To be pendantic, AD&D 1e is actually Post-post-apocalyptic. The actual destruction is far enough in the past that communities and individuals can just now start looking beyond day-to-day survival and towards the larger world and the opportunities it presents.

That said, Post-post-apocalyptic also applies to the tail end of the Dark Ages (i.e. between the fall of Rome and c. AD 1000) and the extremely low population densities could just as easily be attributed to a Midwestern 1970's era understanding of "depopulated" and "wilderness" (even with the expansion in the last 40 years, there are still large swaths of the western states with population densities in the single digits per square kilometer and even today the state of Wisconsin where Gary lived has population density of only about 30/km^2) rather than a deliberate decision to crash the population densities to levels that would make the Black Death look like a mild flu outbreak.

Another sign of this 70's Midwest American filter I think is the discussion Gary included that equated peasants and serfs with slaves and that if you tried to about how if you tried to impose peasant status on the people who flock to you for protection after clearing an area of danger and building a stronghold you WILL have regular revolts against you (versus the actual European history where most of the people who were peasants agreed to that status in exchange for the Lord's protection). The idea that people would willingly subject themselves rather than desire to be free men was just so alien to the mindset of the time that he couldn't imagine revolts against "tyrants" not happening regularly.

So while there is the appearance of a Post-post-apocalyptic world, my hunch is that Gary was actually just attempting to create a fantastic version of Europe c. AD 600-700, but did so through the filter of a Midwestern mindset and the limited resources one could find on the Medieval period in the Mid-70's Midwest (i.e. what books on the subject were available in the Milwaukee Public Library) and the result of that appears far more fantastic than it was intended to be.

When I think post-apoc D&D, the closest thing that comes to mind is 4E's Points of Light:

Quote from:  D&D 4e WikiThe written history of the campaign setting describes that several mighty empires have existed throughout history, civilizations of marvels that developed until they encountered their end and their parts were reclaimed by the wild. Ruins of these empires, filled with monsters and sometimes ancient artifacts, dot the wilderness outside villages, towns and cities that provide relative safety for their inhabitants ("points of light" in the darkness of the wild, hence one of the names for the campaign setting). .

4E never thrilled me at the table, but the setting has a lot going for it.

Quote from: Aglondir;1100635When I think post-apoc D&D, the closest thing that comes to mind is 4E's Points of Light

For me it's Earthdawn

I'd agree with the post-post-apocalyptic for 1E.  To me it's the point where things are ready to expand as soon as what's blocking the door is kicked in the teeth; which is your job - go tilt the stable status quo and expand the frontier.  Saving the world is a defensive mentality.

But then, that's when everyone expected moon colonies instead of trying to convince people to eat maggots and algae.

I agree with much that has been posted here, although I would attribute the Magic User thing more to the Dying Earth influence than a specific post apocalyptic intent. While a lot of the published settings that were in vogue in late 1e/2e had their own apocalypses, Dark Sun was really based on that premise. I'd be interested in what the genesis for that was.

I think another factor is that eventually the RPGs themselves become fuel for what comes later, rather than just the fantasy novels and medieval history. Longsword is the default 1 handed sword because it was that way in D&D. It is actually a hand and a half sword and something like an arming sword or viking sword would be more appropriate. The Ranger character always has at least the option of a pet now, because of Warcraft and Drizzt. I imagine many players don't know what the big deal is with a black runesword other than it was in some other game, etc.

Quote from: EOTB;1100658But then, that's when everyone expected moon colonies instead of trying to convince people to eat maggots and algae.

What did you think you were going to be eating on the moon colony?

Quote from: Simlasa;1100733What did you think you were going to be eating on the moon colony?

Cheese.

Quote from: Shasarak;1100604What do they call apocalypses in the Forgotten Realms?

Tuesday.

Good point.

I've long associated the implied setting of 1e with the motto of the SCA - "the Middle Ages the way they should have been" - aka no serfdom, no monotheism, and no gunpowder. While the latter group successfully kept D&Disms out of their hobby, AD&D expressed those SCAisms very explicitly.

Quote from: Simlasa;1100733What did you think you were going to be eating on the moon colony?

Ribeye smothered in onions.

It's frustrating to see some of this stuff because there are many things factually incorrect about the initial post.

First, magic-users could create spells in OD&D and AD&D. That's where all the spells such as Tenser's Floating Disk came from. Tenser, Mordenkain, etc were actual PCs. The rules exists in the AD&D DMG (pg 115) although I doubt many people used them.

As to the status of Lords and owning land, this originated not with Gary but with Dave Arneson. The story goes that Dave wanted to do some wargaming but all his players wanted to do was dungeon crawling. So, on one expedition, the players return to the surface after a long dungeon dive only to find the bad guys had captured Castle Blackmoor (the same bad guys that were scheduled to be in the miniatures wargame). Thus, the party was forced to flee into the wilderness and establish their own castles. If you look at Dave's old overland maps, Castle Blackmoor was surrounded on all sides by giant nation and only a small portion, the lands around Lock Gloom (Lake Gloomy), were actual wilderness. Another PC, the Great Svenny, actually built his domain right next to Castle Blackmoor.

So, while a post-apocalyptic game would be fun, there's little to suggest that this was the intended way to set up a D&D campaign world.

Quote from: Shasarak;1100520The transition must have come pretty quickly in the games history then because as we can see from the ADnD Fighter XP table the game progression was:

Zero, to Hero, to Super Hero, to Lord [of the manor].

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Note the EP necessary to make Lord--it's a long hard crawl to that level. This was "name" level, at which point you were rather expected to settle down, build a caster, rule a place. Even if not, a level 9 fighter in AD&D is nothing like the superheroes of later editions, with very little powers that would be distinctly different than what a level 1 fighter had. Even with magical gewgaws, a level 9 fighter still could be overmatched by a dragon; most could die from a single breath weapon attack from the oldest ones, and even if a save was made, two such attacks would prove fatal to many fighters (and dragons got 3 a day...).

BX's Known World setting seems to be one of the exceptions.

But. BECMI introduced Blackmoor and that is most assuredly a post apoc sort of background as Blackmoor advanced its tech, I believe with the assist of aliens, and then accidentally set off an explosion sufficient to shift the planet on its axis, among other disasters from the detonation of I believe an antimatter reactor or something equally high tech.

AD&D by the terrain population rules is where the implied apocalypse idea stems from mostly. On average only about 10 of 100 hexes will have habitation on them and a fair chunk of that may be occupied by monsters holding ruins, or relatively small populations. And that is not even counting dungeons which may be the remnants of dwarven and gnome civilizations or other.

A few of the settings have some sort of cataclysm or such in the past. Same for 2e.
Dragonlance: Gods drop a mountain from orbit on the planet. Things get worse from there with successive disasters.
Red Steel: The gods beat the hell out of eachother and essentially blow up an evil god whos fragments are now mutation inducing rocks that self generate.
Mystarra: Blackmoor exploded and tilted the planet.
Birthright: The gods beat the hell out of eachother and essentially kill themselvs off and whos fragments now manifest as mutation inducing powers.

And of course Greyhawk kicks off with essentially a magical nuclear war that turned a vast area into a lifeless desert.

And of course the ongoing parody of itself that it has become... Forgotten Realms. If something isnt totally re-arranging the landscape every other week then something is TRYING to re-arrange the landscape every other week.

5e alone has had multiple events that could have ended in effectively a new setting.
The evil goddess of Dragons tries to manifest in the material plane.
The evil lords of elements try to manifest in the material plane.
The evil demon lords manifest in the material plane.
The evil Giants want to get an artifact that can freeze the material plane.
The evil super lich wants to manifest a soul eating god on the material plane.
and so on.

Quote from: jeff37923;1100511Now while this gives us something to digest, I have a small addendum. Since D&D first came out during the height of the Cold War, cold the concept of a post-post-apocalypse setting be the direct result of the Cold War historical environment? Could the "taming" or "wussification" of later settings in D&D be the result of the end of the Cold War and its influences on society in general?

Indirectly, through the fantasy literature, maybe.  One thing about much of the earlier fantasy (Appendix N and otherwise) was that it rarely paid the bills.  At least not by itself.  The authors had lived through WWI (or been born shortly thereafter), the great depression, and then WWII.  Some of them fought in WWII, and they all knew someone that had, and often someone that died in it.  They often had other work outside the arts.  Even Fritz Leiber, the child of actors, sometimes did other things on the side.  One of the things they often did was write science fiction (of varying levels of "science"), and to them there wasn't always a great divide.  The works are less academic.

I'm not sure it's the Cold War itself, but the events leading up to it, followed by the Cold War, definitely led to a certain hardness of thought and manner.  It couldn't help but do so.    

Dying Earth and the related titles are sardonic.  It takes a little of the edge off the hardness.  Recently, I finally got around to getting a copy of the Vance space series collectively now called "The Demon Princes".  It was originally 5 stories, starting with "The Star King" and ending with "The Book of Dreams".    Without spoiling it, it is a story about a man so hard that only near the end does he question the extent to which he will go.  No editor would take it today, though as with most of Vance's work, it is far better written than 95% of anything out there.  

The Wild West comparison is also apt.  It's not post-apocalypse, let alone post-post-apocalypse, but it does share with those settings hard people doing necessary things.

Right. Some of the settings are more frontier than post-apoc.

Or possibly more aptly. Some are more age of exploration into lands that were once grand but have fallen into complete ruin and new kingdoms are growing on the bones of the old.