Talislanta is a post-apocalypse(s) fantasy setting. It's been a while, but I think the Achaeans wrecked the world through misuse of magic, but there were previous cataclysms, some of which were pan-dimensional - was there a high tech element? I can't remember...

I guess that didn't answer the OP. I think a good time frame is when new societies have just grown up from the ashes and have reestablished themselves independent of the old days. Yet there is still crazy gonzo stuff lying around, still functional, for those who can find it. The post apoc angle is good to spring on players who think they're playing standard ish fantasy and whether the campaign follows the post apoc focus or standard fantasy focus is up to the players.

Post apoc is a good time to adventure because niches are open for new species and beings to expand into. Kind of like how life evolves rapidly after a mass extinction. It gives the characters a chance to make a difference. My issue with Tekumel specifically is that is seems to have become a bit static - playing that world soon after the planet was cut off from the universe seems more interesting to me.

I'm setting up to run a game where the players find out that their multiverse is the result of an apocalypse that destroyed a different multiverse.

Sort of like the fear of the Large Hadron Collider type thing. A multiverse eventually caused the death of their gods by basically 'worshiping' technology. An experiment destroyed their multiverse and caused the creation of a new one.

Quote that will show up in game: "Our multiverse is built upon the cemetery of a past multiverse, and someone has started digging up graves."

Quote from: Panzerkraken;589124Sine Nominae's Other Dust covers it pretty well for me.

Is that fantasy, though? does it have magic? I thought it was purely sci-fi.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;589338Is that fantasy, though? does it have magic? I thought it was purely sci-fi.

It's got psionics, mutations, and sufficiently-advanced relic tech, so it can be played up that way fairly easily. And being old-school, it's perfectly compatible with just adding conventional D&D magic into it. It's not a Tekumel-type situation, though, and I'd do things a bit differently if I were trying to make a Tekumel-type fantasy post-apoc setting.

As with any setting, I'd start by asking "What exactly are PCs going to do here?" Flavor's fine, and interesting setting frobs make for great reading and forum debate, but what exactly is going to happen when you and four friends sit down with the book and a pile of dice? If I was building it on an old-school framework, I'd start by enabling basic old-school play styles in the setting.

Dungeon-busting is necessary, so you make sure the ancient tech-past has plenty of clearly-labeled ruins and ancient fastnesses, some of them still occupied by the degenerate scions or robotic minions of the ancestors. Then you add another layer of more "magical" dungeons representing the ruined constructions of the more recent past, when tyrants and "wizards" and whatnot built their fancy digs, so there's some variety in flavor.

Old-schoolers tend to like wilderness exploration too, so you make some interesting wildernesses. Set up mutant wildlife, "magical" beasts, zones of bizarre and unnatural life or warped natural laws, freakish terraforming engine accidents and so forth. Give the GM some tools for creating weird wilderness.

Dungeons and wildernesses are great, but they're static challenges and not active setting conflicts, and you want to plant two or three basic setting conflicts so that the GM has a cheap and easy source of drama when he needs it. One of them should probably be black-and-white, good guys versus unholy cryopreserved ancient tyrants bent on re-subjugating their errant citizens via magi-tech cults or zealous slave-cities. At least one more should be more shades-of-gray, like two successor nations fighting over control of some precious and dwindling resource from the former days. Most setting conflicts should be decentralized, so that you can plant instances of them all over the place and it doesn't end up feeling like you're constantly dealing with the same NPCs or same essential organization.

Then you probably want to set up a framework for social conflicts, planting a few easily-labeled social groups that don't like each other one bit or are aiming at mutually-conflicting goals. Maybe build some tension into the basic social structure of latter-day cities so PCs can find something to monkey with when in urban surrounds.

Once I know what moving parts I'm going to need for my setting, then I can worry about flavoring them with genre-appropriate forms and tropes. If I start with the tropes first, I run the risk of creating a really interesting, vivid setting that doesn't actually play worth a damn.

Quote from: RPGPundit;589100What would you want an old-school PA Fantasy setting to look like?  That is, a setting that is basically a fantasy world, but one that implies

Would you want magic to be magic, or for it to be either implied or explicitly a remnant of ultra-high tech (maybe nanites or some other kind of super-science)?

RPGPundit

My published Chronicles of Amherth setting is like that if you look closely enough at it---straight fantasy with scifi undertones. It's got references to the Ancients who wielded strange magics and flew across the sky in chariots made of fire and glass, magic artifacts like the Godmap which provides top-down overhead views of terrain features and even "live" views if the proper command word is known (a la Google Earth), and also has places of mystical power that thrum with energy and at the very least may be used to recharge magic items. Als the ability to cast magic in the setting is genetic (a la nanites)c. Warmachten are" golems" made of steel that are powered by Ancient magic (a la robots).  Lots of other little sci-fi bits the DM is free to explain as magic if he doesn't want chocolate in his peanut butter.

Pete

Quote from: SineNomine;589367It's got psionics, mutations, and sufficiently-advanced relic tech, so it can be played up that way fairly easily. And being old-school, it's perfectly compatible with just adding conventional D&D magic into it. It's not a Tekumel-type situation, though, and I'd do things a bit differently if I were trying to make a Tekumel-type fantasy post-apoc setting.

It still sounds good; you should send me a review copy!

RPGPundit

I'd want such a thing to look like the Taarna sequence in Heavy Metal*, unless I'm shackeled with elves and dwarves and stuff in which case I'd want it to look like Athas, the setting of The Sword of Shannara as shown in the first book, or Anomalous Subsurface Environment.



*it's quite possible I have a blog devoted this very thing.

That's essentially the "secret" behind Promised Sands.

It's 3500 years in the future.  After a huge asteroid strikes Mars and obliterates it, the resulting creation of multiple "mars rocks" shotguns Earth.  Something on Mars (another big secret of the world) comes down with all the shotgunned asteroids.  This becomes the basis for the magic users known as "marocs" (Mars+rocks = Maroc).

Some of the population of the earth took refuge under the sea -- leaving the rest to ride out the climate changes.

Another world-spanning civilization rose and fell after 2500 years.  And now the Dry Denizens (remnants of those who took refuge under the sea) are starting to return.

There is "magic" (two forms) and very altered creatures and people (effects of the "something" that came down with the Mars rocks.

Promised Sands plays like a fantasy game with strong post-apocalyptic feel.

Quote from: Gib;589543I'd want such a thing to look like the Taarna sequence in Heavy Metal*

You might like RADZ. I'm told it was strongly influenced by that very thing.

Here's a really weird setting that meets your criteria:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/2702/EABA-Age-of-Ruin?term=age+of+ruin&it=1

The idea is that in the late 21st century nanotech is perfected, then mutates into a destructive, expansionist lifeform of it's own that destroys most of man's civilization and a lot of earth;s ecosystem before being checked by a protective form of nanotech that was released in desperation after the hostile nanotech got loose.

Technology was consumed by the "eaters" and human society reverted to a tribal level in a world where no tech could be built because the resources had been eaten. "Magic" come from learning to establish contact with and take control of the protective nanotech living inside what creatures survive.

Download the sample and see for yourself.

Quote from: Ben Rogers;589635Promised Sands plays like a fantasy game with strong post-apocalyptic feel.

Yes it did, much moreso than most fantasy settings; many other have chosen to have magical apocalypses rather than tech apocalypses in their past (the forgotten realms, for example); or they just have sci-fi stuff in there without specific reasons why (a lot of other old-school worlds).

The only other one I can think of that was pretty explicit like this was Mystara; where the great apocalypse that took place was the destruction of the Blackmoor society, which was high-tech.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Dan Davenport;589651You might like RADZ. I'm told it was strongly influenced by that very thing.

Thanks for the tip. Judging by the blurb, it's not quite what I'm looking for.