Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[LovisXVI]

Anyone got any suggestions for any post-apocalyptic settings in DnD? I know there's the Dark Sun setting, and I think Dragonlace technically qualifies as well, but are there any others that I might've ended up missing?

I'm also taking a look at settings for Pathfinder as well; there's the "Broken Earth" setting for that, any others?

Eberron's Mournlands probably qualifies, as it is properly a blasted hellscape.

 

[Ah ha']

I do feel bad about PC death, especially early on. Awhile back my friends character got coup de gras’d after getting hit by a Hold Person spell and he insisted we play it out that way but was still pissed it happened so soon in the adventure.

Other times Ive killed people and felt bad like in my first years starting out with RPGs maybe thinking I overtuned an encounter or made things too hard for my friends; i was cognizant of this and we were all new. An early example of this was when my friends were on a quest to go fight a Black dragon in his cave but he had two Hydras as guards and the Hydras whipped their ass, some guys died and I felt the evening was ruined and brought up a wandering cleric that restored them so we could play the dragon encounter.

Now I care less because Ive noticed people treat things too much like a video game and the lack of intuitiveness and foresight in an RPG setting chafes me because I also think of it as a scouting tool in my friend group. If shit really goes down IRL can this person think on their feet and plan to win against an enemy? Rpgs are great for weeding out behaviour you want for group cohesiveness and survival I think.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

During my terrible trip to Milwaukee I decided to check out what the city had to offer in terms of gaming stores. Best I came across is Old Guard Games. Nice looking store, very clean when I was there. I'd come back once tourists aren't treated like criminals at the airport. I didn't have much time to check on anything other than the store front. Picked up a few things I could easily pack in with my Warhammer minatures without issues.

Anyone got any suggestions for any post-apocalyptic settings in DnD? I know there's the Dark Sun setting, and I think Dragonlace technically qualifies as well, but are there any others that I might've ended up missing?

I'm also taking a look at settings for Pathfinder as well; there's the "Broken Earth" setting for that, any others?

You can easily turn Red Steel into that. Also works well for horror. There's not much there but atmosphere so it's a good empty slate to work with.

 

[Quintus]

Anyone got any suggestions for any post-apocalyptic settings in DnD? I know there's the Dark Sun setting, and I think Dragonlace technically qualifies as well, but are there any others that I might've ended up missing?

I'm also taking a look at settings for Pathfinder as well; there's the "Broken Earth" setting for that, any others?

Deadlands has a separate campaign setting called, Deadlands: Hell On Earth. It's post the apocalypse caused by the ancient evil big bads called "The Reckoners.". They were finally able to take over the earth via suicide pact technology discovered in the base setting. It's got psychics, mutants the whole nine yards. Iirc, humanity had colonized parts of the solar system prior. So you can even have space adventures!

 

[Allied-Mastercomputer]

Anyone got any suggestions for any post-apocalyptic settings in DnD? I know there's the Dark Sun setting, and I think Dragonlace technically qualifies as well, but are there any others that I might've ended up missing?

Bro, how could you forget Gamma World? It’s like the quintessential TSR post apocalyptic experience. Even pre-dates Fallout.

 

[AnOminous]

Other times Ive killed people and felt bad like in my first years starting out with RPGs maybe thinking I overtuned an encounter or made things too hard for my friends; i was cognizant of this and we were all new.

I've had this. Not often, but when a beloved character who had lasted years irl (in a CoC campaign also lasting years) got wasted by a sucker trap in a cannibal cultist house, I had to call an end and take a pause and literally say some gay shit like "let's just take some time to process this" because I just couldn't go on.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

You can easily turn Red Steel into that. Also works well for horror. There's not much there but atmosphere so it's a good empty slate to work with.

I'll take a look at this one; from what I can tell, it's part of Mystara, right? My group hasn't done much with that setting just yet, but I think this'll be as good excuse as any.

Deadlands has a separate campaign setting called, Deadlands: Hell On Earth. It's post the apocalypse caused by the ancient evil big bads called "The Reckoners.". They were finally able to take over the earth via suicide pact technology discovered in the base setting. It's got psychics, mutants the whole nine yards. Iirc, humanity had colonized parts of the solar system prior. So you can even have space adventures!

Sounds like a fun setting to run; I'll have to give it a look, thanks!

Bro, how could you forget Gamma World? It’s like the quintessential TSR post apocalyptic experience. Even pre-dates Fallout.

Believe it or not, I kinda... forgot about this one. I'd heard of this one previously, obviously, but I never paid all that much attention to it - didn't even really know what it was about, so it's nice to hear more about it.

 

[Glory To Arztotska]

There is also Ashes Without Number (by Kevin Crawford of the X Without Number series fame) which was successfully funded some months ago and is currently in beta. As an OSR title I think it even has some compatability with vintage Gamma World content.

EDIT: Not to toot my own horn, but getting awarded Informative stickers gives me a warm fuzzy feeling for some reason.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Anyone got any suggestions for any post-apocalyptic settings in DnD? I know there's the Dark Sun setting, and I think Dragonlace technically qualifies as well, but are there any others that I might've ended up missing?

+1 for the Mournland.

If you want to play outside of DnD, RIFTs counts.

Others have been suggested but it depends what you want. There's a few Pathfinder locations that might qualify, though not as apocalyptic.
One of which is the Barrier Peaks equivalent Numeria where rampaging robots from a crashed space ship have made the land a Conan esc hellscape.
Their Ravenloft equivalent I forget the name of wasn't a pleasant place either.
For a more localized setting. Alkenstar might be worth a look. It's steampunk fantasy wild west, but it's in a no mans land between two waring magical nations that have turned the surrounding area into a barren wasteland where mana storms making magic unreliable.
Finally. Points of Light. Yes, I'm late to the party on this one, but it's a setting where (from my reading) civilization is just starting to branch outside of a few pockets of safety.

Deadlands: Hell On Earth. It's post the apocalypse caused by the ancient evil big bads called "The Reckoners.". They were finally able to take over the earth via suicide pact technology discovered in the base setting.

I didn't know that. The one I read the apocalypse was caused by "ghost bombs", wmds that vaporize and rip the souls out of people while leaving buildings intact, and causing all other kinds of mutations and horrors to show up.

It had a good system that abstracted salvage and scavanging iirc.

 

[Glory To Arztotska]

The one I read the apocalypse was caused by "ghost bombs", wmds that vaporize and rip the souls out of people while leaving buildings intact, and causing all other kinds of mutations and horrors to show up.

Well that's metal as fuck.

 

[Allied-Mastercomputer]

If you want to play outside of DnD, RIFTs counts

I completely forgot about the Palladium settings. Yeah, Palladium definitely covers some post apocalyptic worlds if you want to learn a new system.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

I completely forgot about the Palladium settings. Yeah, Palladium definitely covers some post apocalyptic worlds if you want to learn a new system.

I do remember taking a look at some of their books before; mostly Rifts, though I never ran anything with them. I'll try and look at their works a bit more, see if I can get anything going; thanks!

 

[RandomTwitterGuy]

So I have a retarded player in one of my groups. So, I am going to vent a bit. I am the DM, and overall, things are going well.

The rest of my players are engaged and tell me their overall ideas and what they hope for. If it fits, I try to make it happen. However, one of them has started complaining because the enemy they are after now uses underhanded tactics and trickery.
To make it short, the party found a McGuffin with a lot of power; said McGuffin was stolen by a man and his associates. They are now hunting the man, but he is trying to delay them with different things.

For example, the man used the McGuffin to cast mass illusions on his cronies, helping them ambush the players. It was a fun little fight where they found the aftermath of a "centaur attack" on innocent farmers, but the wounded, some corpses, and even some nearby trees were people waiting in ambush. It is all fake, and there were some obvious tells, but the dice were not with them, and it happens. Retarded players go over the help one of the wounded, and the cronies attack.
He was angry that I secretly rolled for them, so they were surprised. It was also unfair that they could keep the illusion after the attack and for that long "because that is not how that speels works" and blah blah. Yeah, the guy there hunting was known for Illusions and trickery, and now he has a McGuffin that gives him more power, so he will do what he is best at, and I will ignore rules in favor of flavor if it makes sense for a situation.

Next, he got angry that when they sought out an archwizard for information about the McGuffin, The wizard refused to discuss it in further detail after some RP because he considered it beneath him. They did not convince him of its importance. I wanted to introduce the old Wizard so he could come back later for some stuff.
Retard player got angry that the ARCHWIZARD was known for incredible powers and being an old curmudgeon of a man was not nicer. So he tried to break into the ARCHWIZARD home and got snippy with me when the house had traps, and he had to roll a 20 not to trigger it. They are still low-level, and when he was polymorphed (for a day) into a rat as punishment and put into a cage, he thought it was unfair again.

This last time, he left the session early because he was "Tired" because they lost track of the man they were hunting, "It is not fun that we lost track of him and I don't care about this," and I told him "I don't give a shit" and then moved along. He left soon after, and in the last month or two, he went from Autistic and quiet to Autistic and retarded. I will still give him a chance, but I will kick him out of the group if this keeps up.

There wanted to vent a bit in a place there is no way the retard reads.

 

[Quintus]

I didn't know that. The one I read the apocalypse was caused by "ghost bombs", wmds that vaporize and rip the souls out of people while leaving buildings intact, and causing all other kinds of mutations and horrors to show up.

It had a good system that abstracted salvage and scavanging iirc.

Well yes, the technology in question was devices powered by "Ghost Rock.". Ghost Rock is essentially coal with nuclear levels of power output, made from the souls of the damned. It taints the earth where it is used. The plan of The Reckoners was to proliferate Ghost Rock in military applications. This naturally led to it being used to make giant bombs. And when everyone started dropping them, the world became susceptible to The Reckoners and there minions being able to freely walk the earth.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I'll take a look at this one; from what I can tell, it's part of Mystara, right? My group hasn't done much with that setting just yet, but I think this'll be as good excuse as any.

Yes, not much going for it other than dust and rocks that turn people into mutants. You can basically use that in any post apocalyptic world. Instead of an oasis in the wasteland, it's a cursed location.

 

[Loose Goose]

I like the ACKS approach a lot better than 5e, because in 5e, it's a strict binary. Either warriors pop back up, no wounds, no scars, ready to go immediately, or they die. In ACKS, if a player drops to 0 HP, once the combat is over, you roll on a table to determine what happened. The player may be dead as a doornail, he may need a week of bed rest, or, very rarely, just rattled a bit and ready to keep adventuring. You also roll to see what wound he sustained. He might permanently lose an eye and suffer a penalty to ranged attacks. It might be the loss of CON points, with permanent max HP loss. The fact that every high-level character has taken some knocks means most characters have some baggage by that point.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I doubt everyone's read all 866 pages.

ACKS is starting to grow on me. I bought it as (expensive) reading material, but something about it makes me want to run a proper campaign. It's a natural evolution on the old D&D formula that's not as simplistic as most of the OSR games, but not as obsessed with mechanical detail as 5e or PF go for. It has just the right heft to it, in that it looks like it wouldn't be too cumbersome in play, but it has enough depth to offer staying power. The rulebooks are enormous, but most of them are just stuff to play with, not rules.

The implied setting also has a vibe that clicks. Roman Empire equivalent, various cultures modelled on that place and time in history, odd little rules that reinforce the setting. It's also completely devoid of the plague of modern RPGs. I don't just mean wokeness (it doesn't have that either), but the general cutesy aesthetic, the slice of life fantasy that's everywhere, and even how every fantasy game has to be either over the top or grimderp. ACKS is restrained. It takes a layer of historical realism and then adds fantasy stuff to it.

It feels oddly out of time, like something made in the 1980s or something. It just completely ignores everything the modern RPG industry does.

 

[Brain Problems]

This last time, he left the session early because he was "Tired"

I rolled my eyes at everything until this. No, absolutely not. Straight to jail. Adios you fuckin' skank.

 

[Loose Goose]

Something completely different: a lot of RPG industry people are upset about not being able to produce their slop in China anymore due to the tariffs. This is from Polygon (Archive), which I am surprised is still around. Apparently, Steve Jackson Games is having problems because the US can't print books or manufacture board game components (I am sure this is true), and the grifter who makes Coyote and Crow is being put out of business because he can't get his books done with Chinese prison labor.

Tabletop industry in full panic as Trump tariffs are poised to erase decades of growth​

‘Devastating consequences’ expected says trade group
by Charlie Hall
Apr 4, 2025, 12:27 AM GMT+2

President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on foreign goods Wednesday, with the reportedly “arbitrary” levies exceeding 60% in some cases. While the tariffs were long expected, one business analyst told CNBC that the administration’s plans are “worse than the worst case scenario.” With most tabletop games produced overseas, many in China, the impact could be devastating. Developers and publishers are sounding the alarm.

The games you play are likely to become much more expensive. Nearly 20 organizations that Polygon spoke with said that profits will be severely impacted. Many said jobs will be lost, companies shuttered, and games that have been in development for years may simply never come to market.

Tabletop gaming, which includes board games, card games, and role-playing games, has enjoyed a roughly two-decade renaissance brought on in part by crowdfunding. Nevertheless, much of the industry consists of individual creators, sole proprietors, small family businesses, and remote teams of creatives. The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) said Thursday that the impact of these tariffs will be nothing short of a disaster.

“The latest imposition of a 54% tariff on products from China by the administration is dire news for the tabletop industry and the broader US economy,” GAMA said in a news release. “As an industry highly dependent on producing goods overseas and importing them into the US, this policy will have devastating consequences.

“Tariffs are essentially taxes on consumers, not on the countries where the products are produced,” it continued. “Publishers will be forced to pass these costs along to their customers or face the prospect of ceasing operations. Nearly a third of all US consumer goods — including clothes, food products, appliances, cars, and entertainment items like games — are imported. This means higher prices across the board as all these products will need to increase prices to compensate for these new Trump Taxes.”

It went on to add that as prices rise domestically, discretionary spending will necessarily decrease, further constraining consumer spending on games.

“This one-two punch is likely to put many of our members out of business or force them to downsize and lay off employees to survive,” GAMA concluded.

The U.S. has a very small industrial capacity for manufacturing tabletop games — especially board games. That was made clear in a statement issued Thursday by Steve Jackson Games CEO Meredith Placko.

“Some people ask, ‘Why not manufacture in the U.S.?’” Placko said in an impact statement. “I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production — specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components — doesn’t meaningfully exist here yet. I’ve gotten quotes. I’ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren’t.”

Nearly a dozen organizations expressed dismay in emails to Polygon. A member of the leadership team at an established tabletop role-playing publisher said uncertainty instigated by the incoming administration had impacted their revenues since at least January. Now the tariffs are poised to deliver a knockout blow. They asked for anonymity, citing concerns over reprisals from other U.S.-based businesses.

“The news is bad from every angle, but especially so for card games and RPGs printed in China,” they said. “The choice seems to be either 1) a massive price hike to pay the new import taxes, or 2) go to a direct sales model that removes the hobby distributors from the equation.”

Distributors are the connective tissue that helps keep GAMA’s nearly 5,000 independent member retailers stocked with the latest games. Without their involvement there may be fewer titles on store shelves, causing further stress on an industry still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The situation is especially problematic for companies that have used crowdfunding. Their products were bought and paid for years ago with backer dollars on platforms like Kickstarter, Gamefound, and BackerKit. Now as they near the final push to manufacturing, through overseas logistics networks, and into the hands of eager consumers, what little margin was available has all but vanished.

“In the short term, I just have to eat these costs to fulfill the Kickstarter,” said Joshua M. Simons, founder of Broken Door Entertainment, who baked in an extra margin in anticipation of the tariffs. He says it wasn’t enough.

“The tariffs will erase 20% of my expected profits off this initial print run, making it much harder to get my next round of products developed,” Simons said. “That hit to my budget means I will probably only be able to afford making one product instead of two for the rest of this year.”

As spreadsheets begin to bleed red, it’s the capricious nature of the Trump administration that continues to bedevil small businesses like Hit Point Press.

“Right now, HPP is prepping for our next Humblewood Kickstarter campaign launch next week,” said CEO and founder Ricardo Evangelho. “This news has me revising everything in advance of the campaign. But even then, with how things are going, we can’t be sure that even this adjustment is correct. Trump could come out tomorrow with additional tariffs which makes everything uncertain.

“We have high hopes for this next campaign,” Evangelho continued, “but if everyone is afraid of buying because they don’t know the final cost, I have concerns we’ll raise what we need to continue building to the scale we currently are.”

Still other publishers are literally stopping the presses, terminating the production of games already promised to consumers.

“I had to cancel a print run of one of our board games this morning,” said Michael Addison, whose Nerdy Pup Games is currently supporting the TTRPGs for Trans Right Bundle with the inclusion of Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes. “We’re basically putting all manufacturing on hold. We currently make both board games and TTRPGs. There’s a chance we are simply done making board games for the foreseeable future.”

Tariffs on China aren’t the only problem. Dozens of other international trading partners have also had tariffs levied against them.

“We had been looking at printing in either South Korea or Vietnam instead of China but with the all encompassing nature of the planned tariffs, I have no idea how feasible that would be,” said Liana MacKenzie, owner of Valorous Games. She said the company may be forced to begin publishing digital-only content in the short term. “We’re entirely self-funded through my day job and whatever we can earn through conventions, so not having a physical book is not at all ideal but that may just be where we’re at.”

Others, like Coyote & Crow founder Connor Alexander, say this might simply be the end — for now.

“[The proposed tariffs on China] will essentially kill my company,” Alexander wrote in a deeply pessimistic post on Bluesky. In a follow-up email to Polygon, he sounded only slightly more hopeful: “I’m not panicking yet. Emphasis on yet.”

In its statement, tabletop trade organization GAMA was clear that the time to act is now — before the tariffs have been firmly locked into place, and before more game publishers bow out of the industry entirely.

“GAMA will continue to oppose this policy and calls on Congress to show common sense and work together to avoid wrecking the US economy in a misguided tariff war that is neither necessary nor needed,” the trade organization said in its news release. “We urge all US members to contact their representatives and senators to step in and vacate this damaging policy. You can find your representative and senators’ contact information at house.gov and senate.gov. Please write or call them to express your concerns and demand action to protect our industry and the broader economy.”

This is also a friendly reminder that the same general people wrote an enormous open letter in support of Kamala last year, so this is just punishment for being complete faggots.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Something completely different: a lot of RPG industry people are upset about not being able to produce their slop in China anymore due to the tariffs. This is from Polygon (Archive), which I am surprised is still around. Apparently, Steve Jackson Games is having problems because the US can't print books or manufacture board game components (I am sure this is true), and the grifter who makes Coyote and Crow is being put out of business because he can't get his books done with Chinese prison labor.

This is also a friendly reminder that the same general people wrote an enormous open letter in support of Kamala last year, so this is just punishment for being complete faggots.

Good. Let these lunatics lose everything for supporting faggotry.

 

[Ghostse]

This is also a friendly reminder that the same general people wrote an enormous open letter in support of Kamala last year, so this is just punishment for being complete faggots.

Imagine, if you will, an industrial base that doesn't depend on cut-rate chinese prison labor.
Imagine things being produced by those unions lefty faggots jerk themselves raw about.
Imagine not burning an ocean's worth of tanker fuel - you know, that carbon shit you faggots scream about every chance you get.