What do you like on your Postapocalypse Pizza?  How "old" is your postapocalypse?  Just a few years after, with societies trying to hang on, the last vestiges of armies still carrying out the orders of the rapidly fragmenting governments, using all the high-tech gear while they can but with obvious huge gaps (formerly truck or humvee towed or helo-delivered artillery pieces are now horse or "conscript" drawn, aforementioned "conscripts" carry hand-reloaded zipgun rifles or are issued improvised pikes, no more aircraft, etc.)?

Or do you like it "mid phase" postapocalypse: road-warrior/book of eli/the ultimate warrior style - humans on a tribal level, "tech" is provided by the one aging scientist or doctor in the form of knowing what kind of poop works best as fertilizer, etc.

Or do you like it "late phase" - humans are almost aboriginal, tech = magic, cities are gone entirely to the elements, no knowledge of the way things were exist except as dim tribal legends, and possibly attempts to bring back the "old secrets" are regarded as black magic.

Or, finally, do you prefer "post-post-apocalypse" in that perhaps your world has gone all the way around, and a pseudo-medieval feudal society, on the verge of Enlightenment, has sprung up.  No "tech" exists except as magic items - an "unbreakable" sword made from a piece of composite armor, or a shield that was formerly an access hatch, or maybe a "cave of wisdom" made of a strange untarnishing metal that speaks in riddles (an AI inside a command bunker, etc.).

Tell me!

Road Warrior is fun for a one shot, but it doesn't have staying power in my opinion. I've run several games, some of them based on Panzer Dragoon loosely, which is basically a medieval society with excavated technology. The monsters of the world are genetically engineered mutants from before the wars. The goal of some of the wars are to get control of the towers that burnt the continent in a night.

I probably don't remember the details of the game too well, sense I haven't had Panzer Dragoon Saga in 14 years, but it really stuck with me.

I generally like the apocalypse to be either proximate or distant. I'm happy with the apocalypse being recent enough that people are still fleeing from it or have refused to accept that everything is over. And I'm happy with the apocalypse being long enough ago that people have made new lives and aligned themselves with new tribes and nations and cultures.

Eclipse Phase is awesome, but they really dropped the ball setting the apocalypse in the last ten years. It makes all the cultural identity you're supposed to have towards the outworld colonies you are a refugee in make very little sense.

-Frank

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JKuazGjzEg

I spent the best part of a decade running Gamma World, which counts as post-post espeically the 4th edition about civilisation being rebuilt. Good times.

My homebrew post-apocalypse FUDGE game, Mutant Bikers of the Atomic Wastelands, is mid-phase - far enough in the future that people aren't all chooked up that everyone they knew is dead (unfun territory) but still close enough that our world is recongnisable.

Between the GW and MBAW, post-apocalypse (and few other one offs) is easily the game genre I've run the most.

That said I'm not interested in during/soon after the apocalypse period. That tends to be a bit depressing. Light hearted post-apocalypse might sould like a contradiction in terms, but that's how I like it.

Likewise the tribal, what you call "late setting" always struck me as a little dull. It's not coincidence in my mind that most movies which focus on primitive societies, like 10000 BC or Apocalypto tend to have lousy plots. But maybe that's just me.

All of the options you listed have great potential for interesting play. I have the most experience with way after the apoc. ala Rifts and 1ed.Gamma World,only as a player.Good times!

 I am eager to develope a setting based on the "Erthring Cycle" of books by Wayland Drew.Can't recommend these enough.

The "Masters of Solitude" and "Wintermind" by Parke Godwin and Marvin Kaye (?) have many cool ideas that could be mined for game settings as well.
All the above are way after the Apoc.and deal with the last vestiges of tech. society,great stuff!

Something closer to home and gritty would be challenging,thinking "The Road" here,chilling in its dismal simplicity.Lots of opp. for dramatic narrative...

I've been fascinated by all sorts of post-apocalyptic scenarios, fresh (The Day After Ragnarok, Eclipse Phase), mid-term (Rifts) or old (Hawkmoon).

It's not so much the time-frame, as what the writers do with it.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;395895What do you like on your Postapocalypse Pizza?  How "old" is your postapocalypse?  Just a few years after, with societies trying to hang on, the last vestiges of armies still carrying out the orders of the rapidly fragmenting governments, using all the high-tech gear while they can but with obvious huge gaps (formerly truck or humvee towed or helo-delivered artillery pieces are now horse or "conscript" drawn, aforementioned "conscripts" carry hand-reloaded zipgun rifles or are issued improvised pikes, no more aircraft, etc.)?

Or do you like it "mid phase" postapocalypse: road-warrior/book of eli/the ultimate warrior style - humans on a tribal level, "tech" is provided by the one aging scientist or doctor in the form of knowing what kind of poop works best as fertilizer, etc.

The above.

Quote from: Xanther;396059The above.

Both or just mid-phase?

Quote from: thedungeondelver;396062Both or just mid-phase?

Mostly mid-phase unless it's a zombie apocalypse then I like to at least have a session set in the first days.  Not so big on tons of high tech gadgets available.

I prefer mid-late to late phase myself. In other words, no more survivors, just crumbling cities and such that people scavenge for technology and other goodies (mid-late) but where they still have some knowledge of what happened, or scenarios where it is all long-ago myth and magic.

I favor the first generation after the apocalypse, with some old-timer characters still living who remember the Golden Age.

Their still isn't an established pecking order for different groups so there are many opportunities to affect the course of the future...

Quote from: GameDaddy;396287I favor the first generation after the apocalypse, with some old-timer characters still living who remember the Golden Age.

Their still isn't an established pecking order for different groups so there are many opportunities to affect the course of the future...

Would you expand on this a bit?

Quote from: GameDaddy;396287I favor the first generation after the apocalypse, with some old-timer characters still living who remember the Golden Age.

Their still isn't an established pecking order for different groups so there are many opportunities to affect the course of the future...

In my imagination, the pecking order establishes itself really, really quickly. Every time one group encounters another group, whoever has the less amount of Charisma + Firepower gets absorbed into the larger group. If any groups of soldiers encounter any groups of civilians, they get raped, put to work, and eventually made regular members of the group if they are lucky.

Ever see or read The Stand? I don't think it took those survivors long to start spying on other people.

Quote from: GameDaddy;396287I favor the first generation after the apocalypse, with some old-timer characters still living who remember the Golden Age.

Their still isn't an established pecking order for different groups so there are many opportunities to affect the course of the future...

Sounds a little bit like the move "The Postman".

Cool, I like that movie...a lot.


- Ed C.