How long after the the apocalypse should a "post-apocalyptic" setting be set?

Any fucking time you want where the major themes and feel of the world you want would fit best.
Want a "everything is still on fucking fire" setting? Five minutes after.
Want a fallout style "shit got fucked but everything's slowly getting its shit back together?" A few generations or so after.
Want a totally rebuilt world where society has completely reformed into different kinds of systems, mutants have steadily evolved into consistent races, and the old world is basically just old legends/a long time ago with maybe some superstition filled "forbidden zones?" A few millennia.

Stop asking dumb questions that don't have objective answers.

Is that game actually any good or is it just "cuck simulator" like everyone says it is?

I find that 3 months and 1 week is ideal, but if my players wanted 3 and a half months, I'd make it work.

>cuck simulator
???

I enjoyed it, but I'm just some guy.
the story was pretty good, gameplay was fun, climbing was a little lack-luster.

the story of the Apocalypse was fantastically presented.

a lot of the side characters seemed to be at least a little interesting.

there are vastly overpowered skill unlocks that make certain parts of the game too easy.

the game doesn't go out of its way to tell you how to unlock unlimited fast-travel.

the ammo-pouch crafting is a mechanic I like, but the proportions and rates some of the rarer components to drop is kind of shitty.

protection potions didn't work like I wanted and aren't really adding to gameplay like the healing and fortifying potions do.

I found the cultures presented are interesting, but I do not study other cultures closely

the justification for giant robo-animals made sense.

the views were pretty as fuck

the equipment was all fun to use, aside from war-bows which just were not fun(but fortunately not mandatory)

the stealth system was fun but I didn't like that I could ONLY hide in the specific grass and not say, some random bush.

>not a game reviewer
>trying to review a game

How long would be ideal for there to still be people around who remember the world before the apocalypse and have survived through it? As in the maximum time you could have for there to still be some old timers laying around either as village elders or hermits or that kind of thing.

>cuck simulator

tops?
like, 80-90 years

so that the sons and daughters of those that lived in the good times(and got all the stories from mom and pop) are now old enough to be elders.

they know the ideals, but they don't know enough to rebuild

Depends on how old you want them to be before the apocalypse, it honestly wouldn't take long for people to reorganize into some sort of tribes in areas that weren't hit and aren't down wind from the fallout radiation, immediately after would actually be kind of an eye of the storm thing where people are scared but no one has much need to start shit yet, give it a few months for food to start running low and the like and you'll enter a real shitshow phase where half the surviving population turns to banditry, I'd say after a few decades, thirty or fourty years, is when there'd be enough organization to really start growing crops again and thus create far more organized settlements and tribes revolving around such farms as well as having tribes that have gone nomadic and live off hunting and gathering in areas that aren't still scorched to shit.

>they know the ideals, but they don't know enough to rebuild
Seems like a good way of putting it.
I'd had the idea of the youngest generation being at odds with the elders in a way, in that they were full "old world blues" more concerned with what was lost and what can't be recovered, considering this world to be desolate and a shadow of existence. Meanwhile the younger generation has lived fully in this world, experiencing only what it has to offer with nothing but the secondhand stories of some old people to remind them of what "could be," leaving them with no old world comforts to miss, and seeing the world not as empty and dangerous, but full of unknown to explore and adventure to find.

Depending on scale of apocalypse.

Pic related are estimates of how long it would take to get US back on its feet as functioning country after nuclear war depending on number of people that are nuked into oblivion.

Now, it depends mostly on the kond of apocalypse, but visit Grozny or Sarajevo - a decade after the cities were basically razed sea of ruins, they are once again functioning well, and only some details indicate that yes, indeed, there was a war here. Same thing with post WWII rebuilding of cities like Warsaw, Stalingrad or Berlin.

Any setting that is falloutmadmax desertpocalypse after more than few decades is not very well thought out.

Humans are race of society builders.

Imo best setting is something like TW2K - the apocalypse happened few years before, embers are still burning, and most interesting things are happening .

Possibly referring to the fact that Aloy doesn't actually take anyone up on their flirting?

Of course, with all the stuff going on, I'm not surprised.

My real problem with the game was Aloy was far too rationalist.
Even with the focus, I'd have preferred her to still think of Hades, Hephaestus, and Gaia as gods and spirits.

this, exactly one quarter of a year honestly works best for me, y'know? not a day more or less.

Don't listen to /v/, they're fucking idiots. HZD is perfectly fine, a couple small issues aside.

Probably heard it from the dumb cunts on /v/ who assume that any game with a female protagonist is part of the SJW Boogeyman's agenda.

Depends on setting.

Depends, If the Cataclysm was harsh enough then it shifts into the Dying Earth genre instead.

Depends how ripped apart the world is, and cause.

Zombies? A year AT MOST, unless the zombies are Day of the Dead tier.

War? Depends what you want. Fallout-tier "everyone gets nuked!" Is pretty vible out to a few decades (in terms of new civs arising, industries building), albeit if you have a realism boner radiation will dissapate very fast outside pockets.

Total collapse, Horizon: ZD tier? Any. Take as much time as you want.

Of course, sometimes society rebuilds slowly, or it just MISSES places entirely. My setting has new "civilization" zones, but America is so big a lot of areas (now pretty much tribal) never hear of them, or think its exaggerated tales.

Just before.

You make characters, you go through the first few sessions, then the apocalypse happens and you're stuck surviving in it.

>cuck simulator

December 29, 2017 was apparently the day that the Internet destroyed everyone's brains.

500 years. Watch life after people for what our cities would look like:
youtube.com/watch?v=GyEUyqfrScU

I think you can roughly divide apocalyptic fiction into categories based on how society is recovering (or not). Recovery is not certain and a setting may stay at scavenger level indefinately because that's what the writer wants, likewise there's no timescale for how long each stage should last.

1. Pre-apocalyptic. Society is fracturing but has not yet completely collapsed, though some people see the writing on the wall. Best suited for gradual decay rather than one big crunch that happened overnight. The original Mad Max movie is the iconic work, Fall of Deadworld a more recent example.

2. The Apocalypse: Disaster movie territory, set during the initial zombie outbreak, robot uprising or whatever. Stories generally have a very short timeframe as the goal is to survive the immediate danger.

3. Classic Post-Apocalypse: Society is gone and only scattered survivors remain amid the ruins of civilisation. Settlements are the odd hamlet built out of scrap and are in constant danger from wasteland denizens and the after effects of the Apocalypse. Salvage is almost the only source of technology and materials beyond the most basic subsistence plant/animal products. Road Warrior is the template here.

3.5. A variant and evolution of the above, the setting is still the wasteland but society is starting to rebuild in places. Small towns exist, maybe even a city, trade caravans ply the wastes and various self-proclaimed governments try to impose order and a semblance of civilisation, crude though it may be. Raiders, monsters and radiation remain though, and outside the relative safety of the major settlements it's still Road Warrior-style lone wanderers and punks in assless leather chaps. Thunderdome, Fury Road and Fallout: New Vegas are good examples.

1/2

2/2

4. Post-Post Apocalyptic: Society has rebuilt and has functional civilisation again, which could be less or more advanced than pre-Fall depending, but still lives in the shadow of the Apocalypse and the aftershocks. Dredd is a great example; a futuristic city with flying cars and hundreds of millions of people (pre-DoC anyway) right next to a radioactive desert that used to be inland America which is inhabited by mutants, monsters, wasteland bandits, satanic dinosaurs and sentient fast-food mascots.

5. Society has moved far beyond the cataclysm which is now just another chapter in the history books. This is no longer post-apocalyptic and is now just a setting with a disaster in the backstory. History is full of examples of spectacular dieoffs and social collapses but humanity is still ticking along.

>and knowing is half the battle.
True, but the battle has to be over, otherwise we'd still be mid-apocalypse.

There's a new battle: To protect and reshape humanity as it rises from the ashes of the old world.

Well, knowing is a really big part of Doctor Stone.

Depends on the setting, depends on what kind of game, story and general mouthfeel want to convey.

You could set a comfy, lighthearted game set in a nuclear bunker or some faraway tropical islands or an extremely bleak and violent one where everything should have been alright, the external apocalypse fizzled out but human violence and fear completed it anyway and humanity is ticking down to an extinction of its own making.

For myself, I really like post-post apocalyptic just because of the worldbuilding aspects and the ability to talk about scavenged and technical stuff in detail. I like to color them a bit optimistic too. Sure, the world is a battlefield between all those newly sprung up states, techno-barbarians and warlords but humanity survived, things are back on track and a general sense of rebuilding is going on. Just never mind the gunfire in the distance.

Also, you can just base stuff on real life societal collapses and apocalyptic events. The Black Death, bronze age collapse or the mongol conquests. Or even the collapse of precolumban indian civilizations. The tracking, bison hunting, mustang riding tribal injuns were just the mad max style survivors of a collapse. Before the spanish arrived Cahokia was larger than London.

Welp, if we ever needed proof the word "cuck" lost all meaning, there it is. Might as well call your bowl of cereal cuck from now on.

Never, post apocalypse is only post apocalypse if you allow it to be so

I've run a game where the opening scene of said game was a mushroom cloud appearing over downtown and the grid crashing. Really anytime between The End and civilization recovering.

Fuck that game looks cool.
I love apocalypse tribes, but I don't tend to run into games featuring them very often.

>You will never be a hyper-advanced sentient combat robot that survives the war that destroyed civilization and your masters.
>You will never defend a chosen tribe of primitive humans from the horrors of the waste
>You will never be horrifically wounded in a massive conflict and collapse in front of the people of the tribe
>You will never spend your last moments telling these people that they need no gods, no guardian spirits or kings, for they are human beings. And the scope of their potential has no boundaries.

Getting real NIER vibes off this. I really like the concept of robots actually worshipping humanity instead of yet another trite AI rebellion meme scenario.

Reminds me of some short lived tv series that aired when I was in high school about a world where all electronics spontaneously stopped working one day. The main character's day had a heads up a few hours ahead of time for plot reasons, so he took his kids into the kitchen, busted out all their ice cream and said "Have at it, cause you'll never taste this again."

Apocalypse is a state of mind, really

Severely underrated post.
Hadn't considered Dredd post apocalyptic but on reflection you're absolutely right.

yeah, but she ALSO watched them be made. if we can assume she read the data-logs she'd know for certain heart and mind.

I'd still play the shit out of a game in that setting though.
grey goo, done RIGHT.

>the day that the Internet destroyed everyone's brains.
that happened when the internet became a thing over half of first worlders started using.

if you have a PS4 pick up a copy.
if XBOX watch someone play it through on youtube
if considering systems consider the PS4 as it has both this AND bloodbourne and both are fantastic.

and its a fresh take on apocalypses IMO

stealing this for an encounter of some kind

I know SM Stirling did a book series on that concept or one like it...

I think it really depends on what kind of apocalypse you want. Going back to the Stone Age is one, something a little less extreme like Fallout is another. Then there's always stuff like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or the two films based on it (especially Blade Runner 2049) - though that is a very different kind of post-apocalypse.

>look up that date in Google to see what significant event happened then
>realize you're talking about today
You might be onto something m8

Recently enough that there can be player characters who remember it. People who had real lives before the apocalypse, lost everything and managed to keep going are more interesting than generic wasteland scroungers.

When the cannibal mutant tribes are cannibal mutant polities then enough time has elapsed.
So, in other words, post-post-apocalypse.
Keep the Dixie accents though, just swap out 'Wrong Turn' hillbillies for deformed J.E.Bs.

Know how I know you haven't gone to /v/ in many years if ever?

Hint: You think today was bad

How long does it take for the average grocery store to run out of all edibles after a global catastrophy?

About this far

Looted within days because EVERYONE starts with them. All the food except canned rots away into uselessness within weeks, or even faster because of blackouts stopping refrigeration. The workers themselves may loot everything, within the first hours or days.

Its stupid to assume anything easy to use woud remain in cities in the first weeks or months of a global catastrophe, especially when society is still around but breaking down. A global distruption of shipping and supply chains would cause famine within weeks and mass riots and looting completing the catastrophe itself.

Basically, you want to avoid towns after the end. They are already picked clean, full of chemical spills and other toxic waste, buildings are prone to collapse without maintainance and its a gigantic fire hazard if it havent burned down already.

Just go innawoods, seek out tiny villages, hunting lodges and weekend houses to loot. You can hunt, you can farm and you likely dont have to worry about other survivors either.

Far enough that the post-apocalypse can give your characters some adventure and dangers while still being mostly 'safe' to traverse.

Last time I went there was during E3. I just assumed they were in the middle of a /pol/ invasion, because they seemed to show genuine outrage over Nazis getting shot in Wolfenstein. Also the racist remarks during the Beyond Good and Evil 2 trailer.
I want to believe /v/ isn't usually that bad.

How any of that is bad? Are you from reddit?

ok Varg

If you've played 1 and/or 2 I want you to note, very specifically, the tagline.

The "apocalypse" has happened many times. The world is stacked with layers upon layers of dead civilizations - missing pieces that were scavenged early on, that would be crucial to understand what they had. Some of these ruins mesh together, and people explore down them - cavernous messes of metallic buildings intermingling in various styles and aesthetics - hallmarks of forgotten centuries.

24 minutes

Depends on your taste.