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

[Prak]

Working on a post apocalypse setting, and mulling over the matter of money. It's been handled a variety of ways in a variety of works--bottle caps in Fallout, inexplicable credits in RIFTS, hand wavy Trade Units in d20 Apocalypse. I'm curious as to peoples thoughts on it.

Just to contextualize, I'm using d20, specifically D&D. The apocalypse was the Rapture and a resulting war between Heaven and Hell, which had the side effect of making magic possible. It's definitely not the high magic setting of standard D&D, in that the quality of life improving spells like Plant Growth won't be available, but it's not really low magic either as primary caster classes will be available, just with modified spell lists. Guns are available, but rare due to the length of time since Apocalypse, and their use is discouraged due to the scarcity of ammunition (there was 150 years of war in an apocalypse setting. I don't care how much ammo exists now, a lot of it got used by the mortal armies of lords of Heaven and Hell).

There a few possibilities, of course, it could be wholly barter, and starting equipment is just put in non-monetary terms. Purchasing new equipment then becomes part of the social minigame (or vice versa). Ammo itself could be the primary form of currency, discouraging it's use even more (apparently Metro 2033 went this route, though only original mass-produced bullets were currency, while you were more likely to use hand-packed rounds in your gun). The other idea I had was something like Fallout's bottle caps, though possibly poker chips instead (even if only for the gimmicky nature of handing chips out at the table). Hell, a few settings use water as the currency. Conceivably it could even be cigarettes, which really comes down to the currency being paper and dried tobacco as if you have those two things, you can literally make money.

The problem with an actual currency like caps or chips is the question of backing. They could be purely fiat, of course, but without an over ruling governing body values will vary wildly (a new pistol could cost you five chips in what was once Utah, which would not have tons of chips lying around from pre-event, but 500+ chips in Vegas which would be like sitting in Fort Knox if people started using gold again). An idea I had was that chips could be backed by the feudal warlords left on Earth from the Post-Rapture war who promise spell effects as the ultimate backing. So a red chip is a Circle 1 chip, and is backed by the promise of a lord casting a 1st level spell on your behalf, and it equates to roughly 10gp in the PHB.

I haven't played Fallout yet, so I don't know how caps were backed exactly. I'm interested in additional input.

[name_here]

In Fallout 1, caps were backed by the Water Merchants. Fallout 2 had it transition to some form of coinage issued by the NCR, and then Fallout3/New Vegas have the primary currency be bottle caps with no explaination of how it's backed, even though the two major powers in New Vegas issue their own currencies.

[wotmaniac]

How far "post" are you talking about?
barter economy will only persist long enough for things to "stabilize"; at which point, some sort of commodity standard will emerge. you only need to worry about "backing" when borders get established and/or you have too many competing commodities (which probably won't last long .... at least not locally).
eventually a token economy will emerge, but that comes well later ... at which point you're post-post-apocalyptic (which really isn't very apocalyptic any more).


/2cents

[Prak]

Basically, the trumpets sounded 150 years prior to game start, the "virtuous" were raptured, and the deeply sinful--your Hitlers and McVeighs--were condemned to hell. Then the hordes of Hell and legions of Heaven fought on the Earth for 100 years, with some humans pledging service in the armies of one or the other side to win favour. The rest of humanity in this time didn't get out much to say the least, cowering in bunkers and shanty towns, frequently raided and preyed upon by the armies. So people have really only had fifty years in which to start actually puttings back together, in a world which looks very much like Hell A from the Angel comics, with various areas being the squats of survivors or the realms claimed by angels or demons. And of course, this being a work of my creation, many angels are dicks, and not all demons are horrifying monsters. Some of the demon controlled areas are more like living under a king who is just really cruel to his enemies.

[JigokuBosatsu]

In Fallout 1, caps were backed by the Water Merchants. Fallout 2 had it transition to some form of coinage issued by the NCR, and then Fallout3/New Vegas have the primary currency be bottle caps with no explaination of how it's backed, even though the two major powers in New Vegas issue their own currencies.

I'm assuming there is no actual backing and it's just psychological- in Old World Blues Dr. Mobius predicted prewar that bottle caps would become the currency, for no particular raisin reason.

I've always liked the idea of having a mix of barter and multiple currencies, but realize it can be too fiddly, even when a computer is converting things for you.

[Ancient History]

I'm really tired of everybody defaulting to barter after a generic apocalypse. Let's be honest, just because civilization has literally gone to hell does not mean economic models and thought cease working. So let's break down economic problems of the apocalypse.

1) Loss of infrastructure. Presumably, this means that electronic fund transfers are going to be difficult or impossible, at least until systems can be repaired or replaced. Now, depending on the exact type/consequences of the apocalypse you might still get inventive people setting up temporary computer or telegraph networks, so things like electric and electronic funds transfers may be available in limited areas. However, people got along just fine with checks and paper money for years, so this doesn't have to be a game-ender for the human race, but it may well be paired with...

2) Loss of confidence. Failure in government to prevent/respond to the apocalypse may lead to a loss of confidence in the worth of its fiat currency, and to a lesser but equally important extant the loss or impairment of facilities can lead to the loss of confidence in banks and other financial institutions. Depending on the severity of the apocalypse, this might lead to a run on the banks or people reverting to more liquid currencies (gold, silver, gems, or fuck, oil, water, gas...) and possibly barter. Good governments will seek to reinforce their own currency rather then get dragged into the mire of trading physical goods around, but the rush to find a new store of wealth is often accompanied by...

3) Sudden destruction of wealth. One of the major problems with an apocalypse, the assumed massive destruction/societal breakdown is assumed to bankrupt several individuals, and effectively destroy or negate most investments. Now, on the individual level this may be devastating, and the GNP is definitely going to take a hit, but assuming that debt agencies like credit card issuers and banks are equally hurt, this doesn't have to lead to a mad scrabble for whatever you can get at the point of a gun. Instead, think of it as giving everyone a blank slate credit-wise. Sure there will be some teething issues...look at the privatization of Russia...but it's not so bad unless you have...

4) Loss of means of production. This is the general biggy, in that you have sustained loss to your ability to make shit. Coupled with the new demand for shit (from the survivors), this can result in a scenario where prices go insane - a can of soup traded for an Andy Warhol original of a can of soup, that type of thing. And it's even more devastating as coupled with the destruction of wealth, infrastructure, and confidence it'll take some considerable time to build the means of production back up. A problem made all the worse if you have...

5) Loss of knowledge. Well, this is the worst part: all the people that know how to make X work or do Y or anything useful have died, and you're left with a bunch of supermarket shelf-stockers with chainsaw hands and shotguns, or those mouth-breathers that clean telephones for a living. This seems like a back-to-square-one for civilization scenario, but it doesn't need to be - it just means that you have a large unemployed, unskilled workforce and a few high-demand skilled workers (and associated training materials, text books, etc.). So yeah, you're going to get blacksmiths and leatherworkers doing well while the city slickers starve - but if you're the guy in charge, you make sure that those blacksmiths and leatherworkers are busy retraining the other assholes into productive members of society again, by offering them more money/hookers/whatever. If that means the blacksmith goes to work in his own horse-drawn caddilac, that's fine...as long as he passes the knowlege on and in a few years time you now have fifty blacksmiths and the skill bottleneck eases up a bit. It's not perfect, but you could also have New Deal-type construction and beautification projects, with gangs of former cubicle dwellers leveling roads and clearing forests for farms and, most importantly getting paid to do it. Remember, the key to a successful post-apocalyptic economy is to keep the money flowing...

[Prak]

That's all well and good, AH (and your posts are always pretty entertaining) but it seems to be primarily predicated on the idea that the apocalypse leaves a governing body in place. In the event of a complete societal collapse (as I'm using for my setting, but isn't necessarily a guarantee in a PA setting) there is no real incentive to do anything but barter, even if one side is using a good that is essentially made currency. Sure, I may be haggling how much pure, drinkable water I'll give my neighbour for their shotgun shells, and pure drinkable water may be so in demand that it's a standard of exchange, but it's still barter (and we now get into discussion I remember having been had on these forums as to what counts as money precisely...)

I suppose to some extent I'm inclined to call any currency with a practical, non-financial use, such as drinkable water, fuel, ammunition, etc not a currency but a standardized trade good, and that's my personal opinion and so not gospel on the matter.

In the context of Anno Raptus (my setting), I really am leaning towards a "Spell Standard," where a currency is backed by the promise of the various demon and angel lords to cast a spell on your behalf. Basically you have 1st through 9th circle coins, guaranteeing casting the equivalent level of spell if you go and turn your spell coins in to a lord. They would roughly equate to a value of (spell level*minimum caster lever*10)gp for values from the phb. And I'm leaning towards using poker chips as those spell coins, because I think it's funny, and it's actually pretty practical.

[fectin]

Just use gold. The people who value it correlate well with people who are well equipped to survive apocalypse, and "gold is valuable, because survivalists accepted it once" is plenty of reason to be lazy.

[Prak]

Crazed, religiously-brainwashed republicans and libertarians are well equipped to survive the apocalypse?

[Chamomile]

Is this going to be another thread where Prak asks for answers to a question he's already decided on, then gets irritated when people give him the answers he claimed to want?

[Prak]

I'm going to try not to be a dumbass about this, Cham, I promise. Gold or other precious metals are certainly a viable currency, especially as I'm positing a world more akin to an iron age setting than a lawless wasteland. I just wanted a sounding board and some other points of view.

[fectin]

Anyone who builds bunkers full of food and guns is well equipped to deal with sudden, complete societal breakdown.
They're "crazed" because they're pouring enormous resources into preparing for an extremely unlikely outcome. Your core setting conceit is exactly that outcome.

[Prak]

I know, I was being facetious. They're well equipped, but I don't know about how skilled they are.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Face it, you've destroyed the governments and PMCs, or they'd have imposed some kind of order. The crazed survivalists probably practice with their weapons more than anyone else. They fantasize about brutalizing trespassers.

[Prak]

They probably were also some of the first to sign up for service in the armies that fought for angels and demons in the 100 years between Rapture and campaign era, assuming they were not themselves Raptured (and given that the angels of Anno Raptus have more in common with the hosts of heaven from Supernatural than, well, Cas, there's no reason to believe that dickery disqualifies you from Rapture).

But it's a good point. They probably signed up for service in those armies, demanded payment in gold, and left a tradition of using gold for currency. I hadn't thought about it, it's a good thought.

[fectin]

They dont even have to be dicks; they just have a bunch of valuable resources, and you can't steal them. Anything they value will become valuable, regardless of whether they create a new society or just keep to their bunkers.

Most importantly though, using gold as your currency is incredibly convenient in D&D.

[shadzar]

I'm really tired of everybody defaulting to barter after a generic apocalypse. Let's be honest, just because civilization has literally gone to hell does not mean economic models and thought cease working.

well even in the modern world, everyone doesnt follow your religion of capitalism and greed. there are plenty of people in EVERY country in the world that use barter. services for food is a good example.

without a fucking governing body to back currency, it has no fucking meaning.

even money is a system of fucking bartering you moron. you just agree ahead of time that money signifies an object of trade, and arent you trading money for something else? trading is bartering, monetary systems ARE bartering. monetary systems just dont allow for haggling or buyer choice, because like the modern world, morons just pay whatever someone else asks rather than forcing prices to change, by not spending that amount.

[wotmaniac]

I suppose to some extent I'm inclined to call any currency with a practical, non-financial use, such as drinkable water, fuel, ammunition, etc not a currency but a standardized trade good, and that's my personal opinion and so not gospel on the matter.

That would still be barter; i.e., "I'll give you this jug of water for some of your fuel" type of thing.

So people have really only had fifty years in which to start actually puttings back together, in a world which looks very much like Hell A from the Angel comics, with various areas being the squats of survivors or the realms claimed by angels or demons. And of course, this being a work of my creation, many angels are dicks, and not all demons are horrifying monsters. Some of the demon controlled areas are more like living under a king who is just really cruel to his enemies.

I would think that some sort of token economy/medium of exchange would have emerged in this time frame.
It wouldn't necessarily be very complex, ..... here -- just find/figure out something that at least loosely fits these criterion.

---

even money is a system of fucking bartering you moron.

No, you fucking moron -- this statement right here immediately forfeits your right to make even 1 more post about economics.

Barter is defined by direct exchange without a "medium of exchange".
Money is, by fucking definition, a medium of exchange.

[Endovior]

...but it seems to be primarily predicated on the idea that the apocalypse leaves a governing body in place.

Not actually true. Assumptions regarding the function of government work equally well regardless of whether that government is the still-functioning remnants of the previously existing government, or a pack of squabbling warlords that constitute a 'government' by virtue of having guns and giving orders. So long as somebody steps forward to be in charge, and that somebody has goals more long-term than mere looting, then you effectively have a government. That's not to say that there won't be looters, but successfull looters will eventually organize a government once they run out of stuff to loot, or they stop being successful.

Now, given that you 'have a government', even if it's only warlords enforcing neo-feudalism over wasteland farmers, they eventually need something to determine who gets what. You can get by with barter for awhile, certainly, but currency becomes practical pretty damn soon; and if it's practical for the boss, than it'll happen sooner rather than later. Since your timeline is definitively set 'later', there is a currency. It might be little more than glorified scrip that warlords hand out in pretense of 'buying goods', which is mostly worthless in trade since there's only a few places where you can actually use it... but that's also the kind of thing that stabilizes over a while; even if the whole political landscape is a patchwork of warring gangs, eventually, people will figure out which currencies can actually be reasonably exchanged for goods; the ones that do seem to be worth something will quickly be actually worth something, since the value of currency is highly affected by perceptions.

Related (not an apocalypse, but being a modern town transported back in time is similar enough):

Judy the Younger asked: "Mom, Hayley says that money is worth more now than it was before the Ring of Fire, but Vicky says it's not worth anything cuz there ain't no United States no more. So who's right?"
Judy the Elder stalled while she thought about her daughter's question. "Because, not 'cuz,' dear. And 'isn't,' not ain't."
Fletcher Wendell came to his wife's rescue, sort of. "Back before the Ring of Fire, there was a bank in Washington that had a bunch of fairies with magic wands. They made new money when they were happy, and made it disappear when they were sad. Apparently, when the Ring of Fire happened, one of those fairies was in town, and it now resides in the Grantville bank."
"Daaad!" Judy the Younger complained, while her older sister Sarah smirked.
"I take it," said Daaad, "that you don't believe in Federal Reserve Fairies? That's just the problem, don't you see? Neither do the down-timers, at least not yet. Part of my new job with the finance subcommittee is to keep the Federal Reserve Fairies happy. Another part is to convince the Germans and all the other down-timers that they are real, because they perform a very important function and it only works really well if most people believe in them."
Judy the Younger looked disgusted. Sarah didn't even try to hide her smirk. Judy the Elder was moderately successful at disguising her laugh with a cough, then she gave Fletcher the "look." At which point Fletcher held up his hands in mock surrender.
"All right, I surrender," he said, which no one believed for a moment.
Judy the Elder gave her husband one more severe look then spoke again. "Your father's subcommittee recommended to the cabinet that they declare that money on deposit in the bank and the credit union is still there, that debts owed to people or institutions inside the Ring of Fire are still valid, but debts or accounts in places left up-time are gone. Just common sense, but some people argued about it. Some wanted accounts in other banks honored. Sort of transferred to the local bank. Others wanted all debts to the bank erased."
Fletcher grimaced. "Well . . . pretty much—except there's still a big argument about mortgages. People who owe their mortgage to the local bank are raising a fuss because they think they're being discriminated against. They think the out-of-area mortgages should be assumed by the new government. Truth to tell, they've got a point—and Lord knows the government could use the money."
Judy the Elder plowed on. "Leave that aside, for the moment. Right now, wages paid by the city government or the emergency committee are being kept the same as they were before the Ring of Fire. Dan Frost is still paid the same. The coal miners are getting paid according to their pre-Ring of Fire contract, as are the people at the power plant. The difference is that now the emergency committee, which is receiving the income from coal sales and electric bills, is paying them. As will whatever government follows it. Unless it divests itself of the businesses. What that does is provide a stable point in the money supply which, hopefully, will help keep the money from increasing or decreasing in value too quickly, but no one wants wage and price freezes to last any longer or be any more widespread than absolutely necessary. So the owner of the grocery store sets the prices at the grocery store, with suggestions by the emergency committee. Now back to your question, how much is a dollar worth? If you're talking about paying the electric bill, or the house payment, it's worth exactly what it was worth before the Ring of Fire. If you're talking about buying groceries, it's fairly close to what it was before. For a Barbie doll, it's worth a lot less, because no one is making Barbie dolls any more, and the down-timers are buying them up. So take care of your Barbies, they are going to be worth a lot one day."
"Ah, but the down-timers don't have any money," Fletcher put in with a grin. "At least, not American money. So right now, everyone is trying to figure out how much of our money their money is worth, and vici verci. Which is where the Federal Reserve Fair—" Fletcher paused, casting an overdone look of meek submission at his wife. "Ah, the bank comes in."
"Oh, go ahead Fletcher," Judy the Elder put in, with an equally overdone, long-suffering sigh. "You won't be satisfied till you've run those poor fairies into the ground."
"Not at all. I'm very fond of the Federal Reserve Fairies. They do the kind of magic we need done." He smiled cheerfully at his daughters. "The thing about the Fed Fairies is they hate it when prices go up too fast. It makes them very sad, and they wave their magic wands, and make the bank have less money. Then the bank charges more interest when it loans out what money it does have. What makes the Fed Fairies really happy, is when prices stay the same, or go down. When that happens, they can't help themselves, they just have to wave their magic wands to make more money. As a matter of fact, they look into their crystal balls to see what the prices will be like months or even years in the future, and wave their magic wands in response to what they see. At least they did before the Ring of Fire. I think the crystal ball must have gotten bumped or something cuz the predictions we're hearing at the subcommittee meetings are bouncing all over the place. So one of the things we're working on is trying to determine the 'real' value of all the goods and services within the Ring of Fire, measured in up-time money, so we can help the Fed Fairies figure out which way to wave their wands."
His face grew comically lugubrious. "Now, when people don't believe in the Fed Fairies, they have to come up with some other explanation for where the money comes from. Like, 'The Government.' The problem is, governments always need money, and if they can make it themselves, well, people are afraid they will. And that they will keep on making more of it until it takes thousands of dollars to buy a ham sandwich. So, an important part of my new job is to convince the down-timers that Mike Stearns can't just make more money whenever he wants to. That, instead of the government making the decisions, the Fed Fairies will decide how much American money there is, so they can trust American money to hold its value."
Sarah was always happy to play along with her father's teasing of her little sister. "How are you going to make the fairies happy so they will make more money and we can all be rich?"
"The more stuff there is to buy, the more money you can have without the prices going up too much. We brought quite a bit of stuff with us through the Ring of Fire, but to make the Fed Fairies really happy, we need to find stuff that we can make here."
The rest of the evening was spent in discussion of production and levels of usage. In spite of the dry subject matter, or perhaps because it isn't quite so dry as most people think when presented right, it was an enjoyable conversation, and even Judy the Younger had fun.

[name_here]

A non-barter economy presupposes not only a government, but a powerful enough government for people to actually have faith in its currency. The economy will, in the event of a governmental collapse, become a barter economy until a government with notable power reemerges. 150 years after a global apocalypse, people may very well issue currency but it is highly unlikely most people will accept the currency issued in your hometown at its face value.

[wotmaniac]

A non-barter economy presupposes not only a government, but a powerful enough government for people to actually have faith in its currency.

This is only necessarily the case with fiat currency.
Just look at the link in my last post -- as long as people see value in, say, little nuggets of gold (for example), then it is a viable base for a token economy, pretty much irrespective of any kind of faith in a stable gov't.

[Prak]

So as I mention in the now renamed OP, I'm working on a D&D setting with a post apocalypse aesthetic.

Revelation(a la the Bible)/The Rapture happened, removing a bunch of people from Earth, ruining the works of man, and ushering in a 144 year war between Heaven and Hell which killed a bunch of people and made rebuilding or advancing impossible. The campaign era picks up sixteen years after that war ends. Due to the war, modern weapons, thought they're available, are rare, or rather the ammo for them is. Due to the supernatural nature of the apocalypse, magic is available, both from pacts with angel and demon warlords, and through studying/being infused with the new magical energy left in the world.

So, like I said, D&D with a post apocalyptic aesthetic. You get wizards and rogues, and even dragons and beholders, just don't expect your paladin's armour to be bright and shiny plate mail.

I get that, to a certain extent, I'm remaking Gamma World. What else do I need to be looking at and taking into account?

I have more details figured out (though not necessarily many), so if you have more questions, I'll do what I can to answer them.

[TheFlatline]

What was the level of intensity of the conflict? It couldn't rage everywhere, all the time, for 144 years.

The unequal distribution of conflict and how intense that conflict was will shape what is picking up the pieces 16 years after the end of the fight.

If the fight took place where people were concentrated, there's still totally large tracts of farmable land where the population rate was like 2 people per square mile. Europe itself had literally a fucking 100 year series of wars and it still managed to feed people and form governments. In fact, let's be honest, Europe has been at war for roughly 1800 of the last 2000 years and is still the cradle of western civilization.

I know you're probably thinking of total devastation on a global scale, but unless that happened at the *end* of the 144 years, with no magical sustenance, your global population of humans is going to be zero. Because there isn't enough foodstores globally to last even a million people 150 years.

So figure out what your world looks like. Where does the food come from? Where was the fighting worst? Why did it concentrate there? Once you have an idea of how everything falls out, you'll be able to sketch up an economy.

My thoughts would be that those who are sustenance surviving have little to no need for money and will almost purely barter. Currency is a luxury for those who aren't scrabbling all day to feed themselves. In a sustenance survival scenario, a million dollars worth of purchasing power isn't nearly as valuable as a game animal or a natural water spring if you're starving or thirsty.

[shadzar]

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?

[Prak]

Basically the sequence of events is

• Late in the 21st century, strange shit starts happening. People are living to be 120+, despite benefiting from no modern advances, and basically look like bigoted kooks. Imprisoned Religious extremists start glowing. Some people start saying that God alone sustains them and demonstrating their lack of need for food. A bunch of influential people seem to start going nuts, publicly evangelizing as they make nations fall apart--all of them seem to have taken to using a cane suddenly, and started decrying the female president, even those who'd been her most vocal supporters. Those rare few faithful who actually do the hippy charitable good works thing all suddenly start dressing in glowing white robes and dedicate themselves even harder--some begin withholding their mercy and charity from heathens/non-believers/sodomites/etc. Pillars of unknown provenance appear one day, each bearing a name, just out in a random empty desert--they look as they've been there forever. A certain fringe sect begins buying up radioactive gold isotypes produced by neutron bombardment of mercury and washing their eyes with radium infused pastes--going blind in the process.
• Reports start flying around the world that soldier kitted out in black ops gear out of sci fi--even in this near future--with a large white cross emblazoned on the chest plate of his body armour appearing in the middle of the street in broad daylight in the Vatican, walking up to St. Peter's Basilica, through the doors, and being welcomed by the pope. He is handed a large, heavy scroll with seven wax seals. The soldier begins opening the scroll.
• • The first four seals are broken with nothing happening. The fifth is broken, and from beneath the alter comes a host of ghostly, immaterial peoples--quickly solidifying--and are given white robes by a cardinal before taking a seat in the pews.
  • The sixth seal is broken, and the Earth is taken by earthquakes over night, the moon turns blood red and meteorites fall to earth across the world. Governments start evacuating people to bomb shelters, bunkers, and anywhere else they can possibly hope to protect people.
  • Some people, mostly children, begin displaying an odd mark on their foreheads, and a great pilgrimage to the desert pillars--known by now as The Throne of God--begins.
  • As the soldier breaks the final seal and opens the scroll, a trumpet is heard the world over, and a burning hail or rocks falls
• The sounding of each trumpet blasts "the works of man," ruining buildings and cities, infrastructure, basically making great effort towards reducing mankind to the dark ages. With the first, much of the earth is burned.
• The second trumpet sounds, and Mauna Loa basically explodes. The island is little more than scattered rocks sticking up from the ocean and the lave wreaks havoc on the Pacific.
• With the third trumpet, one of mankind's greatest achievements is destroyed. A vast space station, like unto an orbiting city state, falls from the sky. It's shrapnel poisons much of the earth's fresh water with heavy metals.
• The fourth trumpet is seen as almost a respite as the world simply goes completely dark for eight hours every day. Only about eight hours of day is left anywhere as the darkness does not overlap the night.
• Fifth trumpet- manticores (seriously, Revelation calls them locust, but the description says manticore) swarm the world, and torment mankind. It takes a rocket launcher or better to take them out.
• Sixth Trumpet- an army of Nightmare-mounted horsemen ride out and continue the general ravaging of the earth.
• Seventh Trumpet- Basically, world-wide Storm of Vengeance.
• The pure are raptured-most people don't really notice. These are those 144,000 people that were marked before.
• Angels and Demons begin trying to gather the souls of the "meek," for purging as preparation for Heaven/various purposes, respectively. Human faith is the food of Angels and Demons, so that's reason enough to try to gather a cult of humans.

That last part is the 144 year war. Angels and demons and various beasts on both sides are fighting the world over, lots of people die or are captured. Within the first 10 years, some bright bulb on one side or the other decides that if they can't capture a given human, better to destroy the human and deny their enemy it's benefit. A "nest" of captured humans is attacked and slain. This results in all factions in the war arming humans directly, which in turn brings voluntary captives who want to help one lord or another fight their enemies.

Figure the population of earth is reduced by about half prior to the war, including the raptured souls. The war reduces the remaining half by about 90%, so figure that, when all is said and done and the campaign starts, that the world population is about 355 million. As far as the earth itself is concerned- much of the land-specifically trees and "green grass" was burnt by the apocalypse, the wildlife was reduced by about a third the world over, and a third of the fresh water--likely including ground water--was poisoned. Because Revelation wanted to make sure that people who were religious nut jobs were absolutely fucked. In the aftermath of the war, there are still angel and demon warlords controlling plots of land, and there are various monsters running about. Magic is limited in that you have to get to really enjoy the taste of angel or demon dick to get any. Even wizards have to be taught spells. Being a sorcerer just means mommy really liked that taste.