It's a common enough theme in superhero comics: The End of the World. Typically involving time travelers coming back to warn the current generation of Xmen and Avengers and Justice Friends about how absolutely fucked they're about to be if they don't stop the latest evil villain's plan of world conquest/ destruction.
But there's another genre that's always big on apocalypses: Western Fantasy. How many settings have you read through or prepared to run, and always there's a "Mysterious, Lost Empire" that was once great but is now so many dungeons filled with magical loot for PCs to gobble up like it's free food on game night? Basically ALL of them.
So, fuck it, let's mix the two. A "Fantasy" setting that's really just a Superhero Setting one thousand years after the end. What does that look like? Let's talk about what this world is like, and what we can do with it. None of that dubs or trips confirms shit, or else this will be every bit as cancerous as those fucking Amazon and Ladyknight threads.
Alright, I’ll start, the villain won, now everything is swallowed up in the ocean in Waterworld style. Main types of superheroes are mutants that have sea-creature abilities
Landon Murphy
Thusly all humans now have gills
Daniel Sanchez
The Himalayas still exist because a world with only water is boring. The Kingdom of Shamballa with flying cars and psychic kung fu masters keeps the Evil Bastard at bay and trains new heroes in the Way of the Shadow.
Xavier Martin
You don't have to come right out the gate trying to ruin it user.
How about Mad Max style deserts?
Matthew Ortiz
>You don't have to come right out the gate trying to ruin it user. I’m not trying to ruin it, but if we’re going to go out of our way and make something different we might as well use a lesser used idea than “generic desert everybody kill everyone setting.” >How about Mad Max style deserts? Only if there’s a Road Warrior/depowered Superman type character still trying to find justice in a cruel world
Brandon Howard
>>Road Warrior/depowered Superman type character still trying to find justice in a cruel world
I second this
Grayson Kelly
Mixed environment is best. Water rose 7,000 feet. Is Waterworld. a few mountains are Hawaii- like. pic related. Marble Sea is remnants of Bald Eagle Republic, with Mad Max hillclimbs on nitro-burning funny cars to be Da Prez until the next televised race. DeathRace 3000! "I put mah munny on Sweet JP!"
Himalayas have Peace luvin', but armed to da teeth Monks of Shamballah that will teach promising students the mysteries of ass kickin'.
Villains cruise in old leaky Nuclear subs and aircraft carriers and act like degenerate mutants.
Jordan Parker
killer merpeople "those bitey assholes who keep poking holes in our boat"
Brody Rogers
There's a weird cult around the Aquaman/Namor expy. People ask for his protection against sea nastie and pirates, and most ships have his old costume's symbol somewhere on it.
Constant legends about him returning to unite the oceans under his just rule abound.
Owen Bell
If you haven't read Old Man Logan, it takes place about 50 years after a group of supervillains causes WW3 and takes over the US. One thing I really liked was how so many superhero artifacts (like Ant-Man's helmet that lets him control ants) had fallen into civilian hands.
There might also be a group that's descended from a superbeing (or family of superbeings, or maybe an incestuous cult that's the descendants of a superhero group that hid in a bomb shelter and eventually started a new "society" with the eight of them).
Could also be a supervillain that was put in suspended animation by some superhero before the fall (or during it) but was still aware of everything that happened (the hero planned to come back and unfreeze the villain after "the gang had taken care of this little apocalypse") and is now a telepathic oracle and witness to everything that's transpired in that location over the last thousand years (and unless someone with the ability to reverse the suspended animation power comes along, for the foreseeable future).
Jaxson Cook
the book "renegades" is set in a world getting over a super apocalypse. basically super were always persecuted though out history then a powerful anarchist super just started destroying the infrastructure. government fell gang of super carved out small territories off their own. for twenty years it was a scavenging/barter world. until some young supers had enough and became the worlds first hero's.
Jace Ramirez
what would be a good system to run a game like this op? gamma world? mutants and masterminds?
Daniel Morales
Old superhero and villain bases are basically the equivalent of Fallout Vaults in terms of being post-apocalyptic dungeons full of loot.
Nicholas Gomez
great idea!
Jose Morris
>How about Mad Max style deserts? Old Man Logan - Already been done very well done. How about a cyberpunk setting with superheroes ---bear with me--- A cyberpunk superheroes setting where the world is now being rebuilt after post apocalypse.
Xavier Campbell
FASERIP
Jace Jenkins
I read that as "El Retardo".
Joshua Gutierrez
You never really see capestuff enter the realm of the apocalyptic, now that I think about it, outside the realm of one-shots and mini-arcs.
In any case, I actually dig the concept that brought up, of randos stumbling across the more human-accessible hero gear and using it themselves, turning hero or villain since they have minimal context about who this person even was, just that they had power.
Jose Myers
Isn't there an entire system based on this already?
Jaxon Ross
Dungeons could be abandoned villain lairs or supe hideouts that have fallen in disuse. Villain lairs should fall in two categories: places that were designed for living and thus have less random traps and more complex contrapositions, as well as tighter although old security systems, and well, full-blown lair of death. !Not-Punisher hideouts would be incredibly valuable to adventurers that want basic weaponry, although these safehouses should OCASSIONALLY have really nasty weapons, be it an RPG that tracks heat or a shard of Adaptolyte which once weakened the now-dead superhero Resilience. Now, there are probably a thousand of urban tales and myths scattered across these desolated wild lands about these magical places that superhumans once built, thus parties of raiders should be somewhat common. It would be a risky business since you never know what you might find inside these hidden vaults: the photon gauntlets of the late AeroStar or just a million of spikes and saws, courtesy of the sinister Doctor Mayhem?
