There are pumpkins on porches and bonfires being stacked, which can only mean it's November. Yes, that's right, we're a month late with the Q4 genre survey, but at least we should be more in tune with the change of season.

So what do you fancy now? What did you fancy last time, back in Q2 of this year?

Back then we had an upswing of votes for "always a bridesmaid never a bride", Post-Apocalyptic. All this yearning for the apocalypse can't be healthy peeps! Always a popular choice, it's the first time I can remember post-apocalpse winning outright.

Alas, it didn't spawn any post-apocalypse games, so let's hope we get what we want this time. (Game, not apocalypse. )

Cast your vote now!

In the past I was mostly about FRP ... the further away from my daily grind the better. But this time I selected 'other' because I could not select one based on 'genre'. I am currently more interested in a 'fun' game irrespective of genre <g>

Well, you are allowed 2 choices, if you so wish.

But yeah, not sure what I fancy.... Actually I always fancy horror at this time of the year but that might just be Hallowe'en. Let's say Dark Fantasy then.

I have an urge for cyberpunk, espionage, and of course I had to pick post apocalyptic.

Soap and Thriller for me... I guess watching Scream Queens is getting me in the mood for slashery type fun

's funny, Mina ... I have always had a soft spot in my heart for a good Zombie movie, but never really liked the 'slasher' films all that much.

Zombies are fun too! Love a good zombie movie!

Ummmmm .... just curious ... is there such a thing? <gd&r LMAO>

Technically we do have a post-apocalyptic game, post several apocalypses in fact, namely Pande's Numenera game. Scavenging through the relics of the high tech past, dealing with the strange creatures that resulted from the meddling of the predecessors, definitely meets the criteria.

I liked Warm Bodies.

True. I guess to me Numenera is so far in the future it is its own version of sci-fi fantasy. But your right it can be accurately termed post apocalyptic.

And Warm Bodies was fun.

I agree Pande. It doesn't =feel= post apocalyptic to me either. Course, that doesn't mean I'm not enjoyin' da heck outa da game <g>

Fun it is.

Actually, when you think about it, most D&D campaign settings are post-apocalyptic in some manner. Greyhawk and Mystara both share the Blackmoor Catastrophe, for example.

But yes, the further back in time the apocalypse the more relevence it loses.

Just take the modern world and the dinosaurs as an example.

Anyway, with Post-Apocalypse making a strong showing again, did anyone have any particular game in mind?

Well I have enjoyed films like The Book of Eli and of course the Mad Max series. But really I love the setting of Hell on Earth. <hint>

Deadlands: Hell on Earth worked better for me than the original Weird West setting tbh.

I don't think there are that many more post-apocalyptic RPGs though. Earthdawn? That was post-apoc high fantasy, I guess.

Planet of the Apes

I was going to make a joke about Seraph of the End or be bitter sweet and mention So Ra No To Wo ... but then I decided to get serious.

Shin Sekai Yori - From the New World

Definitely post-apocalyptic but a very different sort of apacalypse, definitely a nightmare world once you pull away the facade of rural living and definitely swallow and oh-my-god-fridge-nightmare disturbing.

There are worse things than hell on earth.

Shin Sekai Yori asks the question "what would really happen if a certain percentage of the population suddenly developed paranormal (super) powers?"

And plays it completely straight.

RPG-wise, I did miss a few classics. Twilight 2000, The Morrow Project, and of course the infamous RIFTS.

RIFTS is one of those post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy super hero space opera horrors.

I have played all those. I think I still have a copy of The Morrow Project in a box someplace. I liked the premise and enjoyed play way back when.

I was hinting at the Deadlands version, that is the one I liked as well. But mechanics wise, Savage Worlds is what I was implying.

Had a great time playing a short lived Morrow Project game with an awesome GM from this area that had written supplements for GDW's Traveler series. It was a sad day when the game fell apart <sigh>

Yeah, I played a Morrow Project one-off recently and quite enjoyed it. It's a relatively grounded post-apocalyptic game, compared to something like RIFTS, although I have fantastic memories of RIFTS and some of the ludicrous, nonsensical munchkin characters we created.

Not sure what my next GM game will be. I'll square away HHE first, since it requires a bit more attention to explain the game as we go, which was one of my original goals with it. I think it'll end up serving as a pretty solid intro to 13th Age.

But yeah, next game will be one that doesn't need explaining. So definitely not RIFTS... although some might say there is no explaining RIFTS.

I'm trying to remember if Cyberpunk described itself as post-apocalyptic. I don't think so. It was "dark future", and there had been bioplague outbreaks and some nuclear conflicts, but not an apocalypse as such. I'd say to qualify as an apocalypse, civilisation as we know it has to be ended, right?

We hit on a few post-apocalypse RPGs here, but the other day I realised something else.

Thinking about what post-apocalyptic game I could hypothetically run, to at least partially sate people's appetite for the genre, I suddenly realised that "post-apocalypse" is way too broad a definition.

It's possibly more broad than "fantasy" or "sci-fi", which at least have flagships of the genre.

Once upon a time (i.e., back in the Eighties), the post-apocalypse genre was synonymous with Road Warrior, but zombies changed all that, becoming a subgenre of their own. And what about the survival genre, that has dallied with the post-apocalypse on many an occasion?

In short, there are 5 votes above for a post-apocalypse game. What did those 5 voters mean exactly?

Three words for the apocalypse:

Undead Cybernetic Squirrels

OK, here's a question. Is RoboCop undead, or a cyborg?

Good question. Trappings from the movies indicate cyborg. They keep him on life support before they begin the work.

My idea of post apoc is most scenarios except zombies. That is more horror in my opinion

Well ... at least in the Peter Weller version, clearly cyborg ... especially in the sense of 'undead' meaning 'zombie'.

As to 'post apocalypse', I agree that it can cover a =WIDE= range of games. It has certainly been the case in movies <g> So if that is where you want to go, I think it will be important to be specific as to the world and how it works.

Oh, and ... depending ... I could be interested <g>

Aye, that's the thing, I'm wondering what peeps wanted from their post-apocalypse. I'm a little tired of zombies myself, but even comparing, say, Mad Max: Fury Road to The Road you have a big difference, or even something very comic book like Bounty Killer.

I think you can go two ways with apoc. First is having everything fall apart on the characters as the catastrophy happens and they have to survive it and rebuild.

The other would be well after the initial event with the new society that has developed.

I like the first one better myself for more drama.

I want to play Eli. From the movie the book of Eli.

<heh heh heh> great minds pande. I was thinking 'book of eli' as well <g>

Ken, I am not sure.. I think I like after society has somewhat reformed. Like Logan's Run, there are a lot of possibilities with that subgenre as well.

I really enjoyed playing in the game WSL: Wasteland a few years back. It was a post-nuclear apocalypse type scenario more slanted to mutants and monsters than to zombies and undead.

I want to play Levi again... a half Cherokee mutant from that game.

Of course, for that to really work out, it would require the return of Keyser and Ilyanna along with Gypsy and Barry.

I LOVED that game. Crazy Karl was one of my favorite characters EVER! And Ily was wonderful as the sister who protected him while he thought he was protecting her.

And Py! I remember her too well!

Question for everyone, since we are talking about Apocalypse games. Since the "return of civilization" ala Hunger Games / Divergent / Etc was mentioned... do you think that the Pern novels would count in this sub-genre or not?

Per, Darksun, those kinds of books to me lean towards their own fantasy genre. To me post apocalyptic is like Eli, Mad Max The Posman. The death of civilization is still in people's minds. If we get to the point where it is a distant memory that might not even be true, then we have lost that line. But that is my own take on things.

Pande, I agree, but I was curious to what most thought since I can see a case made either way

So what do we call the genre where despite the ancient fall, civilization returns? Post-apoc renaissance?

Hey, you realise The Matrix is a post-apocalypse film! Weird. Then again, it's so dominated by its sci-fi elements (including the Matrix itself) I'm not sure it truly qualifies.

Most post-apocalypse scenarios qualify as science fiction, generally through mankind overreaching. The destruction of civilisation is usually through technological means.

I agree that the Matrix has a post apocalyptic world as part of it. The criteria I use, is the idea if you walked into a video store or pulled up Netflix. What category would the stories fall in. While a case coukd be made for urban fantasy, post apocalyptic, or sci-if for the Matrix films. I think most would file them under sci-fi in the context above.

Well ... isn't the rise of any 'civilization' a post apocalypse to some extent? Look at out world. Europe is built on the 'remains' of the Roman Empire ... the current China on the remains of their 'feudal system' and so on.

Hence my use of 'Renaissance' (Which is a bit of a misnomer, the last bit of Rome didn't fall until the mid-fifteenth century AD, and quite a bit of the 'rebirth' was just taken wholesale from it. )

OK ... in a sense 'renaissance' =is= applicable, but that 'process' is also what 'post apocalypse' is also about <g>

Yeah. Genres are funny old things, and they don't always mean what they say they mean.

As the consumers, we understand that a genre is a catch-all of tropes more than anything.

So Star Wars ends up classed as sci-fi, when there's not much science, even pretend science, about it.

Like post-apocalypse genre doesn't simply mean the film is set sometimes after an apocalypse. It means the film will feature a fallen, savage civilisation (if any civilisation at all) and a destroyed environment. They're a way of making us reflect on the modern world, rather than escape into the future. Etc.

Interestingly, the post-apocalypse genre usually focuses on very personal stories too, often stories of survival, though quests for a promised land or holy grail are fairly common too.

And that brings us nicely back to message games. I think a post-apocalyptic message game would have to feature a quest, rather than survivors wandering aimlessly without hope.

There are lots of 'icons' that tend to 'define' a genre.

If it has space ships it is Sci Fi.

If it is set in a world that looks like the Ausi outback it is 'post apocalypse' ... unless there are undead and then it is 'zombie apocalypse' <g>

... at least to the vast majority of people.

But those are just 'settings'. It is what happens in the game ... how that 'setting' is used that determines the 'type' of game. If you have a 'space setting', but the ship is infested with aliens that are trying to eat everyone, horror game.

If you have a game set in a zombie apocalypse, but the =story= is about how two people find each other and fall in love, it is a love story <g>

So I guess, for me, the thing is, there is a 'setting' and there is a 'story' and one doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other.

More of a ZomRomCom. You've got red on you.

I agree that you can put any type of story in almost any setting, Campbell's hero's journey works as well for Gilgamesh as for Frodo or as for Luke.

Yup. Exactly <g> So maybe we should start having proposed games talk about setting =and= story 'genres' <weg>

Keep talking! Looking forward to playing in some of those games!

Depends where in the Pern chronology you mean. The time of the White Dragon read as very fantasy but the discovery of Pern read very sci fi - then all their tech broke and it became somewhat post apoc.

Ividia, good point. The First Fall was pretty rough, and civilization, such as it was, definitely had broken down.

Same with the Shannarra books. Supposedly they are post-apocalyptic.

I just saw the first episode... anyone else watching the Chronicles of Shannara?

And speaking of... the Book of Swords by Saberhagen was another post apocalyptic setting.

Yes. I liked those books, although they got a little silly towards the end.

Fish and I watched it last night. I liked it quite a bit. The visual evidence of post apocalypse is much stronger than the vague narrative references from the books.

Also... wheel of time series by r jordan is post apocalypse- over and over- but it is our earth very far in the future.

Yup, wheel of time is in the same category as Numenera and Vance's Dying Earth, post all the apocalypses.

Mina, yeah. I have to say that seeing the rusting hulk of what looked a lot like an oil tanker stranded on land certainly ... 'hints' ... at a 'post apocalypse' world <chuckle>

On the other hand ... at least in the first episode ... it certainly seemed 'out of place' compared with everything else in the show <g>

Yeah the satellite dish farm scene was subtle.

But all that aside, i did enjoy the show

Mike and Jim, loved the show as well. I think it has a lot of promise, and I hope the expense will not be too steep for it to get renewed.

I think while I love the Apocalypse Now part of the Post Apocalypse Genre, I think currently I am really getting into the Dystopian aspect. Returning civilization, remnants of the past that may or may not play a part...

OK, so if we stick to purely visual media, what is your favourite post-apocalypse film/TV series?

I'm mostly just curious if that 'past' will somehow be brought into the story at some point ... or is it just 'conversational window dressing', as it were.

Mina, dystopian settings work better for me in movies than in games. But I did play in one f2f game many years ago that was a blast. So it feels more like ... for me ... there is a 'narrower window' for 'getting it right' there than, say FRP. I suspect that at least some of that comes from the diversity in 'good' FRP stories and games compared to 'good' dystopian settings. Most seem so ... limited, mostly in the sense that they could not sustain themselves ... or something like that <g>

I have a soft spot for Fist of the North Star. (Having said that, the post-apocalypse setting in those films, series is purely window dressing for exploding heads.) But yeah, Mad Max is hard to beat.

Concur, Mad Max.

I really enjoy those, but for my word is gone movies, I like Day After Tomorrow (since most of the earth become uninhabitable I think it qualifies ) and any of the original Planet of the Apes movies.

Ah, good point on Apes. I enjoyed the new films a lot, the apes themselves were mesmerising.

But I dunno, the post-apocalypse isn't the same if the environment looks better off without us. It probably would be, don't get me wrong. But humans wandering around a magnificent, verdant wilderness -- even with a few ruined cities and talking apes thrown in -- doesn't spark my imagination as much as the stereotypical "Wastelands".

I wanted to get into Into the Badlands but really struggled with the palette. Bloody pretentious thing to say! But if you watch the trailers, you might see what I mean. It's so colourful, it could be Oz! It just doesn't feel post-apocalyptic.

I am with you. Give me desert or at least a totally destroyed cityscape.

TV Series, quite liked Falling Skies & Revolution - for a while at least!

I liked Fallen Skies for a while but it got to the point where I just couldn't take it. Then the end of the first season the main character does something so out of his personality I gave up.

Revolution started ok but lost my interest. Can't say why exactly.

I liked Book of Eli as I mentioned above. Mad Max works, certainly the first set. I am not sold on the remake. It was ok, but.



For a world that I liked though honestly the movie is so so The Postman.

I agree with Mike about the original Apes series. The new ones are not bad but they don't have the same edge. Though I am dying to see the one the previewed at the end of the first one.

There have to be others just not coming up with them at the moment.

The one redeeming thing in Into the Badlands is the fight scenes. If you are a fan of marshal arts movies, they are very well done.

Hmm. Might have to give em a try. I love martial arts movies.

Aye, that's what I liked about the series. I think what they were aiming for with the colour was a Zhang Yimou look, but it didn't quite gel with the post-apocalypse theme for me.



The post-apocalypse doesn't have to be all melancholy and soul-searching though, imo. Sometimes it's best used to serve up mad, feverish, fun antics that'd be indecipherable in another genre.

There a Netflix series I've been watching called "100". It's a short time into the future, and post apocalyptic, after a nuclear war destroys the world. Start of the series takes place in space. There were about a dozen space stations orbiting the earth when the war happened and they joined together for mutual survival. It's now about 100 years later. Rest of the series is about them trying to get back to earth to see if the radiation level will let them live and what happens when they do.

So far it's pretty good.

It is on my NF list too. Have not gotten to it yet though.

Zeim- the 100 is actually a cw show. And i love it. Really gritty and intense but not so over the edge to be cartoonish. Real choices real comsequences and real hardships... but human will and spirit to survive is the heart of this.

I do like into the badlands... the story has progressed and characters have more depth than you first see... the color thing is a contrast to the tenor of the show. It works for me. Post apocalypse can be pretty while the people are not. And the scenes where humams can be found... towns and such... not so colorful

Hmmm. I'll have to look for it on CW. I just finished season 2 and there are no more episodes on NF,

Zeim, I really like the 100. Season 3 premiers on the the WB soon. Keep an eye out, Season 2 has a heck of a cliffhanger!