jeffsforehead
First Post
I'm thinking about starting up a post-apocalyptic campaign, and I'm trying to figure out what every good post-apocalyptic setting needs.
Any ideas?
Any ideas?
post-apocalyptic campaigns!
- Thread starter jeffsforehead
- Start date
joeandsteve
First Post
Radioactive Cannibal Mutants With Chainsaws Riding On Monster Trucks!!!
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The Lost Muse
First Post
Rare resources, starving normal people, questionable morality, cybernetics, big guns, bigger robots, a few major secrets...
BullMarkOne
First Post
roving bands of hideously disfigured mutants, abandoned millenia old (yet still mysteriously active) military outposts, Vaults of pre-apocalyptic men trying to make sense of this new hell they've awoken to, Religious Fanatics, road warriors, more religious fanatics, and a light sprinkiling of loner type wandering extra hideously disfigured mutants, feudal warlords who command vast armies of hideously disfigured mutants, and a few settlements of hideously disfigured mutants just trying to get by.
Did I mention the hideously disfigured mutants?
Did I mention the hideously disfigured mutants?
Angel Tarragon
Dawn Dragon
GDW's 2300: Kafer Dawn?
Turanil
First Post
New York city empty of inhabitants and slowly crumbling, with rusted vehicles lying around. A sudden gust of wind in the street blasts dust and old papers across your path... But apart from the breeze whispering between the mute skyscrapers, you feel overwhelemed by the silence that reigns over the city.
Meanwhile, you regularly hear a car running away in the distance, seemingly always the same, although not in the same direction, but you never encountered it anyway. It's more like a ghost sound reverberating from a dead and forgotten past...
Then you reach the Waldorf Astoria hotel, and to your surprise an employee is still sitting at the desk, greeting you when you enter the abandoned place. This is a polite robot, still in working condition, but unaware of what has befallen to the world around him.
Nonetheless you are not alone in New York city. Some nights you see a strange and unpleasant green light hovering above a building, then disappearing fast into the blackness. And then you will see them, bathed in ethereal light, performing incomprehensible operations while a vehicle of their own hovers above a few feet away : the Grey... What are they doing here? Should they not be just a legend?
In any case, you will eventually find a living being in New York city. A human being, not disfigured by any sort of mutation, but probably gone mad from remaining alone for untold years. A native American, garbed in the traditional clothes of his people, and muttering to himself. Most of the time he sings in Lakota, sometimes speaking to people he only seems to see, spirits of the past... and "others" he says. He won't appear surprised to meet you, pretending to have heard about your coming from the spirits in his dreams. Maybe the old chief is a seer, a mystic of some sort, although he will deny being a medicine-man; or maybe he is just a fool. Who knows...
Meanwhile, you regularly hear a car running away in the distance, seemingly always the same, although not in the same direction, but you never encountered it anyway. It's more like a ghost sound reverberating from a dead and forgotten past...
Then you reach the Waldorf Astoria hotel, and to your surprise an employee is still sitting at the desk, greeting you when you enter the abandoned place. This is a polite robot, still in working condition, but unaware of what has befallen to the world around him.
Nonetheless you are not alone in New York city. Some nights you see a strange and unpleasant green light hovering above a building, then disappearing fast into the blackness. And then you will see them, bathed in ethereal light, performing incomprehensible operations while a vehicle of their own hovers above a few feet away : the Grey... What are they doing here? Should they not be just a legend?
In any case, you will eventually find a living being in New York city. A human being, not disfigured by any sort of mutation, but probably gone mad from remaining alone for untold years. A native American, garbed in the traditional clothes of his people, and muttering to himself. Most of the time he sings in Lakota, sometimes speaking to people he only seems to see, spirits of the past... and "others" he says. He won't appear surprised to meet you, pretending to have heard about your coming from the spirits in his dreams. Maybe the old chief is a seer, a mystic of some sort, although he will deny being a medicine-man; or maybe he is just a fool. Who knows...
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A good post-apocalyptic setting is centred on some subset of things that exist now being transformed and adapted in unexpected ways. I'm personally a big fan of settings that centre around major megaprojects like hydroelectric dams, canal locks, bridges, power stations, enclosed shopping malls, etc. Another thing I like to use are institutions in the present day that gain in significance because something about them allows them to hold society together: churches, fan clubs, sports leagues, etc.jeffsforehead said:
I'm not a big fan of mutation as the central thing in a post-apocalyptic campaign; most people seem to make that their big focus but I think that tends to be over-emphasized.
Turanil
First Post
Later on, you explore the Liberty tower. The first 48 floors are abandoned and dusty as everywhere else. However, floor 49 and beyond cannot be accessed, and are protected by security doors, electronics, and robotic weapons. When you finally enter, there are dozen of tanks lined against the walls, each of them containing a human seemingly in suspended animation. They are the dreamers, their minds wired on some kind of virtual reality, and oblivious of the dead world around them. All of this use a technology and material impossible to stop, disrupt, or break. All you see are sort of living zombies who forever will live in a world beyond your dreams. The only thing you could do, is to catch glimpses of their fleeting conversations with an appropriate electronic device (requires a Smart hero / Techie to create it).
Turanil
First Post
Me too I don't like hordes of mutants pouring from nowhere as soon as the word "post-apocalyptic" is pronounced. I would rather have a few weird races who originally were humans who were genetically altered to suit some purpose. However, no mutant because of radiation or chemical stuff in the biosphere. It has become a rather boring cliché.fusangite said:
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