The End Times for a given world are not 'the End of all things' and things continue thereafter - see the weird time epochs collected on Coins and Scrolls or last summers Blog Carnival topic "It Came From Beyond Time" where I went into some of the ways that things can survive through 'deep time'. We also see that 'the end times' of a given people may be little to nothing for their neighbours (d6 Sites of the Long Wars) and also that adventure can be found in the immediate aftermath of the end-times: d12 post-apocalyptic worlds (GLoGtober '22).
Things eventually bounce back - especially when we are dealing with a multiverse teeming with life - even a world burnt to a cinder is briefly a paradise for fire-elementals before turning into a rock suitable for dao, xorn and other rock-creatures.
All this assumes your apocalypse hit hard enough to disrupt the underdark and the oceans, both of which provide vast reservoirs of hardy life which can re-seed a devastated land.
Menagerieworld has four great extinction events - where "the fate lines pinched out" - running back to the distant past. Multiple devastating conflicts and continent shaking events barely register on such a scale.
One can have truly global 'end times' with nuclear winters, the fading of life and the long wait for re-seeding from the seas, underdark, wildspace of the planes - but one can get most of the same adventurable bang-for-buck from a continental apocalypse; sufficiently large that it is practically beyond escaping but still leaving the possibility of remnants out there.
One kind of 'post apocalypse as we don't generally understand them' is something unique to our fantasy realms - where a thriving civilization can essentially be cut down while its neighbours or even some of its citizens carry on.
d6 possible 'post-apocalyptic' games
1. The elves of this world all just withered away - their soul-tree in Arvandor died. What is found in their forest holds? What treasures slipped from their fingers? What gates they held barred now fall open?
2. An illithid invasion swept this world, nautiloids hang in the skies and subterranean cities are being constructed. You are one of the inedible races - warforged, plasmoids, dhampir - carve out a niche in the new order
3. The seas rose, much has drowned - you are in one of the few remaining spots of protruding land - adapt to this new water world and its now pre-eminent aquatic masters
4. Princes of Undeath - you and your peers have out-lasted the mortals, as was always the plan. They had some ragnarok, all souls went on and now, finally, the gameboard is clear and long-held grand ambitions can be pursued
5. The great chill - volcanic plumes have darkened the skies, sufficient to hold off the baleful sun - forests spread, the deserts shrink, the claw-locked grip of the lizard-folk empire are loosened. As they skulk off into hibernation or away to warmer climes, what to do?
6. The great migration - everyone just up and left, reasons unknown. Rumours of strange heralds beckoning and driving all through portals that opened everywhere. Are they gone for good? If not, when will they return?
The broad theme here is a massive shake to the system that opens a window for outsiders to potentially forge a new destiny in the abandoned palaces or ruins of the old.
I like these game seeds!
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear it - hopefully you get a session or two out of them!
DeleteInteresting take. I do like your comment that "where a thriving civilization can essentially be cut down while its neighbours or even some of its citizens carry on."
ReplyDeleteNot always does an apocalypse result in the world coming to complete screeching halt.
Thanks - indeed, especially given the variety of things in a fantasy world, the odds on there being some sort of survivors seems probable - avians avoid floods, underground dwellers shrug off a nuclear winter, lizardfolk avoid a plague that wipes out mammals, etc, etc...
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