I don't see as many games as I would expect set after the fall of an empire.
The recovery period from a large war or plague also seems rare.
Usually, the setting seems to be several generations later or set before the crash.
I know "Post-Apoc" is a genre but I mean a normal disaster recovery.
What do you think is the best time in a timeline to give the most opportunity for adventure/development?
All the times after the fall have pros and cons. Depends on what kind of campaign you want to run. Let's talk extremes.
I've run a sequel campaign where the new characters in a different part of the world picked up the pieces after the previous party failed to fully avert the cataclysm. Built in backstory that everyone knows well. World is familiar yet changed. It's a period of vast and rapid change mixed with NPCs (and maybe even PCs) clinging to a past that has been shredded. Just getting food and shelter is an achievement. It can be depressing and it is likely not epic--or at least the epic part is more negative--the characters rise to the epic challenge and stop some threat such that not everyone starves or is killed for their food. The stakes are both higher and lower, if that makes sense.
Contrast that to thousands of years after the fall, that for whatever reason the world has been slow to come out of--some really nasty cataclysm that sent civilization almost back to the stone age and a new world has slowly evolved, but not quite to what it was before. Now you've got the room for all kinds of traditions to have built up--many no longer strictly relevant. There's enough leisure for people to adapt all the good and bad effects that it brings. There's room for sophistication and sophistry. Civilizations have risen and fallen in the interim. Elves (or their long-lived counterparts) have things that are before their collective memory. Yet, still there is the possibility of discovering something long-lost--for the power, fame, glory, etc.
I think it makes more sense to say what kind of world you want, then reason back from there to make it fit. A post fall is a great way to get a lot of the things to fit, but you can make almost anything work with a little planning. The reasons for the fall matter too. A meteor strike 8,000 years ago that wrecks a tremendously advanced world and its technology and also introduces magic is one thing. The gods resent hubris and visit falls on any civilization that grows too proud is very different. And of course, whatever the cause of the fall, what the people on the world believe about it will vary considerably as well.
Another way to think about it: Immediately after the fall isn't much of a sandbox for most players. Yeah, you can run it as one, but the actions that will work are fairly limited in one respect. You can do anything you want to try to rebuild a civilization the way you want, but the game is going to be either about rebuilding it or wandering around dealing with it not getting rebuilt. There's more freedom to do anything you want with what is left, but less left in which to exercise that freedom. In my experience, some players eat that up while others find it either constraining or depressing.
I'm using the Bloodstone Lands FR 1e/2e AD&D setting book currently as my 5e campaign setting, it's set right after a major war where the good guys lost, then won. My own version has a very 'Europe 1946' feel. This definitely helps explain why there are wandering orcs & cultists all over the place and central authority is so weak.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 19, 2021, 07:40:53 AM
Another way to think about it: Immediately after the fall isn't much of a sandbox for most players. Yeah, you can run it as one, but the actions that will work are fairly limited in one respect. You can do anything you want to try to rebuild a civilization the way you want, but the game is going to be either about rebuilding it or wandering around dealing with it not getting rebuilt. There's more freedom to do anything you want with what is left, but less left in which to exercise that freedom. In my experience, some players eat that up while others find it either constraining or depressing.
Not much of a sandbox as far as world-building goes perhaps, but it can make a great setup for a old-school style large-party episodic dungeon crawl game -- if the primary method of "rebuilding" civilization is, say, recovering all the useful stuff that got buried in the cataclysm.
Quote from: Greentongue on April 19, 2021, 07:12:22 AM
I don't see as many games as I would expect set after the fall of an empire.
The recovery period from a large war or plague also seems rare.
Usually, the setting seems to be several generations later or set before the crash.
I know "Post-Apoc" is a genre but I mean a normal disaster recovery.
What do you think is the best time in a timeline to give the most opportunity for adventure/development?
Greayhawk is set after a large scale war of technomagic.
BECMI's Blackmoor is set after a global disaster.
AD&D's random gen system suggests the land is mostly in ruin sometimes.
Forgotten Realms has had multiple disasters over the span. Orcs perodically pour down from the empires to the north and raze whole civilizations. There was a magical disaster that altered magic in the world. There was a whole thing where the gods were forced into their avatars around the world and all the trouble they caused. Various countries have been, or still are, recovering from one disaster or another. Neverwinter is I believe finally recovered after being a wreck in 4e. and so on.
5e Eberron is set right after a large war that somehow rendered a whole kingdom uninhabitable.
The levels of this have varied from one period or location to another.
Others like BX's Known World are not set after or during some problem.
Then there is Oriental Adventures which had a whole rules set for yearly disasters ranging from floods to famines to plagues that could and often would leave whole swaths of the land in ruin and everyone left picking up the pieces after.
It really depends on what type of world you're build and the type of flavor you're going for--what you're trying to get out of the setting and what the specific circumstances of the "fall" might be. Some falls can be so cataclysmic it takes ages before the environment recovers enough to support enough life for character races to start venturing into the wilderness again. Granted, that's more Post-Apoc level type stuff.
Starting it immediately after the fall can grant it a medias res type of feel, where characters begin play right in the middle of the action, as the allied forces or whatnot are retreating from whatever disaster has befallen, fighting to survive. The campaign can be about what comes immediately after, how to rebuild, forge new alliances, establish new bases and setup defenses against an occupying force, shaping the new direction the world will take, etc.
If the setting is more about what type of world emerges after the fall, then maybe setting the timeline a decade or two after the fall might be best. That way the old world is recent enough to remain relevant and in people's memories, but old enough that the new order has already begun to set in place and new players (in terms of dominant factions, societies and such) have begun to emerge and establish themselves.
I think making it too long after the fall makes it kind of irrelevant or just ancient history (which might add flavor and depth, but doesn't have much to do with the PC's current circumstances), unless we're talking Post-Apoc level cataclysmic falls.
My homebrew setting is usually several hundred to ~500 years after the god-war.
Each of the six great gods cursed the world in some fashion, fundamentally altering the world. Sarissa's curse was to bury all the great cities and architectural wonders with earthquakes and volcanos. Hence leaving many places for adventurers to delve for.
This is an excellent topic.
Quote from: Greentongue on April 19, 2021, 07:12:22 AM
I don't see as many games as I would expect set after the fall of an empire.
The recovery period from a large war or plague also seems rare.
Usually, the setting seems to be several generations later or set before the crash.
I know "Post-Apoc" is a genre but I mean a normal disaster recovery.
What do you think is the best time in a timeline to give the most opportunity for adventure/development?
How much lawlessness are we talking about here? How much dated history do characters need to know? Remember, most young people don't even know who Ronald Reagan was. And that's with Internet in everyone's hands.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll on April 20, 2021, 11:58:53 PM
How much lawlessness are we talking about here? How much dated history do characters need to know? Remember, most young people don't even know who Ronald Reagan was. And that's with Internet in everyone's hands.
That's kind of the point.
Are the bodies still rotting or have people tried to pick up "normal life" again and move forward?
What makes things interesting and not boring or depressing?
Are you and your gang now The Law or The Outlaws?
Perhaps the Player Characters are children born after the cataclysm; who grew up in homes with parents who were somehow different, because of what they themselves had gone through? Now, 20+ years after the cataclysm; a new generation seeks for answers in a tainted world.....
The Auran Empire (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/197374/Auran-Empire-Primer), the default setting of Adventurer, Conqueror, King, is actually in the middle of the downfall period (http://www.autarch.co/blog/auran-empire-default-setting-adventurer-conqueror-king), although it has plenty of existing ruins from the fall of earlier civilizations. For a length of 23 pages cover to cover, I thought it did a good job (https://tkurtbond.github.io/posts/2020/07/07/recent-rpg-reading-auran-empire-primer/) of laying out the basics of the setting.