Game Developer getting his feet wet in Cartography

[lazarusfog]

Hello All,
My Name is Ibrahim, most people call me Abe, I'm a Game Developer for an Indie RPG Gaming group called Insomnium Games. I helped publish my friend's book - Abeo, but I've got my own ideas I'm spinning with.
To get to the chase, I'm working on a Sci-fi/Fantasy RPG called (so far) "Last Age". The game revolves around a post apocalyptic world of magic and mystery one thousand years after the "Big Boom" that nearly destroyed everything.

The time frame allows society to be reborn and memories of the past to be forgotten into the stories of folklore. So here's where you guys come in. My brother-in-law got me connected to this group and hooked me up with GNU. But I'm trying to create a world that looks like It came out of a Nuclear holocaust - then add 1000 years for most of the radiation to fade and large cities fall to forest wastes and have people rebuilding again.
So far I've found no maps to help me and all the post-apocalyptic themes I've seen have only been fewer than 2 or 300 years ahead (Fall out, I am Legend, and misc. Anime I could pull up on the net).

So that's it - I'll probably be posting more. But I thought it wouldn't hurt to toss a line out for any creative minds to join my thought process.

Thanks!
Abe

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard Abe!

We have a map request forum here, you may want to drop a post in there (be sure to look over the guidelines) and see what kind of responses you get.

Or, post up some of your ideas in the WIP threads and folks will give helpful and honest critiques and suggestions on how to further your work in the direction you want to go.

[ravells]

Hmmm the end of the last series of BSG comes to mind...not that I saw any maps there. A scientist friend of mine was saying that one of the interesting things about the way we build and store information today (as opposed to say the Egyptians or Babylonians) is that we don't really build things to last 1,000s of years - if that's right I would guess that after 1,000 years from a nucleur holocaust you'd have very little evidence of modern civilisation left apart from the odd bit here and there. paper books will have rotted away, information on silicon chips would have degraded into nothing. Bring back the stone tablet!!

Welcome to the guild, btw!

[Redrobes]

That sounds interesting lazarus. I am wondering what your thoughts are on what your likely to see in these forests with the present day modern junk decaying there. I agree with Ravs that you cant get a 3.5" floppy drive much any more and standards are moving too quickly to keep pace. Lots of the old TV is being lost as its on celluloid and not spread among the VHS/DVD's etc. What would have been lost if not for youtube is quite worrying in itself. So yeah, not so much of modern stuff would survive but mainly what would survive might not be historically known about in that future date. Sorta depends if the nukes go off before or after we populate another planet I guess. Screw offsite backups - get some offworld backups

[waldronate]

After a big event like that there would most likely be significant climate forcing (likely toward cold, perhaps toward hot). Plus, there wouldn't be much overall damage to the landforms because most of the modern weaponry is designed to kill people rather than equipment. But as they've stated, 1000 years is a long time. Look at what happened to Rome, for example, from 400 to 1400 (everything fsilted up and forests grew on them).

So 1000 years after a good whack you'd likely have a world in an ice age with mounds of rust and debris covered in vegatation ecept in desert regions. The hardest hit areas would be in the northern hemisphere with the southern hemisphere likely less damaged. I would recommend finding a good ice age map and laying a modern road grid over it. You can make your own from some of the better bathymetric sets out there such as ETOPO2.

[NeonKnight]

Welcome tot he Guild!

[DevinNight]

Hello.
I've always been fascinated by the idea of having whole cities retaken by wilderness.

There was a TV show a couple months back that dealt with the idea of what would happen if man ceased to exist. Our modern buildings would last maybe 100 years or so.
I like the idea of pockets of technology and modern architecture existing in jungles and mounds of vegetation. The mutations and the way creatures would adapt to the new world would be fun to extrapolate on.

Good luck with your project.

-D

[Nomadic]

Hello.
I've always been fascinated by the idea of having whole cities retaken by wilderness.

There was a TV show a couple months back that dealt with the idea of what would happen if man ceased to exist. Our modern buildings would last maybe 100 years or so.
I like the idea of pockets of technology and modern architecture existing in jungles and mounds of vegetation. The mutations and the way creatures would adapt to the new world would be fun to extrapolate on.

Good luck with your project.

-D

Yes, it was called life after people (there have actually been two such documentaries). According to the best estimates modern houses would last 50-100 years, skyscrapers around 300-500 years. After 1000 years the only stuff left were the rusted husks of city foundations as well as the more sturdy human constructions (the sphinx, pyramids, mt rushmore, etc). I think the world would largely be reverted to a pristine environment. Other than the more sturdy remnants of humanity, little would remain to show what civilization had once been like.

[Ascension]

Yeah I remember the feral cats and dogs roaming the streets and how simply painting things helps them last longer and with no one to fix/paint things everything decays surprisingly fast. Ends up lookin sort of like the lumpy forests that have reclaimed many of the Mayan temples...cool idea to explore.

[Gamerprinter]

It kind of reminds me of the Aftermath RPG - certainly out of print, I bought in 1985, I think? Too complex and never found any to play with...

Anyway, debris and foundations is all you'd find of the previous civilization, depending on what survived if anything you'd find yourself in anything from neolithic restart to something like the dark ages, only darker. Perhaps technology hidden in some subterrainean hardened bunker complex, perhaps not even that, as rust and erosion would still occur, even out of the weather.

Even after a thousand years, depending on how big of a nuclear war it had been there would be residual radiation, certain hot spots that still burned the living and would be no man zones. Perhaps inhabited by radiation zombies!

It would be a world of difference after 1000 year.

GP