post-apocalyptic campaigns!

[Phoenix8008]

I'm about to go post-apocalyptic in my D&D 3.5 game. PC's just hit 20th level and the main bad guy is going to put together an artifact which starts sucking in ALL the life force in the world. The gods come down to put a stop to it and start getting sucked up too. When all is said and done, the artifact will get sundered and pieces will fly all over the world imbedding themselves in people, places and things. All these things are empowered with the stolen life force energy and ...Viola!... Epic level powers are now possible! Due to the PC's last adventure, they will be immune to the life draining and have the chance to stop the bad guy.

So, my PC's will be left behind with a few survivors and get to try to rebuild civilization. Unknown to them though, as they beat more epic level things and absorb the crystal shards from them they will gain levels and slowly become the new gods...including the main bad guy who becomes the god of death and evil. Now if I can just figure out how to work the magic system, I'll be good to go!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) Decide on RPG type: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Sci/Fant Fusion, Alt History.
1a) If your setting is based on the RW, you must pick a time to research for your setting. The severity of your apocalypse will differ depending on how far your civilization has to fall. A meteor strike in 1776 would have different consequences from one in 2776, and the artifacts of the fallen civilization will also obviously vary.

2) Decide on Apocalypse type: Nuclear, Chemical, Engineered bio-plague, Natural Pandemic, Planetary Upheaval, Cosmic accident/coincidence, Invasion from outside (space/time/dimension).

3) Pick an initial campaign goal: survival, rebuilding society, etc.

4) Decide on what kind of population your world has, especially enemies. Mutants (bioengineered or radioactive fallout), Robots, and Aliens feature heavily in Sci-Fi apocalypses, as do the actions of Man himself. Legends of the fall of Atlantis also feature Man, his supernatural allies and enemies and gods, as do the stories of Ragnarok.

5) Pick a tech level for the beginning of the campaign: Is society coming back from the stone age, Dark Ages, or have some people been relatively unaffected by the apocalypse? Perhaps the planet has been recolonized by people from Moon Base Alpha...or an Arctic, Desert or Mountain research station (or from all of the above).

Apocalyptic or Near-Apocalyptic Fiction to look for: Isaac Asimov's NightFall, the Mad Max films, anything about Atlantis, Norse and Mayan Mythology, HG Well's War of the Worlds, David Brin's Postman, Terry Brooks' Shanarra series, the movie Omega Man, Greg Bear's Forge of God and Anvil of Stars, Frank Herbert's The White Plague, Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt, D&D's DarkSun setting, DC Comic's Y, the Last Man, 12 Monkeys, Big O, the later Zombie movies, the original Godzilla movie, and countless others that have or have not been mentioned in this thread.

 

[Turanil]

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

Agreed 100%

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.

Great idea! I must remember it!

 

[Turanil]

anything about Atlantis, Norse and Mayan Mythology

Dramatic climatic changes were often the reason for antique civilizations disappearances. Mayan civilization disappeared because of a long and harsh drought; Neandhertal man disappeared because climatic changes slowly destroyed the forests in which they hunted, and they were unable to adapt to plains ; some civilizations of the ice age disappeared when ice melted and flooded the coasts 12,000 years ago ; etc. As such, you can have a massive planetary drought and ice melting provoke enough disasters to starve 99% of humanity, provoke civil wars, and eventually make the civilization end.

 

[Harmon]

Right now I am working on a campaign that will take place on the Flanaess. About thirty years before there was a plague, killed off all the non humans, and anyone that used magic, or had lots of magic items. Commoners and some very low level adventurers gathered people together and moved them north through Keoland, then East making for Tringlee.

Thirty years has passed and the leaders of the town realize that their population (numbering in the thousands) is decreasing and in a hundred years they will all be dead.

Over that time they have seen a couple dozen people, but all have avoided the town.

PCs are the scavengers, hunters/gathers that venture out looking for supplies and things long lost.

A campaign I tried some time ago but failed completely was a group of Seals on a training missing jump from their plane and directly into the path of a UFO that had some mechanical problems. The group is sent forward through time 500 odd years. They were destined to take part in some ops that would have altered the fate of the world, but as they were in the future they ended up not saving it. They found a communication device to talk to the past, and through a lot of trail and error got some supplies.

Eventually the group would go back to the past, with the knowledge of what had happened (some of it subconscious) and change what would cause the world to be so messed up.

The Seals campaign was done in GURPs and the other will also be done in GURPs.

I have run dozens of PA campaigns, though played in only three. I love that setting, but dislike the idea that the world has to be so beaten down and that you can never win the day.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

My favored PA game style is actualy to start during the apocalypse. "its the end of the world as we know it and you have a 30 minute head start" sort of thing. I ran a one shot called "the end of the world timeshare" under the fudge rules at one gameday and the plot definitly had the potential to continue on as a campaign. (I refer to this style of games officially as TEOTWAWKI, and it came somewhat out of likins the Stand and similar stories and somewhat out of reading a survivalist newsgroup in 1999. )

One wacky semi PA setting was Mutants In Avalon. Teenaged mutant ninja turtles type characters in a post nuclear-regressed to medieval-fuzzy animals setting. fun stuff.

 

[Rackhir]

A very good "Post-Almost Apocalypse" series is David Gerrold's "War Against the Chtorr". There were a series of very nasty plagues that caused a population crash (Something like 90-95% of people killed). Civilization survived at a high tech level, but then some wierd creatures start showing up, most notably large hairy worm like creatures called the Chtorr. As the books go on it becomes clear that it isn't just mankind that's under attack, but our entire ecosystem. The main character does get rather annoying over the course of the books and he spends a bit too much time "exploring his sexuality" for my tastes, but the ideas and the background are fascinating. I think there was a gurps suplement released at some point.

Two other books "Voyage of the Star Wolf" and "The Middle of Nowhere" also by Gerrold deal with some of the implications of a fighting a high tech warrior race with no holds barred bio-tech and nanotech. So they might be good for some ideas.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

A very good "Post-Almost Apocalypse" series is David Gerrold's "War Against the Chtorr". There were a series of very nasty plagues that caused a population crash (Something like 90-95% of people killed). Civilization survived at a high tech level, but then some wierd creatures start showing up, most notably large hairy worm like creatures called the Chtorr. As the books go on it becomes clear that it isn't just mankind that's under attack, but our entire ecosystem. The main character does get rather annoying over the course of the books and he spends a bit too much time "exploring his sexuality" for my tastes, but the ideas and the background are fascinating. I think there was a gurps suplement released at some point.

There was a GURPS supplement, and it is very good, but good luck finding it without paying a premium -- although even with premium, it isn't worse than some of the 400+ page hardcovers they put out nowadays.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Dramatic climatic changes were often the reason for antique civilizations disappearances.

That is but one reason why Asimov's Nightfall is considered to be the best (or at least in the top 5) science fiction stories ever told, according to many of his peers and literary critics.

SPOILER ALERT!

(I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO SPOILER TEXT, SO DON'T READ ANY FURTHER!)

In Nightfall, the central mystery to be solved is why civilization collapses every 1000 years.

The planet that is the setting for the story exists in a solar system with 7 suns- there is never night as we know it. Darkness is experienced only in enclosed spaces or caves. As a result, fear of the dark is common, and often pathologically intense.

The solution to the mystery: every 1000 years, there is a complete solar eclipse- the resultant, near-global panic results in the destruction of civilization.

 

[Templeton580]

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