Re: Setting request: melancholy sense of wonder

Silveraxe wrote:
tussock wrote: 
Silveraxe wrote:

<Re: d20 Modern campain ideas> 

Thanks, this is great feedback. Helps me clarify and put my ideas in
order.


    No problem, fun stuff. Hope I'm not too far off the mark with
anything, I'm not a proper engineer or anything IRL.

"Wasteland (but not)" because the world has bounced back after the
apocalypse, but humanity has not.

Multiple generations then. 

To be honest, I haven't given the apocalypse itself much thought
because the PCs are not very likely to become interested in history for
quite a while.


    Inside-out world builder, eh? I'm half and half, first sketch the
frame outside-in detialed completely down as far as I can be bothered,
then blocks as they're needed in game inside-out to fit it.

I do know that:
1. It was most definitely not atomic. It might have been higly
human-specific bioweapons, the superflu, emergency selective
star-emmigration, some plant or animal mutation ... I don't know,
something that wipes out humanity, but leaves the world almost in
place.
The game would be, indeed, several generations later, but not that
many. Let's say five.


    Hmm, you've got to give 2nd-hand accounts time to die off, so it's
all just reprocessed writings and whisper chains rather than real knowledge.
    On the principle that memory of the "event" could pass from a 5
year old who experienced it directly to her grandchildren of the same
age 60 years on, that's 150 years at least, which is close enough to
adults being 5th generation post.

    I'd prefer more like 300, to soften the concrete a good bit and
give the larger vegitation a chance to do a few generations. You'd
probably need multiple waves of your apocalypse to keep humanity under
control then though.

2. The apocalypse did not occur today, but much later. Tentatively at
about PL 7 if you're familiar with d20 Future terminology. This allows
me to introduce magic/tech and removes AK47s from encounter treasure.


    Heh, yep. You could still have neuvo-amish who where insisting that
the 20th century was all the tech the world needed.

Perhaps a few such fools refused to get the "perfect-health" nano's
implanted, which cured cancer, heart disease, all congenital disorders,
allowed ludicrously unhealthy living standards while keeping a perfect
physique, and caused latent but dominant and irreversable 8th
generation infertility.
Maybe everyone's trying to find a fertile partner, which keeps STDs alive, which makes more people infertile....

This much is common, now for the weird stuff and the sense of wonder. 

    You'll have to excuse my picking that follows. I like the idea and
all, but just wonder if you've considered the ramifications.

1. Titanic ruins covered in vines. 

    Birds will spread forests into the cities very quickly, and their
roots will tear open everyhting to the weather within a century.


Great, I want that. I don't want to run a dungeon that looks like an
office building on Friday evening.

Fortunately most cities are built in areas with prevalent soil, and the natural flooding in the concrete jungles (every time it rains until it shatters the sealed surfaces, roofs get opened, and the land regrows forests) will soon bring it to the surface.
You'd be amazed what a young willow tree can do to pipes (no current construction materials can keep them out), expect similar things to destroy all the old drainage within 50 years.

Well packed sealed roads away from flooding danger can last a long time without traffic, though treefall will block the ones built anywhere that trees can grow. Great potential as landmarks though, even with the surface disrupted the levelled ground stands out for a few centuries.

Expect fairly unique animals to evolve from racoons

Expect? I'm designing them right now :) 

    Heh.

    Something to seriously consider is the lifespan of building
materials.


PL7 building materials are advanced to about double the lifespans you
mention. *handwave.

Fair enough, even though I'd go the opposite. I guess whatever's left will be the long lasting stuff anyway.

2. Tiny villages at vastly different levels of re-civilization.

OK, very fantasy themed then, not too much attention to reality. 8]

Yes, that is why I considered it on topic and posted it here.

World design's always good, and there's bound to be the odd DnD campaign that seeks to explore what happened when the old heroes failed to save the world.

    Amish use very modern technology to make their old-looking tools
and carts, and use fairly modern breeds of animal and crop (many of
which won't survive without human keepers).


Hm ... ok. I meant simple farmers who actually know and understand what
they are doing (albeit empirically,) as opposed to others who use
technology without understanding it.

Fair enough. Even if you're doing without pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, and artificial fertilisers, it all works much the same as modern times anyway, just mixed with traditional rotations and hedgerows.
Scottish highland cattle might dominate, currently being spread the world over by the organics movement.

    Hydro plants won't survive the first big flood, which I can
forgive, but you can't seriously think a lightbulb would last any length
of time (let alone the insulation on wiring that stops shortouts, loved
by rats, protected by constant human intervention).


Not lightbulbs, but Philips-GE EverGlo (TM) trilithium tubes.
"Guaranteed to last a thousand years, or your money back." And in 2017
an new brand of plastics was invented which tastes so horribly that
even rats hate it.

The key word on most such materials over time is "brittle", and rats will still live in the tight cavities where they run.

    Computers? No chance. None. Nada. Ziltch. Zero. Zip ... Ok, perhaps
one or two in some sort of bunkered military vehicle (add oil, patch
unweathered but incredibly brittle rubber pipes, invent battery, start
engine, cross fingers).


Not your PC, or mine, but solid state positronic computers ... or
something. All you have to do is reverse the polarity on their power
sources and they work.


    Starting WOS 4F ...

<7 hours later> ding! Connection to secure.mclindows.gov not available. Please test local coverage and reboot when signal is found.


Heh. Security systems on cars, weapons, buildings, computers; endless fun finding the spell that makes the magic box walk and talk.


<snip> 
:) That was just an example. I dislike plain +2 swords even in D&D. I'd
like magic items like the ones in the stories, items that do ONE thing,
but really well, and the idea is to either use them at the exact right
time, or to quest for them to solve a very specific problem.

Ah, plot devices. Not really my thing; I like common tools used in unique ways. Number 8 wire and all that.

Or the little box that creates a Mage Armor personal protection
forcefield (just because it's a staple.)


    Forecefields? Hmm, more futuristic pre-apocalypse than I was
thinking. Not that it really changes the fundamentals of material lifespan.


Yes, I'm sorry for failing to mention that. I thought that mentioning
Fallout would give a hint. After all, there are plasma, laser and gauss
rifles in Fallout even though it looks like the apocalypse occured in
the fifties.

Fallout should've worked, never mind. Never did play that one all the way through; always seemed more fun to create whole a new character that would go on use whatever new toy I'd found. Too many shinies.

4. People/creatures (aliens? robots?) that seem to perform pointless or
incomprehensible actions for no apparent reasons.


    Can't be robots. Metal fatigue is unavoidable in anything that
moves, and corrosion and seizing is unavoidable in anything that
doesn't. Ditto with machines that might rebuild the robots.

They are self repairing, of course, using colonies of repair nanobots.

Raw materials likely to be the ultimate problems then, particularly ultra-tech stuff with very fussy requirements. Perhaps there's only three nanobots left of the original thousands, and routine nightly maintenance takes a whole year.

BTW, that's a real big handwave you've got there about repairing metal fatigue. Most things need smelted down to raw components, repurified, and reforged; and only the light or soft metals do that cheaply (aluminium being best for that currently).
I'd go with bio-machines, more like zombies than robots: the nano-bots have to be self-replicating to do the job, and then they're little more than living cells anyway. Bio-machines can just bud when they get old.

That's ignoing random encounters with the wildlife, and problems with
more  short-lived components.


Not ignoring. What you mention are the reasons why they're not
everywhere, as they used to be before.


    Hmm. Box of "detect magic" to find the other boxes that actually
still work would be handy then.

    Aliens (or bunkered, enviro-suit-wearing humans) could be fun.
Perhaps even uplifted animals working for the bunkered humans.

Anything goes :)

Anything? Out of control nano-swarms, out of control bio-paint, time-capsule people (millions of them). The mars colony that just needs a spare part or two and the satellite defences disabled to get home. Infinately knowlegable but cryptically insane computer banks.

    Set the pre-apocalypse in high enough tech and the computers could
do anything, and your robots could just be bio-drones (with bio-problems
as above).


It will have artificial gravity. OF COURSE the robots and computers can
do anything. :)


    Artificial gravity is just spin, that's easy. Besides, there's
obviously one thing the robots and computers couldn't do: or chose not
to do. 8]

--
    tussock

Aspie at work, sorry in advance.
.

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