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Effectronica posted:Speaking half-seriously, there's so much stuff out there in even semi-urban areas that the main issues facing most people would be boredom and loneliness in an immediately post-apocalyptic period. Instructions are everywhere on things, even the most out-of-shape person could break down glass sliding doors with a crowbar or tire iron, and there's enough imperishable junk hanging around that people could feed themselves for long enough to get books and pamphlets on agriculture and read them. The problem with this is limited supply, your average urban area only has at most a few days worth of food for every inhabitant and once that starts to run low is when the real chaos starts. If something wipes out half to two thirds of the population first then you have the luxury of time, if the food just stops coming one day because reasons...
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Sep 5, 2014 02:50
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Besides, everybody knows that the interesting parts about post-apocalypses come well after whatever precipitated the end of stuff. That's why Fallout New Vegas is cool and, uh, RAGE is sad.
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Sep 5, 2014 02:52
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Kwyndig posted:The problem with this is limited supply, your average urban area only has at most a few days worth of food for every inhabitant and once that starts to run low is when the real chaos starts. If something wipes out half to two thirds of the population first then you have the luxury of time, if the food just stops coming one day because reasons... That's not a conventional post-apocalyptic scenario, then! Even 66% death rates really are low for your typical end-of-the-world thing.
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Sep 5, 2014 02:55
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Chances are that most communities, if they worked together, could probably fare a zombie outbreak pretty well. Their enemy is a slower, dumber, and more fragile version of themselves that can only hurt them at immediate range and transfer their disease in the one of the most inefficient methods possible. Humans have the advantage in that duel.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:12
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Davin Valkri posted:Besides, everybody knows that the interesting parts about post-apocalypses come well after whatever precipitated the end of stuff. That's why Fallout New Vegas is cool and, uh, RAGE is sad. Yeah I'd like to skip directly to the fire-breathing-hotrod and crossbow stage of the Post-apocalypse.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:12
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I remember some RPG book having a list of ten groups that would survive an apocalypse or something like that. The only ones I remember are Mormons and the army.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:15
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Bucnasti posted:Yeah I'd like to skip directly to the fire-breathing-hotrod and crossbow stage of the Post-apocalypse. I meant the "in what image shall we rebuild civilization" stage of the post-post-apocalypse. But I'm the weirdo who'd rather play in pre-apocalypse or post-post-apocalypse settings over straight apoc/post-apoc settings.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:15
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Zurui posted:I remember some RPG book having a list of ten groups that would survive an apocalypse or something like that. The only ones I remember are Mormons and the army. Insurance salesman and Hurdling Athletes.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:19
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Covok posted:Chances are that most communities, if they worked together, could probably fare a zombie outbreak pretty well. Their enemy is a slower, dumber, and more fragile version of themselves that can only hurt them at immediate range and transfer their disease in the one of the most inefficient methods possible. Humans have the advantage in that duel. Zombies are at their most symbolic when they're devastating cities and the world instead of menacing people in cheap Italian flicks, so you're not really fighting the undead monster, you're fighting societal discord, consumerism, authoritarianism, etc.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:20
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Covok posted:Chances are that most communities, if they worked together, could probably fare a zombie outbreak pretty well. Their enemy is a slower, dumber, and more fragile version of themselves that can only hurt them at immediate range and transfer their disease in the one of the most inefficient methods possible. Humans have the advantage in that duel. The bolded part is where it all comes apart. The operative term in zombie apocalypse isn't really zombie, it's apocalypse. These things could be set in the backdrop of any other disaster, whether it's a category 6 hurricane, a supervolcano, a tsunami, and it'd still work because the conflict really comes from how people react to and treat each other. Zombies just modifies the natural disaster to be something that people can fight off in limited amounts, gives it more persistence (compared to a flood that you'd expect to withdraw after so long) and throws in some additional moral issues such as infection and wounding.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:27
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Davin Valkri posted:I meant the "in what image shall we rebuild civilization" stage of the post-post-apocalypse. If I was rebuilding civilization, it would be with fire breathing hot rods and crossbows. Oh and shoulder-pads, everyone would have to wear shoulder-pads.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:29
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Although some of the newer zombie fiction tends to go at that from a different perspective. Like, Mira Grant's zombie novels describe an America that survived the zombie apocalypse with only like a 30% death rate, and are more or less about the idea that fear of a thing sometimes becomes more damaging than the thing itself, which is a general theme I know I've come across that elsewhere in post 2010-zombie books. (Also specifically with the Mira Grant books, there was this cute thing where like every third kid born after the rising was named George or Georgette or Georgina because George Romero saved the world with his series of weirdly prophetic cheesy horror films which taught people how to kill zombies.) If I ever ran another zombie campaign, personally, it'd be something more like that. A setting profoundly effected by the presence of zombies, but not like... in ruins with random bands of survivors and occasional bandit kings or whatever. I'm kind of burnt out on really bleak hopeless zombie apocalypse scenarios where HUMANS ARE THE REAL MONSTERS at this point.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:31
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Bucnasti posted:If I was rebuilding civilization, it would be with fire breathing hot rods and crossbows. That's the RAGE way of rebuilding civilization. Just everybody playing in the rubble.  Effectronica posted:Zombies are at their most symbolic when they're devastating cities and the world instead of menacing people in cheap Italian flicks, so you're not really fighting the undead monster, you're fighting societal discord, consumerism, authoritarianism, etc. But you can get all of those things without zombies. In fact it'd probably be easier to highlight those themes without zombies, depending on if you're willing to set a game in, say, 1950s full Cold War paranoia USA and play the McCarthyism for all it's worth.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:34
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Davin Valkri posted:That's the RAGE way of rebuilding civilization. Just everybody playing in the rubble. Just rip off the cheesy Italian sequels to Night of the Living Dead and have Knights Templar zombies menace vacationers on some random island, and then have ridiculous zombie sharks.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:36
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Zurui posted:I remember some RPG book having a list of ten groups that would survive an apocalypse or something like that. The only ones I remember are Mormons and the army. Isn't mormons one of the big groups surviving the apocalypse a thing on Fallout?
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Sep 5, 2014 03:42
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Davin Valkri posted:But you can get all of those things without zombies. In fact it'd probably be easier to highlight those themes without zombies, depending on if you're willing to set a game in, say, 1950s full Cold War paranoia USA and play the McCarthyism for all it's worth. Well, the thing is, zombie apocalypse fiction not written in the 1950s (which is to say, pretty much all of it) is not going to be about 1950s Cold War paranoia, because, like most speculative fiction, it reflects the societal hangups of its time. And zombie fiction is basically just a very extreme, very blunt version of that. It robs people of everything in order to push them to their limits and make a statement about society or human nature or whatever. There are works that do the same things without zombies, but they're not like what you're describing -- they're things like Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I mean, sometimes it's also just about killing zombies with chainsaws, but in the same sense that sometimes science fiction is only about shooting robots with spacelasers.
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Sep 5, 2014 03:43
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Bucnasti posted:If I was rebuilding civilization, it would be with fire breathing hot rods and crossbows. 
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Sep 5, 2014 03:45
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Auralsaurus Flex posted:I don't see what 80s/90s fashion has to do with the two former items. It's not a proper post apocalypse wasteland unless. Everyone  Wears  Awesome  Shoulder-pads 
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Sep 5, 2014 04:12
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Isn't mormons one of the big groups surviving the apocalypse a thing on Fallout? Yeah, it was going to be a big part of the original design of Fallout Three which then got relegated to New Vegas DLC. The second best DLC, but still.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:14
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It's nice to see that the apocalypse won't damage our supplies of hair dye and peroxide. Though apparently it will massacre our underwear stocks. Also all of those look lame.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:18
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Quarex posted:but the hate for play-yourself games mystifies me, I have a serious medical condtion that would cause me to die in agony after a year or two without access to a modern medical system. It represents enough of my selfimage that any self-insert DMPCs I run are all fisher king archetypes.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:22
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DalaranJ posted:I have a serious medical condtion that would cause me to die in agony after a year or two without access to a modern medical system. It represents enough of my selfimage that any self-insert DMPCs I run are all fisher king archetypes. This is also one of the things that makes me back away from the idea. My dad has type 1 diabetes. He would die, very soon, in any sort of apocalyptic scenario, and there is absolutely nothing I could do about it. Not very fun. I wear chainmail at work on a semi-daily basis and that outfit makes me cringe so hard. That stuff is hell on your bare skin.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:50
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Tulul posted:I wear chainmail at work on a semi-daily basis and that outfit makes me cringe so hard. That stuff is hell on your bare skin. Are you a knight Errant, what the hell?
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Sep 5, 2014 05:02
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Error 404 posted:Are you a knight Errant, what the hell? Chain mail actually has a lot of modern uses. I think the one most people think of is shark suits. But some butchers use it and a lot of industrial jobs actually use chain mail.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:09
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mr.capps posted:Chain mail actually has a lot of modern uses. I think the one most people think of is shark suits. But some butchers use it and a lot of industrial jobs actually use chain mail. That's weird and also cool. Well, not cool for bare skin, but still cool.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:14
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Error 404 posted:That's weird and also cool. Well, not cool for bare skin, but still cool. Pretty sure the typical gutting/dressing mail glove has a sort of normal glove inside it.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:17
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Plague of Hats posted:Pretty sure the typical gutting/dressing mail glove has a sort of normal glove inside it. Yes they do, partially to keep the gunk off your hands (which doesn't always work) and also as an additional layer of protection if you're dumb or clumsy or just plain forget and stab your own hands.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:24
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Yeah, I work in a kitchen and have to wear mail (or "metal mesh", because they're squares) to clean all of the big powered slicers. Those things are sharp as hell; a guy lost a finger a week before I was hired because he wasn't wearing a glove. Machine wasn't even turned on, just slipped and pushed his finger against the blade.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:25
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^^^  Davin Valkri posted:Also all of those look lame. Heritic! When I run Barter Town you won't be allowed to man the double crossbow turret on my six-wheeled nitro-burning-dune-buggy.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:26
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^^^  Tulul posted:Yeah, I work in a kitchen and have to wear mail (or "metal mesh", because they're squares) to clean all of the big powered slicers. Those things are sharp as hell; a guy lost a finger a week before I was hired because he wasn't wearing a glove. Machine wasn't even turned on, just slipped and pushed his finger against the blade. I'm kind of surprised it's not (as far as I know) Dillons/Kroger store policy that you always wear mesh gloves handling the slicers. The number of stories about missing finger tips that I have heard from my Dillons-employed friend…
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Sep 5, 2014 05:31
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Sep 5, 2014 05:38
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That game is way way less depressing than the movie Threads.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:55
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Zurui posted:I remember some RPG book having a list of ten groups that would survive an apocalypse or something like that. The only ones I remember are Mormons and the army. The book you're thinking of is GURPS Y2K, which is a real good resource for Beginning of the apocalypse games. There's only three groups mentioned. You got the latter two. the first is small towns. Rural small towns in temperate climates that have farms. They'll pull together to keep their town from collapsing into chaos. It does list the top ten professions in demand after a major disaster. They are farmer, Veterinarian, Cook, Teacher, Scrounger, Mechanic, Armorer, Combat instructor/militia captain, Physician/nurse, and strangely counselor.
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Sep 5, 2014 06:01
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A friend of mine worked at Disneyworld when he was young and apparently they're all kitted out with absolutely everything they need to be self sufficient, their own airfield, manufacturing facilities, generators, food etc etc. So he would always run post apocalypse games with Disney as the last refuge of civilization.
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Sep 5, 2014 06:23
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Bucnasti posted:Disney as the last refuge of civilization. "The city of tomorrow" as it were.
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Sep 5, 2014 06:30
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Bucnasti posted:A friend of mine worked at Disneyworld when he was young and apparently they're all kitted out with absolutely everything they need to be self sufficient, their own airfield, manufacturing facilities, generators, food etc etc. So he would always run post apocalypse games with Disney as the last refuge of civilization. Sadly it seems the airport is no longer in use, having stopped operations in the early 80s. It would, however, be totally valid for 1977!
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Sep 5, 2014 06:46
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Between that and the horrendously creepy artificial town nearby filled with actors paid to live day-and-night in an uncanny-valley attempt at portraying the Ideal American Small Town, there's got to be an Unknown Armies adventure in there somewhere.
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Sep 5, 2014 07:48
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Tollymain posted:Between that and the horrendously creepy artificial town nearby filled with actors paid to live day-and-night in an uncanny-valley attempt at portraying the Ideal American Small Town Wait, what? Holy gently caress, except for the actors bit this is a real thing.
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Sep 5, 2014 07:55
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Disney is basically a real-life cyberpunk megacorporation. They even planned to enter the construction and real estate markets in the late 90s before the dotcom bubble and the end of the Disney Renaissance put paid to that.
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Sep 5, 2014 11:11
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Covok posted:Chances are that most communities, if they worked together, could probably fare a zombie outbreak pretty well. Their enemy is a slower, dumber, and more fragile version of themselves that can only hurt them at immediate range and transfer their disease in the one of the most inefficient methods possible. Humans have the advantage in that duel.
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Sep 5, 2014 11:21
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