So I am going to run a post-apocalyptic campaign some time this winter. and I have been thinking How is it going to end. So I thought we should talk about, the best way for the World to END, not like the planet blows up because Rocks flouting in a Void is kind of fun but not for that long. So more like all of society crashes and maybe a lot of people die, and most of the infrastructure fails as well.
Anyway What will the Apocalypse look like to you?
Runaway Greenhouse is the most likely "end of the world" scenario as I see things.
Increasing climate instability leading to ecological collapse, with the resulting food and water shortages resulting in increasing violence as different groups resort to war to secure (or protect) the few remaining resources.
Rovagug
You know ... not a completely bad idea.
If you do want a more "magical" answer:
"Gaia is awoken by the continuing abuses of man upon the Earth. In her rage, she unleashes an assault on mankind's technological civilization, the combination of earthquakes, typhoons, and volcanoes brings the world to ruin."
|
how about a supervolcanic erruption that blotted out the sky, distroyed instantly a few countries with the blast and then the acid rain destroyed most of the fields/forests, the toxic ash in the atmosphere killed off many of the initial survivours and the resulting unrest and wars finished off what was left?
So I am going to run a post-apocalyptic campaign some time this winter. and I have been thinking How is it going to end. So I thought we should talk about, the best way for the World to END, not like the planet blows up because Rocks flouting in a Void is kind of fun but not for that long. So more like all of society crashes and maybe a lot of people die, and most of the infrastructure fails as well.
Anyway What will the Apocalypse look like to you?
If you want things to get scary, go all Children of Men on it and have several PC races suddenly become infertile. Things will get ugly quick.
The favorite way for me to end the world is by useing human stupidity.
Someone believs in an ancient profecy from a long dead civilization and "thinks" the world will end in a few years so in their panic they lose all sense of humanity and civilization collapses for no reason other than people are scared the world will end and bring it about themselves. I have a fondness for self fullfilling prophecy's
*please excuse all spelling errors,no time to edit*
|
|
Children of Men had an interesting sort of apocalypse. Humans suddenly, inexplicably, started going fertile. The birth rate just kept declining until it hit zero. That would give the game an interesting feel. Heck, if you tacked a normal world-destruction apocalypse on top of that... Things would be pretty bleak.
I have played post-apocalyptic fantasy before, and it's pretty sweet. If the destruction was magical, you can create all sorts of unique environments themed towards the type of "radiation" from the bombs. I.e., if the drow used some sort of "shadow nuke" you could have areas where the Plane of Shadows has bled through, bringing all that entails with it. I actually played a shadow caster from Tome of Magic with that back story, like he was irradiated. He was... awful.
Gods vye for supremacy.
One pantheon summons Cthulhu.
Pantheons unite against the greatest threat.
To seal the gate, they have to bring the moon down from the sky, causing a fantasy "Asteroidal impact" scenario, tidal waves, and remnants of the GodsWar lying in sunken cities and eldritch catacombs.
And the Gods are too tired from the recent cataclysm to do much direct meddling as the humans and batrachean minions of the Great Elder One try to re-establish culture and nations on what remains above the surface of the waves.
Gods vye for supremacy.
One pantheon summons Cthulhu.
Pantheons unite against the greatest threat.
To seal the gate, they have to bring the moon down from the sky, causing a fantasy "Asteroidal impact" scenario, tidal waves, and remnants of the GodsWar lying in sunken cities and eldritch catacombs.
And the Gods are too tired from the recent cataclysm to do much direct meddling as the humans and batrachean minions of the Great Elder One try to re-establish culture and nations on what remains above the surface of the waves.
Isn't that a variation of what actually happened on Golarion with the imprisonment of Rovagug?
RovagugYou know ... not a completely bad idea.
If you do want a more "magical" answer:
"Gaia is awoken by the continuing abuses of man upon the Earth. In her rage, she unleashes an assault on mankind's technological civilization, the combination of earthquakes, typhoons, and volcanoes brings the world to ruin."
M. Night Shyamalan tried to do that. You saw the result.
Hadron collider makes one of those miniature black holes; only this one isn't so miniature. It actually lasts about 10 times longer than it's supposed to....on the scale of .00000000000054 seconds instead of .00000000000054 seconds.
When Switzerland is on the dark side of the earth, the minisingularity burps and the earth, though not sucked into the mini black hole, is pulled further away from the sun, when whatever cataclysms that that would cause clear, it's the Ice Age again.
M. Night Shyamalan tried to do that. You saw the result.RovagugYou know ... not a completely bad idea.
If you do want a more "magical" answer:
"Gaia is awoken by the continuing abuses of man upon the Earth. In her rage, she unleashes an assault on mankind's technological civilization, the combination of earthquakes, typhoons, and volcanoes brings the world to ruin."
Actually, I am not sure I did.
Actually, I am not sure I did.M. Night Shyamalan tried to do that. You saw the result.RovagugYou know ... not a completely bad idea.
If you do want a more "magical" answer:
"Gaia is awoken by the continuing abuses of man upon the Earth. In her rage, she unleashes an assault on mankind's technological civilization, the combination of earthquakes, typhoons, and volcanoes brings the world to ruin."
Wise choice.
Actually, I am not sure I did.M. Night Shyamalan tried to do that. You saw the result.RovagugYou know ... not a completely bad idea.
If you do want a more "magical" answer:
"Gaia is awoken by the continuing abuses of man upon the Earth. In her rage, she unleashes an assault on mankind's technological civilization, the combination of earthquakes, typhoons, and volcanoes brings the world to ruin."
I did not see that either, and you know I don't think that I want to see it. Also what does the M mean, and is Night really his middle name.
I did not see that either, and you know I don't think that I want to see it. Also what does the M mean, and is Night really his middle name.
With no surprise, a lot of people in Hollywood have pseudonames. In his case, he also anglicized it. He was originally Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan.
so do you think a slow decline or a fast destruction?
Magic or Scientific, which one is more fun do you think?
Nukes or no Nukes, that is the third question, or fourth question if you include the topic?
And thanks for the stuff so far, I kind of like the Gaia theory. And we go a M. Night Shyamalan joke are good too.
I did not see that either, and you know I don't think that I want to see it. Also what does the M mean, and is Night really his middle name.With no surprise, a lot of people in Hollywood have pseudonames. In his case, he also anglicized it. He was originally Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan.
Hollywood does not use there real names, what else is not real there.
So I am going to run a post-apocalyptic campaign some time this winter. and I have been thinking How is it going to end. So I thought we should talk about, the best way for the World to END, not like the planet blows up because Rocks flouting in a Void is kind of fun but not for that long. So more like all of society crashes and maybe a lot of people die, and most of the infrastructure fails as well.
Anyway What will the Apocalypse look like to you?
Human society is amazingly resilient. It's easy to disrupt for a short while, especially through massive destruction, but a total or near-total global collapse would be a lot harder to pull off. World War II thoroughly bombed and ravaged a good chunk of two continents but even the places that caught the worst of it were back on their feet in a generation or so, and doing respectably as soon as a decade after. I think you'd have to have some kind of tremendous, rapid change to the biosphere. Something like the Yellowstone caldera blowing and venting enough ash to give us a multi-year winter.
It's far easier to come up with things that would cause general social collapse on a limited basis, of course. Virtually any natural disaster could work for that.
Fire & Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
Wise choice.Actually, I am not sure I did.M. Night Shyamalan tried to do that. You saw the result.RovagugYou know ... not a completely bad idea.
If you do want a more "magical" answer:
"Gaia is awoken by the continuing abuses of man upon the Earth. In her rage, she unleashes an assault on mankind's technological civilization, the combination of earthquakes, typhoons, and volcanoes brings the world to ruin."
+1
I can't un-watch it. :(
|
Gods vye for supremacy.
One pantheon summons Cthulhu.
Pantheons unite against the greatest threat.
To seal the gate, they have to bring the moon down from the sky, causing a fantasy "Asteroidal impact" scenario, tidal waves, and remnants of the GodsWar lying in sunken cities and eldritch catacombs.
And the Gods are too tired from the recent cataclysm to do much direct meddling as the humans and batrachean minions of the Great Elder One try to re-establish culture and nations on what remains above the surface of the waves.
I think that would work better with an entity more powerful than Cthulhu. Maybe Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, or Nyarlathotep. Or perhaps even Nodens.
I had my setting get flooded by magic when overuse and improper use of magic ripped massive cracks into the fabric or reality. Which not only lead to both place and people being "twisted" but outsiders and such being allowed in with out being summoned. Demons, devils and elemental spilled across the world as did fey and sprites of the dead and worse.
Then it got hit with giant asteroids and entered into an age of ash and death with massive numbers of die offs and even wars to weed out unstable magic users.
I set my game thousands of years after this series of events, but the events play heavy into the setting's feel and much of its restrictions and themes play off those events.
Perhaps it ends after a well-meaning but ultimately foolish event.
Say someone accidentally drops an magical artefact, possibly a ring, into a volcano. Well obviously it melts but where does the magic go? perhaps it gets absorbed into the volcano which proceeds to grow to into a super-volcano which explodes.
Cheap easy to make, warp drives. Farmers in their backyards, upset with whatever the political issues are of the day build their own space ships and leave the world. After a few years a sociological turning point is reached and between poor weather patterns and bad political agendas the entire planet is all but devoid of populations. Yes there are some people in remote areas or those who choose not to leave certain backwoods but all major cities are now ghost towns.
The year: 1994. From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction! Man's civilization is cast in ruin!
Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn...
A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery.
+1
I want to play a Mok.
|
The year: 1994. From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction! Man's civilization is cast in ruin!
Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn...
A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery.+1
I want to play a Mok.
I keep telling people that if the baby is a boy, then Thundarr is on the short list for names.
Another possibility is that the world just...ends. But slowly. Things both magical and mundane become unpredictable- flint and steel only grudgingly create fire, and even then foods rarely satisfy hunger, nourish, or both. The gods quietly take members of their flock to their final reward, but this is no rapture; in fact it seems to happen almost one at a time- someone who is there today is gone tomorrow, sometimes disappearing right in front of witnesses. There are still riots in the streets and general chaos, but the world ends with a whimper, not a bang.
|
So I am going to run a post-apocalyptic campaign some time this winter. and I have been thinking How is it going to end. So I thought we should talk about, the best way for the World to END, not like the planet blows up because Rocks flouting in a Void is kind of fun but not for that long. So more like all of society crashes and maybe a lot of people die, and most of the infrastructure fails as well.
Anyway What will the Apocalypse look like to you?
When you say 'World' which world do you mean? Earth or a D&D Campaign World?
If you want a Sci fi you can plunder my RUUL 6 Setting:
A Shuttle piloted by a Robot infected with a sentient bacteria pilots a shuttle away from the Generational Colony Seed ship and drops Terraform Weapons on it from orbital approach followed by Resource exploitation blocks (Factory modules designed to unleash robots under the control of a megabrain and mine for water and minerals - making fuel storage plants and factories).
Rules are that you cant terraform worlds that have life but this one did. It is a Medieval/Stoneage setting where THe Shuttle lands in a valley it teraformed and sets up a Marine Cloning Facility who will become colonists. At varying stages they must secure resources to extend their reach to other factory modules.
Some Factory modules failed to activate and must be 'rebooted' by specialist personell.
So if you are looking for Armageddon you might spin the story from the other side where 'aliens' show up with terraforming weapons and descimate your civilization with intent to mine your sacred sites and colonize your uninhabited planet (TERRA NULIUS).
|
|
Hadron collider makes one of those miniature black holes; only this one isn't so miniature. It actually lasts about 10 times longer than it's supposed to....on the scale of .00000000000054 seconds instead of .00000000000054 seconds.
When Switzerland is on the dark side of the earth, the minisingularity burps and the earth, though not sucked into the mini black hole, is pulled further away from the sun, when whatever cataclysms that that would cause clear, it's the Ice Age again.
THat would imply the singularity snags on some point in space and the earth is pivoted about that point causing it to alter its orbit...I got overpaid Particle Physicists prepared to reject that possibility as an acceptable risk - apparently God will save us if we F... it all up badly.
|
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
|
The sun begins to wink out.
No supernova, no warning, it just inexplicably begins to grow dimmer and dimmer (like someone slowly turning off the gas to a BBQ) until it all but winks out. No one knows how or why.
Most plants die, including many of the animals that feed on them, causing a catastrophic reaction along the entire food chain. What survives is hardy indeed.
The world is reduced to a barren wasteland shrouded in darkness much of the time with only the stars to see by, or twilight from the sun for a scant few hours a day at best.
People begin to farm all manner of fungi to survive, or become nomadic hunter gatherers. Food is scarce, and people return to a state of brutal barbarism. Cannibalism becomes commonplace.
Disease, only a small portion is immune. Everyone else over a matter of a year or so die. Soon everything would stop working and everything would fall apart.
Disease Disease
spreading the diseasewith some help from Captain trips
he'll bring your world down to it's knees.
Some things a little more realistic if you don't want to go fantasy/sci-fi:
Asteroid/comet hits the earth. Earthquakes/tsunamis rock nearby continents. Ash/smoke blot out the sun for months, killing much of the food base and ushering in a mini ice age. 50% of all life on the earth dies.
Gamma ray burst hits the solar system. A giant star within a few thousand light years of us goes ultranova before becoming a black hole and it's poles point in our general direction. When the gamma radiation hits us, it completely wipes out all electronic devices and electrical power on the side of the earth facing it. The radiation poisons most living things on that side of the planet. A third of the earth's ozone layer is fried and our sun does the rest. Solar ultraviolet radiation kills the food base in the oceans, leading to 95% of all life dying on the planet. It takes over a decade for the ozone layer to replenish itself.
Same as above can happen from our own sun. A focused coronal mass ejection that hits us could have nearly the same effect, though likely lesser.
THat would imply the singularity snags on some point in space and the earth is pivoted about that point causing it to alter its orbit...I got overpaid Particle Physicists prepared to reject that possibility as an acceptable risk - apparently God will save us if we F... it all up badly.Hadron collider makes one of those miniature black holes; only this one isn't so miniature. It actually lasts about 10 times longer than it's supposed to....on the scale of .00000000000054 seconds instead of .00000000000054 seconds.
When Switzerland is on the dark side of the earth, the minisingularity burps and the earth, though not sucked into the mini black hole, is pulled further away from the sun, when whatever cataclysms that that would cause clear, it's the Ice Age again.
The black hole would not only need to last longer, it would need to be much bigger (though those both go hand in hand). And you need a much bigger collider. Much larger and faster collisions than happen at the LHC happen constantly at outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere. An exsisting black hole passing (relatively) near the planet would do the same thing.
But it'd make a good sci-fi reason for a mass extinction event.
THat would imply the singularity snags on some point in space and the earth is pivoted about that point causing it to alter its orbit...I got overpaid Particle Physicists prepared to reject that possibility as an acceptable risk - apparently God will save us if we F... it all up badly.Hadron collider makes one of those miniature black holes; only this one isn't so miniature. It actually lasts about 10 times longer than it's supposed to....on the scale of .00000000000054 seconds instead of .00000000000054 seconds.
When Switzerland is on the dark side of the earth, the minisingularity burps and the earth, though not sucked into the mini black hole, is pulled further away from the sun, when whatever cataclysms that that would cause clear, it's the Ice Age again.
Then there's the guy who thinks he's coming back from the future to purposely sabotage the whole thing so they DON'T do whatever they're trying to do, but I get the feeling he's the odd duck with the wacky sense of humor of the lederhosen mini blackhole gang.
But it'd make a good sci-fi reason for a mass extinction event.
Nobody asked for convincing Nivenesque crap; it's as good as the Death Star for chrissakes.
They coulda just blown Yavin up and that would've jacked Yavin IV when it got bombarded by chunks of Yavin and then went spiralling into oblivion.And that runaway comet that chopped the moon in half on Thundarr....oy don't get me started.....
But it'd make a good sci-fi reason for a mass extinction event.
Nobody asked for convincing Nivenesque crap; it's as good as the Death Star for chrissakes.
They coulda just blown Yavin up and that would've jacked Yavin IV when it got bombarded by chunks of Yavin and then went spiralling into oblivion.
And that runaway comet that chopped the moon in half on Thundarr....oy don't get me started.....
That's no Moon............
I was thinking Earth ends, SiFi but some magic.
Frye sets off one of Professor Farnsworth's many doomsday devices.
That my be the best Idea so far,
Also I watched Reign of Fire and that is a pretty good Post-Apocalyptic Movie, even thought Matthew McConaughey is in it, and really he was kind of good in it, really it was a good reason not to smoke pot. Reign of Fire one year of naked bongos and pot, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. This is the best reason not to do drug I have ever seen.
I highly suggest you watch the DVD >THE ROAD<
"A post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son trying to survive by any means possible.
Here is the >Plot Summary<
I think if you want a realistic apocalyptic scenario, the most likely is that, for one reason or another, our industrial society simply collapses. Whether it's because we run out of non-renewable resources, or because we are no longer able to feed ourselves, or because an epidemic of antibiotic resistant bacteria decimates the population, or because the many effects of global warming wipe out our cities through drought, flooding, and wildfire, eventually; our society falls apart and the survivors are left to fend for themselves.
Of course, that doesn't make for a very interesting campaign in and of itself, because there is no clear antagonist. For a campaign, you need an adversary of some sort, someone you can roll dice against and gain xp for their defeat. I guess you could have roving gangs of misfits who simply take what they need from others. However, scavengers only survive as long as there is a society off of which to scavenge, and with the collapse of industry, groups like that would very quickly run out of things to scavenge and would eventually be forced to go rural themselves.
Personally, I think a much more plausible, and enjoyable campaign would be one in which industrial society did collapse, but it was so long ago, that nobody can really remember why. Nevertheless, there are threats left over from that time period which provide hints as to what might have happened. For example, there might be mutant humanoids, or chimeric monsters left over from genetic experiments that now roam the countryside. There might be intelligent, nuclear or solar powered mechanoids, left over from ancient wars, who still follow the ill-conceived programming of their creators. Perhaps there are secret societies who live underground, and who still maintain a level of technological sophistication not known to the vast majority of the world's inhabitants. Perhaps there are half submerged, or crumbling remains of cities, left behind by the ancients, whose ruins contain secrets best left undisturbed.
The nice thing about a campaign world like this is that the possibilities are limitless. As the campaign develops, you can decide what might have happened to society. Perhaps it collapsed because of some biological agent released by man. Perhaps it was extraterrestrials, or godlike beings who destroyed our cities, attempting to start over an experiment that they began long ago with our species. I think a campaign like this preserves the elements of conflict that are necessary for a roleplaying game, while not limiting the possibilities of what kinds of scenarios you can run for your players.
I think if you want a realistic apocalyptic scenario, the most likely is that, for one reason or another, our industrial society simply collapses. Whether it's because we run out of non-renewable resources, or because we are no longer able to feed ourselves, or because an epidemic of antibiotic resistant bacteria decimates the population, or because the many effects of global warming wipe out our cities through drought, flooding, and wildfire, eventually; our society falls apart and the survivors are left to fend for themselves.
What about nuclear war?
|
|
I highly suggest you watch the DVD >THE ROAD<
"A post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son trying to survive by any means possible.
Here is the >Plot Summary<
For your own wellbeing I suggest you dont. You are better off watching the Postman and Waterworld.