THE APOCALYPSE!!!!

[Asperion]

Society is operating normally. Then something (you define) happens and things start to come apart. This will be the period of transition that is normally jumped over in those post apocalyptic stories.  Many people will be killed by this transition (along with other animals and plants), but many will survive.  Society itself will be transformed in MANY fundamental aspects as transportation,  commerce,  communication,  government,  medical,  etc all break down.  Exactly what causes this apocalypse? What percentage of the population survive? How can they make a living in this new society? What is the new society like? How long will it take for things to get resettled into what is seen in those other stories? Other comments welcome and appreciated. 

[Christougher]

You should really retitle this "Help me create THE APOCALYPSE!"  😉

[Khymeria]

This can be all over the map because apocalypse has a lot of different options. Obviously you have nuclear war that caused it, disease, climate/environmental catastrophe, outside forces (asteroid), volcanic eruption, earthquake, decades of full fledged war, Ragnarok, Revelations, etc. It would be way easier to know if you are going for a Fallout feel, Twilight 2000, Gamma World, Mad Max, Walking Dead, etc. feel because each of those has its own reflections and things to be considered. Are the PCs normal joes? Are we constructing a world, pitching you ideas for a game. Got to help us out a bit.

[steriaca]

My favorite Apocalypse is the WITCH Mansterial Virus. It's a virus which mutates all men, making them unable to create sperm. (The name Mansterial comes from man and sterial)

 

It affects a lot of people, doesn't cause a cataclysmic event, but threatens to make life unlivable in a generation. It doesn't affect women at all, but without men's sperm, how can the next generation be created?

[Khymeria]

1 hour ago, steriaca said:

My favorite Apocalypse is the WITCH Mansterial Virus. It's a virus which mutates all men, making them unable to create sperm. (The name Mansterial comes from man and sterial)

 

It affects a lot of people, doesn't cause a cataclysmic event, but threatens to make life unlivable in a generation. It doesn't affect women at all, but without men's sperm, how can the next generation be created?

You should check out the 1988 flick with Rowdy Roddy Piper called “Hell Comes to Frogtown.” It’s a lot like your virus with some other mutation stuff and general silliness thrown in. 

[Asperion]

I asked this because recently I got thinking about the different types of games people play  - western,  post apocalyptic,  fantasy,  super,  scifi,  different punk's, etc.  However,  there seems to be a large void that concerns the apocalyptic era.  As with any period of transition,  there are many stories that can be told about it. Not just as remberance of times past,  but when it is actually occurring.  So I asked questions to make a good campaign during such a time. 

[steriaca]

I know there was a series of Digital Hero articals, but should we have an "APPOPOLIPS Hero" book?

[Khymeria]

41 minutes ago, steriaca said:

I know there was a series of Digital Hero articals, but should we have an "APPOPOLIPS Hero" book?

I think that could be a lot of fun, useful in many different games, lean on some of the vehicle stuff as well. I’m a fan of genre books, hence the writing of the upcoming Victorian Hero book. I think deciding what not to include when you have such a wealth of inspiration would be difficult but fun. 

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, steriaca said:

I know there was a series of Digital Hero articals, but should we have an "APPOPOLIPS Hero" book?

 

If you mean what I think you mean, we do, and more.

 

 

Also, please look here: https://www.herogames.com/search/?q=apocalyptic&quick=1&type=nexus_package_item

Edited August 13, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[assault]

For the Australian version, watch Mad Max. The first one.

 

Trivia: the woman in the first car later married Yahoo Serious. Thankfully she eventually divorced him.

[Doc Democracy]

I think a big problem with gaming in the transition is that it is about minimising loss and suffering rather than stopping it. 

 

Getting players feeling happy that they only lost 45% of those they were protecting, rather than all of them, is a tough gig.

 

It would be a campaign filled with loss and suffering, you would need to work hard to avoid it being grim and depressing.

 

I think that is why post-apocalypse is more popular, there is hope and progress to chase after.

[steriaca]

Sorry. I actually forgotten they made it into a book. Maybe the articles were Zombie Hero?

[mallet]

The movie "Miracle Mile" from the 80's is great for showing the breakdown of society in a short period of time. The Americans have launched nukes at Russia and Russia has retaliated and launched nukes at the USA. Only a few people know at first as word gets out at like 1am in the morning. Then as word spreads the city (LA) quickly descends into anarchy as everyone is fighting to get out of the city before the nuke's hit or is it fake news/panic and nothing will happen at all? 

[Duke Bushido]

I am with Doc D (which, honestly, is not unusual in most things):  you are setting up a bleak, must-lose-and-endure-anyway campaign, and as a thought exercise, it can be a lot of fun.

 

As a gaming experience, though, it's kind of depressing.  Most choices will be centered on minimizing attrition by horrible means, and victory conditions are "continuing to inflict the horrors of the world on as many people as possible for as long as possible," even while knowing that the survivors probably won't stay alive anyway.

 

It's hard to get stoked for.

 

However, the last couple of decades have seen a shift in society that makes me crave societal collapse through global peasant uprising, wherein the richest world controllers and other cash sinkholes are stung up by the ankles and beaten like stainless steel pinatas, followed by a mass exodus from business, reliance on anything,that costs money they will,never have, etc-

 

People start ripping up pavement and planting food.  Society is for the middle,and,upper class, and built,on the backs,of,the day-to-day grunt.

 

What happens globally,when they have all had enough of supporting the non-contributors, and simply stop?

 

Besides, they have better odds of living through this one.

[Lord Liaden]

As the saying goes, "We still know where the pitchforks are."

 

But societal collapse has never been a salutary experience for the bulk of the people involved, whatever started it and whoever perpetrated it. Mobs will turn on whoever they decide is to blame, whether they're responsible or not. People will flock to whoever appears strong enough to offer them security. Such "strong men" are usually ruthless and exploitive, and often ambitious, prompting factional violence over remaining resources. Much knowledge, practical, historical, artistic and philosophical, is lost in the chaos.

 

Something better may eventually emerge, but if it happened today it's unlikely our children and grandchildren will live to see it.

[Old Man]

On 12/2/2023 at 10:42 PM, mallet said:

The movie "Miracle Mile" from the 80's is great for showing the breakdown of society in a short period of time. The Americans have launched nukes at Russia and Russia has retaliated and launched nukes at the USA. Only a few people know at first as word gets out at like 1am in the morning. Then as word spreads the city (LA) quickly descends into anarchy as everyone is fighting to get out of the city before the nuke's hit or is it fake news/panic and nothing will happen at all? 

 

I lived through this a few years ago.  Honestly there wasn't much time for anarchy to break out even though everyone got the same text message.  Yeah there were some people speeding around in their cars and/or shoving their children into storm drains.  And there were some people who quit their jobs or (supposedly) had sex with people they shouldn't have.  But 20-30 minutes is not much time to get any real anarching done.

 

Then again, I'm in the civilized state--perhaps I am underestimating the latent savagery of mainland Ur Murrikans.

[Lord Liaden]

Your state isn't more civilized, it's just chronically laid back, under the influence of tropical climate and Spam. 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

There is a great apocalyptic scenario in the 4th edition VIPER book in which they postulate a situation where superbeings engage in so much war and conflict that they basically destroy everything except a few domed cities ruled, of course, by superbeings.  Basically the supervillains won, and are dictators over cities which are isolated between wasteland and the city states are technological marvels.  An uneasy truce remains between the cities.

 

The PCs are a band of rebels who fight against the supers, obviously lose, and are exiled to the wastelands, where they have to try to survive.  but they stumble upon an intact Viper base, hidden in the ruins not far away, and start using that equipment as a campaign against the supers, liberating their city, then moving on to other cities if they win.

I was always enormously intrigued by this concept and wanted to run it as a campaign but my attempt only lasted one session.

Edited December 9, 2023 by Christopher R Taylor

[Christopher R Taylor]

Oh, and while I am a Christian, I don't subscribe to the complex prophecy and timeline of dispensationalist premillennial types so I don't think the Left Behind series is Biblical or likely.  But I do think it makes a really interesting, unique sort of sci fi apocalypse scenario that could be mined for ideas. 

 

Taken without the faith issues, it becomes a very strange setting that suddenly occurs not only without warning but without the ability to predict. It wouldn't even make sense for a while: why did everyone disappear?  Where did they go?  And why are these tyrannical things happening in the government?  Why are people so awful to each other more than even before?  Its a great setting for adventure and has a very unique flavor.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Christopher R Taylor

[Christopher R Taylor]

...aand I killed the thread

[Asperion]

21 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

...aand I killed the thread

 

Fitting for a thread dealing with the dead 

[Christopher R Taylor]

A gigantic solar flare EMP would be one part of a good apocalyptic disaster scenario.  Its not enough to really destroy things (they'd get rebuilt fairly quickly) so you would need something else in addition, like a plague or a war or some cultural destruction like a movement to oppose technology to really seal the deal.

[Asperion]

19 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

A gigantic solar flare EMP would be one part of a good apocalyptic disaster scenario.  Its not enough to really destroy things (they'd get rebuilt fairly quickly) so you would need something else in addition, like a plague or a war or some cultural destruction like a movement to oppose technology to really seal the deal.

 

Depends on how devastating the flare is on the technology base.  Current equipment can only be built if the underlying technology is still in place.  At present, we have replaced that underlying technology with more modern (and susceptible) technology. As a result, if society loses this current technology they might have more problems regaining their current position than most people think. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah but most of the really important stuff is shielded and backed up, so as I understand it, while people would lose things like their phones, companies would still have the tech they need.  It would be a significant disaster, but a recoverable one unless something else was also making problems.

[Lord Liaden]

On 12/9/2023 at 10:28 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Oh, and while I am a Christian, I don't subscribe to the complex prophecy and timeline of dispensationalist premillennial types so I don't think the Left Behind series is Biblical or likely.  But I do think it makes a really interesting, unique sort of sci fi apocalypse scenario that could be mined for ideas. 

 

Taken without the faith issues, it becomes a very strange setting that suddenly occurs not only without warning but without the ability to predict. It wouldn't even make sense for a while: why did everyone disappear?  Where did they go?  And why are these tyrannical things happening in the government?  Why are people so awful to each other more than even before?  Its a great setting for adventure and has a very unique flavor.

 

On the Biblical front, there are a couple of short novels by sci-fi author James Blish, Black Easter and The Day After Judgment, later published together in a single volume called The Devil's Day, involving the release of all the demons in Hell upon the Earth. The war between Heaven and Hell was fought, and apparently Hell won, and God is reputedly dead. The first novel graphically describes many of the grotesque denizens of Hell, while the second includes a detailed description of an assault by remaining American military upon the infernal city of Dis, which has translocated to Death Valley, California. IMO it's a great depiction of modern military weapons and tactics against traditional demonic forces, with some analysis of those forces from the perspective of science. The presentation of the aftermath of demonic invasion is also not what most would expect.

 

The novels deal with the entities and the rituals from grimoire demonology as real and effective, while the city of Dis and the further reaches of Hell are taken straight from Dante's Inferno.

Edited December 14, 2023 by Lord Liaden