Anybody listen to Destructomundo? Each episode addresses a different aspect of popular portrayals of the apocalypse, from zombies to nuclear war.
I've downloaded the entire series, and am working my way through them all.
The guys are obviously gamers, too. Their programs are littered with references to D&D, although the topic is never explicitly discussed.
The site is at:www.destructomundo.com (http://www.destructomundo.com)
There's quite a cool book that discusses that weird probability theory idea that argues that we're likely to be living towards the end of man's existence than towards the beginning and it has a great run down of all the different ways in which the world can end.
I always thought D&D WAS set after the end of the world. All the ancient magics and buried treasures and things suggest that the D&D genre is invariably set at a time after some great civilisation has fallen with all of its knowledge and riches long since forgotten. Between that and the unchanging level of technological advancement I kind of assumed that D&D was intentionally post-apocalypitic in the same way that Earthdawn explicitly was.
Well, given that Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" books were the inspiration for much of the magic system, I'd have to say that you have a good point.
You can always amp up the post-apoc quotient to D&D, ala Thundarr the Barbarian!
"Ookla! Ariel! Riiide!!!"
Quote from: mattormegWell, given that Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" books were the inspiration for much of the magic system, I'd have to say that you have a good point.
You can always amp up the post-apoc quotient to D&D, ala Thundarr the Barbarian!
"Ookla! Ariel! Riiide!!!"
Indeed, by the time the Dying Earth starts, the world has ended many many times over.
Well, as D&D isn't a setting, I have a hard time seeing the post-apocalyptic connection. The "apocalypse" of greyhawk was that Monochromatic Pyro-Precipitation, but the Wilderlands definitely had a technological history.
What's rather interesting about games back in that day (and novels, too), is that they weren't as much afraid to mix sci-fi with fantasy as its done today. There's way too much clean genre separation. Wonder where that comes from...