to the creators
keep the continuity fanboys from nitpicking their new direction

It's an easy blank slate that means you don't have to feel constrained so much by what came before when making new stories.

The Grumpy Celt said:

That is the opposite of my experience. The apocalyptic settings and breaking settings are favored by GMs who like beat down and torment players (rather than the characters) and call it fun to destroy what they've done and spit in their face and deride them as weak if they don't eat all the crap like it was candy.

They elevate "the journey" to the point they reject any meaningful goals or accomplishments and so it all runs in ugly circles.

Then they do it to your favorite settings and demand money, time and thanks for what they did.

Click to expand...

While I don't care for the apocalyptic revisions of settings that have come out, I don't think that post-apocalyptic settings are inherently demeaning of the efforts of the players.

Then again, I think Dark Sun was one of the most creative settings ever published for an RPG...

And not all GMs who run such campaigns are as determined to beat down their players, either.

I'm currently designing a campaign in which the players will be trying to rekindle the light of civilization that was almost snuffed out by Illithids from the future who precipitated that world's "apocalypse" in order to gain a whole world of thralls to do their bidding and be their cattle. (Think War of the Worlds in which bacteria didn't save us, coupled with the "To Serve Man" episode of the Twilight Zone, stirred with a Mad Max swizzle stick in a JRRT tumbler.)

In the process, players will get the chance to reform nations and even rewrite the world's history & spellbooks, becoming the next Bigby, Mordenkainen or Ottiluke...or Kos or Vecna for that matter.

The Grumpy Celt said:

The apocalyptic settings and breaking settings are favored by GMs who like beat down and torment players (rather than the characters) and call it fun to destroy what they've done and spit in their face and deride them as weak if they don't eat all the crap like it was candy.

Click to expand...

Bitter much?

It sounds like you had one or more bad experiences with GMs of that sort. For that, I am sorry; playing with a crappy GM is not fun.

But not everyone who enjoys apocalyptic settings, either as GM or player, is some kind of twisted sadomasochist. Doom can be a lot of fun... for some people. If you it's not fun for you, that's cool.

Fallen Seraph said:

For me it is somewhat opposite when it comes to post-apocalyptic.

For me it is taking what is left of civilization and culture to try and build something, create something, do something you can't do in a non-apocalyptic setting which is be the foundation of a new society.

I personally find it "sexy" also in that feeling of the unknown and also the known. Your heading off into the unknown and uncover things once known, a city, a technological device, etc. Your essentially building both a current history and finding out about the past.

Click to expand...

This. I'm going to nuke my long-running home-brew, in all likelihood. After a while, there just aren't that many corners left to shine the flashlight into or nations to raise and stabilize. At a point, you're going to move a fantasy world out of the psuedo-primitive/Medieval time frame or it will feel artificial. If tech doesn't move forward, magitech will.

The (very) occasional cataclysm is a fine way to reset the chronometer. The alternative is to move to a different world, which marginalizes player contributions even more.

Besides, all those ruins the PCs loot had to come from somewhere.

Part of my problem with settings that change by massive apocalypse or some other trope, is that it neglects any effect the PCs have had on the world. No matter how many times they saved Elminster's butt, they have no control over the world. What the hell is the point of adventuring. They should have left that setting alone.

Spatula said:

It's an easy blank slate that means you don't have to feel constrained so much by what came before when making new stories.

Click to expand...

I disagree. Giving these established setting an apocalyptic treatment is not about creating new opportunities. It is about breaking things.

HDTVDinner said:

…but It seems you may have more of a GMs…

Click to expand...

This, the destruction of a setting, attracts that very kind of mentality. An apocalyptic treatment of a setting draws that kind of mentality like nothing else.

Jasperak said:

What the hell is the point of adventuring. They should have left that setting alone.

Click to expand...

Amen. Why bother in deed. It makes the only real barometer of success simply looting, pillaging, killing and whoring. Let everyone else die and Rome burn. So much for any maturation of gaming….

Dannyalcatraz said:

Then again, I think Dark Sun was one of the most creative settings ever published for an RPG..

Click to expand...

I’m not talking about Dark Sun or the original Dragon Lance or Exalted or Scarred Lands. Those were both designed from the inception to be to post-apocalyptic settings. It was a further apocalyptic treatment that was objectionable.

Joshua Randall said:

Bitter much?It sounds like you had one or more bad experiences with GMs of that sort. For that, I am sorry; playing with a crappy GM is not fun.

Click to expand...

I wouldn’t limit it to bad GMs. Life is ugly and people are nasty.

People enjoy hurting each other (even if they can only do it in small and petty ways) like nothing else in life and will do it if given any kind of opportunity. If not given an opportunity to hurt others, then people will create opportunities. They ignore what others want to impose what they want on others, by hook or by crook and draw deep emotional satisfaction if this requires hammering square pegs into round holes. After all, that means they defeat (and maybe broke) both the person and the situation. Some people simply manage to contain this aspect of their nature and some do not contain it. The people who do not, or cannot, contain this aspect of their natures like the apocalyptic treatment.

That is what people do.

That is what people are.

I have witnessed nothing in my life that would make me believe anything else – and no one here has come close to making a convincing counter argument.