post-apocalyptic campaigns!

Vigilance said:
So unless you're in a setting like that found in David Brin's Postman (excellent book btw- dont hold the movie against it) where the apocalypse was a series of natural disasters followed by a military revolt/guerilla movement that brought down the US gobvernment, there's usually at least a little "handwaving" of radiation effects.
The short-lived (well, two seasons) TV series Jeremiah was also pretty hard sci-fi, with the apocalypse happening pretty much in the modern day. There, the thing that killed civilization was a plague that killed everyone who had entered puberty (well, with the exception of some people who hid in bunkers of course), leaving only children alive.
 

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Whoops, I did mean Lucifer's Hammer. Footfall (which is the proper title, not Hammerfall) isn't a bad novel for inspiration either, however. That is more of an alien invasion model of destruction, however, like War of the Worlds or, shudder, Battlefield Earth.

Having aliens around typically ups the Sci-fi content signficantly.
 
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DMH said:
Maybe, but it could be also he wanted to use an alien invasion that destoys human civilization as an example. Hammerfall is also a great story.

Again, not to nitpick, but I think you're talking about "Footfall". Invasion of earth by elephants with bifurcated trunks and crowbars dropped from orbit as anti-tank weapons.

For the record, "Hammerfall" was the name given to the event of the comet strike from Lucifer's Hammer.

I say this as a person who owns pretty much every Larry Niven book ever written.
 
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Okay, I have mud on my face. Wasn't there a short story by them called Hammerfall? Maybe it was the precursor to Lucifer's Hammer?

One of the ideas that I enjoyed very much from D20 Apocolypse is the idea of the society that fell is somewhere in Earth's past. I am working on a GW setting where aliens invaded middle ages Europe and left technology behind (along with mutagens to make it GW). The Years of Rice and Salt by Robinson is a great PA novel where Europe is depopulated by the plague and the powers that rise are the Middle East and China (plus a few more by the end of the book).
 

DMH said:
Okay, I have mud on my face. Wasn't there a short story by them called Hammerfall? Maybe it was the precursor to Lucifer's Hammer?

Might you be talking about this?

Hammerfall is the title of several of the chapters (Hammerfall Morning, Hammerfall: One, etc.) in Lucifer's Hammer. And of course Hammerfall took place on Hot Fudge Tuesday.
 

Staffan said:
The short-lived (well, two seasons) TV series Jeremiah was also pretty hard sci-fi, with the apocalypse happening pretty much in the modern day. There, the thing that killed civilization was a plague that killed everyone who had entered puberty (well, with the exception of some people who hid in bunkers of course), leaving only children alive.

That's a cool as hell idea.

I need to find that series on DVD.
 


post-apocolyptic

Being a huge fan of the genre, ever since red dawn and road warrior, I have a few ideas on the subject.

If you want post-apocolyptic, just after, twilight: 2000 or price of freedom. Great games. Aftermath by FGU was okay. Merrow project was brilliant, but the system was number intensive. Blooddawn has the best equipment list for this genre I've ever seen. A must-have.

I noticed no one mentioned car wars.

If you want rapture-type end of the world stuff, The End is great. Rapture is okay. Kult can certainly be used in this vein.

Lastly, mutants: there's so much material out there for this topic, I'm not sure what to tell you. There's a great french game called polaris. Dealt with very mature themes however (sterility, enslavement, etc.).

Movies: 28 days later, night of the comet, road warrior, the beach, the arena, robotjox,
boy and his dog, red dawn, terminator, the list goes on.

And don't forget 12 monkeys.

Spycraft has a book called battlegrounds and one of the chapters is dedicated to this very theme. Just in case you're using that rule system.

- jim pinto
(fluidsum.blogspot.com)
 

My favorite PA game was Morrow Project. In the years before the apocalypse, the Morrow Foundation set up bunkers and put people into suspended animation to wake five years after WWIII to help rebuild. Due to sabotage and betrayal by one of the members, things go horribly wrong and the player characters don't wake up till 100 years after the war. The world is in the process of rebuilding and parts are using abotu Civil War tech. of coruse, those are the parts ruled by the guy that betrayed the project and his servants have orders to keep the look out for such things as the PCs.

It had some psionics and hinky monsters such as the glowing rad zombies, but was otherwise very realistic. Had a detailed combat system with hit location, death due to hits as per location, blood loss rules, fatigue, and a radiation system where you had to keep track of the rads your character absorbed before suffering radiation posioning.
 

Our tabletop group is playing a post-apocalypse game using d20 Modern/Future/Apocalypse right now. I based it on the great Seventies dystopia movies: imagine an Earth where the world of Logan's Run existed side-by-side with that of Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man and THX-1138 and Zardoz and Soylent Green, and you have an idea of how the campaign is set up.

The characters are citizens and Sandmen from the City, attempting to run to avoid a premature date with Carousel. They are in the maintenance passages under the City, trying to avoid pursing Sandmen, and they've just discovered that their guide has led them into the automated recycling and waste disposal plant, where a bunch of maintenance 'bots will determine if the characters should be used as mulch or incinerated...

The whole Mad Max "punkocalypse" has been done to death, IMHO.
 

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