Paolo RedaelliLast week, I talked a little about the corporate same-y-ness that overtook later editions of D&D, and how it differed from the kitchen sink, anything goes weirdness of 1st Edition AD&D.
That post was written largely in response to a recent episode of Geek Gab, in which guests P. Alexander and Jeffro Johnson discuss some of the stranger, more overlooked aspects of the game. Once again, I recommend checking it out. The discussion is fascinating, lively, and in-depth.
One of the meatier subjects they breach is the idea that AD&D’s implied setting is inherently post apocalyptic.
I had to spend a little time chewing that over, largely because I’m fairly new to the 1st Edition ruleset. I never had much exposure to it as a teen, aside from one group I played with after High School. Even then, it was just a handful of optional rules cribbed from Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures, bolted onto a 2nd Edition chassis.
In a nutshell, the argument is that—independent of campaign setting—the rules of AD&D imply the game takes place in the wake of some unspecified, civilization-ending cataclysm.
Credit: Photo Artistry By MelindaFor what it’s worth, classic sword and sorcery fiction tends to make this same assumption. Conan’s Hyborian Age is perhaps the most famous, taking place thousands of years after “the oceans drank Atlantis.” Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique tales are more properly classified as Dying Earth stories, but the effect is the same: the last vestiges of humanity cling to superstition and sorcery on the Earth’s last remaining continent. Not to mention The Dying Earth itself, where technology and magic are both remnants of long dead empires, and are completely indistinguishable from one another.Simply put, without the collapse of some ancient civilization (or several), the landscape wouldn’t be littered with ruins for the characters to go dungeon-diving in. But that assumption can hardly be called unique to AD&D. Later editions still feature plenty of ruined temples, lost cities, and dungeon delves, even if they are significantly less lethal than the old school variety.So what was unique to AD&D that made it inherently apocalyptic? What was missing from the later editions that pointed to a post-cataclysmic world?
According to Geek Gab host Daddy Warpig, the answer is domain level play.
For those of you weaned on newer editions, a quick definition: “Domain” was a word that had nothing to do with the Cleric class back in the day. Rather, it referred to the fact that at 9th level or so, characters would begin to attract loyal followers and build a base of operations.
Furthermore, these weren’t just optional rules, buried in an Appendix of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. These were class features, listed in the Player’s Handbook under each character class’ description.
At first glance, that might not seem too apocalyptic. But the rules for Territory Development by Player Characters (found on page 93 of the DMG) are written assuming a vast, sparsely-populated wilderness as the default setting. A wilderness controlled by monsters, and littered with the ruins of countless, long-dead civilizations.
According to these rules, characters building a fortress go through considerable time and expense, selecting a construction site, clearing the area, paying and staffing a garrison, and conducting regular patrols to sweep for monsters. Once construction is complete, these strongholds attract settlers looking for safety and security.
In Warpig’s opinion, this doesn’t just represent a post apocalyptic style of play. It represents a specific kind of post apocalyptic play. The AD&D apocalypse isn’t Mad Max, Warpig says, with humanity dropping into savagery and barbarism. Rather, it’s at the point where humanity is climbing out of savagery, retaking and reestablishing civilization in a monster-infested wilderness.
Interestingly enough, I made a nearly identical point a few weeks back in my review of Rutger Hauer’s The Blood of Heroes. In fact, a new DM trying to figure out domain play could do much worse than to look at that movie as a blueprint. The sparsely populated desert wastelands. The clumps of agrarian survivors gathered in Dog Towns. The powerful, governing elite clustered in the Nine Cities, demanding tribute and loyalty. The Juggers traveling around, engaging in ritual combat, and scouting new recruits.
Add some roving monsters and some dungeon-diving, and you’ve got a pretty good representation of what the world looks like according to domain play rules.
Domain play was still around in 2nd Edition, though I vaguely remember the rules for it being a bit more generic and simplified. I can’t speak for 3rd, 3.X, or 4th Editions, having never played them. But in 5th Edition, it’s entirely gone. Which means in terms of game mechanics, a 9th level character doesn’t have any more responsibilities to his community than a 1st level one.
In that sense, it’s easy to see Warpig’s point. 5th Edition doesn’t presume the characters need to establish safe areas, because it assumes there are already enough safe areas. Whatever near-extinction event caused all those ruins the PCs are exploring, 5th Edition’s rules imply it’s far enough in the past that humanity’s overall survival is no longer in question.
But the argument for an “apocalyptic AD&D” doesn’t stop there. The Geek Gab folks also spend a good amount of time on Vancian magic.
I’ve written about the subject before, so I won’t repeat myself here. Suffice to say, the Vancian Magic system might be the single strongest argument for an apocalyptic D&D setting. But not in the sense of “fire and forget” spells.
In AD&D, the only way for a Magic-user to learn more spells is to find them, typically by recovering old scrolls or spell books from dungeons. Even then, there’s a chance the character will completely fail to understand any spells they do manage to find.
In other words, AD&D Magic-users are a cargo cult, parroting scraps of mostly forgotten spells they barely comprehend, and risking life and limb in the ruins of lost civilizations to find more.
Granted, the “classic” Magic-user still exists in 5th Edition, as the Wizard class. But it exists alongside Warlocks and Sorcerers. And therein lies the difference.
Vancian Magic implies a lot about the setting, but only if it’s used in isolation. If an accident of birth or a demon sugar-daddy can grant the same powers as those lost scraps of magic, how lost were they? How fantastical and rare are they now?
In the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, Gary Gygax spends several paragraphs stressing the the scarcity of magic spells, and how difficult it is for the Magic-user to obtain them. NPC spell casters should be reluctant to divulge their secrets, demanding exorbitant fees, rare magic items, and quests in exchange. It’s advice that makes sense, but only if magic is a forgotten art from a lost golden age.
And that’s the thing.
That lost and forgotten nature was a base assumption about magic in 1st Edition. Taken along with domain play, the sparsely populated wilderness, and the sheer number of ruins players were expected to encounter, it’s obvious the core rules had an apocalyptic setting in mind.
It’s interesting reading through the AD&D rulebooks now. Like I mentioned last week, I don’t have any personal nostalgia for this edition. So it’s not like I’m viewing it though rose-colored glasses. Even so, it’s hard not to come away with a feeling that something incredibly cool was lost in the transition to the slicker, more polished game I grew up on.
Thank God for reprints and second hand stores…
Jonathan8/21/2019 05:25:27 amVery interesting read! It might also be said that medieval Europe, which serves as a foundational template for so much of RPG fantasy, is itself post-apocalyptic if one considers that the Dark Ages arose, in part, due to the collapse of the Roman empire. The rise of feudalism, with enclaves of protected lands dispersed within an otherwise dangerous and lawless wilderness is just the sort of thing we’d expect to get from the vacuum left by a powerful collapsed civilization.
8/22/2019 01:23:51 amYes and there is a second historical apocalypse that is relevant here: the plague, particularly it’s 13th century outbreak, which caused the abandonment of many farmsteads.
Eric Scheid8/22/2019 01:35:19 amYep, the Black Death of 1347–1352 AD was alone responsible for much wilderness reappearing (even entire villages being abandoned).
The Justinian Plague of 541–544 AD was not quite as bad, but it combined with an 8 year famine, leading to the collapse of centralised Roman rule, and the rise of culturally distinctive societal groups … but this is more “pendulum swinging outwards” post-apoc.
Marja Erwin8/24/2019 02:11:47 pmAnd a 0th has also shaped heroic fantasy: the Bronze Age Collapse for the Trojan Cycle.
P.S. I have to resize the comments window for the submit button to appear.
Billy Graey8/21/2019 07:12:16 amI believe you missed the part of 1st Edition where every time a magic-user levels, he automatically gains a spell of his choice (or random roll if he prefers). That sounds to me like they constantly are researching new spells and not dependent on pre-existing spells to scrounge from ruins. I doubt this affects much of your thesis, but it is an important part of being a magic-user that they are not dependent strictly on finding scrolls. Just my two cents.
Christopher De Roos8/21/2019 10:31:44 amP 39 of the DMG specifically states in the second paragraph:
“this knowledge is not automatic. Each and every spell, except those which “master” was generous enough to bestow upon the character, must be found somewhere and recorded in the character’s spell books.”
Different groups/DMs do it differently, and that’s fine. It’s just not canon.
8/21/2019 02:20:57 pmNot to be antagonistic , “In AD&D, the only way for a Magic-user to learn more spells is to find them…” This is not totally correct, please read page 115 of the DMG under the section entitled “spell research”. Not easy nor given but something perhaps a little overlooked.
Franko8/21/2019 01:03:35 pmNah, surely just a bit of fluff to explain how all these different species can communicate ;~]
8/21/2019 08:16:28 pmThat’s a brilliant observation. One I completely overlooked. Thanks for pointing it out!
8/24/2019 05:44:48 amI believe that is officially explained somewhere as a trade pidgin. Which both makes sense and is relatively common in our history.
Patrick8/30/2019 07:01:23 pmTrade pidgin is a later explanation, not part of the earliest rules.
The LBB explicitly state all humans speak a “common tongue” across the continent.
Jeffrey8/21/2019 10:09:28 amIf by apocalyptic you don’t mean technology was way better and we devolved in that aspect. If you know Gary Gygax’s world he played in, The World of Greyhawk, it WAS post apocalyptic but not in technology. Two great empires destroyed each other and the remnants of those groups went to a very sparsely human populated (but not monsters/humanoids, etc) area and tried to rebuild.
There are so many ruins because with a history so long (several thousand years usually) and with so much of it fighting against monsters and evil humanoids, lands will rise and fall over time but with a very low population density and being unable to overcome things like starvation and common diseases, humans never rebuild everywhere.
Also, all of those intelligent creatures have history as well. Similar to thinking the Americas were empty of history because the natives didn’t write it all down nor make very many permanent structures. Those empty spaces are populated by many cultures that simply aren’t really recognized by humans/demi humans as being valid cultures.
And lastly, some worlds created for D&D (I am looking at you Mystara and Blackmoor) actually had a technological apocalypse in their history which is still shaping those worlds.
So, I would say you are correct in saying most of D&D worlds are apocalyptic, just not that they were a world with technology like ours before it happened. More like mentioned above, the Roman Empire collapsing.Also, a great conversation to have and would probably keep me and friends occupied for an hour at least. Thanks.
Essentially AD&D’s rules function under the assumption that at some point there was a noodle incident and the sort of technomagic society that is commonplace in newschool fantasy rpgs is now gone along with most of the population.
Even divorced from setting products, you have tables and percentages meant to generate sparse worlds populated mostly by monstrous beings and treasures that cannot easily be replicated.
Using the world generation rules from AD&D, you couldn’t create a setting like the ones that most groups play in.
8/21/2019 08:46:43 pm“Technomagic society” is a really great term for it.
Christopher De Roos8/21/2019 10:12:35 amGreat thesis on the subject of 1e AD&D. I run a 1e campaign, but also play in a Pathfinder game, and often have to remind myself that they are the same game (at it’s core), even if a lot of the ‘feel’ of the game has changed for many of the reasons you mentioned.
Yunus Temple8/21/2019 12:04:23 pmNot rue this is thesis so much as fact. If you dig into the history of the Flanaess (on Oerth: the world brain-child in which AD&D was birthed); the Invoked Devastation and the Rain of Colorless Fire were the apocalyptic events that kicked it off.
Alex Temple8/21/2019 12:05:05 pmThat would be “sure” not “rue” in the first sentence…
8/21/2019 06:52:15 pmThe Sea of Dust was created by the rain of colorless fire during a cataclysmic war. So yes!
Crom8/21/2019 02:20:00 pmIf I’m not mistaken, Conan’s Hyborean age comes before our modern age. The implication is that an apocalypse happens after Conan’s time to birth our modern times. You can see the roots of our modern geography in the way Conan’s world maps are drawn, for example.
This theme is also repeated in the Blackmoor setting, which succumbs to a magical catastrophe. They retconned this as a seminal event when they wrote the Mystara setting.
Have you ever read the Elric saga by Michael Moorcock? I dont want to put out any spoilers, but if you are writing about fantasy stories and apocalypses, that has to be the grand-daddy of them all.
Conan exists in a post-apocalyptic world that was left after the fall of Atlantis and the declining kingdom of Valusia that had been ruled by Kull had finally had all traces of its once-great civilization all-but-erased.
He happens upon several fallen civilizations and some stories, such as Beyond the Black River take place right as the peak of contemporary civilized expansion is about to be rolled back.
Howard’s setting is one of ongoing apocalypses and collapses, though the hey-day was always sometime before the present.
8/21/2019 09:10:20 pmOh, yeah. I’ve read Elric. You’re not bullshitting when you say the climax of Stormbringer is the grand-daddy of all fantasy apocalypses. I’ll never forget the last lines of that book.
Like Cirsova says, Conan’s world is one that exists between the apocalypse of Kull’s world, and the much later cataclysm that destroys his own. Howard was fascinated by the cyclical nature of civilizations rising and falling over one another.
And it’s not Howard (not even by a long shot), but have you read Oliver Stone’s unused Conan the Barbarian script? The setting was supposed to be some far-future, post-nuke thing. There were even references to machines and robots in the climactic battle.
Okay I went into this thinking “what the hell is this guy on about”, but by the halfway point I stopped skimming and starting reading. By the end, I am convinced. I never thought about it like that before. I agree with the lost civilization, just never associated that to a post-apocalyptic setting. But I can’t deny these excellent points laid out. Good job on convincing a stubborn old gamer.
8/21/2019 08:58:30 pmWow, man… Thanks so much for the kind and encouraging comment. It genuinely means a lot.
And I hope you’ll stick around for some of my future posts. Stubborn old gamers are my people.
Eric Scheid8/22/2019 12:23:36 amI’ve started incorporating the domain game into my campaign world building right from 1st level — I reason that levels 1–3 are spent helping an established lord secure an already cleared domain, then at levels 3–7 the PCs move outwards to another domain that is in the process of being cleared (more dangerous monsters etc), and then at levels 8-10 the PCs strike out into unclaimed wilderness, exploring long lost dungeons and ruins and such … and finally at the end of that they stake their own claim and start the domain game.
Having an appreciation that the campaign world is post-apocalyptic and that the pendulum is swinging back towards civilisation, and that huge swathes of the world are unclaimed wilderness resting atop forgotten fallen civilisations … actually answers so many questions. It’s all starting to make more sense like this, and posts like this are super helpful. Thanks for the insights!
And, if you consider the whole alignment system (Law vs. Chaos) to be a question of should civilization expand or contract, that whole mess makes a lot more sense as well. And is probably why the Moldvay Basic goblin is Chaotic (as an agent of civilizational contraction) while the AD&D goblin is Lawful Evil (where law-chaos describes more outlook and organizational principles, rather than how you come down on a specific issue).
8/22/2019 01:32:34 amThis is a very curious and correct observation, albeit possibly incomplete. Fallen civilizations are a main staple of the entire fantasy genre, not just D&D. Lord of the Rings, Westeros, the Shannara Chronicles. And, for dramaturgical reason, humanity’s survival seems to be always at stake in these fantasy settings as well.
RemtonJDulyak8/22/2019 01:37:47 amI like your analysis, but I think the descriptor you’re looking for is either cataclysm or collapse.
While the word “apocalypse” is commonly used to refer to large-scale disasters, that usage is not correct.
The word traces from the concept of divine-sent, creation-wide destruction, while saving the worthy,
taking them in heaven. The apocalypse is supposed to be a world-ending event.So, for example, Dragonlance is almost an example of an post-apocalyptic setting, where the gods sent the fiery mountain down on Istar, killing many and changing the world, while at the same time they saved the worthy a moment before the destruction.
In fact, Dragonlance is a post-cataclysm setting.Greyhawk, on the other hand, is a post-collapse setting, where powerful kingdoms have almost annihilated themselves in a huge and long war, and what remained has to raise from the ashes.
Dark Sun, from AD&D 2nd Edition, is another post-cataclysm setting, for example.
Generally speaking, almost all D&D settings are set in a sort of late medieval, early renaissance time, so the idea of being a post-collapse (see ancient Rome) is also rooted in our own Earth’s history.
The main reason why Europe didn’t approach ruins in the same way as the Realms’ adventurers do, is that Europeans in the Middle Ages knew that Rome had been there, the land was usually “smaller” in comparison to most settings.
Eric Scheid8/22/2019 04:06:52 amFurther, to my senses, a collapse is more gradual than a cataclysm. Greyhawk’s world changing event is a cataclysm, while the fall of the Hunnic Empire with resultant power vacuum is a collapse.
But I’m really getting into the weeds with semantic quibbling now.
RemtonJDulyak8/22/2019 07:30:06 amWell, not necessarily.
The collapse might be the RESULT of a gradual progression, or it might be a single event that causes a cascade of events (imagine the king dying with no heir nor kin, plunging the kingdom into civil war between smaller nobles.)
Greyhawk’s changing event is a war, and wars are a gradual thing, especially when magic is involved and the war escalates over and over.A cataclysm is usually addressed as a natural disaster, or a sentient-driven catastrophe, like man-made deforestation causing landfall, for example, or the aforementioned Dragonlance’ cataclysm.
Sebastian Drakulov8/22/2019 10:37:55 amI grew up in southern Wisconsin and was acquainted with Gary Gygax (my best friend’s mother was his cousin, or some such, and he and his family would occasionally come for dinner). He would frequently discuss D&D with my friend and I, and I remember him telling us more than once that his map of Greyhawk had been derived from an Earth continental drift map he had encountered somewhere, and the AD&D game as he envisioned it was “set in the distant future…as far past even the future depicted in the Gamma World game as our own civilization is beyond that of the Sumerians.” (Perhaps not his exact words, but as close as I can recall them after three-and-a-half decades.)
Bryce9/4/2019 08:39:59 amThat makes sense. Take a look at the “Pangea Ultima” map.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=future+continental+drift+map&iax=images&ia=images
Peter Ward8/22/2019 12:48:49 pmNothing in the original AD&D rules required/suggested it to be post apocalyptic setting. Other cultures had passed, or built that ruined temple/castle/dungeon your characters were exploring, but it wasn’t necessarily Earth, or any other given setting, allowing the DM to create their own history.
Yes, it was intended to be “edge of civilization, create your safe haven”, but what came before was not mandated in any way leaving the options open to the DM.
8/22/2019 02:43:42 pmThis is a fascinating aspect of AD&D that had never occurred to me. You’ve certainly got this one right. One bit of support I would add is that the DMG adds something on page 116 as a handwave to explain why players can’t create certain powerful magic items, which incidentally reinforces the idea that this is a civilization rebuilding from a lost golden age:
“Books…artifacts, and relics are of ancient manufacture, possibly from superior human or demi-human technology, perhaps of divine origin, thus books, artifacts, and relics cannot be made.”
R.8/22/2019 03:04:00 pm4e default setting (points of light) is explicitely post apocalyptic
Todd S8/22/2019 06:22:36 pmI’ve considered basing a campaign in our own distant future long after some cataclysm, a nuclear or biological war, a pandemic, or an asteroid collision. Then, throw in some future continental drift to change the map from our present world. “Monsters” would be some combination of genetic/radiological mutation and evolution. The difficult part to add or explain is the magic. I was thinking the magic could be some derivation of modern technology somehow preserved and carried forward. If we went back in time with our present day technology I’m sure it would seem almost like magic to our ancestors. Add to that however some magic users being able to harness nanobot technology. A cloud of microscopic machines functioning together might appear to look like some of the traditional spells of D&D.
8/23/2019 05:45:33 amIn L.E Modesitt Jr’s “Recluse” series, the “magic” system (order vs. chaos) is essentially described as being derrived from those able to use the “neural net” operating system from a space ship that crash landed on a planet with primitive technology. So it doesn’t necessarily need to be based on technology per se, but on the ability to control such things, even after they’re long gone.
Jon8/23/2019 11:33:11 amIt’s been a long time, but I recall that the “forced into memory and barely held there” was used in a description of Raistlin’s magic during the Dragonlance books. (Spoiler alert: Before it wasn’t, for reasons)
I always found that element of Vancian magic both terrifying and fascinating.8/24/2019 05:56:41 amSo, couple points for you to consider/wrap around/into your theory:
(Which bee tee dubs, I like, and I am a fan of post apocalypse in my fantasy, but which I am not 100% convinced of. Regardless, every player can absolutely have whatever back story in their game they like and yours is excellent.)
You talk about the apocalypse being the reason for all the dungeons etc…
But go read S. John Ross’ Medieval Demographics Made Easy and he gives you the relative rate of incident of ruins etc… that is historically accurate simply because of shit logistics or shifts in need etc… They’re not so much different than the abandoned warehouse on the edge of town today because businesses have shifted from large inventory stores to JIT inventory delivery.You also mention the domain rules and I would remind you that ODnD was essentially a rules hack for Chainmail. The Domain rules were less about world building and more about the appropriate level to gather your own warband to you, paint a bunch of minis and return to the chainmail rules.
The Implied Apocalypse of Dungeons & Dragons
Pages: 1 2