how does a culture recover from an apocalyptic event?

[eyebeams]

90+% of society destroyed?

There is no longer a society.

Many indigenous peoples in the Americas would disagree with you there. By contrast, I'd say that the survivors would cling to the values of their culture while exploring how to adapt them to new circumstances.

A magical society's self-sufficiency is a function of the way magic works. If magic requires some sort of quasi-industrial infrastructure, things will get pretty bad. If magic just requires personal dedication, then its masters (and folks with similarly useful skills) will be correspondingly elevated and may spearhead renewal.

People in the culture will reevaluate social arrangements, especially since every worker is now valuable (this is similar to what happened after the Black Death). We in th West tend to have these fantasies about people turning on each other and becomeing savage jerks, but this doesn't actually happen to often. When it does (such as with the Ik, an African community that allegedly became totally amoral in response to poverty), what's more likely is that survivors will think in terms of family, temple and other traditional allegiances and may be reticent to extend full personhood to those outside of it. There are always exceptions, of course, but this is a bit different than magic survivalists.

The one group that is *most* likely to freak out is the privileged group that relies on commerce rather than physical or technical skills (including magic). These groups can't really renew without losing their political power because they no longer have society and abstract commerce to support them. They may try to wrench autonomous groups into provisional governments. If lordship is conferred by the gods, self-sufficient types may have to even babysit this gentry. They have to feed Little Lord Fauntleroy and train descendants to grow up to be more like Aragorn.

I'm pretty skeptical of militaries surviving, simply because the historical record shows that during catastrophes that break basic social arrangements, the military (which in most societies, isn't self-sufficient, as everyone from Sun Tzu onward noted) breaks up into warlord demi-states or backs up one or another former authority. Soldiers are usually terrible farmers and inept smiths because their place is to use the fruits of society to repel that society's enemies.

I *highly* reccomend the novel _A Canticle for Leibowitz_ (and even the posthumous sequel) for anyone who wants to run this kind of game.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

A Canticle for Leibowitz is cool but I think it's really more of a history lesson than a good speculation.

1000 years is a good chunk of time, it took about that much time for Europe to return to Roman levels of tech, but it was a very different sort of tech.

And it's also true that not every 1000 years is like every other. The one from 1000AD to 2000AD was more or less the hugest, but the one from 2000BC to 1000BC probably not so much. Not to say that a lot didn't happen, just that tech does not advance at anything like a steady rate.

90% is the estimated death rate for Eastern North American cultural groups just prior to Pilgrim arrival.

From that it seems like people tend to recluster around the most defensible and interesting sites and redevelop cultural, linguistic, and technological capabilities feverishly but in small groups. Intrigue and dissension seem to be pretty common as does petty crime and diplomacy. For all that the East coast groups had a reputation for savagery they seemed pretty reluctant to go to war and happy to have allies.

For all the human life and freedom is probably cheaper, wasting people in large numbers is probably really distasteful.

War Against the Chtorr has a 90% death rate for a modern society. The civilization in question ends up with a major material surplus and a big break down in normal organization, culture, and social bonds. People end up changing professions a lot and getting loads of brute force training as people are shanghaid into needed professions and glutted with information. So knowledge and tech doesn't break down but humanity and infrastructure does.

 

[Epametheus]

In a world where the mortal races have been utterly crushed like that, the strength of those creatures that are inherently better becomes apparent very quickly.

"The people do not care what rules over them, as long as they are safe."

Dragons, giants, beholders, efreeti, etc.. Enclaves of humanoids would easily fall under the sway of surviving monsters. Having to occasionally sacrifice children to your red dragon overlord beats the hell out of being raided regularly by your fellow survivers.

I'd expect a post-apocalyptic D&D world to be kinda like the world of Mad Max, only worse.

 

[Tonguez]

Just another observation (involving my neolithic ancestors and their settlement of Aotearoa (New Zealand) from tropical Polynesia) . This initially involved settlement of an uninhabited country (although later migrants encountered earlier settlements) with a vastly different climate and range of resources. Anyway the traditions generally talk about the initial discovery/exploration and then have a gap of about 6-9 generation until the next 'story cycle' begins being traditions about the expansion of the tribe and conflicts with neighbouring groups.

It has been suggested that the 6 - 9 generation gap covers the period in which the initially small band of settlers goes about establishing themselves, adapts to the new conditions, acquires new technology and techniques and basically develops their new culture in response to the environment.

The initial scenario - post apocolyptic and resettlement of the survivng populations shouldn't be much different. So 6 - 9 human generations (aprox 300 - 500 years) should be sufficient to establish a viable culture group. After a 1000 years anything is possible as that culture develops - including the reacquisition of metallurgy

Now just as another intersting point the original proto-polynesians (who settled Fiji-Tonga-Samoa area) had knowledge of ceramics (Lapita pottery) but due to the lack of clay deposits in Polynesia this art was lost (and the gourd us as a convinient alternative). In Aotearoa there are viable clay deposits however ceramics was not 'recovered' (and use of the gourd continued into contact times)

Anyway thats just a few more thoughts 300 - 500 years ought to be enough to get recovery of a viable population and after 1000 years the culture has probably recovered to DnD standard levels

 

[Buttercup]

As others have said, if magic users were in any way responsible for the catastrophy, then practice of magic is probably universally abhored.

But what if this catastrophy left huge areas polluted with magical taint. The flora and fauna in these tainted areas are wrong somehow (dire rabbits and squirrels at the low end and truly nasty abberations at the high end). But what of any people caught in these areas who somehow survived? Voila! Sorcerous bloodlines! Perhaps these folks have stayed put and learned to live with the taint, or perhaps they have migrated. In this latter case, maybe they have dispersed throughout the population and are (cue ominous music) Hidden Among Us. Or maybe they migrated, but have formed insular communities. In this case, the PCs might quest to find them.

 

[Hand of Evil]

It would be rather interesting to see one of those maps you aways see in sci-fi movies, growth and expandation. Small animals are quick to recover, lack of predators and number of young being born, larger animals a bit longer. You may have to build a time line, with point of interest on it.

I wonder if there is a calculator(s) that could help with the number?

 

[DMH]

I wonder if there is a calculator(s) that could help with the number?

Dragon 89 has an article on humanoid population growth (Survival is a Group Effort). The equation in it is:

rate= (natural log [new females produced by each female]) divided by generation time

If a cataclysm destroyed 90% of the population of all races, then goblins, gnolls and kobolds with their short generation time are going to have the advantage.

In one of the Creature Weekly files found on rpgnow, there is a race called the orlin. It is the end result of the interbreeding of orcs, goblins and their kin. If the population drops enough, orlin (or mongrelmen) should come about with all the hybridization.

 

[Jupp]

Pure speculation follows without any scientific background:

As others have said, if you erase 90% of the population regardless of the race you pretty much have an empty continent/planet/whatever. There will be a recovery but I do not think that those that did survive this will get back to the same level of technology any time soon, if at all. there will be a loooong time of anarchy and upheaval. And the remaining races will be spread so thin over the continent/world that it will be hard at first to reorganize at all (Perhaps something like in Mad Max or so will happen). While those survivors try to recover those intelligent races that where not affected by this apocalypse will have enough time to take over the reigns and get control over everything (I am more or less thinking Planet of the Apes or so). So if the dragons were not affected by this incident you can bet alot of money that they will become the rulers of everyone else. They are the strongest race and if 90% of their number one enemy was decimated then they have enough room and time to breed themself to world domination and no one can do something against it. The next step would be that the dragons spread over the world and settle down in the the most important places to enslave everyone. Now the PCs come into play and you have a truckload of possibilities on what could happen from that point on. From pure survival game to "get the enslaved races back into the seat of power"

 

[DMH]

A follow up to my last post:

If we ignore monsters, the likely rulers will be kobolds. The reason is their magical apitude and high rate of reproduction. Long lived races live gnomes, dwarves, ogres and elves will fall eventually to kobold numbers. The only race that can seriously compete are humans and they just can't keep their numbers up in most situations. Goblins would be the next most serious threat and then orcs, but they don't have the magical back up.

I fiddled around with some numbers and came up with a 50% population increase annually for goblins and 75% for egg laying kobolds (that doesn't include infant mortality and assumes no female infanticide). That is for goblins having a 10 year generation gap and 6 years for kobolds. They are the rat and dandelion of D&D.

 

[Hand of Evil]

A follow up to my last post:

If we ignore monsters, the likely rulers will be kobolds. The reason is their magical apitude and high rate of reproduction. Long lived races live gnomes, dwarves, ogres and elves will fall eventually to kobold numbers. The only race that can seriously compete are humans and they just can't keep their numbers up in most situations. Goblins would be the next most serious threat and then orcs, but they don't have the magical back up.

I fiddled around with some numbers and came up with a 50% population increase annually for goblins and 75% for egg laying kobolds (that doesn't include infant mortality and assumes no female infanticide). That is for goblins having a 10 year generation gap and 6 years for kobolds. They are the rat and dandelion of D&D.

And being lawful, which can be taken to mean they will work together. I could see them enslaving other races but later because of INT/WIL becoming a server race. Mmmmm.