Abandoned Settlements

What about magic items?

That's brilliant.

They jump in and out of battle, fire from concealed locations, and maybe use some points and the like.

>Castle Combe
Mate, if you want an IRL abandoned Wiltshire village, try Imber:
imbervillage.co.uk/

bumperino

A briefcase, a grocery list, maybe some newspapers. if they are really lucky, a Chem 101 textbook.

Well, assuming it's not a 'lost' city, then chances are scavengers have picked through most of the stuff and then what you'd find would more likely be from more recent excursions others have made.

Can you also explain why it was abandoned? Was it sudden? Was it war? Was it disease? Famine? Did the housing market go down and lower educational standards cause gangs to overwhelm the populous?

It's a bit modern, but I recently found a place: desertedplaces.blogspot.com/p/index.html

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You have excellent taste.

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How ancient and fantasy or what?

Not OP, but for mine it was an atlantis kinda deal. The whole island was part of a war between the allied humans and orcs against the elves. They were like a research base if anything, trying to find advantages for their side.

Fantasy, and iron age, just before the discovery of steel.

Is there a name for these "friendly" post-apocalypses?

I believe "green" or "blue" apocalypses. TVtropes refers to it as 'cozy catastrophy'.

It's kind of what I wished Fallout 4 was like. In a way it kind of is, it needs more (non-radiation related) green and more water pools that don't give you RA(I)DS. As far as people getting cozy, I guess that is kind of the player's job to make happen.

Not a fat lot above ground, especially if the site is well known and has had a few thousand years to be picked over.

Most likely a few crumbling arches praising the names of dead kings, and the odd building that hasn't entirely tumbled down.

The catacombs UNDER ruined cities on the other hand tend to be where lurking horrors and forgotten caches survive.

And of course you can find an excuse to meet damn near anything in the catacombs, from the restless spirits of the long-dead citizenry, to your nemesis who lured you to this abandoned spot as a ruse.

A pile of human teeth in the center of town.

a lot of old rusted shit and rot. like that kind of rot so rotty that you can't even smell it anymore. it's just there. probably used to be a sack of grain, but now it's just rot.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West has a lot of scenery like that. Too bad everything else is crap.

I gotchu, OP

Is there any good sources on this green post-apocalypse (or regular post apocalypse) style where the ruins are from a kind of futuristic ancient race? I can't find anything more than scraps and am getting desperate.

Any dumps would also be very helpful.

Probably old human artifacts, from before they died out.

Those ruins are pretty old, though. Not much more than dust left.

Teeth.

just loose scattered teeth. There's dust and debris and dirt and everything on the ground, but on top of it all there's these pristine, dustless and clean white teeth.

Just scattered everywhere.

Nothing, there has been enough time for it to be sacked of everything of value it could possibly have.

Ghosts, maybe.

A young dragon with a hard-on for locations of historical significance.

The same two fathers with pre-teen sons, all wearing fine clothing and bored expressions, that you've bumped into at nearly every other stop in your trans-dimensional journey, looking at some kind of tour pamphlet they won't show you.

Nothing, the locals already picked it over for the last 1,000 years.

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Squatters, their crude traps protecting the shitty belongings and the odd relic they found:

Mass graves full of bones of extinct races.

Several levels of ancient urbanization piling up, mixed with sewers and hideouts of things that never wanted to be found.

Like parisian catacombs full of undead which never saw living people walking among flooded cellars.

The pit where sacrifices were tossed into, both valuable motive weapons and slaves.

Cisterns full of fishes.

Tunnels that should be ruined, but show signs of maintenance.

sometimes-interesting.com/2014/05/09/derinkuyu-the-underground-cities-of-cappadocia/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground

mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/09/the-mystery-of-the-ancient-roman-tunnel-to-hell/

atlasobscura.com/places/zana

youtube.com/watch?v=4ExqhHp_xgY

atlasobscura.com/categories/abandoned

atlasobscura.com/categories/ghost-towns

thebolditalic.com/a-rare-look-at-the-tunnels-under-san-francisco-the-bold-italic-san-francisco-896f850dd994#.g1y2vtnxd

atlasobscura.com/articles/chilling-scenes-from-greeks-sinking-ghost-town