D&D as a Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&D got it's start in the 70s, and apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction was definitely out there. 70s sci-fi (50s-70s, really), until Star Wars changed the game, just loved dystopias, nuclear wars, environmental catastrophes, and, when the production wasn't too expensive, their aftermaths. Damnation Alley, Deathsport, Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, A Boy & His Dog, and many others... back to On the Beach, I suppose. The pulp fiction that in part inspired D&D, like Lovecraft, also had an affection for lost civilizations and the like.

And, it's not uncommon, in genre, for magic to have been greatest some time in the past. (Tolkien's Palantiers, et al, above). Myth/legend also tends to credit the past with mystical secrets and golden ages.

In early D&D, that vein is very evident both in the emblematic dungeon-crawling (exploring ancient ruins expecting to find /better/ stuff than you could get at the surface), and in the most powerful items being Artifacts & Relics. D&D doesn't lack for good candidates for Lovecraftian remnant elder races, either: Mind Flayers, Kuo-toa, Drow, Spellweavers, even elves if you're feelling a little suspicious of them.

One difference between the typical sci-fi Mad Max post-apocalyptic setting and the presence of the theme in D&D is that D&D tended to have perfectly functional societies built over the ruins - the apocalypse having happened long ago.

 

[Doug McCrae]

This is the default D&D setting.

"Books (including tomes, librams and manuals), artifacts, and relics are of ancient manufacture, possibly from superior human or demi-human technology, perhaps of divine origin" - 1e AD&D DMG​

"The misty past holds many secrets. Great wizards and powerful clerics, not to mention the deities themselves, have used spells and created items that are beyond the ken of present-day knowledge. These items survive as artifacts, but their means of creation are long gone." - 3.5e D&D DMG​

"Wild regions abound. City-states, confederacies, and kingdoms of various sizes dot the Iandscape, but beyond their borders the wilds crowd in... War, time, and natural forces eventually claim the mortal world, leaving it rich with places of adventure and mystery. Ancient civilizations and their knowledge survive in legends, magic items, and their ruins. Chaos and evil often follow an empire's collapse." - 5e D&D DMG​

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

You have shades of that in Eberron, particularly with the continent of Xen'drick, which is a literal post-apocalyptic setting in which lie the magical secrets of an age more advanced than that known by almost all current cultures.

 

[Leatherhead]

D&D got it's start in the 70s, and apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction was definitely out there. 70s sci-fi (50s-70s, really), until Star Wars changed the game, just loved dystopias, nuclear wars, environmental catastrophes, and, when the production wasn't too expensive, their aftermaths.

The mindspace of the Cold War Era.

 

[Reynard]

Both Howard and Tolkien, powerful influences on the formation of D&D's milieu, used post apocalyptic worlds as their basis. Middle Earth is a crumbling shadow of a former Golden Age, with wilderness and darkness slowly consuming civilization. Hyboria is the remnants of its own Golden Age, although that age itself was already corrupt and full of terrors. And we should not forget that in comparison to the Glory of Rome (or its propaganda anyway) the Dark Age of Western Europe was itself a post apocalyptic time.

 

[Jer]

Do you view D&D play (or at least the way you play D&D) as similar to many of the tropes and themes that you associate with typical post-apocalyptic settings?

Sometimes. But not always. And it's not really my favorite setting style (though we did enjoy using that style for our 4e "points of light" campaign). And I think that's probably because the D&D "Known World" was much more my jam back in the day than other settings were. The Known World was more about the unexplored frontier than the remnants of civilization left behind from a fallen empire. My games were maybe flavored a bit more with Renaissance tropes and fairy tale bits and bobs and Greek/Roman myth than with "Dark Ages" post-apocalyptic "Fall of Rome" tropes that so much of D&D is influenced by.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Nagol]

I tend to run D&D as a society escaping a Dark Age. Civilization has returned. The core is safe; the frontiers are large. Much that was known is lost and the landscape changed. Challenge and opportunity abound along the frontier as people push against the wild and the wild pushes back.

The most alluring targets are those fragments that predate the fall for who knows what wonders and terrors they contain?

My most commonly used setting relies on Darlene's Greyhawk maps with a different territorial descriptions. The history includes at least 3 known falls of civilization and ruins from each age have differing themes and probable contents.

 

[aco175]

We played a campaign where the PCs were exploring a new area not settled in the past. It quickly became boring since there was no ruins to explore or dungeons to find anything in. There quickly came in a old dwarven kingdom that had ruins.