The Campaign Builder's Guild

I'm actually in the process of unifying the majority of my own fantasy settings and the various campaign worlds that have been used by this regions LARPs into one macro-setting. It's my first time doing much in the way of cannabalisation and it is a massive processes that leaves me most often brooding on metagenre.

I'm mashing so hard it hurts.

Quote from: WeaveBesides, who needs more than one post apoc setting? ;)

A tangent, but every setting is post-apocalyptic if you look back far enough and/or accept a smaller scale. I've heard a plague swept through the Americas before it was settled by Europeans, so that period of colonization could be seen as post-apocalyptic.

I don't mind taking elements from past settings.  Hell, I've come up with fun ideas, then ditched them, then brought them back.  If a setting is completely out of use, I have no hesitation in using it for parts.  And if I like it enough, I might even take an element from a living setting too. 

I actually mashed my old Gesana,. thr David's Delvings, Ish Isle, some of my really ancient Bro-an-mabden, the Lambrian Lament (which was the post campaign for Gesana), all into Celtricia after I created it.  Triblia, Lambria, Celtricia, Ish Isle, and Gesana are the five biggest continental structures on the the "waking Dream", in that order.

So I respect the crap out of what you are doing.  I mashed crap that had been done with T&T and AD&D and Rolemaster...so you sometimes become very aware as to the game-outcomes that are somewhat system determined.

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A tangent

Yay

Quotebut every setting is post-apocalyptic if you look back far enough and/or accept a smaller scale. I've heard a plague swept through the Americas before it was settled by Europeans, so that period of colonization could be seen as post-apocalyptic.

How do you define apocalypse, sir?

Quote from: Tangent_Jaerc
How do you define apocalypse, sir?

I could ask the same of Fallout 3. Everyone's not dead there either, and there's the implication that some places are relatively okay. There have been a few historical cases of people living in the ruins of more advanced civilizations (Rome) and cases of people just living their lives over the mass graves of their neighbors (the plague). The scale hasn't ever been global (in human history) but given the limits of transportation and communication in a given time, it may as well be.

The definition of apocalypse is already fuzzy if there are survivors (which there tend to be in post-apocalypse). So I guess the annihilation of all prior culture, cultural cannibalization without context or understanding, decimation of the population, and a scarred landscape would be the central tropes of the genre. The scarred landscape would be the hardest to find in historical apocalypses (as a trope brought on by fear of nukes and environmental collapse), but famines and little ice ages might qualify now and again.

Anyway, I qualified about the small scale intentionally.

Well said.

Thanks. :D

Quote from: Tangent_Jaerc
most often brooding on metagenre.

Reading through again, I'm curious what you mean by "metagenre," as I've sort of seen genre itself as kind of poorly defined (horror is defined by its tone, while scifi by a jumbled bunch of stuff, romance by character relationships, etc.) Sometimes I wish genres were categorized based on what defined them (tone, "stuff", other) because I think that would provide a good guideline for what mashes well and what doesn't. There's a reason scifi mashes so well with horror, action, and comedy, and a reason why which one you pick will make the same scifi tropes into a totally different story.

Actually, in a sense, both of my major settings here: Avayevnon and Cad Goleor, have in a sense suffered an "apocalypse" in the past, and as such are post-apocalyptic. Cad Goleor has completely recovered, as the legends about that apocalypse are the beginning of their "creation myth."  Avayevnon is struggling a bit more, but it's "apocalypse" was in the form of devastating wars between religions and their gods, which included scarring the landscape, plagues, cultural upheaveal (but not complete destruction of culture) and so forth. However, neither setting is currently in the condition of the typal "post-apocalyptic" setting. 

I've put parts of my setting back into the meat grinder and fed it to itself so many times that I should probably be investigated for some terrible cannibalistic crime. My first version of it started way back in 1998; I really need to have something done with it before it reaches 20 years old.