In another thread, The Butcher resurrected an old discussion point:

Quote[I think it was Jeff Rients who once wrote that "the default, implied setting for D&D is post-apocalyptic, period, full stop."

I figure it's worth resurrection in its own thread.

My position at the time when Rients made the claim was that I see the point -- yes, there are hints of a more advanced civilization in the ruins that adventurers are trying to reclaim -- but calling it " post-apocalyptic " is silly. The fall of Rome was considered an apocalypse, so technically we're a post-apocalyptic society, by that reasoning.

Thoughts?

I think The Butcher nailed it. This is precisely how I used D&D historically, and continue with ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG as I author its tone:

People huddle together in walled cities, proclaiming themselves conquerors over the vast wilderness outside their gates. Yet, long tracts of road remain the demesne of barbarians and highwaymen. Those intrepid (or stupid) enough to wander off the beaten path may encounter things far more vicious and brutal.

Thematically, chaos versus order is a great place to start. It's not necessarily about the common tropes of "orcs versus everyone else". It's the fight to civilize the barbarians. And, it rings true in our own personal history - even today.

Quote from: talysmanThe fall of Rome was considered an apocalypse, so technically we're a post-apocalyptic society, by that reasoning.

I think we've moved well past the "post-apocalyptic" phase nowadays, but there were some eras of medieval history that come pretty close to apocalyptic.

The era I imagine most when I think of D&D is the 14th century (Europe), partly because of the presence of plate armour.  Here's a short list of the stuff that happened in that time:

- The Little Ice Age is beginning.  Winters are getting colder and summers cooler and rainier.  In the north, glaciers are destroying whole villages.

- The Great Famine (1315-17) wracks Europe with massive crop failures.  Even the nobility sometimes don't have enough to eat.  Cannibalism and infanticide become shockingly commonplace.  Prices for some basic commodities increaser over 300%.  More than one in ten people living in towns and cities die from starvation.   Banditry and other criminal activity become commonplace.

- The Black Death strikes in 1348-50 and kills aproximatelya third to half of the entire population of Europe.  Think about that: take all the people you know, then imagine one in three of them dead from plague.  Total numbers are upward of 75 million people, perhaps as many as 200 million - and this is a time when there are only about 500 million people on the entire planet.  Religious scapegoating is rampant.  There are lynchings and murders of Jews, gypsies, foreigners, lepers, and even those with mild skin conditions.

- The Hundred Years War begins, commencing a century-long period of inermittant slaughter in Western Europe.  Mercenary free companies both employed and unemployed roam the countryside pillaging.  France is a war-torn ruin of a country divided by civil war and general mayhem.

- The Great Schism results in a fragmented church, with multiple popes.  There are riots in the streets.  The shattered state of the church complicates European diplomacy enormously as kings have to decide which pope to back.

- Peasant revolts generated by the War and the Plague threaten to overturn the social order.  Mobs of armed peasants begin killing nobles and others of import.  Gaols are opened, records burnt.

Sounds pretty apocalyptic to me...

To my mind any setting with that many unexplored ruins and tombs for the robbing is 'post apocalypse'... even if the apocalypse was small scale and only effected that local speck of civilization.

I guess a place could not fall but they just kept building and the ruins are the old bits that got buried... but I can only think of scifi examples of that. Ghormenghast, maybe? (where's that damn game?!!!)

Quote from: talysman;745974My position at the time when Rients made the claim was that I see the point -- yes, there are hints of a more advanced civilization in the ruins that adventurers are trying to reclaim -- but calling it " post-apocalyptic " is silly. The fall of Rome was considered an apocalypse, so technically we're a post-apocalyptic society, by that reasoning.

Thoughts?

Dark Ages Europe in the centuries following the fall of the Western Roman Empire is best understood as a 'Post-Apocalyptic Society'; that's certainly a much more valuable prism than projecting the relatively healthy situation in the Eastern Roman Empire onto the West and calling it all Late Antiquity, as was fashionable for awhile - thankfully that fad now seems to be passing.
Arthur, if he lived, lived in a post-apocalyptic society, but Western Europe had ceased to be a post-apocalypse society by Charlemagne's coronation AD 800; it was becoming early-medieval. In AD 2014 the fall of the Roman Empire does continue to cast a shadow over us, it was the last really major civilisational collapse, and people often wonder if it will happen again. But it's not very meaningful to call our society post-apocalyptic (the most recent big semi-apocalypse was the WW1-WW2 disaster 1914-1945, before that the 30 Years War - neither caused a full civilisational collapse).

Or: Dark Ages Greece ca 900 BC was post-apocalyptic, living in the aftermath of the collapse of Mycenean civilisation. That collapse influenced Classical Greece ca 450 BC, but that was not a 'post-apocalyptic' society.

Greyhawks background in the boxed set strongly suggests that the setting takes place after a nuclear war of magical or conventional methods. So Yes. D&D can have a PA feel. Dark Sun is another example as it is also a PA setting much more PA than Greyhawk.

One of the key elements of most PA settings is a massive downgrade in tech level. The fall of the Roman empire did not massively effect the overall tech of the world other than certain techniques being lost that were not accessible to the general populace anyhow.

Very much a YMMV thing. I see the fall of Rome as having some minor PA elements. But overall not much really changed. They werent reduced to clubs and stones or living in caves. (Except for the people who used clubs and slings anyhoo... ahem...) The Dark Ages certainly were not PA as they were simply a stagnation of overall advancement.

Dragon Storm is a pseudo-PA setting complete with the equivalent of radiation mutations. But the overall tech level of the setting did not change.

Greyhawk and most simmilar settings are what was once termed Reconstruction Era settings. The world has recovered from whatever happened and is its own world now. Greyhawk, Tekumel, Battletech and others fit this. Gamma World iteself oft fits this as well.

Other settings have a disaster happen but are not Post Apoc as nothing overall changes other than a empire is lost perhaps. The world in general remains pretty much the same. Dragonlance, Dragon Storm, Rome and various others.

Which is my viewpoint from doing A-LOT of PA stuff and being a moderator on the GW list since the 90s.

The very first D&D campaign I ever played in was set in post WWIII Spain some 200 years after the great nuclear war. When Gamma World was originally published and released, it fit right in with what we were already playing.

I agree with Jeff's quote completely.

It's the main reason for the Great Plague in Hulks and Horrors. Even Arcana Rising has shades of this in it's deeper setting history.

An apocalypse is a seriously handy tool for setting up gaming environments.

Quote from: talysman;745974My position at the time when Rients made the claim was that I see the point -- yes, there are hints of a more advanced civilization in the ruins that adventurers are trying to reclaim -- but calling it " post-apocalyptic " is silly. The fall of Rome was considered an apocalypse, so technically we're a post-apocalyptic society, by that reasoning.

Thoughts?

"The original creators of the Dungeons & Dragons games were fans of Jack Vance and incorporated many aspects of the Dying Earth series into the game."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Earth

A "post apocalypse" really depends on how you define the apocalypse it's supposed to follow. For me, an apocalypse means a complete collapse and renewal, a revelation of sorts, a lifting of the veil caused by great disruptions in the world.

I do think that D&D implies that some ancient civilizations and empires preceded the current era of play, in order to have a rich tapestry of a past embodied by ruins, temples and dungeons to explore out there, forgotten, where treasures were sealed away, in wait of an adventuring party to plunder them.

Whether that setting is post-apocalyptic stricto sensu depends whether the collapse (or collapses) of the preceding civilization(s) was general, and if it basically triggered a rebuilding of societies (or points of light) from the ground up. That'll vary from setting to setting.

Merriam-Webster defines apocalypse as: "a great disaster : a sudden and very bad event that causes much fear, loss, or destruction".

So it is fairly vague, more like an adjective.

Quote from: Omega;746034Greyhawk and most simmilar settings are what was once termed Reconstruction Era settings. The world has recovered from whatever happened and is its own world now. Greyhawk, Tekumel, Battletech and others fit this.

I disagree with the rest of your post, but I agree with this. Greyhawk has ceased to be PA by 1 CY and the founding of the Great Kingdom, which seems a very close parrallel to the coronation of Charlemagne I mentioned above. "Post apocalypse" is necessarily a transitional state; either civilisation recovers or it dies out completely. There are a bunch of older fantasy settings which look like this - Third Age Middle Earth (despite a weirdly stretched timeline), the Wilderlands, the Fighting Fantasy world - Allansia is very PA.

Quote from: talysman;745974My position at the time when Rients made the claim was that I see the point -- yes, there are hints of a more advanced civilization in the ruins that adventurers are trying to reclaim -- but calling it " post-apocalyptic " is silly.

Emphasis mine.

If you accept the bolded part, we've already agreed on what D&D's default setting essentially is; an age of forgetful ignorance and barbaric danger growing, like a fungus, on the corpse of a more civilized past.

Your disagreement therefore hinges on the use of the term "post-apocalyptic," as in, how fucked does a civilization have to be for it to merit the "apocalyptic" label? I find these debates fundamentally about semantics.

Nevertheless, for the sake of clarification, I like my D&D settings to feature sparse enclaves of civilization insulated by swathes of dangerous wilderness. Bandits, monsters, petty warlords and even wild animals threaten everyone. Civilization as it stands is a fragile thing; if the goblin clans down the valley stopped bickering for long enough, or if the old red dragon wakes up to find his hoard's been pillaged, they might wipe out a large city or a barony.

It is this fragility of civilized institutions, together with the monumental and frankly supernatural remainders of a more sophisticated past, that move me to use the term "post-apocalyptic" when I refer to the sort of D&D setting I prefer, and believe implicit in the older rulesets.

Which fantasy games aren't set among the ashes of some past glory?
I know there's at least one fantasy RPG that attempted to set itself DURING that golden age (Dawnforge?)
I suppose Warhammer's Old World... and Confrontation's Aarklash are both confronting an impending apocalypse more than they are lingering over a previous one.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;745977I think The Butcher nailed it. This is precisely how I used D&D historically, and continue with ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG as I author its tone:

People huddle together in walled cities, proclaiming themselves conquerors over the vast wilderness outside their gates. Yet, long tracts of road remain the demesne of barbarians and highwaymen. Those intrepid (or stupid) enough to wander off the beaten path may encounter things far more vicious and brutal.

Thematically, chaos versus order is a great place to start. It's not necessarily about the common tropes of "orcs versus everyone else". It's the fight to civilize the barbarians. And, it rings true in our own personal history - even today.

You can certainly run D&D post-apocalyptic. And some  of the settings, like Greyhawk, include elements that could be emphasized to make it post-apocalyptic. But is it post-apoc by default, as in tthe quote?

As I recall, Jeff Rients did mention examples like Greyhawk, but he wasn't claiming that most or all of the published D&D settings were post-apocalyptic. He was saying that the spell list, magic item list, and even the very act of exploring dungeons to find treasure make the default implied setting of D&D post-apocalyptic. My counterexample was that the mere presence of a fallen civilization doesn't make a setting post-apocalyptic.

Similarly, although post-apocalyptic stories often contain roving bands of outlaws, it's not definitive of the genre. Not all post-apoc settings have Law vs. Chaos as a theme, and not all stories with outlaw bands are post-apocalyptic. Are the Billy Jack movies post-apocalyptic? Mightt make an interesting reading, but no. Is Deadwood post-apocalyptic? Again, no.

Quote from: The Butcher;746062

Quote from: talysman;745974My position at the time when Rients made the claim was that I see the point -- yes, there are hints of a more advanced civilization in the ruins that adventurers are trying to reclaim -- but calling it " post-apocalyptic " is silly.

Emphasis mine.

If you accept the bolded part, we've already agreed on what D&D's default setting essentially is; an age of forgetful ignorance and barbaric danger growing, like a fungus, on the corpse of a more civilized past.

Your disagreement therefore hinges on the use of the term "post-apocalyptic," as in, how fucked does a civilization have to be for it to merit the "apocalyptic" label? I find these debates fundamentally about semantics.

No, it doesn't. Remember, I included the example of the fall of Rome as an apocalypse, despite the fact that, as some point out upthread, a lot of Dark Ages Europe was fundamentally the same as it was before. The Fall of Rome was an apocalypse because people at the time, notably St. Augustine, saw it as an apocalypse.

But at some point, a post-apocalyptic society becomes a post-post-apocalyptic society.

The defining characteristic of post-apocalyptic settings, to me, is the sense of loss and despair. The earlier you are in the time frame since the apocalypse, the more things are shifted towards despair. A little later, when most but not all of those who remember life before te apoclypse have died out, it's less about despair and more about the loss, vs. the hope of rebuilding. Much, much later, when there are still legends of the Before Time,  the despair is non-existent and even the sense of loss is diminishing, because enough has been rebuilt, but the lost lore of the Before Time may be relevant to avoid repeating the disaster.

But the mere esistence of a lost, ancient civilization as a source of plunder doesn't, in my mind, make something post-apocalyptic, even if technically you are talking about something that happened after an apocalypse, of any magnitude. Sometimes, it's more pulp adventure than post-apocalyptic.