how does a culture recover from an apocalyptic event?

Plenty of games cover this concept over several time periods in a fashion beyond the standard (there was a golden age ages ago).

Dark Sun
Eberron
(non-d20) Evernight, etc.

I think Fantasy Forge put out the antithesis of this with Dawn Forge, a game world that is reaching its Golden Age soon, Teiflings rule humanity, the Drow haven't split from the elves yet, etc. It was amusing to read the flavor text for DawnForge and then the sidebars which took on the "text" of a future historian talking about "ages past."
 

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Thanks for all the comments so far. Good stuff.

I just wanted to add a couple more tidbits:

The survivors fled to a previously unpopulated and unsettled region.
Almost all written text was destroyed, lost, or left behind.
Most spellcasters were killed in said cataclysmic event.
 

-->Sorcerors become dominant over their wizard counterpart for the next several centuries.

-->Language would completely evolve to the point where it is indistinguishable from the original.

-->In terms of technology, a span of time this long wouldn't change much; however, such a large scale cataclysm would see a complete disfiguration of societies. I.E. different empires would inhabit different regions.

-->Ethnic diversity would be massively decreased.
 

It is thought that 90% of Native Americians were wiped out from illness, so you may want to look for information dealing with that. Some of the results, when the Pilrgims came they found vast tracks of land that had not seen a people in generations and saw room to grow, you had the devolopment of the plains indians. You also saw the need for trade, the American Indians (Inca, Aztec, Mississippi River Indians and some others) appearred to have vast trade routes going on, these were lost, this provided Europeans trade goods that were missing.
 

Elves, orcs and humans become largely blurred together into a racial amalgam as the handful of survivors from each race are forced to turn to each other to expand their breeding pool. This is doubly true if all the survivors participate in a mass migration to roughly the same region.

Flash forward about 500 years. "Pureblood" members of one, two or even all three races may be looked upon as the new nobility - orcs for their strength, humans for their versatility, elves for their longevity. Alternately, purebloods may be looked down upon, with power residing in a virile young hybrid race and the rulers being those who claim descent from the kings and chieftains of all three races in the pre-cataclysmic age. A third possibility is that purebloods and certain stable half- or quarter-breed strains form a rough caste system - long-lived elves as lorekeepers, strong, smart orc-elves as the warrior-sorcerers, creative humans as the inventors and engineers, sturdy half-orcs as the manual laborers and so on.

Because of the strength of this triune amalgam, the other races, less commonly interbred with the "Big Three," will suffer much worse and probably not be able to establish significant communities in the next few centuries. Halflings and gnomes (and perhaps goblins) may form a small-sized mirror of the human-elf-orc hybridization, but neither of these races are known for amassing great power like the "Big Three." They are more likely to be scavengers of civilization than its driving force.

Dwarves, likely to be the only real purestrain race left, may organize themselves in opposition to mixed races. Being probably the best suited single race for this kind of environment, they could present a formidable foe. They might also choose to remain in whatever remains of the original, shattered continent.

Hobgoblins and bugbears don't seem to mingle readily with humans, elves and orcs. They are more likely to remain much as they are, nomadic raiders and barbarian hordes. Their natural enemies, the dwarves, now become natural allies in the face of the powerful "Big Three." They may serve as mercenaries, giving dwarves plausible deniability when they attack the "Big Three," or as a buffer between the two empires. Alternately, hobgoblins might forge an empire of their own, similar to the one described in Eberron's history.

Thus, we have an expansionist empire of the "Big Three," a parastic or sybiotic subculture of the "Little Three" or "Little Two," and the menacing presences of the defensively-minded but also bitter and hateful surviving dwarven empire. Furthermore, either large but disorganized goblinoid hordes and/or a hobgoblin empire with similar attitudes to the dwarves.

Class-wise, barbarians, rogues and rangers are dominant - scouts abound if the Complete Adventurer is in use. Most divine spellcasters outside the dwarves are druids - both elves and orcs have a strong druidic tradition - and most arcanists are sorcerers. Fighters also appear regularly. Paladins and true clerics are extremely rare, likewise wizards and bards.
 

Some considerations for "after the fall".

If magic, or more correctly the misuse of magic, was responsible for the apocalypse then in the post apocalypse period, those associated with magic would be fear, shunned or hunted down and killed. Basic fear of the survivors that magic lead to their downfall and "let's not go down that road again" sort of thing.

So a magical apocalypse may cause the prosecution of magic users as the survivors try the safeguard from that happening again. Steam tech may replace magic (since magic is now forbidden, its adherents hunted down and killed).

Anyone try to resurrect magic research would be branded a heretic, a dangerous madman .... whatever and responded to in a harsh and deadly fashion.

Just some ideas.....basically, the survivors don't want another apocalypse and will take whatever steps to destroy the knowledge or prevent it from rising to dominance.
 

Technically, it doesn't. The Apocalypse is the end of the world; there's only one apocalypse. The term "an apocalypse" doesn't really work.

OK, that was far too pedantic! In your example, you state that 90%+ of the population is destroyed. I'd imagine that, after that, whatever existed before the event would be pretty much irrelevant. You'd be starting again, pretty much from scratch. Language would probably survive in pockets of existence here and there, but it would be rare for different groups to be able to communicate with each other; in fact, it would be rare for groups to even see each other.

You'd be talking small communities, spread out. There'd be no travel between them; each would not know of the existence of the others, and even if they did, they'd be too busy eking out a meagre existence in whatever small settlement they'd managed to construct.

Maybe an occasional person (an adventuring group?) would venture from their home and discover another community after months of travel. They'd probably be greeted with bewilderment, supsicion.. probably hostility. These would be the first strangers anybody had seen in decades.
 

I think the populations are any where you want them to be. Morruses example seems to be still in the dark age, and after several thousand years these scars would be gone unless the survivors continued to be under heavy pressure from monsters and hostile humanoids. In this case several of the races would be mere fragments, or faint touches from weakened bloodlines.
In particular elves and gnomes, & halflings are likely to be gone. If underground realms/ exist or were protected they might have recolonized the surface esp if you had an underdark as active as greyhawk or FR. Humans, orcs and to a lesser extant halflings breed fast enough to recover more completely if not subject to hostile pressure.
As For time lines - most human empires last 300 yrs ( 12 generations) and when one falls the dark age can be 600ish years Demihumans might have a differernt cycle of rise and fall.
 

Heck, go the opposite route...

"The Apocalypse was just the begining."

Have demons invade and enslave mankind. Sure, the technology is back to where it was, but it does you no good as you are a slave.

Sure, magic is back, but it's all in the hands of your evil masters.

Sure, they fight other things that want to destroy the universe, and well, since they're not quite done with it, they throw you into the battles as well armoed and armored slaves.
 

I suggest reading Earth Abides, a novel that follows some of the few survivors of a plague that wipes out 90 percent of the population (of 20th-century earth). Any advanced society is hyper-specialized and that all falls apart without a critical mass of people to support such specialists.

For a "primitive" D&D setting, imagine a world where you don't handwave spell components and you don't assume that you can "just" get whatever you want with enough gold pieces.
 

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