DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Front of House Play-by-Post Game Studio Genre Surveys Q4 2015 Genre Survey - Vote Now

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>