"How Do You Like Your Post Apocalyptic World?" Topic

Shaken, not stirred.

During? "The Day After" movie?.

Right after? Think the Mad Max, The Ultimate Warrior & Postman movies.

Later enough to have patch-worked vehicles and mutants galore? The Wasteland comic… The Gamma World RPG?

A mix of the variety?

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Postman stylie.

With zombies and automatic weapons.

Mad Max

The same way I like everything else; with airconditioning or snow.

D~

Preferably far in the future.

Postman with limited viable population…if you want zombies then so be it…but an altered non-viable population would be welcome…close to hard science with virus related change or far other end with (insert one…beastmen, mutants, morlocks,etc.)

I'm with aec on this one. Later, much later. Mutations would be OK, zombies no.

Later on, stable(ish) society

As with Shagnasty, mutants are fine, but Rule No I – NO ZOMBIES!

Another vote for no zombies. I'm tired of zombies, they've become an unimaginative plot device. I envision a Mad Max style in the wastes & a cyberpunk grit in the urban areas – along the lines of the Parrish Plessis triology.

Fallout style

2) Right After (Postman style)

CC

Gimme Gamma World every time!

I like mine as a sort of open-eneded mix of this and that. When I'm thinking PA games, I do have a tendency to fall back to my Road Warrior, Gamma World, Damnation Alley background. I like the idea of mutants, lost tech, and yes zombies. I figure if I'm going to have all other manners of freakness ,then why not zombies too. But, they are zombies as an accent mark on a world gone yucky, not the reason why it did.

For that matter, zombies in a PA setting could just as easily be another form of mutant. Shambly and hard to kill is shambly and hard to kill regardless of the PSB you put on it.

As for human populations, I like to keep it open and with room for Post Man style survivors, Road Warriors, and even some Water World like fun.

My take may not be as focused or even make as much sense but for gaming purposes it keeps it fun and playable. In an RPG setting I might focus a bit more, but with miniatures gaming not having the all the flexibility of play and plot and such, I think having more options built into the background the better.

-Eli

I like all of the 'not too long ago' options:
- the immediate aftermath type of games (on an I Am Legend, Day of the Triffids or Survivors sort of timescale)
- the 20 to 30 years has passed type of games (Aftermath RPG, Postman novel)
- the it all happened several generations ago type of game (Tribe 8 RPG, Chrysalids novel).

Utterly uninterested in zombies. Mutants and psi powers are okay.

Postman but with communities protecting themselves from robber bands (not robber armies) and fighting with other communities for resources.

Possibly bands of ex-federal/national forces selling themselves to the highest bidder.

In cities, Escape from New York with cultists and /or scavenger cannibals.

Cheers
Mark

I vote with CapnBlanc:

Fallout style.

I liked the setting of Stphen King's " The Stand'.

Stronty Girl said, "Aftermath RPG" – Holy Kow!!! I used to run that game… for about 6 months! It had to be one of the most number/rules crunchy games in existence!

I like both the "right after" and the "some time has passed" versions.

"Mutants and psi powers are okay." The Morrow Project & Gamma World RPGs. You just gotta love those muties and their powers.

Although I like zombie movies and games zombies have their place… in horror miniatures… NOT in a PA setting.

"Stphen King's " The Stand'." – Started out great but I really didn't get into the "good vs. evil" stuff.

You all might want to check into this…
onipress.com/thebigwet
Very cool comic! IMHO. And you can get the first issue for free in the download section.

I will readdress my vote…as I noted "zombies if you like"…that was not a vote for zombies, not from me…just noting that if you wanted it you could add it.

Postman…yes
Road Warrior…as tribes, gangs, etc. yes
mutants…non-superhero level mutations

Gamma World with restraint rather than laundry list powers

Less people, lots of ruined stuff, a general evil…fell men/beastmen/robots/packs of dogs/etc.

Far enough in the future that the present is a passed along shared memory…3-4 generations, although with the increased toughness of living a lifetime may be a reduced commodity…75-80yrs after the fall.

But in retro, I would take zombies bad guys over mutant characters with 8-12 superhero mutations…zombies over power gamers.

**************************************************

Ah damn…that was great, read the first issue for free… link …that is a great PA setting…a western, 100 yrs after the big wet, basic trading society, common "classes" ranger/gunslinger/trader/priest/etc., mutations for characters are "gifts" and seem to be limited to 1 or at least 1 major gift (healing, TK, etc.).

Postman with extras…this works and the style of the book is good…like it much.

Mad Max/Road Warrior style is the best without a doubt. So many possibilities.

Otto
noizehive.blogspot.com

How about something from "The Day After Tomorrow" No massive destruction, but a massive die-off due to climatic changes.

OG,

There's still some destruction in that flick:

link
YouTube link

Plus, it really makes it impossible to inhabit more than half of the US and pushes the remaining government south into Mexico!

CC

"mutations for characters are "gifts" and seem to be limited to 1 or at least 1 major gift (healing, TK, etc.)." – I like the recent article about Psionicists, and how they're thought of, in the Skank game.
link

DRDHauser said – "The same way I like everything else; with airconditioning or snow." – Would OldGrenadier post about The Day After Tomorrow be cool enough for ya?

Would OldGrenadier post about The Day After Tomorrow be cool enough for ya?

Who doesn't love a good ice age, who I ask ya, who?

D~

I guess you can compare it to how long you want your steak on a grill . . .

Rare – Your heroes are still in the thick of all the chaotic changes taking place;

Medium – Your heroes live in a world that is starting to get used to the new geography, climate, governments, etc., but still remember what once was; or

Well Done – People see their world as normal, though they occasionally see remnants of the past.

CC
PS. Did I mention I like my steak medium?

I have varied tastes when it comes to Post-Apoc (There is just so much!)

On one hand I love The Big O's background. 40 years ago everyone lost they're memories in some cataclysmic event in which a huge portion of the world was destroyed. Be they humans, androids, or something else.
Life continues on for these people who have no recollection of their pasts. The series takes place mainly in Paradigm City, the largest city known withing the scope of the series. Gigantic domes have been built with their own biosphere, pseudo-sun (There is a constant cloud cover over the planet.), and amenities. It is a paradise only the rich can afford in a harsh world. The lower classes and poor live out in the old city and try to scrape together a living. Beyond the old city lies a wasteland where only an occasional settlement can be found (the only one shown in the series was Electric City but there are others hinted at).
Remnants of the past lay in wait, being that only 40 years have past there is still a lot of usable material though it is in disrepair. Yet you still have many mysteries because of said memory loss.
All in all it's a very Noir style Mecha series having mainly retro-futuristic designs.

Warzone 2100 has another interesting take on it, a military leader comes out of a bunker after a nuclear war and its fallout are over and sets out to bring order to a chaotic war. Fighting with raiders, scavengers, and later remnant military forces over control and resources.

I also like a Mad Max like world full of renegades and tribes all trying to survive.

"The Big O's?"

Is that the name of it? I want to look that up.

CC

It's just "The Big O". Great series, it was actually more popular here in the States than back in Japan.

Wikipedia's take on it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_O

Try not to read any of the spoilers, some of the twists are quite good!

The name of the starring mecha actually has quite a significance. It's a pretty well thought out story.

The Big O, its an anime series witha first person noir type narrative. Its kind of like blade runner meets mike hammer--no, not really but kinda. Actually its a pretty fresh concept.

An anime I really liked for a PA world is Ergo Proxy.
High tech cities with people also living in the wastes. Lots of strange stuff going on. Each city is very different. The world is close to ending. Teknolize is a good one too. The japanese are very good at PA settings.

I personally like them pretty far beyond my reality. Its pretty depressing thinking of people trying to live with generators and eating candy bars until the alpha male gangs come and rape them to death. I prefer overthetop antiheroes and insidious villains controlling a mish mash of half forgotten technology mixed in with some sf stuff.

The Deathlands isnt a bad setting. They are a series of low rent novels.

These might be worth checking out.
link

With lots of cute Goth girls desperate for my company.

Ooh, come to think of it, my favorite anime, Ghost in the Shell, is also post-apocalyptic.

You mean for gaming, or just in general?

If this is for gaming, then I'll give another vote for a Mad Max/Road Warrior/Thunderdome world. I like it when civilization has been knocked back a few centuries but not knocked out entirely. I like it when there's at least a minimum of technology and the means to nurse it along. Societies are brutal, ad hoc, and sort of wild westish, but at least there's a kind of social order and something to build on. There is still arable land in places, with plants and animals that survive. That at least gives you something worth fighting over. Kind of a modern version of the Dark Age, which itself was a post-apocalyptic world.

I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which was a great book and I found it very moving. However, I wouldn't really like it in terms of gaming. It's just way too bleak. It's apparently during a nuclear winter, and there are no plants, no animals, and not even the shreds of a society. There are maybe a few thousand humans worldwide, and the population is shrinking every day through cannabalism. I think a game set in that world would just leave me bummed for days.

@MeroMero: I like you phrasing "a modern version of the Dark Ages". Sums it up nicely for me.

I don't like zombies in PA games; I prefer them in zombie games. Any surviving communications networks would be battlegrounds of cyberpunk style hacking wars. Everything else would be like Mad Max & Tatooine.

Hmmm. Interesting.

I've always felt that the 5th century in Europe was an apocalypse of sorts, caused by a collapse in the government and economy. No nukes, asteroids, etc., but a real collapse nonetheless, even if the rest of the planet continued much as it had done before.

And, when you read accounts of how people in Europe reacted to the collapse (those who fought against the chaos, those who brought about the chaos, those in denial and expecting salvation to bring things back to normal, and those who just gave up), it is very similar to the feedback in many of our TMP discussions on PA survival:

TMP link
TMP link

If it took hundreds of years for things to gel again, and for civilization there to move forward, imagine how long it would take if the collapse had been global and had included nuclear strikes, major earthquakes and/or any of what we now consider apocalyptic events?

Hmmm. Interesting indeed.

CC

meromero imdb.com/title/tt0898367
:)

28mmMan, I'm looking forward to that one! It's such a great book. Very bleak, as I said, but strangely uplifting and somewhat hopeful also. As a father, I think it had much more of an impact on me too.

"As a father, I think it had much more of an impact on me too." – I, too, just got finished reading it and felt the same.

Thank you 28mmMan I'll have to finish checking that one out. I think if we wait just a little longer we will not have to chose one we'll be one. I want to see what everything will be like with all the Ice caps and glaciers gone and the water at the new sea level will be like. As Kool-Aid guy would say "Oh-Yeah"