Apocalyptic Settings and Breaking Settings

[Savage Wombat]

Compare this to a previous thread on "fantasy vs. sci-fi".

It seems to me that a massive retooling apocalypse (I'm thinking of Dragonlance 5th age myself) breaks the connection between the History of the setting and the recent Event.

And if traditional fantasy is about the past, and traditional sci-fi is about the future, you've just converted your game's theme from the one to the other. And this conversion can be kind of jarring.

 

[Hussar]

Not really though. You're not switching genres. Loads of fantasy settings have apocolypses. Steven Erikson's Malazan series, for example, talks about numerous empires, both human and not, collapsing constantly. Even going back to King Arthur, you have the backdrop of the collapse of the Roman Empire and the subsequent Dark ages, a fairly apocolyptic event.

King Kull is set after the fall of Atlantis. Elric actually brings about the apocolypse of his people. China Mieville's setting is shortly after a massive event that ushers in a new age. ((Although, to be fair, China Mieville straddles genre)) Thieves World is set after the fall of empires leaves the Thieves World city cut off from the rest of civilization.

I'm thinking that apocolypse fiction is not a particularly SF theme.

 

[Wolfwood2]

Ummmm... forgive my ignorance but are people suggesting that the new FR is somewhat post-apocalyptic in nature?

I'm not a FR fan at all, so I haven't been following it, but I'm a HUGE post-apocalyptic fan, so if that element has been added, I'm very interested in checking it out.

Or am I just misunderstanding the OP (and a few of the following ones)?

You aren't misunderstanding the OP, but that doesn't mean he's correct. The new Forgotten Realms is hardly post-apocalyptic. Waterdeep is still there. Cormyr is still there. The Silver Marches are still there. It's not all radioactive sand blowing through ruined cities while mutants howl in the background.

Some of the less popular parts of the setting were blown up so that there could be more ruined areas to adventure in. Some kingdoms fell. Bad things happened. Good things happened. Major NPCs are dead. There's still plenty of civilized lands for games that need civilized lands and there's plenty of ruined wilderness for games that need ruined wilderness.

To me, a post-apocalyptic game is one where the known game world has fallen and is scrabbling along far below the heights of the previous civlization, looking to wonders that can no longer be duplicated. We're talking Gamma World stuff. The new FR doesn't qualify by a long shot.

 

[Schmoe]

In the best case scenario, people break things because deep down people like breaking things. They like calling other people losers. They see someone doing something, they go and knock it over just to see what happens. They don’t establish their own new thing, they take from others and break stuff.

I think it's safe to say that a meaningful discussion of the topic is practically impossible when you bring these prejudices to the table.

I also think it's safe to say that your and my experiences have been far, far different.

 

[Urizen]

When I wrote the Bloodthrone Campaign Setting , the goal was to create a Post Apocalyptic fantasy world filled with all sorts of possibilities for adventure. But more than that, the setting needed to be designed to ensure that heroes mattered. More to the point: Heroes are necessary. The actions of PC’s can potentially have great effect on the larger world.

Whether the focus is on epic scaled-wars designed to throw invading forces back from whence they came, or something as relatively (but no less important) minor as freeing slaves, or protecting a freehold, the end result needs to be the same: Heroes must have a sense of purpose, a feeling that the things they do matter. Otherwise, the Post Apocalyptic game becomes a selfish cycle of “kill, pillage and hoard…” And that gets boring really fast.

Admittedly, I haven’t been following what is happening with the Realms, but I intend to check out the book, because I happen to like P.A settings. The problem with the destruction of the forgotten realms is that, to a certain point, the people who designed it made the assumption that everyone wants their game to be apocalyptic in nature. This just isn’t the case. Post Apocalyptic games are a niche. A well-loved niche – but a niche all the same.

The average player/GM doesn’t want their world turned upside down. I won’t go so far as to say the developers are “shoving it down our throats;” we can always choose not to pick up the product and continue with the realms as we know and love them.

If_I_were running a realms game, I’d design a campaign geared towards making the actions of the PC’s count, because that is the true beauty of an Apocalypse game. Your heroes can shine like beacons in darkness. In a High Fantasy game, heroes are a dime a dozen. They’re the usual suspects, fighting against various enemies we’ve seen over and over again. In a Post Apocalypse setting, heroes are paragons of the term. They rise above the huddled, ragged masses and fight to change the world for the better. They are the characters who are just as lost, just as afraid as anyone else, but they choose to try and change the world for the better. They go into the darkness which is all the more prevalent, all the more oppressive, and beat it back.

It’s not pretty.

It’s often thankless.

But it matters.

It’s true heroism.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I couldn't disagree more with the OP (or with the stated outlook on life and humanity that drives his views, but the less said about that the better).

I love post-apocalyptic settings, and among the many reasons is the fact that the actions of heroes are, if anything, much more important than they might be in a fully civilized setting. Sure, it's a hardscrabble life, but those who rise above can really, truly improve the world for generations to come.

As to why settings suffer apocalyptic events: The simplest explanation is to give the players more to do. Give the setting back a little of its mystery, put a few blank spaces back on the map. Create more headspace for the heroes to influence the shape of the world.

Personally, I think it has a lot more to do with giving people creative space than with an urge toward destruction.

 

[Adrift]

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.

This tells me everything I need to know about your experience with post/apocalyptic settings. Your problem has been the GM(s) in question; not necessarily the fun that can be had in a setting such as this. I'm sorry that former GMs have spun you into such a negative frame.

 

[Fenes]

Wrecking the world so you have a clean slate to work on just looks lazy and cheap to me. Like pulling the old "threat to the world" ploy to add some shadow of tension to a boring novel.

One could have had the desired change in the FR without wiping half the realms simply by changing certain elements, making some groups stronger, others weaker. The way it was done also feels so forced. Gods doing stupid stuff, Spellplague wrecking the realms, worlds colliding, all out of the blue sky. At least Thay's change feels somewhat rooted in the setting - a major lich messing up, a somewhat logical extrapolation of the plots he did before - and less "rocks fall from the sky" "divine intervention cause I say so".

If more of the changes had been caused by mortals, and not the gods, it would not feel like that I think.

As it is, the whole vibe I get is "Your characters do not matter, what they did does not matter, their powers do not matter because Gods are doing this!". And that cuases me to stop caring about the resulting world.

Now, if there was no spell plague, no godly stupidity, and there were changes wrought by mortals, it might feel differently. I might be thinking along the lines of "how would my PCs react to this? Could they prevent this?" and less "who cares?"

 

[Barastrondo]

Speaking as someone who's had a hand in destroying a setting (the old World of Darkness, for those keeping track), I have to say that there's some projection going on with the whole "Because they're bad people who do it to hurt people!" explanation. It's really not that. Now, someone might be hurt by an act of destruction like that, but that doesn't mean that it's an act of sadism any more than breaking up with someone that you can't see yourself spending the rest of your life with is something you do just to see them hurt. Maybe they're just not right for you. Just as maybe a setting isn't right for you: sales are down, it's too dense for newcomers to jump into, things like that.

To me, looking at something like the Forgotten Realms overhaul is like looking at a combination redecoration/yard sale. It's asking "Do we really need all this stuff, or can we send some of it to Goodwill?" It's trying to get rid of some of the clutter so you have more room to move around and do stuff in the living room, so you can have guests in the guest bedroom. That's the motivation I see there. Now, certainly some people are going to like the cluttered charm of the way the place used to be better, and they might get really upset if you got rid of the tiki head and the Lost Boys posters. And some people are going to love what you've done with the place. But ascribing sadism to the act is a little far-fetched, in my experience.

 

[Fenes]

Speaking as someone who's had a hand in destroying a setting (the old World of Darkness, for those keeping track), I have to say that there's some projection going on with the whole "Because they're bad people who do it to hurt people!" explanation. It's really not that. Now, someone might be hurt by an act of destruction like that, but that doesn't mean that it's an act of sadism any more than breaking up with someone that you can't see yourself spending the rest of your life with is something you do just to see them hurt. Maybe they're just not right for you. Just as maybe a setting isn't right for you: sales are down, it's too dense for newcomers to jump into, things like that.

To me, looking at something like the Forgotten Realms overhaul is like looking at a combination redecoration/yard sale. It's asking "Do we really need all this stuff, or can we send some of it to Goodwill?" It's trying to get rid of some of the clutter so you have more room to move around and do stuff in the living room, so you can have guests in the guest bedroom. That's the motivation I see there. Now, certainly some people are going to like the cluttered charm of the way the place used to be better, and they might get really upset if you got rid of the tiki head and the Lost Boys posters. And some people are going to love what you've done with the place. But ascribing sadism to the act is a little far-fetched, in my experience.

To me it looks like someone wanted an old house repainted and the furniture of two rooms replaced, and the decorator razed it to the ground and replaced it with a trailer, but uses the bricks from the old house for the storage shed and crammed the old furniture into the trailer.