[ATE] What makes you interested?

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

(SNIP)

And postapocalyptic adventure is not always a genre driven by realism anyways ...

I think this is the main thing to remember. The main feature of realistic post-collapse survival wouldn't be excitement and adventure. It would be sheer, mind-numbing drudgery -- day after day, week after week, year after year.

I've lived significant fractions of my life, now, in rural, farming communities and I think I can say that, except for the very few who love it, farming mostly sucks. It's 12-hour days (minimum) to try to produce something, despite the vagaries of weather, only to find that (because of the amazing efficiency of modern techniques), the per-unit price is so low you can't make any money, anyway.

So, you turn to Uncle Sugar (or whatever the nickname is for your government, in your part of the world) for subsidies of one sort or another, knowing that you're (basically) on the dole. If you're an absentee land-owner and you just see this as an investment, then you don't care whether the money comes from market sales or price-supports -- all you care about is the ROI.

If you're a family farmer, though, it's a lot more difficult to deal.

There's a reason why less than 1.5 percent of the population in the United States makes its living, from agriculture -- and yet, they still manage to over-produce, in most years, and the numbers continue to decline. It's a s*** job, for most people.

In a post-collapse economy, that number jumps to 80-90 percent of the population doing back-breaking labor, with no security except what they provide for themselves with what little surplus they can produce.

There would be nothing good about it, and the best you could do is try to rebuild a technological civilization -- with all of its complexity -- as quickly as possible.

I think that would be a fun game, but I understand that I'm definitely in the minority, on that one. :)

What most people want is a gun-bunny, heavy metal power fantasy. They want Mad Max, or John Rourke in the Survivalist series, or The Walking Dead, or DayZ, or Gamma World, or Hiero's Journey.

That's what PK wrote and, while I'd love to create settings in it, I'd need to have a long talk with the GM about his or her perception of what he or she wants for the campaign, before I'd play in one, again.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

So, you turn to Uncle Sugar (or whatever the nickname is for your government, in your part of the world) for subsidies of one sort or another, knowing that you're (basically) on the dole. If you're an absentee land-owner and you just see this as an investment, then you don't care whether the money comes from market sales or price-supports -- all you care about is the ROI.

NZ farming became deregulated in the 1980s, no subsidies. A very drastic change. Interest rates where very high at the time too.

I have enduring memories of living on wild pork and potatoes as well as going to school in clothes that had been repaired one too many times.

Edit we managed to keep the farm while many didn't.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

So, you turn to Uncle Sugar (or whatever the nickname is for your government, in your part of the world) for subsidies of one sort or another, knowing that you're (basically) on the dole. If you're an absentee land-owner and you just see this as an investment, then you don't care whether the money comes from market sales or price-supports -- all you care about is the ROI.

NZ farming became deregulated in the 1980s, no subsidies. A very drastic change. Interest rates where very high at the time too.

I have enduring memories of living on wild pork and potatoes as well as going to school in clothes that had been repaired one too many times.

[Jürgen Hubert]

I was not particularly interested in the overall premise (although I bought it on general principle anyway). However, this week I came across this review of X-Piratez, a total conversion mod of the old 1990s X-COM game. Here is the premise:

"X-COM failed. The aliens conquered Earth, had their gross tentacly way with it for centuries, and then, at some point, buggered off. Earth is now a forgotten backwater of some stellar empire, awash with mutants, human collaborators, and abandoned underlings of the terrifying, but absentee Star Gods. Your band of all-female mutant pirates has stumbled across an ancient military research base. From here, you decide to make a living cowing the world with acts of theft and violence against the filthy human agents of the Star Gods, extorting protection money from petty local governments and seizing goods, weapons, and captives to ransom from everyone else."

Which is a brilliant premise for an After The End campaign - the aliens came, saw, conquered, messed around with humans and other life forms (giving rise to mutants, psionics, monsters, mutant psionic monsters...) and then eventually vanished, leaving their half-alien hybrid spawn to rule isolated city-states which still have limited access to alien high-tech and ultra-tech while most of Earth has reverted to barbarism.

[DCB]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

the best you could do is try to rebuild a technological civilization -- with all of its complexity -- as quickly as possible.

I think that would be a fun game, but I understand that I'm definitely in the minority, on that one.

The minority might not be that small - I'd certainly be more interested in a "rebuilding civilization" campaign, and others have expressed interest in this thread already (not to mention the extensive discussion of farming in another thread).

My suspicion is that GURPS+AtE would be well-suited to handle those types of games, albeit with some adjustment to the different focus. The value of different skill groups - social skills (to marshall support), technical skills (to advance capabilities), combat skills (to defend the expanding civilization), investigation skills (to find caches of lost tech), etc. - would IMHO play to one of GURPS's strengths, and would make for an interesting game.


That being said, Gamma World made for a good techno-themed dungeon crawl game, so both approaches have merit.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Ransom

To me both as a player and as a GM a big part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic games is the ability to set the game in familiar environments while still having exotic challenges. A big part of the impressiveness of my Reign of Steel campaign was the ability to use real-world maps, right down to pulling up the Google Street View of the specific buildings and environments the players found themselves in.

I do that with my wainscot fantasy "Facets" campaign, and it definitely makes the game more accessible, especially for n00bs.

[scc]

Some of the comments on the last two pages make me wonder if PTSD should be the norm for people in AtE.

@tshiggins on your comments about farming, realize that land quality and water availability have probably been shot to hell as well, looking at the LTC3 rules I'm thinking herding cattle, or more likely sheep, would be the best way to get food until land quality improves (I figure that most land will be Desolate because apocalypse).

Now it takes 20-40 years for Desolate land to recover a step and someone said that the comment of two generations means 40 years, and I think I've got the gleaming of a setting/game.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by scc

Some of the comments on the last two pages make me wonder if PTSD should be the norm for people in AtE.

@tshiggins on your comments about farming, realize that land quality and water availability have probably been shot to hell as well, looking at the LTC3 rules I'm thinking herding cattle, or more likely sheep, would be the best way to get food until land quality improves (I figure that most land will be Desolate because apocalypse).

Now it takes 20-40 years for Desolate land to recover a step and someone said that the comment of two generations means 40 years, and I think I've got the gleaming of a setting/game.

I have a write up for something along those lines underway, mix sheep and goats so you have one grazing species and one browsing species. Expect in the example thread sooner or later.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I've been watching this thread for a while now deciding if I should hop in or just leave it alone. For me, the apocalypse in general is an interesting subject to me. Eschatology was a subject I studied when I thought I was going to become a priest and I've continued to keep a toe in long after.


As a storyteller and writer I like the idea of humanity being forced into a crucible and coming out (or not) the other end. Whether it's on the macro scale (a society picking itself back up) or micro (a family trying to survive) that is compelling to me. The will to survive. The will to carry on. The will to do whatever is necessary to take care of those you love. That speaks to me on a primal level.

From a gamer's point of view I like looking at the nitty gritty details of survival: You got some water? Awesome! How you gonna purify that? You going to drink it and risk giardia? Most people have little concept of how to actually survive in the wild. What's safe to eat. How to catch fish. How to make water drinkable. How to catch game with traps or snares. What rain smells like when bad weather is coming in.

Most people nowadays would be screwed in an ATE situation. And i'm not talking about just reading about doing these things. I'm talking about doing them. Creating a bow drill and hearthboard seems simple...but it's not. There is a way to apply pressure with the socket so that the spindle can still spin and that's not something you can typically learn by reading. That's something you have to earn.

Same goes for things like repurposing trash - most people look at a plastic bottle as something you can just fill up and drink from or throw away. It's so much more. You can use it to pasteurize water. You can make a fish trap if you cut it in half. You can use it to light the interior of a dark domicile like a wickiup or sodhouse by filling it with water and putting it in the roof. You can squish it down and using the drinking spout it makes a perfect socket for a bow drill. You can use it to start fires if you fill it with water (or urine) - much like a magnifying glass. You can cut it in strips and it makes excellent material for weaving or braiding (I've done the latter to create rope when helping a friend move and the strap for his truck snapped).

I guess to sum up the things that make ATE interesting to me is...

...survival. Period. Full stop. Doing what it takes to survive (but see "...having humanity")
...building. I love the idea of building something from the ground up. Picking up the pieces from a broken world and making a new one as best you can.
...hope. Hope springs eternal and while realistically I think if we survived a cataclysmic event we'd kill each other off in 20-30 years from a gaming viewpoint I want hope. People coming together to do something good instead of acting like crabs in a bucket. Overall, I've always been the kind of person to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness (sometimes I do both).
...having humanity. Not even apocalypse should be Season 6 Walking Dead. Despite what I think if it's every man for himself then what the hell's the point? Sometimes you have to protect what's yours, but that doesn't mean you hose everyone in the wasteland.
...ingenuity and adapting. Being able to make one thing do another or working with what you got is something that calls to me on a visceral level.

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by scc

Some of the comments on the last two pages make me wonder if PTSD should be the norm for people in AtE.

Immediately "After the Disaster", perhaps. "After the Collapse", probably not; as posted upthread, the latter is explicitly a generation or two removed in AtE RAW. The post-Collapse situation is the "new normal" rather than "abnormal stressors".