"Your Post Apocalyptic Games Take Place How Many Years After?" Topic

So, do your figures and terrain look as though a short time has passed since the big worldwide turning point event, or a long while afterwards?

Do your characters recall the world as it was before the event, or are they all from later generations and accustomed to the afterworld as is?

A) Days?
B) Weeks?
C) Months?
D) Years?
E) Decades?
F) Centuries?
G) Longer?

Dan
PS. Also … does the Apocalyptic event itself begin during our present time (2017 or so), or does it take place decades before the present (like during the Cuba Missile Crisis, for example), or does the worldwide disaster happen decades ahead in our future? In other words, on what year does the world hit the "re-start" button in your universe?

I do like sci-fi but limited to one gamjng era. Nevertheless if your following the Last word thread I havd been trying to find movies that are the year that the comment is at. What I am finding looking for these movies is one might have a nuclear war 10 years before, another is alien attacks and still another nothing

The few we have done are decades after the big bad thing

Cacique Caribe suggests something very powerful here:

Most Post-Apocalyptic (PA) settings assume an Apocalypse that starts now or in the near future ( and a few set in 1950-1964). But what about alternative history PA Games?

First we need to consider how each era thought the world might end. And then consider how the survivors would adapt.

World wide famine and decease were the most common concerns to end civilization, but research might bring up some interesting ideas.

My present games seem pretty mundane set in a near future (energy weapons), about 60 years into the PA, and the actual cause is not clear to the people. So, only a few elders recall the old world, and it is very distorted by not being very old at that time. The rest is rumor!

G, for Gamma World!

While D, E, and F are of interest for Twilight 2000, Mad Max/Postman, and Liebowitz type settings, respectively, I've always been more a fan of Thundarr ("Lords of Light!") than The Day After. Put me down for sorcery and super science over gritty realism any day of the week.

Of course, Paranoia is always an option…

All my PA game generally start present day going forward and using the list above my games are A, B and C.

Anything past that I really wouldn't call PA anymore, it would seem to me we would have rebuild after decades.

My games take place in a world of blood and fire! It could be years to decades is my guess. But, if the current situation plays out just right, it could be months.

Ours starts right after a war with North Korea and they release a chemical attack in response, that turns out to be bio-warfare and produces… zombies.

We kick-off in two weeks time…

Scary huh?

I have two different ones I am working on.

The immediate one would be "e", decades.

Is fairly heavily inspired by Fallout, but a bit more tongue in cheek. About fifty years in an alternative future, where the wonders of the nuclear age gave us all the fun stuff it was supposed to. The flying nukes were preceded by a domino effect involving lots of entangled national alliances, like WWI times ten. In the chaortic years that follow, powers switch sides, and after thngs get really bad, nations clooapse, and most armies revert to bands of rampaging free companies. Making the Russians or the Chi-Coms the sole bad guys seemed "done", so I want to shake it up a bit.

The profusion of mutated humans and critters mostly grew out of desperate genetic and radiation experiments (because we all know some form of funky rays can give you tentacles and horns and stuff) to create horde troops in the waning months of the war. Also, wandering killer robots.

E, About 10 to 15 years after the collapse. Not so long that corrosion resistant technology has rotted away, but long enough that anything perishable is likely gone, unreliable, and risky to use. This also means that the food economy has transitioned from scavenging and is largely returned to subsistence farming, hunting, and fishing. Most new goods are crafted from the imperishables found at the time of the collapse coupled with the simple materials of the middle ages and Neolithic world. (Stuff fashioned from aluminum, brasses, bronzes, and some plastics are common. Re-forged steel and black-smithery abound. Lots of skins, leather goods, and old nylon and woolen fabrics for soft goods.) Add to this a number of durable goods found in peoples basements and attics from simple times when product durability was key. Almost all "packaged" foodstuffs long since exhausted. Collapse of a sustained transportation network (zippo road maintenance and refueling stations) makes long range movement difficult by motorized vehicle, but lots of bio-diesel and wood-burner conversion for local vehicle transport. These supplement beasts of burden. Long range comms with optical telegraphs, signal fires, crystal radios, avian messengers, etc.). Basically, the world of The Postman.

I do Fallout, so i guess that's a past alternate universe centuries in the future….

Why play Post-Apocalyptic? Why not play the Apocalypses?

I'm still writing the back story to my post apocalyptic pursuit, but it starts off something to the effect

"The apocalypse, yes there was an apocalypse. How long ago had it been now, but more importantly exactly what was it. Was it radiation from the bombs, or viruses from chemical weapons, or some other overwhelming agent of catastrophe. Those who remained weren't sure they could remember any more, they just knew there had been an apocalypse and they wanted to survive.".

That's the best time line I can give.

Terry

About a year.

C&D I guess. Still has "normal" infrastructure with some changes thrown in. Start current day level.

Outside of historical games, my only PA game is All Things Zombie. In this case an A- as most campaigns probably are started during the event and continuing after the event becomes officially PA.

60,000 to 160,000 years after, but I never picked a precise date as the game world inhabitants don't even know they are in a post apocalyptic world. So, "G" would be the answer to your question.

Der Krieg Geist

Im reminded of the Johnny Depp remake version of "The Time Machine".
H. G. finally gives up trying to 'fix' the question of the death of his wife.
However he finally realize's her death is 'destiny', it cannot be avoided. As a result, resolves himself to go forward rather than back.
Eventually traveling far enough into the future, man kind has 'returned' to much of the native american-ish form of survival. The bow and the spear.
The cause of the Apoc. itself has become simply ancient history, the real "cause" forgotten over time.

2250 AD. Your pet cat is a 200 lb Siamese. (and you just think they are annoying at 12 lbs!) Andre Norton's 'Daybreak 2250 AD' or 'Star Man's Son'. Like most post apoc stories of this period, it assumes far too many radiation caused mutations survive past being born. I ran 'Metamorphosis Alpha' for a couple of years, which had character generation tables that allowed things like water soluble giants, and hummingbirds with spears. The most dangerous one was a tele-psychic named 'Remorse' (Remorse was a horse, of course, of course…)

One week to a year after.