How Do You Like Your Post Apocalyptic RPGs?

[CleverNickName]

My favorite post-apocalyptic setting is the video game Subnautica:
Your spacecraft is shot down by a mysterious energy beam, and crash-lands on a watery planet. As you look for ways to repair your radio and send a distress signal, you discover the ruins of an advanced civilization that was wiped out centuries ago by a lethal virus...a virus that you are now infected with. Were there any other crash survivors? What was that energy beam, and why did it shoot your vessel down? What happened to the ancient civilization, and why did they fail to stop the virus? Will you be able to succeed where they failed?

 

[Reynard]

As of this posting, the elements that are leading the poll point to an apocalypse that occurs in the relatively near future so that the post apocalyptic people can rebuild in a world still full of the remains of what we have today. This tracks with most PA media, from The Last of Us to Mad Max to Fallout. In this way, the PA genre is actually very optimistic: it suggests that even though we somehow failed and the world ended, we can rebuild. But in the end would that rebuilding not just lead to the same status quo and inevitably to yet another apocalypse?

 

[aco175]

I would be in favor of a Shannara meets Thundarr the Barbarian world.

 

[Tonguez]

I would be in favor of a Shannara meets Thundarr the Barbarian world.

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Heh I had forgotten about Thundarr being postapocalyptic (mainly cause I keep conflating it with Mightor). I’d vote for that

 

[Reynard]

Heh I had forgotten about Thundarr being postapocalyptic (mainly cause I keep conflating it with Mightor). I’d vote for that

Super Science and Sorcery!

Two great tastes that go great together!

 

[aramis erak]

When it comes to games set in the post apocalypse, what sorts of setting elements and themes do you prefer?

As usual, I have tried to be comprehensive with the poll options, but I am sure I have missed a bunch of stuff.

You left out "during the apocalypse" (aka transapocalyse) and the whole issue of tone
I like silly and semi-serious, but skip the grimly serious unless it is humorous.

My PA games have been largely silly. T2k semi-serious. Buffy/Angel is transapocalypse (it's ongoing), as is Army of Darkness.

I'm really not picky on a lot of elements as a whole - just can't stand zombies (overdone).

 

[michaeljpastor]

You might be interested in my post on my blog, where I start an outline of the elements of P-A play and settings. https://tabulasordida.blogspot.com/2023/12/post-apocalyptic-rpg-systems.html

In regards to space travel - the Lost Colony trope has space travel in the background, but the ability to utilize it is lost. In Gamma World, the PA world had some Lunar and Martian elements to it, but not Interstellar. And one cannot ignore the ur-P-A game, Metamorphosis Alpha which was both P-A and space travel.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

At the risk of beating a dead horse, interstellar space travel and scifi are not mutually exclusive at all to me. I'd call the setting Traveller: TNE clearly post-apoc despite fairly common interstellar travel and pockets of civilization that can include entire multi-world polities (eg the Reformation Coalition). "Apocalypse" means different things depending on scale, and the slow death of the Third Imperium throughout the last Civil War tipped over into apocalypse with the rise of the Virus and the collapse of FTL commerce throughout most of known space (not to mention the fleets of totally-not-Berserker-AI-ships, of course). TNE is an "early recovery period" setting, and while you've got a lot more resources than the survivors of a one-planet apocalypse there's also a lot more work top be done. Recovering old tech from ruined worlds and local tyrants is still important, the same way recovering ancient tech is in Gamma World or food and ammo and gas in Twilight: 2000 or a zombie setting. And it's similarly dangerous even if you have battledress and fusion guns. You can stir up a Vampire fleet, or fail to catch Virus code in recovered tech, or run into lingering Civil War-era bioweapons or radiation in a Scar or on a deadworld.

Fits the core tropes of a post-apoc setting for me, anyway. Same goes for most variants of a "Long Night" following the collapse of a former multi-system civilization.

But I'd still rather have my PA gaming be something gonzo like Gamma World, Thundarr or Kamandi.

 

[michaeljpastor]

At the risk of beating a dead horse, interstellar space travel and scifi are not mutually exclusive at all to me. I'd call the setting Traveller: TNE clearly post-apoc despite fairly common interstellar travel and pockets of civilization that can include entire multi-world polities (eg the Reformation Coalition). "Apocalypse" means different things depending on scale, and the slow death of the Third Imperium throughout the last Civil War tipped over into apocalypse with the rise of the Virus and the collapse of FTL commerce throughout most of known space (not to mention the fleets of totally-not-Berserker-AI-ships, of course). TNE is an "early recovery period" setting, and while you've got a lot more resources than the survivors of a one-planet apocalypse there's also a lot more work top be done. Recovering old tech from ruined worlds and local tyrants is still important, the same way recovering ancient tech is in Gamma World or food and ammo and gas in Twilight: 2000 or a zombie setting. And it's similarly dangerous even if you have battledress and fusion guns. You can stir up a Vampire fleet, or fail to catch Virus code in recovered tech, or run into lingering Civil War-era bioweapons or radiation in a Scar or on a deadworld.

Fits the core tropes of a post-apoc setting for me, anyway. Same goes for most variants of a "Long Night" following the collapse of a former multi-system civilization.

But I'd still rather have my PA gaming be something gonzo like Gamma World, Thundarr or Kamandi.

Another Post-Apocalyptic interstellar setting is the Hyperion Cantos universe of Simmons, particularly Endymion. The gates have all been destroyed, and a society that is overly-dependent on them has utterly and literally collapsed. Endymion takes place 275 years later after the Fall (the name being another P-A trope), and those who accept the cruciform can be considered the Mutants of the setting, There are human sub-species galore, abandoned ruins, myths about the Before Times, and the Ultimate (Narrative) Railroad of the River Tethys.

 

[Voadam]

Thundarr and Thunderdome are great PA gaming guideposts.

I voted for vehicles as Mad Max and TMNT Road Hogs can be fun themes to have in the world, but most games don't do actual vehicle mechanics that well for me as a tabletop experience.