How do you correctly pull off a post-apocalypse setting that isn't grimdark?

YKK is hopeless as fuck though.

Add catgirls and remove scarcity.

>that pic
weird I just had a dream about this the other day that this was basically how the world ended up

>Not cliff diving off the roof and swimming the ball back.

>catgirl mind

>tfw you aren't surviving in the verdant ruins of a flooded city with your squad of anime girls

It's interesting the amount of lighthearted games with almost-human-but-not-quite characters moving across the ruins of a cataclysmic flood.

Mega Man Legends, Wind Waker, Veeky Forums's CATastrophe, Splatoon...

And the thing is, I can't think of the setting being used in any media outside vidya or RP, off the top of my head.

It's a bad feel.

There was the anime Coppelion, but that's not flooded, it's just an abandoned city that's been overgrown.

The lesson of a non-grimdark setting is that the end of the world was the best thing to ever happen to it. People were overworked, underpaid, oversaturated and misunderstood by everyone in the old world, and now that the bombs have fallen and the zombies have gotten loose and the meteors hit everyone can finally act the way they always wanted to.

Yes, the settlement needs clean water. No, you haven't eaten in three days. Yes, you watched your best friend step on a land mine and get eaten by radioactive cannibals last week. But the Chief gave you your buddy's atomic watch and you adopted his 17-year-old purple-haired daughter as your side kick/love slave. Could you do that in the old world? No, because the age of consent was 18 in California, and now it's whatever she'll let you get away with because she's got a razor-sharp crab claw for a hand and psychic powers.

So you and your new crab-clawed child bride go on a raid in the San Diego Children's Pool, where you hope to hunt some seal meat. But the pre-War seal activists and the seals have bred with each other, and now they're half-seal, half-Greenpeace activist, and they've retained just enough intelligence to be angry about the Exxon Valdez spill, but now have the testosterone of fully grown bull seals to do something about it.

Naturally, you fight the seal-men of San Diego and discover to your delight that napalm cooks seal meat as it kills seal-men. You eat half of it, then return in glory, holding high the head of their shaman, and declare the seal meat is free to any who will recognize you as the new chief. The tribe cheers you on, and after sealing the old chief in a go-go cage you have a drug-fueled orgy in a bombed out Burger King. You father six children that night, and your wife somehow fathers two more.

In the Old World, you were Jerry, who worked at Kinko's. In the New World, you are Jekinko, and you are a god.

Why are green and blue the best colors for a post apocalyptic world?

I'm pretty sure apartment buildings would collapse before long anyway if the bottom floors were constantly submerged in seawater. Best not to overthink it.

I get it, they're going commando.

Simple, the most grimdark post-apocalyptic settings usually assume that all forms of civilization will collapse and we'll suddenly all start wearing leather and killing eachother because why the fuck not.

I think that by realistically thinking about how a post-apocaliptic earth would play out, only the very first few years would be grimdark and from that point onward things would get better. Let's say that, for example, peak oil is reached. Here's the grimdark part: in a very short span (we're thinking about one or two decades here) millions if not billions will starve. We will see some wars to secure arable land, especially in Africa (where the fuck else?), but that would only last so long before most of humanity has starved. That's a horrible scenario, but after that it probably won't be all that bad. Sure, the remnants of humanity will have to say goodbye to most modern technology but after that I can imagine humanity organizing in some form of pseudo-feudal farming communes and living in relative(!) peace with some semblance of law and order, rather than in some lawless 'wasteland'. You could even make this a downright noblebright setting if you want, just make sure to gloss over the whole "90% of humanity recently died clutching their own stomachs and begging for a single breadcrumb" part.

Yes.

What are those girls operatoring for? There is nobody around for miles.

Not that we can see.

I think a better question is how the fuck they manage to keep an AH-64 flying.

>There is nobody around for miles.
That only proves how effective they are.

>the Golden Gate Bridge is 67 meters above sea level at high tide
>if all the ice caps in the world melted the Golden Gate would still be above water

Could have been futuristic apartment buildings, built in a world expecting an incoming flood, but not prepared for it's full extent or failed to survive through it.

Could be an interesting idea. World full of tech left behind for only a small amount of survivors, exploring the unknown marvels of their precursors and trying to put the world back together.

I'd imagine the coastal areas being the open and inviting areas, as one travels inland it becomes less welcoming, with thick ancient forests, swamps and marshlands and vast deserts. People start mostly primitive, with only a basic understanding of the "magic" around them, but begin to reverse engineer the tech, being able to learn advanced diving techniques or finding specimens above the water to be able to recreate functioning engines, finding old computers and such.

I want to run a game like this now somehow.

First thing first avoid nuclear fallouts. Here's something that I prepared some times ago as an inspiration.

WW3 ensued for "reasons", humans were smart enough not to huse nuclears (maybe a few, still you get the point, no radiation bullshit), but not enough to stop killing each other. After years and years of war as the population rapidly decreases due to war, bombings, lack of food and viruses people that give a damn about the war eventually die out and the only few survivors are the small communities that run as far as they could from war zones and managed to get ignored. 2/3 generations later, the children of these communities are the elders that recall the war and warn their younglings about its horrors and only know how the world used to be through the stories of their own fathers. Almost all of the glaciers are now melted, and the people live off fishing in settlements on island, coastlines or places like OP's pic. The temperatures raised a lot: extreme heat and access to drinking water can be problems, although not life-threatening. Agricolture is practicized but only for basic susteinance or small trading, as the mentioned problems make it impossible to overproduce.
These small communities live closely in an endless summer, and are relatively happy. The main reason to travel is to find and trade objects from before the war, mainly tools and gadgets. The most valuable products are printed books, useless for surviving but still extremely requested.

Remember that it's boring to play in Utopia, and there has to be some conflict. It's up to you to make it more lighthearted, maybe some small scale drama like catching some thieves or challenging other scavengers. Since books are so important, it's fun to design communities around them, e.g. towns that built a religion around old Tolkien books, or congregations of philosophers making up weird metaphysical theories after reading physics books they cannot actually comprehend.

>The most valuable products are printed books, useless for surviving but still extremely requested.
Ah yes, I'm sure the "How to survive for dummies" and "how to rebuild civilization" books would be useless.

That first book would be useful, but the second almost entirely useless because it's bound to be full of either bullshit or things that almost certainly don't apply because; you can't exactly predict how civilization will end and have enough time to write an incredibly detailed civilization revival guide. Especially in a world where we STILL can't solve the shitholes that are Africa and the Middle East.

Make it several centuries after the apocalypse and establishment of a new civilization.

So, so much is gone, yet hope remains.

The worst and best are things of the past, make do with the present so a better future might come.

Will be GMing a CATastrophe game in Ryuutama in the future, so if it will be interesting will bring storytime to Veeky Forums.

For now, this is how earth looks like with 800ft increase in water level (65 ft is downright piddly, so for a flooded world you gotta do something else... like dropping a giant ice meteor. Giant ice meteors are cool.)

I'm pretty sure that books like "how to survive for dummies" are dumb and not actually as helpful as a shovel or a knife when you live in a post apocalyctic world. Anyway you want the setting to be interesting, so you could have Robinson Crusoe instead of "How to survive for dummies" and philosophy or history books instead of "How to rebuild civilization"

>"how to survive for dummies"
I think (hope!) that by that he means things like a Scout's handbook that teaches you things like how to make rope from hemp or how to make knifes from stone, how to use animal hides to make tents et cetera. Having that knowledge in an easy to reference guide beats having to (literally?) reinvent the wheel.

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CosyCatastrophe

It was also shit. Try Gargantia instead.

This is the most beautiful thing I've ever read, user.

How do you know my dreams

>tvtropes
Begone, cancerous whores!

oh shut up. Tvtropes is fine if you're looking at it as a short summary and reference list.

>not having Great teacher AI in shelter
>not losiing said AI as it runs out of power
>not crawling upon the overgrown face of earth, educated, but confused
>not making a shrine dedicated to said AI
>not trying to bring it back

Screencapped for posterity.

I am so making the Purple Haired CrabClaw Child Bride in a game.

...

By making it comfy

>In the Old World, you were Jerry, who worked at Kinko's. In the New World, you are Jekinko, and you are a god.
Needs to be a tagline

>dropping a giant ice meteor
Where's ground zero though?

Probably in the middle of the pacific.

>Modern society collapsed in the 1980's due to nuclear war
>Hundreds of years later society has begun to rebuild
>Most valuable objects in the world aren't Gold, Silver or gems but instead Vinyl records.
>religions and governments have been molded around certain songs that have been seen as words of wisdom from society long ago. E.G. King of the main Empire is called "The Sultan of Swing"
>Groups of diggers go around the world rummaging through ancient ruins looking for Vinyl.

C'mon mate, post the cap.

I think the usual method is to make it a world where everyone who actually managed to survive isn't struggling to piece together the old world.

Countries aren't around, but you're in your small community of friends and neighbors. Old world tech is a mix of things that lasted and things that didn't. You have plenty around that any crops you're farming as the 21st century superfoods that can sustain a crazy amount of people per acre. Water is easy enough to get due to all the ways your precursors found to purify it.

There isn't a big drive for people to become cannibalistic bandits or anything like that when things are so plentiful. At most people will get fed up with an easy life and try to go out and become fishers and explorers, but those pockets of home will still exist.

>The world is slowly becoming a desert
>Everything outside of two big countries is dying
>Those countries fight each other for resources and the remaining scraps of land
>Yet people still have small dreams like learning music and can lead happy lives, despite all that's bad in the world
I fucking love Sora no Woto. It really surprised me for something that looked like K-On in military outfits, concept-wise. The OST is amazing, too.

made a quick Pacificentric version so you can see just how big that damn ocean is now.

Set it after the true extinction of all life.

Can't be grimdark without the living.

Yeah, Pacific.

The fun thing is, meteor this big will leave an indent in earth where he falls and create a small mountain in the opposite point. With volcanism and all, since it'll also push up the mantle.

And supervolcanos are always a good location for a final.

>ctrl+f
>no desert punk

It's basically the definition of fun post-apocalypse.

Late to the party, but what is it called?

Simultaneously you're right, but it's mostly just a pretty dark world put through a zany lens of the protag.

There's nasty stuff like raid, rape and slavery, more openly than in other series like it.

Most shitty writing is about
"Oh, we want to kill each other, but we can't be arsed with actually doing it, so we write about pacifists getting raided"

Realistically, tribalism ends in weeks, so long anything resembling paths or transport remains.
Roaming cannibals would literally get treated like bears: You set bounty, gather groups, and exterminate them if they are a real pest.
Foundation period of city states, would be extremely peaceful.
Periods of war won't even occur until technology is re researched enough for travel to happen again.So that city states can start bickering over nearby "mines" of wasteland.

Sunabozu is fun.

Humanity endures. It might not be Noble bright, but the fractured remnants of humanity picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, and working together to make sure their family/community/country survives and endures only becomes grimdark if you make it that way. So long as their is hope and the potential for progress, it's not true grimdark

Could be a bunch of smaller ones instead of one big one.

I think it would be neat to have it somehow cause the volcanic activity in the middle of the pacific, so you have this massive endless ocean with just a tiny bit of fiery, inhospitable land in the middle.

Works nicely as an 'end goal' of sorts, since that would be very hard to reach and probably only be a rumor for most people.

I dunno, you could have just a bunch of zombies beating the shit out of each other for all eternity. Kinda like Grixis from MtG.

Dont make it about the merciless winter that comes after the global catastrophe, make it about the rebirth of the society, it's spring

Because the setting makes no fucking sense.

Most settings don't but that doesn't mean they can't be awesome.

>They misundrestood the term as an ancient technique for increased stealth capabilities

Mad Max from the point of view of the completely insane mooks.
The apocalypse actually IS fucked up, but you enjoy it.

I've been thinking of doing a similar situation, but not as extreme of high water, with what I said here >the coastal areas being the open and inviting areas, as one travels inland it becomes less welcoming, with thick ancient forests, swamps and marshlands and vast deserts
So we could have CATastrophe and Desertpunk on the same planet at the same time.

The sea and the coasts would be the relatively safe areas. Inland you run into thick rainforests, poison swamps, desert wastelands and manmade horrors.

I was thinking either the ocean rising 50 to 60 meters, the Golden Gate bridge would be above water, connecting two of the island that make up the San Francisco Archipelago, Big Ben would still stick up above the water, telling the dwellers of the London rooftops what time it is and the London Eye could have been refit into a Bathysphere carrier to bring people down to the sea floor.
flood.firetree.net/?ll=27.4089,-174.5011&zoom=1&m=60&type=satellite
Taking a bit of artistic licence with exactly how things flood to make more interesting maps.

Otherwise, if not making it set on Earth, I've liked the idea of maybe colonists of the planet Venus after something went wrong in the terraforming process, released from their suspended animation to find a world of water and wastelands, scattered with old science.
Pic related, Venus topography.

Set it far enough past the apocalypse that civilization is returning. Or have it have been an apocalypse that primarily depopulates as opposed to wrecking infrastructure and resources.

Adventure Time

Not the most masturbatory shit I've ever read but that's not exactly high praise.

Conversely, you could focus on schadenfreude and show how these idiots really all had it coming. Show how the planet is better off without them despite their delusions that they're the center of the universe. That way it's funny rather than sad or scary.

This. Don't have the characters aware that they are in an apocalyptic world. To them it's just the world.

>post-apoc
>remove scarcity
Someone hasn't been nuked enough.

Focus on the second generation and beyond instead of the generation that saw it happen and had to change their entire way if life (if they survived at all.) For the children that come after, a simple life of farming/hunting/whatever is all they've ever known, and they're quite fond of it in the way all people become fond of familiar experiences, and things of the old world are foreign and scary, more so because the first-generation elders have this fierce but impossible expectation that everyone younger than them should value the same things as them, things that their children have no chance of understanding, let alone caring about.

I mean, if 99% of the world's population died, there would be plenty of resources to go around. It depends a lot on how much tech survives to make use of those resources, but in some cases it shouldn't be difficult for the two-dozen people who have a city of thousands to pick through to live.

>implying the 20% furries aren't mutants of radioactive effects

People are rather resilient, at least in the short term. Resources and infrastructure are always destroyed faster than populations because people have a will to survive and objects don't. When there's a disaster, most of the things and some of the people are destroyed, and the few things that are left aren't enough for all the surviving people that need them, and so they consume them all quickly. Only after that do the people start dying fast enough to reach equilibrium, so in the end there are very few people and very few things.

Gone with the blastwave is a dark humor kind of Post-apocalypse setting

>mfw I go to grab one of the comics and it's actually updated.

Unless it's the type of disaster that kills people faster than other things, like if it's some sort of really virulent plague that only a small percentage are immune to.

World might decend into some chaos and panic, but everything will largely be intact for the survivors to pick through and build something of.

the land is empty because most of the people moved off-planet/to a different reality or time/uploaded to the matrix. The only people remaining either chose to stay or couldn't leave with everyone else.

Most things need maintenance or they become useless after only a few years. So in that case there'd be a small window of easy looting before the only thing left in abundance was land.

>I am currently in the process of trying (and so far failing) to commit to a more regular update schedule once again.
Yay, I guess.

>Empathetic
>Gain advantage on an attack roll

That's not how empathy works WotC.

I dunno user. I was working on a post apoc setting with irradiated dangers, working societies, cults, factions, cities, and a new set of currencies and the gimmick was that it was supposed to be centered on the town you lived in, so DM and players would be using familiar landmarks. A group that lives in KY would be using Louisville as a city, Fort Knox as a location for bandits or player stronghold, and the George Stagg Brewery and the US Marine Hospital to raid for supplies. A New York group would have NYC, Statue of Liberty, Aidarondacks, and Niagara Falls to work with. The GM would reimagine what their community would look like post apoc and players would have missions that either safeguarded their community, supplied it, or reinforced it somehow combine with all the other odds and ends that floating through the community.

And then I realized how close to Fallout it was and I gave up.

I have posted in the wrong thread.

A few years is a pretty long time, and in that time the things you want to focus on are the technologies that make long-term survival a breeze. From there, you establish a community and start producing with your key bits of tech.

This gets a lot easier if you have at least a handful of people who are technologically savvy with you. With them, you could get some pretty well-off post apocalyptic societies by simply being able to maintain key parts of infrastructure.

>the only thing left in abundance was land

Land is a pretty amazing thing to have in abundance. It's pretty much been one of the most valuable and sought after things for all of human history.

What if technology was advanced enough that the entire process was mostly/completely self sustaining?

The robots mine the raw materials , refine it, then output it.

Kinda like the Walmart apocalypse but not dystopian. Robots know automatically what needs refilling but don't overstock either and security gas conveniently stopped working.

it's one of my favourite webcomics. I would fucking love a game set in The City, tabletop or Video. if you throw a Kickstarter or Gofundme up for one I'd love to be a contributor.

it's one of my favourite webcomics. I would fucking love a game set in The City, tabletop or Video.

Depends on how observable the maintenance and process is, though at that point I would expect subsequent generations of survivors to view it in an almost mystical way. How their ancestors left behind these inhuman servants to watch over them before they died in a great cataclysm.

Still pretty bright overall, even if the robots are only able to maintain certain things. I mean, a post-apocalyptic community next to a self-sustaining powerplant certainly won't be having a hard time if they can tap into the grid and use it for farm tools and other comforts.

I'll throw a kickstarter for it, 5000$ goal, I'll throw 10% to the author. Pls donate.

If there's a fully automated post-scarcity economy that's still fully operational after the apocalypse, it wasn't much of an apocalypse, was it?

Destiny is Pretty NobleBright, sure, mankind has been reduced to a single City that's going to be destroyed at the beginning of the sequel but the Guardians are nigh-immortal protectors that have fought back against physical-god level threats and come out on top.

Isn't that the Engine Heart setting?

Wouldn't you end up with pic related?

Humanity could have been wiped out by a disease or something and not enough people who understand how things work are left alive to make sense of it all.

Could be an interesting plot hook. Local robots are starting to give up so party needs to go find the one engineer in the world who knows how to repair it. Depending on how far society has regressed, they might even think the engineer was a magician while the engineer is constantly annoyed by the references to parlor tricks.

Almost positive that the vinyl records will be too degraded to use after that long.

Ah, I see you're familiar with the Engine Heart approach.