Musings On Post Apocalyptic RPGs

[aramis erak]

Huh... Walking Dead does not map to those bullet points. Is Walking Dead PA?

it's past the first one, but not the second - the first is the collapse due to the disease; the second is the one going on, the survivors slowly becoming the walkers... or worm food.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Huh... Walking Dead does not map to those bullet points. Is Walking Dead PA?

I was referring to when it stopped being PA. Post-Post-Apocalypse. Someone else said they had to get back to where the old civilization was.

Since none of those apply to TWD, it is "Apocalypse-adjacent". The Commonwealth implies pockets are no longer mid-Apocalypse. This would be the "beacon of light in the darkness" step.

 

[kigmatzomat]

That's a common read, but when you did into technological archeology, its not true. They didn't get a country that had the reach Rome did, and there were selective areas where Rome had an edge (we just figured out what they were doing with their form of concrete in the last few years), but the overall technological level of Europe had caught back up by about the sixth century.

And frankly, for long periods prior to that, I would describe some parts of Europe as post-apocalyptic. The only reason the rest weren't was that those parts didn't really fall in the first place. Rome just withdrew, but the regions still kept going under local leadership. Its more analogous to a situation where, say, the U.S. fragmented into separate nations. The not only didn't really fall, a lot of them never stopped trading with other nations in the first place.

What you lacked for a long time was anyone in serious expansionist-mode, but that's not a necessity.

The real common misperception is that the Roman withdrawl caused the fall. The Romans withdrew because of some other disaster: steppe nomads, plague, and simply deciding a region wasn't valuable enough to waste the resources to defend it from constant raids. For centuries, Romans refused to believe it was acceptable to ever give up territory.

To your point, many regions soldiered on with a lower quality of life (higher taxes, more soldiers/fewer farmers, more raids) but never collapsed. What they couldn't make internally, they could still buy from the Empire as luxuries.

Others did collapse right after the romans left as those armies, or the Roman reputation, were all that were keeping raiders at bay.

But, did they remain "post apocalyptic" until they were able to build bath houses and colloseums? No, at some point they were below where they were but no longer defined by the fall.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Isn't Walking Dead "Apocalyptic"? Like...you're experiencing it firsthand?

So now we have three genres:
Apocalyptic
Post-Apocalyptic
Post-Post-Apocalyptic

How can I possibly have any fun unless I know exactly what genre I'm inhabiting?

 

[Reynard]

Isn't Walking Dead "Apocalyptic"? Like...you're experiencing it firsthand?

So now we have three genres:
Apocalyptic
Post-Apocalyptic
Post-Post-Apocalyptic

How can I possibly have any fun unless I know exactly what genre I'm inhabiting?

Don't forget Pre-Apocalyptic: you can see it coming but you can't stop it. "Looking For A Friend At The End Of The World" or "Look Up."

 

[Thomas Shey]

The real common misperception is that the Roman withdrawl caused the fall. The Romans withdrew because of some other disaster: steppe nomads, plague, and simply deciding a region wasn't valuable enough to waste the resources to defend it from constant raids. For centuries, Romans refused to believe it was acceptable to ever give up territory.

You don't have to have one single event to create an apocalypse. As referenced earlier in the thread, the Mad Max setting clearly didn't go all at once. In the case of Rome, as you say, it was a combination of social implosion/imperial overreach and some outside forces rolling them up bit by bit.

To your point, many regions soldiered on with a lower quality of life (higher taxes, more soldiers/fewer farmers, more raids) but never collapsed. What they couldn't make internally, they could still buy from the Empire as luxuries.

Or, honestly, other places. It wasn't like Rome wasn't getting some of those themselves by trade.

Others did collapse right after the romans left as those armies, or the Roman reputation, were all that were keeping raiders at bay.

Sure. Or stopping them from thoroughly fragmenting themselves (Briton comes to mind).

But, did they remain "post apocalyptic" until they were able to build bath houses and colloseums? No, at some point they were below where they were but no longer defined by the fall.

Again, sure, but I'd argue that most of them by that point were doing what I said--back to trading and interacting with other regions quite some distance away, not just being city-states in a sea of quasi-chaos.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Don't forget Pre-Apocalyptic: you can see it coming but you can't stop it. "Looking For A Friend At The End Of The World" or "Look Up."

You know where this is going, right?

Pre-Pre-Apocalyptic RPGs.

 

[Reynard]

You know where this is going, right?

Pre-Pre-Apocalyptic RPGs.

That's just,like, now, right?