Why I Have Eight Post-Apocalypse Settings (Patreon)

I had two very, very early post-apoc influences, and they hooked me on the genre which I love to this day.

The first of those was the live-action Saturday morning show, "Ark II." For those not familiar, it revolves around the crew of a mobile scifi vehicles (the Ark II) who are agents from a "base of surviving scientists" who wish to explore the new dark-ages 400 years into the future after civilization has collapsed. I don't think we ever see that enclave of scientists who sent Ark II out, but it's mentioned, and the Ark II is exploring and trying to bring civilization back where they can. It's almost a small-scale post-apoc Star Trekk, with the prime directive reversed to "Interfere with every culture you encounter if you can somehow help."

The second is the 1950s novel "Alas, Babylon." It's about a small town in Florida surviving a nuclear exchange between America and. the USSR. It starts before the nukes drop, and focuses on what it takes to keep the town running as the centralized governments and infrastructure fail.

Both of those present a post-apoc world as a place where individuals must DO something for the greater good and safety of others, and that remains one of my favorite sub-genres of the fallen-civilization oeuvre. I ran into the novel (and later movie) Malevil shortly after and it took similar themes and applied them to people who happened to be in a castle in France when the world ended, and then A Canticle for Leibowitz (which is famous for good reason).

The next set of big influences on me were Axa (comic), A Boy and His Dog (movie), Damnation Alley, Judge Dredd (comic), Level 7 (novel), the original Planet of the Apes movies (and animated series), Thundarr, Road Warrior, Wizards... and Car Wars and Gamma World. (Aaaaaand the Toothopolis ads for Crest... which II used to flesh out ideas taken from Axa and Ark II. What can I say, I was a weird kid.)

All of these presented less a story of trying to survive or rebuild the post-apocalypse, but treating it as a setting for action/adventure. While they could get grim, it was no more drim then darker fantasy of the time, and the ability to mix scifi trappings and modern language with D&D-style adventures and comic-book style mutants thrilled me. And in these, some level of functioning society was established already--often savage and/or privative, and with :ruins" and "wilds" and "dungeons" that matched their D&D equivalents in function if not in name, but functioning no less well than fantasy fictional settlements. This became the baseline from which I ran or wished to play in post-apoc, often (but not always) with such adventures serving as the points along the way to building or protecting something better.

Not long after I ran into the Morrow Project ttRPG, which influence me so heavily it inspired my setting entry in the d20 Apocalypse book for d20 Modern. I only played Morrow Project using its rules once. But the setting was a favorite for Hero system games, especially (early on) combing Danger International and Justice, Inc, which allowed for a great "paramilitary cryosleep team wakes up in a post-apoc world and needs to rebuild civilization" setting.

A TON of stuff has gone into my post-apoc influence hopper since those first encounters in the 1970s and 80s, but the way I approach post-apoc ideas remains heavily shared by those two essential approaches I first encountered. When I write for post-apoc games, run them, or play in them, I borrow from the things that I love the most, and that have worked best for me in the past (while tying to keep things new and interesting).

My most successful post poc campaigns as GM have been either "Young heroes from the same small post-apoc settlement become major heroes" or "characters from modern world end up in post-apoc world somehow," and the overarching plotlines of either "cross Mutant North America to get to the fabled Safe Place/Cache of Advanced Tech" or "Go On Adventures to Protect and Develop the Small Town of Basically Good People which is facing some Major New/Growing Threat."

Mixing those in any of the 4 combinations works well for me.

I have done a TON of work on a GammaFinder setting and rules , designed to use Starfinder 1st ed as the framework of a ttRPG experience that follows these elements find work best and are the most fun. I have done less work (but could adopt a lot of GammaFinder) for other post-apoc settings, including Metamorphosis Gamma, The Mirk, #CrashBoxCity, MegaRuins (and its movie inspirations), Underground States of America, 'Scrapers, and Frontier Island.

So, yeah, I have SEVEN post-apocalypse settings I have worked on. And a set of rules partially written. And a need to start publishing thins for profit again...

Hey, Since I Have Your Attention! 

My friend (and brilliant cartoonist) Stan! has done a whole series of drawings inspired by my online ramblings. He refers to them as "Damn It, Owen!" cartoons, since they get in his head and prevent him from doing other work until he draws them. He's been doing these for years, so now we're collecting them into a book!

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