Science-Fantasy Worldbuilding Help

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While the sword and sandal aspect is fine I would say don't limit the potential of the tech in the world. Try to incorporate it into the everyday aspect.

For instance, lets say you have some religious organzation that managed to maintain documents and recordings on how to implant augmentations and for their special soldiers holy warriors or whatever they have to pass various rites to be "blessed" with these holy augmentations. Why they were developed and how this church organization came into possision of it can be a matter of intrigue in and of itself. They probably do even understand why it was made in the first place, just understanding how to use it but also coupled with the religous mysticism attached to it as well.

Granted, this is my own thoughts and feelings on this. I am personally weary of worlds that are so detached from the various macguffins that inhabit it. An acopcolypse wouldn't completely whip out all knowledge of a thing but how it's used and why certainly would

I did have some ideas of how salvaged maguffins would crop up in everday life - Imagine using a radio-like device for hunt for signal sources, or replacing damaged limbs with mechanical ones with weird bugs and residual AI.

The original idea was to have a very large time gap between the previous societal collapse and the 'now' time of a game, but I like the idea of certain groups surviving in weird forms and utilising ancient tech in a kind of cargo cult. Your example of creepy gene-modded holy warriors seems a particularly good example.

Figure out how advanced things got before they got fucked, how scarcity was dealt with and power generated. Then figure out how it got fucked.

Dot the landscape with the remains of large technological devices that generated power, housed resources, divided space, stuff like that. Then break them.

Sort out who has access and knowledge of what was, what happened and how to make things. What trappings they maintain and how their access to knowledge gives them control.

Map making can be fun. Take a look at Beyond The Wall's Further Afield group map generation. The characters won't know what the technological origins of the things are, so after deciding the magical appearances, fill in the technological background.

>withering forest is radiated bog grown in massive crater from meltdown with basement filled with arcane computers.
>shatteryard is tidal flat filled with broken hulls of wet navy ships that washed ashore when their semisentients crashed
>scalding vale is a valley with a still functional thermal borehole that creates superheated mist as the planet's core fluctuates

Alright, so with that you can use that span of time to explain how certainly groups morphed into the way they are or how certain pieces of magi tech survived and is used now versus then which leaves you room to always have something better.

Not to mention using examples like where certain locations develop a certain legend of because no one remembers why the fuck it became the way it came so you can have "The Zone" type areas where space and time are wonky because a thousand year old physics experiment was left running and never stopped creating all sorts of weird twisted creatures or something.

I was planning on setting things up to have been really advanced (Orbital megastructures, collosal resource systems, society a tiny elite ruling empires of automated projects and experimented-upon underlings) but now you mention it prehaps scaling it back would make a more interesting world, although I shy away from making it too close to a regular post-apocalypse setting. Where do you think the best balance is?

I like your process, but surely you should work out what happened before its effects? A slow societal atrophy leaves behind a different landscape than a nuclear holocaust.

Mapmaking has been an unmitigated disaster so far, so procedural systems like the one you posted should be a great help, thanks.

>Alright, so with that you can use that span of time to explain how certainly groups morphed into the way they are or how certain pieces of magi tech survived and is used now versus then which leaves you room to always have something better.

How might groups morph over time? I toyed with having one or two groups ruled by 'survivors' who exist as something between god-kings and dementia patients on a mass of life support, but I'm rather lost on how large groups would survive and change into something interesting for a game outside of good old techno-cults and crazed religions.

Certain habits and ideas become basic practice and ritual overtime. Like for instance, the current nobility are descended from the various corporate CEOs and other high up executives of a company owned arcology or something like that.

Or perhaps an influental individual decided that this is the way you access this protocol for this device to do this and overtime it became a semi religious thing to do taught out of sure habit.

It's the same way with various supersititous beliefs. There are and were practical reasons for doing a thing but over time it's sort of lost in the mysticism as it's retold over and over again like not stepping on a crack in the street because you could trip over it but then you have "If you step on a crack, you break your mother's back" or something like that.

Basically if its too far advanced, it won't mean anything to the players because they won't be able to use it or figure it out. That can be neat too, but its a different vibe. Honestly probably best to check with your players and see what they're into. Also keeping in mind technological progress is iterative. We still use hammers. That's been around for a loooong time, probably still will be.

Figuring out what effects you want and keeping the apocalypse mythological enough to fit that in should be fine.

>Basically if its too far advanced, it won't mean anything to the players because they won't be able to use it or figure it out. That can be neat too, but its a different vibe.
>Also keeping in mind technological progress is iterative. We still use hammers. That's been around for a loooong time, probably still will be.

Maybe theres a middleground to be sought here? I like the idea that scavengers or those with moderate technical knowledge might recognise certain components they find and collect those, despite being unable to figure out what the device as a whole does.

They might not be able to understand this weird tunnel-looking thing with all the coils and bits of glowing pannel, but that nobbly bit over there sure as hell is a transistor and they know what those do.

This could extend to stuff like mechanical constructs. They may not be able to reprogram a robotic spider-caretaker, but they know when you take its eyes out it goes kill-crazy so they drag them to battlefields and set them loose.