Humanity as we know it has ended and there is no going back. All that is left to do is survive and maybe there is the chance to rebuild.

The campaign I am playing in right now is a post-apocalypse version of earth. We don't really know what caused the apocalypse, but magic and monsters have brought mayhem upon mankind. All the big cities have been overrun with monsters and only a few small settlements have survived. Our characters explore abandoned strip malls, fight vampires in Appalachia, use moonshine as currency, and avoid paved roads because of the fiendish biker gangs. The main inspirations of this setting are Sweet Tooth, Mad Max, Hellboy, and Adventure Time.

Common post-apocalypse settings include the famous zombie apocalypse (World War Z), aliens (Quiet Place), disease (Sweet Tooth), nuclear (Mad Max, Adventure Time), and more. What other post-apocalypse stories inspire your world-building?

Do any of y'all run or play games with this genre? If you don't, do you have any ideas for post-apocalypse Dnd games? 

I've always wanted to run a game like that. Instead of the Fallout-style radioactive wasteland, I would use more like the magically corrupted Mournland mechanics from Ebberon, or any of the less pleasant regional effects from Tasha's  whenever the players need to survive out in the wastes.

Most of my worlds are either set so far after the apocalypse that people have rebuilt, or just before that apocalypse. I had one apocalyptic setting, but that one was based on the game OFF, which is set in an industrial wasteland that was rebuilt by a group of absolute monsters who had no idea what made the world actually "work" and tried to rebuild the world in their image.

Never played or run a post-apocalyptic game, though if my players hadn't beat the BBEG, my previous campaign would have turned into one. I was already prepping for a tier 3 "you broke the world, now how do you fix it?" arc. Fortunately, they eked out a win.

I've had a half-baked idea in my head for a while about demigods in the wake of a catastrophic divine war. Tier 3/4 play, the cosmos is in shambles because the pantheon went to the mat with each other, and the ruined Prime Material is sucking power out of the upper planes. It's an apocalypse in the sense that the gods' war devastated the multiverse, and the party are agents of those wounded gods sent to restore order before reality collapses in on itself and the primordial forces of chaos claim total victory.

I had a game where, every 100 years or so, locust-like beings would swarm across the desert to wreak absolute havoc. Then, during a lull (of 300 years) there were no attacks, defensive structures were neglected and fell into ruin - and then they returned tenfold. Queue the end of civilisation. So the whole game was about buying time, minimizing losses, getting out in time, trying to reach the coast and maybe escape across the sea. 

Turns out it's too dark - no one wants to play like that. The concept was cool though (I felt). Rogue-like. Better not get too invested in any particular character, because every session is a potential TPK. Was fun while it lasted =)

I love this in concept but it takes the right players. If you can build a group excited about the themes of apocalypse, it's going to be a good game. If not, folks may balk.

Quote from Agile_DM >>

I love this in concept but it takes the right players. If you can build a group excited about the themes of apocalypse, it's going to be a good game. If not, folks may balk.

 This is true. When running an apocalypse you definitely should check with players because of the themes. This is also true for many post-apocalypse games, but not all of them. For example, I doubt many folks would have issues with playing in a world inspired by Adventure Time. If an apocalypse happened in your world's distant past and now the characters are exploring it and seeing how the cataclysmic event has affected the world, it might not have the overwhelming dread or hopelessness many apocalypse stories fall into. 

Sweet Tooth is a story that balances it well. The apocalypse is pretty long and drawn out and people have to learn how to deal with it. There are portions of it that are very dark and bleak, but the characters never give up on hope.  

Growing up on Final Fantasy games, my worlds almost always have some advanced ancient race or another that has gone through an apocalypse. But it's usually long enough after that the old world is more myth and legend than memory. I don't think I could run a true post-apocalypse game without loss being a major theme, and that's just heavier content matter than my group wants to deal with during their gaming time I think.

One setting from other media that really grabbed me was Horizon Zero Dawn (although I have not played the sequel yet). The way the story unfolds and explains the world was just so good.

I am not big on running urban games, but something based on Hugh Howey's Wool series (adapted to HBO as Silo) would be really interesting. All of known civilization trapped in a confined space, giving the party motivation to figure out what happened, why, and what the outside is really like.

Quote from The_Summoning_Dark >>

Humanity as we know it has ended and there is no going back. All that is left to do is survive and maybe there is the chance to rebuild.

The campaign I am playing in right now is a post-apocalypse version of earth. We don't really know what caused the apocalypse, but magic and monsters have brought mayhem upon mankind. All the big cities have been overrun with monsters and only a few small settlements have survived. Our characters explore abandoned strip malls, fight vampires in Appalachia, use moonshine as currency, and avoid paved roads because of the fiendish biker gangs. The main inspirations of this setting are Sweet Tooth, Mad Max, Hellboy, and Adventure Time.

Common post-apocalypse settings include the famous zombie apocalypse (World War Z), aliens (Quiet Place), disease (Sweet Tooth), nuclear (Mad Max, Adventure Time), and more. What other post-apocalypse stories inspire your world-building?

Do any of y'all run or play games with this genre? If you don't, do you have any ideas for post-apocalypse Dnd games? 

 

 
Mid-apocalypse in my case. The world has taken an absolutely savage beating by the time designated as its present day. The main government collapsed, two organizations fought over the remains until they were on their last legs, and to top it all off the tree that holding multiple demons trapped was burned. Civilization hasn’t completely fallen, however. people are scattered and disorganized but can still maintain defended zones. But the hidden main villains of the setting are poised to deliver their final blow.

So I have run such in the past.

The premise was basically “the bbeg won”, killed everything good, and the assorted minion critters started building their little kingdoms. Gobs, bugbears, gnolls, etc. They essentially were the world’s people.

PCs came from pockets of survival minded sorts, hiding, raiding, avoiding capture. Very dark stuff. I used Planet of the Apes for inspo.

It was a very depressing game, and we moved on after a year. Main campaign was “bring back a good god, build the first human city.”

Technically even the Forgotten Realms is a post apocalyptic setting, just so far past the apocalypse that the world has rebuilt.

Does Dark Sun count? Because I’ve played in a few of those. They never really felt apocalyptic, though. Mainly because we quickly got tired of tracking our rations, encumbrance and chance of breaking equipment. And scarcity of resources is a big part of the genre.

Yes, Dark Sun is most definitely post apocalyptic. I love Dark Sun, but then again I have no problem tracking rations, etc.

Monte Cook Games is coming out with a sourcebook for post-apocalyptic adventures in the Cypher system, called Rust and Redemption. It's not D&D, but it will assuredly have great ideas abound. I've never been dissatisfied with a product by MCG.

I'm looking into a Thundarr-esque setting where the apocalypse has basically destroyed humanities civilizations. I'm using rules from Drakkenheim for the strange eldritch radiations and some of the monsters. I know that after two thousand years, basically nothing would be left of our buildings or infrastructure unless it was maintained by some power. But i love the pulp feeling of that sort of thing, like the torch from the Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes. For the adventures, I envision adventures that play like MCC- I even thought about converting some of them, but decided on a different pathway for the meta plot.

I remember way back in the 80s and 90s there was a game called Gamma-World that some friends and I played a few times. That was wicked fun. It really struck a chord for us at the time because the Mad Max movies were still fresh and relatively current, and because the Cold War made us feel like we were on the brink of Armageddon every other day. I'm pretty sure they've made updated versions of Gamma-World, so maybe someday I'll find a group to play it with again. 

I like the idea of a post-apocalyptic D&D setting - like maybe the Tarrasque just woke up and rampaged across the world for a year before finally being put back to sleep for another century, but all the biggest cities have been destroyed, crops were destroyed so there's widespread hunger, trade routes have been disrupted, there are power vacuums everywhere because so many of the world's capable leaders and warriors and healers were killed during the Tarrasque's rampage. So the players would have to deal with a collapsed world and either revel in it or try to fix it. 

Wait until you find out that Gamma World was ported into 1e, officially...