Post-apocalyptic setting?

[CaptainPenguin]

Well, I've been listening to Rammstein and reading a lot of post-apocalyptic books (including A Canticle For Leibowitz and V for Vendetta; what stories! They should be compulsive reading) and I'm thinking that instead of doing one of the desert settings that I was going to do, I might do a post-apocalyptic setting instead (possibly in the same timeline as "A Mouthful of Dust"?).
Thoughts?

[Strolen]

How far are you going to go with it? Is it fantasy in the future or are you going to be allowing a lot of surviving technology? Gamma world it with mutations and such?

I like the post apocalyptic personally...much better then your basic science fiction.

Plus, I enjoyed the Canticle was well. I felt the heartache when he realized what a blueprint really was. Most memorable part of the story for me since I read it so long ago.

I voted apocalyptic.

[CaptainPenguin]

Yeah, Canticle was a masterpiece. I disagree with the views of the priest at the end, but that isn't the point.

I was thinking pretty soon after the "apocalypse", whatever it is- maybe so that great-grandfathers remember it.

[Kinslayer]

Recent apocalypses have different flavour than aged post-post-apocalypses.

Personally, I would like to see new ideas for how society changes due to the effects of the apocalypse, and how humanity adapts out of necessity.  It's interesting to me to wonder how things would change, and what things would stay the same.  

All too often, it's the same social changes that I see in a post-apocalyptic setting, whether in a game, book, or movie.  Sometimes the nature of the actual apocalypse changes (away from the now-cliche default of nuclear war), but that's just background window dressing.  

There's much more potential to the genre than the level of tech pre- & post-, or the possibilities of mutation or magic.

[CaptainPenguin]

Well tell me what you would like to see done differently, so that I'm not boring you?

[Ancient Gamer]

I think it is looking good Captain.

As you might know, I have just begun a post apoc setting this summer. It is still in its infancy and thus I have no great advice, but these are elements that have so far been included in my setting, perhaps they can help?:
The cliches:
-Mutations
-Wasteland
-Guns and technology
-Drugs
-Northern Europe: Orson Welles inspired alien craft and machinery
-Struggle for survival in a harsh and unfriendly climate
-Holocaust caused by Nukes and environmental disaster
-Aliens: There are aliens with psionic powers. They are called "the Strangers"

Other:
-Satire: Picturing society of today in a totally alien light, as it is completely misunderstood by the survivors.
-US NOT destroyed as seems to be the standard, instead it and England are the last remnants of human civilization. (Think Blade Runnerish cities and the countryside and mountains available only to the rich and powerful)
-Undead=Partially animated cyborg corpses, the cybernetic implants and digits still working despite the demise of the host
-Space Travel: The Chinese, The Americans and the British made it into space. There are colonies on the moon, but those mostly went to hell during the war too. There are orbital stations and there is a Chinese colony on mars.
-Russia and Canada: Huge wilderness where nuclear disasters has all but wiped out human life. Animals and plants have survived and now even thrives, but humans are few between and located in huge refuges and metropolitan cities of squalor
-Middle East: My players are located in Yemen, a truly horrible place after the war. The middle east got hit first and got hit hardest. There are roaming bands of Forowen (gypsies), Isari (Israeli) Mercs, Ganubi (Somali) cannibals and there are some Falawi (Arab) towns. There are secluded Startraveller (American and English) fortress towns in which the Startravellers play golf, dance charleston and relive american culture from "the great era" (1920-1960) and similar for the english counterparts (relive Victorian England). The inside of the fortress towns is lush and green, while the outside is desolate desert (The southern Rub al-Khali desert)

I must add that we enjoy the cliches vastly. To vaguely quote MoonHunter: It is all up to the presentation.

[Kinslayer]

Well tell me what you would like to see done differently, so that I'm not boring you?

I'm sorry, that was not meant as criticism.  It was more of a generalised "what I'd kinda like" post.

[CaptainPenguin]

America, being what it is, is a chancy subject. It is, sorry to say it, powerful, rich, heavy-handed, polarized, and (as far as I can tell) hated! It is not unrealistic to suppose that in the event of a huge war of some kind (especially a nuclear war with less ground involvement; my nation has the finest army in the world, possibly with the exception of the Israelis), the good old U.S.of A. would be nuked into a Third-World s**t-hole, our very few allies notwithstanding. In my (sarcastic, polarized) opinion, we're the nation that all other nations aspire to nuke.
So we might come out of a Big War as a Stone-Age wasteland.
Another possibility is a war over gas- since my nation doesn't seem real concerned about that right now, a Humboldt disaster (in which the oil is gone) would probably wreck our infrastructure, if not us as a nation.

ON THE OTHER HAND....
Owing to our huge size, huge wealth, powerful military, and (of late) strike-first politics, we might not come out so bad, relatively, and there I'm stressing relatively. It is possible that we might rip through with less damage than all the others, but that doesn't mean the U.S. would be unharmed- no, no. The big cities would definitely get bombed, probably starting with Washington D.C., though New York does have more people, and thus, more impact. We'd probably have to go Total-War-mode like we did in WWII, throwing all our (albeit large) resources behind the war effort. In the end, if we came out all right, we'd probably still be economically destroyed, and its all downhill from there (thus, AG's Blade-Runner-esque cities are not a bad hypothesis).

[CaptainPenguin]

IDEAS....
-Big War (that's what it'll be called) sparked mostly over a scarcity of oil, with a lot of political tension thrown in for good measure.

-I think I will adopt AG's cyborg Undead; they're just too good of an idea!  

-Two major European centers of population (one's a city-state, one's really more of a district): the New Holy Reich of Neues Berlin and Novya Moskva (anarchic semi-kleptocracy built in and around the ruins of Moscow).

-Mechs, hell yeah!

-The Followers of Morgenstern, a weird cult-hive of people who aspire to become cyborg-ized by their god-leader, a supercomputer called Morgenstern.

-The Freedom Army, a large, well-armed militia of the French from the Big War which devoted itself to the cause of stopping "American tyranny".

-Siberia is wilderness now; got nuked and then became a sort of bizarre mutant tundra-jungle, with giant carpets of moss and insane fungi, as well as evil-looking pines.

-Japan is hyper-urbanized and technological (think Akira-style).

-Mutants, robots, fallout-savages, cargo cults, and the like.

-Nuke-Winter and Global Warming counteract against each other- huge storms and violent weather (probably not scientific, but hey, who cares?).

IF the U.S. is kaput:
-A community of militant Christian-fanatics in the Southeast (Florida, Georgia, the Virginias maybe) that refer to the time before the Big War as "Babylon" and all others as "Pagans" (Mouthful of Dust tie-in?)

-A military state begun by a stranded U.S. military unit on the last surviving base in Europe; they still cling the hope that somebody is coming to rescue them, even despite being beset by the Freedom Army out of France.

IF the U.S. is (mostly) okay, then radiation-sealed cities policed by robots and ruled by the now-despotic President Campbell (130 years old, sustained by nanotech; Big Brother tendencies); a "democracy" that is really a pluto/aristocracy. Possibly some sort of virtual-reality-consciousness network so that not everybody can see the squalor and decay?

I could probably incorporate the two ideas- perhaps the pseudo-U.S. exists only in the Northeast or West coast of the (former) nation.

[Ancient Gamer]

Good ideas CP!

"my US" was not entirely unscathed during the war. The interior states were spared, as were some of the coastal states, but the government was annihilated and several important states got hit hard.

Thus there is not a "US" as such, but rather the remnants of it; high tech nations like the Christian Republic of Idaho, the Tennesse-Louisiana Intercity League and so forth. Some parts of the states are just infertile wasteland and the borders to such areas are guarded by heavily armed patrols in hovercars and the like; you never know what comes shambling out from those hellish places.

Still it is a dark age of sorts, with much of the technological advancements lost, and only occasionally are powerful artefacts from the past found within factories and offices close to the initial blast sites.

[Ancient Gamer]

A word of caution: Avoid the "arms race"!
Some tech is really cool and personally I love tech (and magic items for that matter). Still tech must be treated like magic items, lest the PCs become walking avatars of mayhem and destruction.

Here are some good tricks I use to give the PCs guns, while at the same time limiting its use:
-Ammunition scarcity. No one makes ammo like they used to. In primitive areas such can only be found through salvaging or attacking the rare expedition from a technological superior culture (dangerous).

-Ammunition scarcity 2: The primitive hordes! So your players ain't scared of those spear wielding savages now that they have those Heckler and Koch miniguns? Well, they should be! As wave after wave of savages hit them, fanatic and uncaring whether they live or die, the PCs awesome artillery and armor is put on a test. Then the ammunition runs out...
Time to ruuuuuuun!

-Escalation. The PCs begin with little besides some combat knives, a bow and arrow and an instruction manual on how to use guns. The arms race is more like an arms crawl.

-Technical know how. The PCs finally got that awesome Smith & Wesson beauty. But do they know how to override the thumb print personal safety activation mechanism?

-Silence is golden. The PCs got a lovely sniper rifle with awesome targetting mechanisms and an impressive maximum range. But the sound is so loud it attracts all manner of unwanted attention. Do they risk attracting the attention of those high tech city guards in their patrol choppers?

-Silence is golden 2: A gun is useless when the enemy is unseen! The enemy use darts and crossbows and hide in thick foliage. They ambush the PC who sought to rely on guns for an easy killing. The gun avails no superiority on close range, excepting damage increase. Still poison will kill the PC, backstabbing will kill the PC and the gun is far more noisy than the enemy is.

-Ammunition and Guns are economy. Those bullets can buy medicin. Those guns can buy favours. Seems like the PCs have to save bullets for more than combat. Ordinary money might exist, but bullets are the ideal leverage in a trade.

[Enthroned Carcass]

Man, I have the perfect setting for you. It's post-apocalyptic. It's german. It's presented with a typical german industrial-metal tune, much like Rammstein. Go here:

http://www.degenesis.de/

(mind want to sit back and watch the lenghty intro, if only for the sake of the aforementioned tune/impressive art)

[CaptainPenguin]

Well, I don't really speak German, but thanks anyway, Carc!