[3.5]Post Apocalypse D&D (Formerly PA Economies)

[Prak]

Due to the war, modern weapons, thought they're available, are rare, or rather the ammo for them is.

what about other technology? not just electricity based t4echs, but combustion engine? steam-power? are their fossil fuels left? is there any working industry machinery left?

what ceased in that 16 years since the war? what is left? is the planet like Arakus, a desert planet? is there plant life left? is water safe?

does Harry Potter physics exist, or can magic repair technology?

Tech still exists. The Earth was just on war footing--rationing and warband raiding--for 144 years, with no production worth noting. Some people were able to maintain modern tech--and I'm considering letting some future tech have survived so people can play robots--there should be a lot of industrial machinery that can be fixed up to work. Indeed I intend on that being part of the game, in addition to rummaging and scavenging supplies, I want players to cobble together weaponry and machines and I'll allow them to find the bits and pieces to do it.

The war was stopped due to attrition. In the Christian traditions, people don't become angels. All the angels that will exist were created by God at the dawn of the world. So when those angels start getting killed, it's a serious problem. Demons can totally be made, in a number of ways, but it's still hard. It's not like a couple demons can just fuck and pop out a baby (well, ok, they can, and it's even going to be faster than human reproduction, but it's still not optimal). So forces were dwindling, and they decided to basically say fuck it. God called his angels to fall back. Demons didn't bother to pursue as one concerted force.

Plant life was, as I said above, seriously damaged. Seas and rivers and lakes were poisoned. It's been 160 years since, though, so the earth is beginning to recover. Basically, the world looks a bit like that in I Am Legend, but with more advanced plant growth/wild reclaimation.

I don't know whether I want magic repairing tech. I may say that it's capable of repairing physically damaged components, but those components still need to be put back together.

[shadzar]

i would say then look at Battlefield Earth with john travolta, and go from there with how the world is behind in tech, but like the one rat-brain, some people still know how to make things work, then throw in magic. that is pretty overgrown and post-apocalyptic.

or watch the movie Wizards

[Bihlbo]

I'm not sure as to why you care about the currency. It's a pretty unimportant and simple aspect of the setting that could literally be anything you want it to be and it's probably not going to bother your players one bit. Heck, you could decide it's sloth claws because they're extinct and the bones are easy to identify, and everyone will likely just shrug and move on to the game.

Also, unless your intent is to have the entire game localized to one corner of the world, it is a guarantee that there are many types of currencies being used in the world. One region might be controlled by Overlord Zim who uses silver coins with his name on, while another place might be full of nomadic tribes who only ever trade the goods they produce when they occasionally meet in the off-hunting season, and somewhere else it's possible people gathered up all the Canadian $bills they could find and use these as currency with higher values being attributed to bills that are in better condition since no one can read.

[Prak]

I care about the currency because players need to know what they're dealing in, and if it's barter, then starting equipment needs to be altered (even if it's just "use this amount for PHB values, but in the game you'll be dealing in barter")

That said, a case can be made for gold, though a case could just as easily be made for pre-revelation poker chips.

[Aryxbez]

For what its worth, a game I got awhile back called "State of Decay" used ones Influence as "currency". It's an Open World Zombie Apocalypse type deal, Influence had a number value used to claim use of certain resources as you would go out explore. You gained Influence by Helping out the community on various missions (Hunting certain zombie,Rescues,training etc), or bringing a cache of supplies back to base. Though Influence was also used to give sway to start various projects your base is capable of, like upgrading a facility, creating stuff, or even lending resources to fellow neighbors.

Albeit in State of Decay your Influence was limited by "Fame", which increased by your community doing more notable stuff, like survivor(s) becoming more personally competent, or doing Story/sidequests for other people. However yes, I quite liked this idea, much different from simple barter, and seemed to make sense to me at the time, go out and do stuff, and you get privileged with resources from people.

[Prak]

non-living wood

i wasnt wanting to touch that one based on treant vs table....but if you have decided, then it works. no telling what abominations exist in this world you are creating such as living tables or even animals mutated together with them... so the "liviing" requirement added to the next line to explain "undead", pretty much closes most if not ALL gaps there.

what about beyond glass then, and depending on how futuristic your tech is, say Star Trek energy shields? would they work like a magic shield to block magic effects, or like a tech energy shield?

looking currently at Defiance and thinking back to Dune shields and such. Defiance definitely seems close to your world era of tech, save for that was alien vs god war or what have you. and war of any kind brings quick growth in weapons and defenses, so no idea how far tech has gone or had a chance to go.

how about detonation weapons affecting magical shields while thinking about it? grenades like says D&D had/has boomsmacks or whatever it was called in Aurora's or gnome grenades, even up to nukes?

does cure disease extend to curing mutations, cancer, etc? could the earlier table/human mutant meld be returned to a table and a human?

projectile guns were the only ones you were thinking earlier, or how about lases, sonic weapons, etc?

"fighter" with a flamethrower vs "wizard" with a fireball/burning hands/etc? is there going to be a balance issue with some magic effects replicated by the tech?

an idea, if magic came to be, that current tech at the time molded its development so that th normal D&D spells from medieval era are not that way, but in fact tailored to the physics and abilities of the more modern era. new spells based on modern times:

Napalm Missles
create Jell-O-tenous Cube (is it a monster or a dessert?)

can a spell "scroll" be photocopied? digitally copied such that an iPad can have x-gigs worth of "scrolls" on it?

can magical energies be stored like electricity in a battery? an iScroll with flash memory that much be recharged for 8 hours over night to regain its spells?

scrying via cameras? magically tap into the camera system and see all it can see? or like the repair the cog, but someone has to put the cog back into the tech to make it work, magic can't just be Edward Elric and use alchemy to fix a broken radio and it be working right away.

i doubt you will have to OotS and 4th edition problem os summoning a Gold Elemental and disenchanting it into residuum and a pile of gold due to the other thread, but can you summon any sore of elemental? waht about those trasmute spells or warp wood? warp carbon since it is known as an element to go back to the previous modern spells based on modern ideas as opposed to medieval era ideas and knowledge?

the scarcity of precious things leaves a lot of spells in the lurch depending on whit 3PP and other things created under OGL.

underwater breathing? is the water is just returning from an poisoned state, do you need to alter that?

what is the environment like? bad weather from the destruction of nature with the lack of flora and such? barren wastes and desserts? what weather type spells exist? call lighting, already covered that. meteor swarm, are they brought down from the Kieber belt? wait meteor swarm creates rocks and such out of nothing, so that might hurt the scarcity factor....

For a lot of such questions, I will be looking at Urban Arcana, and when that inevitably turns up a "fuck, we didn't think about that," well, I'm not certain. Defiance seems to have had a much more stable (or less unstable) war period. Anno Raptus (my setting) starts out with a scenario much more like "stealth nuke ambush" where half the world population dies and much the industrialized world is destroyed before the war even begins.

On the other hand, most of the devastation would be surface. If anyone knows about actual subterranian research facilities or bunkers built in mountains, that'd be handy.


Hmm... maybe there was a brief magical renaissance during the war, as the remnants of governments seized the new "science" and used it to try to rebyild and mobilize.

... fuck, now I'm thinking about a kind of "Global Secular Defence" force that formed to fight both angel and demon, to "cancel the apocalypse."

watch war games or stargate for a look at what NORAD would be like. or Umbrella Corp for what a BIG underground facility would operate as. i think they are pretty self-contained, so if anti nuke, would they be anti-angel/demon?

if they are and hidden well enough, then underground places still exist and are probably still running, and maybe one such had one crazy scientist that well hellbent and already turned into a lich since it is 16 years after this war... he turned all the other people into monsters to defend the bunker and... well it is your world and story, so i will let you create things like that as to not direct your ideas too much more.

I was wanting more actual real life non-surface facilities. Of course I can make a few up--I'm already making up a space station to fit into the Revelation plot (something called Wormwood falling from the skies to poison the fresh water).

But yeah, it occurred to me that since magic comes when the angels and demons manifest, even a devastated earth would pretty much immediately start making use of it, especially since at least some of it would suddenly legitimize some of the crazier CIA projects which could be pulled out and resumed.

[shadzar]

well NORAD is a real life non-surface facility, but that is about as specific as can be said about that.

underground missile silo bases also exist cause we saw they during the gulf war and cold war.

also sub-aquatic? were submarines hidden from the war enough? how about places like that underwater hotel? it is real, so feasibly, an underwater base ala Spy Who Loved Me is within currently technological possibly, though maybe not the depths of say in The Abyss.

also for surface dangers the movie Screamers seems very good to mine for ideas. its post-apoc style with some terminator thrown in where machines take on a life of their own. gives "War"forged a whole new meaning!

[Prak]

Well, looking at Cracked, and poking around the internet, I've found a number of underground facilities and such.

The next thing I need to do is figure out how to explain how people were actually moved into these places in a vaguely coherent fashion when the government seems to have trouble responding to hurricanes. I'm kind of considering having the actual government destroyed and scientists fed up with bullshit leading people. Like, imagine the Rapture comes and Neil Degrasse Tyson just says "Alright, fuck this bullshit, follow me, people!"

[JigokuBosatsu]