What are some people's campaign ideas for post apoc?
Is the world rebuilding? Just gone through the disaster? The time in between the two.
What caused the world to end? War? Alien invasion? Unknown?
Tell me what you got people!
What time period did you have in mind?
My group just finished a modern homebrew; details here. No idea where things will go next (that's what Tuesdays are for), but it might run along the lines of fantasy-apocalypse. I blame Dragon Age...again.
What are some people's campaign ideas for post apoc?
Is the world rebuilding? Just gone through the disaster? The time in between the two.
What caused the world to end? War? Alien invasion? Unknown?
Tell me what you got people!
One I've been working on was a fairly typical fantasy world that comes to an end when a cabal of wizards, clerics, and other educated and influential people dedicated to order decide to kill a trickster god that caused loads of problems in the past. Killing a god is not a simple matter as a number of variables have to be taken into account or a gods death will lead to disaster. The cabal kills the god but they don't manage to do all they need to negate the backlash. The god plummets into the Underworld, creating a hole that the Underworld starts bleeding into. The land begins to die, the dead rise, and those that survived manage to open a gate to another world so they can escape.
The new world is empty of major civilizations though ruins cover the land and there are more primative alien cultures.
I've also always been interested in a Dragon magazine article about variant takes on the Underdark. One suggestion was that the Underdark was actually the last bastion of good on the world when some evil conquered the surface world. This one has always stuck with me.
I have a different take on the post apocolyptic...
To make a long story short, there wasn't really an apocalypse per se, but the beings who were there before have declined eons ago, and the other races now live in the fruits of their labor.
2 servile races of a galaxy spanning empire were sent to terraform the planet, and establish a base close (on a space scale) to an enemy solar system. They did thier job, experimented with local life, but lost contact with thier superiors and eventually fell into a conflict, the result of which ended both's presence on the world...
The modern races are a result of their exepriments.
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What are some people's campaign ideas for post apoc?
Is the world rebuilding? Just gone through the disaster? The time in between the two.
What caused the world to end? War? Alien invasion? Unknown?
Tell me what you got people!
What game system, D&D/Pathfinder or some variation of D20 Modern or future?
Is this a fantasy world PA situation (death of all the Gods, etc) or one based off of a modern/sci-fi setting?
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Recently I've been fascinated with a world where all the natural terrain has vanished/been destroyed, leaving only man/misc humanoid race-made structures 'floating' in a psuedo-limbo.
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What are some people's campaign ideas for post apoc?
Is the world rebuilding? Just gone through the disaster? The time in between the two.
What caused the world to end? War? Alien invasion? Unknown?
Tell me what you got people!
In the Res Publica Setting I'm working on Wizards discover the Planes and make 'contact' with the entities that dwell there. Consequently Civilization breaks up as Every Bozo and his cult decides that hey if I worship one of these 'demons' from the planes i can have power. So the enightened Republic discovers Religion...and the republic is destroyed by the fundamentalist uprising led by various 'religious factions' worshiping their diverse gods.
How about Swords against History.
The environment is going through an extinction purge, and mankind needs to rediscover magic to build warp drives to excape. What they discover is a now defunct government time travel project. Some go into the future looking for the new eden, while others go into the time of legend seeking magic.
Another option is the world hasd turned toxic, and characters run robots sent out of the domes and underground complexes to look for resources and mutants that have adapted. It's Avatar meets Wall-E
The time period is whatever you'd like it to be, although I really like modern day to post apoc.
The time period is whatever you'd like it to be, although I really like modern day to post apoc.
You might be interested in the D20 Apocalypse setting for the D20 Modern rules (you could adapt some of the Pathfinder rules to it if you wanted.
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The time period is whatever you'd like it to be, although I really like modern day to post apoc.
I am actually working on a test campaign to run through my basic version of Gamma World 3rd ed (1985 ed).
No mutants, no super weapons, minimal armor (light anti-ballistic at best). The idea was to run a basic PA based game so I set up this campaign since my rules support an "any period" style game. Also it is designed to give me lead time to work on higher tech issues (powered armor, robots, advanced weapons, etc) and mutants, mutations and advanced game rules. So it's my working campaign to playtest a "basic" and stripped down version of the game.
So here is the working premise-
The fall takes place somewhere near 2035-2040, but things were set into motion years before the actual collapse/end of the world. Mid to late 2020's US and European economies collapse - primarily due to resource shortages tied with fuel (or lack thereof) combined with failed social and financial systems. The US gets entangled in a North African conflict, the ME is in complete disarray and social upheaval (wrote this before any of the ME states started to have their revolutions) overtakes the various gov'ts of the ME, shortages and mass starvation become the norm in the 3rd world as western states decline.
Basically old grudges are inflamed and fought as the world starts to tear itself apart, NK invades SK and Japan. While this is going on an intense crop blight begins to hit the world – mostly Europe and Asia (double whammy for both food and fuel shortages), now it isn't just the 3rd world starving, but many parts of the more modern states. Infrastructures begin to fall apart, gov't power is held in localized or regional seats in the US. Somewhere in all of this the American dollar turns to nothing, shortly followed by the Euro with a few pathetic attempts to reintroduce a new currency.
At around this time China who was set to stand on top gets hit with the hardest on the crop blights that and a 10 year long drought pretty much pushes them over. And push does come to shove, one of the few things the US has going for it is its crop land and huge stores of food (relative to other countries). China sets out to invade the US, naval battles ensue, and Russia invades Europe. Bombs drop in a few limited exchanges, some big cities get hit – some avoid a direct attack altogether but everyone is affected. A limited NBC war coupled with social collapse.
After this the world begins to die, not all at once but slowly as each year passes the world begins to move in an irreversible direction.
The characters in my new campaign are going to be young guys returning from the failed NA campaign, they will most likely be based out of a desert community many hours from Los Angeles. The idea is for them to be living and growing in a remote community after most of the bad stuff has already happened. They may serve as part of a guard or civil defense unit, and their background will lend some credibility to engage in combat and survive. Think slightly more advanced Mad Max setting with multiple player protagonist (or not, lol).
Los Angeles is dark, the city having been destroyed by food riots and unchecked fires. Most consider it and the choked freeways that lead to the city a death trap. The characters need to go into LA, get some medical research from a University hospital (a facility that up until recently was in touch with their community) and get out. Gangs, warlords rumors of savagery and horror are part of the LA landscape.
That's what I have so far, I have a few follow up scenarios if they survive but mostly I am focusing on ironing out some rules issues to get the game at the place I want it to be.
I like the idea of the Nuke War starting in the middle east.
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I like the idea of the Nuke War starting in the middle east.
That was Morally Gray of you...
I would have thought it more likely that the Taliban pull off what they did in 2001: Hijack an existing, locally avalable -low tech weapon and Use it on America at the worst possible time - like an airliner or a petrol tanker into a power grid-significant power station/heating gas plant during the nastiest winter on record...the destruction throws New York into chaos as a million people are freezing to death without heating or electricity.
I like the idea of the Nuke War starting in the middle east.That was Morally Gray of you...
That was Morally Gray of you...
I would have thought it more likely that the Taliban pull off what they did in 2001: Hijack an existing, locally available -low tech weapon and Use it on America at the worst possible time - like an airliner or a petrol tanker into a power grid-significant power station/heating gas plant during the nastiest winter on record...the destruction throws New York into chaos as a million people are freezing to death without heating or electricity.What I meant was only those countries would launch a tactical war against each other. The Taliban is currently attacking any countries with weak security hoping for a domino effect. I'm sorry is this has rambled into politics. Let's try to drop this tangent and get back to the current gameworld suggestions. Aside from drifting radiation clouds, most of the bombing would have taken place outside North America.
Is the world rebuilding? Just gone through the disaster? The time in between the two.What caused the world to end? War? Alien invasion? Unknown?
I like the Unknown idea, it allows for players to adventure for the reason and find out things are not as they seem. Set the time 100 years into the future, you can have a bit of space sci-fi with space stations, luna/mars colonies and if your really saucy go further out to the moons around Jupiter/Saturn. Everywhere the pc's go in the world or space if they find inhabitants make them naive about everything, except to keep the ancient machines going.
Lastly the pc's find clues that their was a war with a strange species that appeared out of nowhere and started destroying everything in their path.
It could be a campaign that has intrigue, combat, and the pc's can travel to new and interesting places in the solar system and kill bad-guys.... bu who are the bad-guys?
There's a short scenario in Kenneth Hite's awesome GRUPS: Weird War about the possible consequences of Hitler and Stalin also developing nuclear weapons.
It assumes that they would have used the bomb as incompetently as they deployed most other "super weapons" of WWII. In dribs and drabs as they were painstakingly built one at a time, and against targets of questionable military value, instead of massing them for a knock-out punch.
In game terms this sets up a Twilight: 2000 situation in the 1940's, with the PC's being American or Allied troops trying to escape a collapsing Europe.
There is the possibilities that anti matter weapons create manna.
In a game any technology sufficiently advanced, can be magic.
Maybe warp drive and teleportation experiments result in elves and orcs being born. Lizard eggs have dragons hatch out of them. That sort of thing.
I'm a bit pressed for time, but another thread that might give you some ideas, here.
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They fly at mega height!
Who are we to argue?
The creation of brain-control and re-writing technology gets out of control, creating myriad psychotics and zombies. The psionic backlash attracts alien influences as civilization crumbles. Some of the alien technology is used to create generation and/or sleeper ships to transport survivors to new systems.
I've long been intrigued by the Macho Women with Guns setting, which has been released in a D20 version, and which I've been thinking of adapting to Pathfinder. I've got a bunch of my own ideas and changes, like giving Texas a little more respect than is given in the sourcebook, but the basics of the setting are like that in the book.
The short story is that the foreign and domestic policies of <insert name of U.S. President> combined with an effort to create a food shortage results in starting the third world war, which goes through chemical, nuclear and biological phases. A plague results which kills most of the men, leading to a world where the women have to cope with alien invasions, demonic invasions, the return of the Bthulhu, and everything else that can possibly happen.
Society breaks down into factions that keep order as best they can in their areas while fighting all the threats to earth and each other. (In my version, the demons ensure that the Second U.S. Civil War never ends, for example.) Each area of the world has its own unique flavor, based on whatever attempts at humor can be attempted.
Chicago, for example, is run by a gangster named Alice Capone. Alaska is governed by a communist regime led by Aunt Josephine. Chernobyl is overrun by radioactive zombies. Europe is dominated by the Eighth Reich, while Scandinavia is the realm of amazon barbarians in fur bikinis. (That global warming is really something.)
This sourcebook has inspired a couple of other ideas for me. One is a "Stand of the Last Men" campaign at the start of the androcidal plague, where men are dying off and the PCs need to find out why and how to solve the problem. The other is applying the idea of an androcidal plague to a fantasy world like the World of Greyhawk.
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There is the possibilities that anti matter weapons create manna.
In a game any technology sufficiently advanced, can be magic.
Maybe warp drive and teleportation experiments result in elves and orcs being born. Lizard eggs have dragons hatch out of them. That sort of thing.
I actually don't mind the general premise of the new Gamma World game, I just wish the rules didn't flux so much. The basic idea is that something goes wrong with the Hadron Super-Collider and causes an "accident" that merges realities. So you could technically have D&D critters running around with GW monsters.
That said, if there were a Pathfinder-ized Post-Apocalypse game, I'd like to see a setting that's harsh and about survival. I don't mind the idea of using magic, but I'd rather see it use mutations and psionics (as they feel more sci-fi). Also, having a variety of groups and factions would also be cool. One of the ideas I played with during an old Gamma World game was the influence of extraterrestrials. Feeling threatened by the human race, well placed aliens in society were actually to blame for the disaster ... they then used Earth as a social/science experiment, allowing for certain mutations, while also allowing for certain groups to be equipped a certain way. All in all, it was pretty fun. We never reached the end, but if the group had, they were going to find out about the aliens and attempt to stop them ;)
As part of my proposed Macho Women with Guns world, I was going to have the concept of a Magic Field and a Faith Field, which were believed responsible for arcane and divine magic, respectively.
Scientific instruments could detect and measure the Magic Field, and scientists knew that it was growing in strength after the apocalypse. They did not have instruments that could measure the Faith Field, but the fact that certain spellcasters did not register on their Magic Field instruments indicated that something like the Faith Field must exist.
Borrowing from a lot of the video games I've been playing and movies I've been watching, I introduced this into my campaign. Essentially, it's the end times and a few powerful fiends have taken up control of the world. Demonic creatures, hordes of undead creatures, and hideous mutants can be found roaming freely. Most towns and cities have become ruins. Groups of survivors roam the wasted territories, just trying to live. Some angels remain to aid the resistance, but they are in danger as well. An incredibly powerful evil being (the one responsible for kicking off the apocalypse) has cast a spell which severed the world from the heavens, stranding the angels without reinforcements. Divine characters can still gain their spells, but the spells are restricted (spells which would allow them to commune with their deities are restricted), and celestial creatures can not be summoned by summoning classes.
The world is dying. The only people who can set it right are the heroes.
Another possibility is that the characters fight their way out of the disaster zone to find, the bulkhead. Areas infected by zombies and mutants have been isolated on a ship called the Metamorphisis Gamma and shot into space. Another possibility is the MiniScope, from Carnival of Monsters, from Dr. Who. Hundreds of monster infected landscapes, all being watched by a timelord called the Collector. He is trying to find their weaknesses. If the characters clear a loop by killing all the monsters, the loop ends and they can travel to the next time/space area.