Inspiration Strikes! #22

[jameson (ST)]

[SalmonMax]

Hmm! The ideas are good, but I think most of this article overlaps with previous articles which focused on HOW the world ended. This article's titles suggests it's going to be about what happens next. You make a good point that the details of how the world ended are important, but it seems like more attention could be paid to the essential question of the post-apocalypse setting: What now?

Certain elements of post-apocalypse settings are genre-tropes, essential to convey the tone. Perhaps if you spent some time talking about these 'universal' elements it would bring the article back 'on track' as it were.

1) Scarcity. The world before was based on plenty. There was food to spare, energy to spare, people to spare...a surplus of everything, at least for the wealthy. The end of the world was an equalizer, of sort. Even kings now live in squalor. Resources are all but nonexistent, and must be fiercely protected...or savagely conquered.

2) Lawlessness. Like the Old West only more so, might makes right in the wasteland. Towns may have laws, but only if they've got the firepower to keep those who would break them in line. Gangs of wild thugs roam freely, preying on anyone weaker. This is part of the draw of the setting, as it is very friendly to self-sufficient badass heroes who enforce their own code.

3) Retro-futurism. In most (though not all) post-apocalypse settings, there are hints of a once high-tech society that's now fallen. Technology as a whole has fallen back to relatively simple machines for civilized folks...and down to muscle powered mounts and weapons for the more barbaric ones. And yet, robots still patrol the old military-autofacs which gleam with promises of lasguns and power armor to those who can slay the machine-spirits within. The wastelands are rife with degenerate mutants; the spawn of countless generations of gene-modified plants, animal and even people. The town mechanic might spend most of his days fixing old hot water pipes that keep failing...but he also has to keep an eye on the magnetic bottle of the old-tech fusion reactor he managed to jury-rig back into half-hearted operation...and keep in secret so the Devourer Gangs don't hear about it.

And so on.

[jameson (ST)]

Fair point I suppose, though I was looking at this from the angle of "designing a setting" whereas the previous were more of "designing a plot". You can plop a planet killer into most any Space Opera Science Fiction setting for instance. Similarly you can have a war of the gods as a major plot in most any fantasy setting, but having a setting that reflects the aftermath of said event/plot is different.

Your own added points are, of course, important to the formation of a setting as well, but sometimes you do have to start at the beginning which was my intent.

[SalmonMax]

Arr, that's true...and this is a good beginning. It just seems like it stopped at the beginning and didn't go on to the middle and end.

But perhaps those are still to come! I look forward to seeing your take on this, one of my favorite genres.

[jameson (ST)]

I will probably do one more on this subject line before jumping off to something completely different.

As for stopping short ... I do have to keep these things short enough to be readable.

[RushingMountain]

This very much reminded me of the Wordbuilding columng that appeared in Dungeon magazine (at least, that's what I think the column was called).

Thanks again for a thought provoking article.