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Miniatures Adventure => Post-Apocalyptic Tales => Topic started by: NickNascati on December 15, 2015, 09:06:10 PM
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All,
I just spent a week painting up two very nice forces of the beautiful Indochina figures from Redstar. Now that they are done I am looking at them and trying to decide if I really want them!!! I keep going back and looking at Post-Apocalyptic games. Something about the PA setting always seems to grab me, to the point where I am already thinking of selling the Indochina figures. Is it me, or are PA games really a draw? I do enjoy making the buildings and terrain for PA games. Help, do I need to take a step back?
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I think most settings, themes, periods and wars have a "lure" when you see other people gaming them with good-looking miniatures on good-looking terrain. The very coolest thing, though, is to be the person that makes other people go "Oh wow, I want to game that as well!" by displaying one's own miniatures and terrain. Maybe that could be you with the French Indochina conflict? Just a thought - I'm certainly not trying to dissuade you from a PA project :)
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I like me both, I love history and the Indochina conflict is very interesting. Wish I could find more information in English about it honestly.
Post apocalypse is fun because you can use what ever you want to. You want magic? Psych powers or strange technology. You want monsters? We got mutants glory. You want to do what ever you like with out the police busting you? Don't worry there are no longer any law dogs.
It's a sand box that allows you to do what you want. Where as historical are set to a current time and place.
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I absolutely love the Post-Apocalypse genre, to an utterly mad degree. It's one of my absolute favorite genres of all time. I'm a particular fan of Z-grade knock off PA films, stuff like The New Barbarians, Battle Truck, World Gone Wild, etc.
The appeal of the genre, particularly for wargamers, is the way the genre lends itself so very well to skirmish combats. It's a genre that allows for guns, even crazy sci-fi weapons if you go the Gamma World route, but also for swords and axes. It's got room for power armor and salvaged sports gear. Introducing ideas like cyborg, mutants, psychics and robots allows for a huge range of potential model types.
Post Apocalypse is a real kitchen sink genre that can allow for just about anything which is why it captures so many people's imagination.
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Yep what Gailbraithe said! Plus you don't have to do tidy and orderly buildings and terrain :)
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Apocalyptic boils down to three incredients
one - setting
An environment we do not know anymore, cause behind the horizon could just be anything, as said before. And since the old world is gone, no known rules apply.
two - possibilities
This gives us the feeling of exploring a new world, since we cannot really explore Africa or the arctic anymore. It is cartographed. The future is not. And in an apocalyptic world, it is not either, because there are no satelites. But maybe there are, we just do not know
three - reason
Any form of combat is possible, it is the apocalypse
That is just about everything a combat simulation needs.
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Mad Max.
And lots of other things ranging from aliens through zombies to dinosaurs.
But mostly Mad Max.
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There's so much popular culture tied to it which I enjoy, games, cinema, books - I consider myself lucky to have kept it to 20mm and quite trim.
I'm a particular fan of Z-grade knock off PA films, stuff like The New Barbarians, Battle Truck, World Gone Wild, etc.
Ah a fellow traveller! 8)
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All,
Thanks for the comments and inspiration. I have a problem though, I've had a collection of Dreamforge troopers that I have had for sale that I simple cannot sell. Can I somehow re-purpose them to fit Post-Apocalyptic?
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Fallout styled enclave?
(http://img07.deviantart.net/db89/i/2012/330/4/7/enclave_support_by_citizenxcreation-d5mb24f.jpg)
Or the security forces of a totalitarian Lord of the Wastelands?
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All,
Thanks for the comments and inspiration. I have a problem though, I've had a collection of Dreamforge troopers that I have had for sale that I simple cannot sell. Can I somehow re-purpose them to fit Post-Apocalyptic?
Basicly you can repurpose everything for PA.
(In Fallout 3, one faction is Ceasar's Legion. They base their society on the Roman Imperium en pretty much dress accordingly, but carry guns and power fists as well as short swords en spears)
Your Dreamforge troopers would indeed make a good faction with (limited) access to advanced technology.
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Like it was already said, the PA genre is pretty opened to anything you might want to add to your game.
You can even set it as a western or as an epic fantasy while sprinkling current technology here and there.
Your characters can come across people gone back to a primitive state or some very advanced closed up society.
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You don't have to do a "purestrain" PA setting, either. You could go for something more like the settings in Judge Dredd or Beneath a Steel Sky (an old computer game with a bit of cult status, originating from the same British cultural scene as 2000 AD and very similar in mood and style) wherein a dystopian non-PA society soldiers on in the big cities while the "flyover" regions between these cities are essentially a PA wasteland in every way. That would give you plenty of room for prim-and-proper high-tech soldiers alongside your wasteland desperadoes, cannibal mutants, motor-cultists, etc.
That said, my favourite style of PA setting is the style in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I like the idea of new medieval-style cultures (possibly retaining some venerable high-tech materiel) with long histories of their own having come into being hundreds or even thousands of years after the upheaval. I also like the weird ecosystem in the film, and the way the general mood of the setting juxtaposes hopelessness with genuine hope. IMO not even a PA setting should be all doom and gloom. A glimmer of hope for the future will give your wasteland adventurers a reason to have some spring in their step.
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Beneath a Steel Sky (an old computer game with a bit of cult status, originating from the same British cultural scene as 2000 AD and very similar in mood and style)
Oh wow, I haven't thought of that game in years. I loved that game so much.
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if the populated islands where far apart enough or there might be whole continents wiped out in "the great war before the time" there is plenty of room for all sorts of cultures. Even very very alien ones, given enough time.
You also have options to what degree you want your inhabitants remember that time "before" ... even not knowing anything about it anymore can be a setting, where they explore something finding out about it in the process.
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I had to take some time to think about this, but I think that the PA setting is so flexible that it cannot help but be appealing to anyone who wants to mashup all of the other genres. Knights with swords, check. Big guns? Check. Weird monsters? Check. Old tech? Check. New tech? Check. Can be used with almost any system? Check.
And Fallout just hits that all-american apple pie laced with cyanide that post-nostalgic children of the 80's cannot get enough of.
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And don't forget Thundarr. God, I loved that show back in the day. Still do, come to think of it...
Some excellent points here. I've been feeling the lure lately myself!
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I just like going around and picking up toasters, hot plates and wonder glue!
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When I was younger and despised the world, PA settings in games just felt right.
*Shrugs*
Since then the aesthetic simply pleases me. Especially when the story goes along the lines of "Everything was destroyed but people are keeping strong and making the best with what they have"
Empowering notions of human strength, etc.
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When I was younger and despised the world, PA settings in games just felt right.
*Shrugs*
Since then the aesthetic simply pleases me. Especially when the story goes along the lines of "Everything was destroyed but people are keeping strong and making the best with what they have"
Empowering notions of human strength, etc.
You know, I think that's one of the other great elements of the genre -- its easy to accuse it of nihilism (the world is gonna end!) but the genre itself, with a few exceptions (The Road, I'm looking at you), is generally quite optimistic. Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome are both told from the perspective of survivors looking back and remembering the legend who saved them, and almost all the Mad Max knockoffs are built around this assumption that humanity will rebound.
Not to get political, but I think we're back in a cultural moment much like the one that gave birth to the genre originally -- this time the concern is less thermonuclear annihilation, and more catastrophic environmental collapse, but the end result is the same: civilization grinds to a halt and it all becomes deserts. And while it's easy to think of post-apocalyptic fiction as a gloomy warning, it can also be a cheery promise that no matter how bad things get, people will survive and find ways to thrive.
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For me the draw is the wide-openness of theme, where one can have hideous monster struggling to do the right thing in the most monstrous way possible.
Then there are the CARs, what is the future wasteland without everyone's reawakened vehicle. they all fit as characters in their own right. My current idea is Landspeeders of the Apocalypse..... Though to be honest I tend to have a High Tech Post Apocalypse....