Apocalypse Tao

[kumakami]

so I've been rereading my deadlands:hell on earth books as of late. and the need to write a post apoc. rpg is in me. It dawns on me though, what type of Apocalypse? Zombies, while a fav of mine, have been done and redone. While I could find a new angle, look at the post I made in general, it feels lackluster right now. Magical/religus is another popular genre, but as with zombies..MEH! I have a few ideas but not sure which is the best angle to move toward

1) Quantum event/ goodbye standar time+space+entropy rules.
2) Quantum event/ say hello to the Alternitive Humans
3) aliens....
4) mixed bag (deadlands is nukewar/Magical/religus/ lots O zombies)

[Onix]

There is the old nuclear apocalypse, that could be interesting because it might not involve Russia and the US directly.

Meteorite impact? Not terribly interesting by itself but has the potential to wipe out most of civilization and the story of a rising civilization can be interesting.

A world without bees?

I once had an idea for a post apoc story that went something like this. Somebody invented flying cars with some future tech. Over decades, roads disappeared because no one used them. There would still be roads or walking paths in cities and probably still railroads and subways. Then something made the flying cars suddenly stop working. I had it worked out what it would be but now I forget. (nuclear emp? That wasn't the original idea but it's possible.) Society collapses because there is no transportation now. Cities would struggle to survive but food wouldn't be shipped in from farms and there aren't enough rail lines anymore to support a whole city. There's no fuel being shipped in, no coal, oil, gasoline. Riots and looting prevail Some pockets of civilization especially on port cities but most places had become too dependent on the flying cars.

The world's supply of artificial cheese flavor dries up and anarchy ensues?

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Let me pose a couple of questions to guide this quest.

First of all, do you want a hard or soft apocalypse? A hard ending is something like a meteor impact, nuclear war - very little in the way of old cities and infrastructure left. A super plague or chemical weapon would leave buildings mostly intact, but would kill lots of people.

When does this event take place? Is it a 1950's nuclear attack, an ice age in the 1970s, or a massive solar flare induced electromagnetic Pulse shorting out electronics around the world in 2010? Older stuff might be less efficient and heavy - but also more fault tolerant. Compare a computer controlled car of today to a carburetor model from the 1960s, or a turbine powered M1A2 tank to a M-48's diesel.

How long after the event is the game set? Right after-wards, with the characters surviving the initial hazards? Five years on where you can still hope to find unexpired cans and working vehicles? Fifteen years into the rebuilding era and the first generation of new adults? Or perhaps a half century on when only the oldest tell stories of metal boxes with wheels?

What survives into the modern era? How common are functioning computers - a few here and there, hundreds as the basis for a new technological nation-state, or none at all?

Another thing to think about is the themes. "On the Beach" is about hopelessness felt by survivors of a nuclear war, while "The Postman" is more upbeat, and stresses that working together will get people through the hard times. Are you going to draw on the Western as inspiration (like Mad Max etc. - the lone gunman/knight errant, robber barons/draconian city states) or is it a simulation of the end times? Perhaps its Romeo and Juliette with mutants as children of waring enclaves try to make peace between themselves.

Of course, there is the question of oddities - do you want radiation to produce mutants rather than leukemia, for example.

Is the event on earth or limited to that planet? Could it be the far future, and then something happens that shuts of Faster than Light Travel? In the game Blue Planet, the colony ship never received re-supply, so the initial batch of settlers needed to go native and adopt low tech.

After all that, I'll suggest two actual ideas for a setting.

What if the second world war saw the same sort of chemical exchanges as the first? Germany managed to develop nerve agents in the interwar period - which the allies didn't even learn about until they captured stockpiles in the closing months. Certified super-weapon they never used - at least in part because the allied heavy bombers could drop mustard gas anywhere they pleased. Still, a torpedo's warhead is about 280kg/550lbs and a type IX U-boat could reach the US coast, as could some Japanese submarines. No need to go into this "what if the axis got nuclear weapons" and it would leave a lot more intact, though perhaps with poisonous residue.

Another option is that you have a large orbital colony - tens of thousands, or perhaps even millions in an O'Neil cylinder. However, the close confines means a viral infection spreads rapidly - especially one with a long latency period before symptoms set in. Lots of people start dying, panic sets in, a bit of damage to the station, and no one from outside will approach because they don't want this planet side. For some real fun - its only lethal to adults, so you've got the space station of lost children - like Babylon Five meets Lord of the Flies.

[SheikhJahbooty]

I like the first one, the Quantum event thingie with messed up space-time.

But don't have magic or psychic powers because that would make it too much like Rifts.

You can still have magic-like things but make them different and unique. Like healing magic is pretty common in RPGs, but instead of having healing spells, have like a causality undo, a skill that lets you figure out what to say or do to undo the effects of another action, in this case, the effects of being shot.

Hmm, now that I've written that I do worry that a post apocalyptic game with an inconsistent space and time might turn out to be level insane.

[kumakami]

CA: thank you. however you missed the point. I was looking for concept atm not the details. But you have given my much to think of.

SheikhJahbooty: I'm leaning towards that as well. The "powers" of the game were going to be Quantum echos, think bits of strange Alt reality that are attached to characters.