Post-Post-Apocalypse

Does anyone have any experience with settings that take place a significant amount of time after an apocalypse? The bombs fell, plagues ravaged civilization, society collapsed, and so on and so forth. Now the people left are rebuilding and creating their own societies, and even beginning to understand and harness the useful but dangerous technology left behind from the previous age.

I've been wanting to set a game in a setting like this, where rather than just being a Mad Max style bandit-riddled wasteland and constant battle for survival, there are organized settlements with farms, resources, safe havens, and where ruined cities and pre-apocalypse facilities play the role of dungeons.

Honestly, the "standard" fantasy setting is quite often like that, there's usually some long past golden age that people are starting to rediscover artifacts from.

If you want something a bit more grounded in reality, or go sci-fi, I could recommend the Hawkmoon books by Moorcock, which seem to be several centuries or maybe even a millennium after some kind of nuclear/biological war that wracked earth.

Degenesis is probably the current big one for this type of thing, and I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but I'm 100% sure there are more out there.

I guess Metro:2033 kinda fits with what you're asking, though it's not quite there.

Oh, just remembered, Canticle for Leibowitz. Though there isn't a whole lot of worldbuilding in that.

>Does anyone have any experience with settings that take place a significant amount of time after an apocalypse?

The Modern-Day Americas are a basic example of that., the north more than the south. But the scenario with a more fantastic twist is rather common in french comics.

Mesoamerica apparently expierenced apocalypses at least three times.

There's also the Bronze Age collapse. That was so bad it killed entire languages.

NausicaƤ is what you're looking for.

My book series takes place in one. The quest hooks for the companion campaigns are all about dealing with magic, weapons, and divine powers that nobody even recognizes any more, but it's set against the backdrop of thriving metropolises.

Thanks for the recommendations, I'll check these out.

>Mesoamerica apparently expierenced apocalypses at least three times

source?

also, just more information in general. even if its bullshit, its interesting bullshit

Literally Fallout

Actually I've thought about this a lot due to my current worldbuilding project. I'm mostly interested in figuring out what kinds of economies/governments would be prominent in such a world where populations are low but technological knowledge is high and there is ruined infrastructure from the good ol days everywhere you look, infrastructure which requires more people just for upkeep than you've seen in your life.

In my setting, the apocalypse happens pretty far into the future due to technological singularity. About 95% of the population just up and fucks off to godhood. The setting is concerned with the remaining 5% and their decedents.

I've been picturing a sort of micro-state/manorialism economy where the means of production is centered on refurbished factories and processing/treatment/powerplants, but I'm not very pleased with it yet.

Technically, Warhammer 40k counts.

Also Fallout.

>Technically, Warhammer 40k counts.

Not OP, but I don't think it does. 40k doesn't have a golden age, followed by a terrible collapse, and then slow rebuilding. 40k has a golden age, a slow collapse, and things getting progressively shittier since 30k or so.

Well, there are some worlds that supposedly regressed all the way back to almost the stone age but then built themselves back up to modern or future times by the Crusade.

The Mortal Engines setting is like that, and even the prequel series set more than a century before the main books is still hundreds of years after the original apocalypse

Also has lots of tech being rediscovered.

And giant moving cities (originally for tectonically unstable regions) that eat smaller cities

It's a videogame series, and not touched upon all that much as a main element until postgame typically, but the entire Etrian Odyssey series takes place a long while after an apocalypse.

Even 40k is better than the Age of Strife, on the whole - it's more doomed, what with the crons and the nids, but the actual state of the galaxy for humans in 40k is still better than the age of strife

Yeah, because the Eldar no longer control 90% of it.

Though, counter to that, I think it's stated that humanity still controls less than they did.

Its world building is fairly shit though.

If you can find a copy, BTRC's old Warpworld game worked on this premise. It had a great system as well. It's out of print and chances of finding a scan are pretty low, but if you can find a dead tree version, it's worth a read.

BTRC has made a reboot of the game for their EABA system, which is pretty good, and purchasable at a reasonable price in pdf from the usual places. I liked the older one better, but the newer one is still pretty good.

IIRC, Dungeons and Dragons is basically always this. The 'main series' usually has lots of wars and cities in the past that can be looted.

Even the traditional Dungeon Crawler can be this. Just take Fallout, replace Nuclear stuff with Magic, and it's basically 1 for 1. All those dungeon monsters are just people who were mutated and now inhabit those ancient shelters/tunnels.

What you need is one really big Curveball on the setting, because once technology advances were people can ascend, technology was too good, you know?

Some ideas:

>Old colony ship/s
Maybe they were sent out with STL, only to arrive and see that Humanity developed FTL and moved on. The technology is good, but they don't know how to fully handle it.

>Engine Heart
Maybe what's left is some 6 inch tall people. Even if they can operate stuff, it's going to be a whole lot harder at that size.

Read the second paragraph.
That removed Fallout from the equation immediately.

>I've been wanting to set a game in a setting like this, where rather than just being a Mad Max style bandit-riddled wasteland and constant battle for survival, there are organized settlements with farms, resources, safe havens, and where ruined cities and pre-apocalypse facilities play the role of dungeons.

It is literally fallout, except they included Mad Max gangs because they are cool

Log Horizon is that but it's a weird take on the setting because of the context.

Fragged Empire bills itself as a post-post apoc game which I quite like, but it's also a sci-fi which may not be the angle you're going for.

Love those books