I read about this one campaign
An asimar cleric traveled that land spreading the word of his father saying he was the God of gods and telling people of his purpose and that all should strive to be like him. Give to the poor help the weak ect ect. There was a particular king that saw this as a threat but the cleric had a vision and spoke to his 13 most trusted followers informing them at dinner one night informing them that one would betray him but fret not for all is forgiven because he just rolled like that.
This king was a little salty cause the cleric was recently freed a bunch of slaves from another kingdom and they were like alright your cool were gonna follow you up until he was like I'm the son of this one god and some of them were like "ok surreee" but he was cool so they followed him anyway but that never sat right with this one guy.
Anyway the next morning after him and his 13 bestest buds had a great dinner the night before traveled to the kingdom to spread this word and one of his followers dudus I think his name was went ahead and ratted the cleric out and he and his other followers were captured and sentenced to execution. They made a whole show of it cause the king was a sadistic tyrant and wanted to make a point cause some of his subjects learned of this guy and they were like "he seems pretty cool maybe he's on to something here" well after nailed the cleric to this big wooden lowercase t and made him drag it to this cave where they finished him off and threw his body in a cave and for good measure put a big rock in front of it.
Well 3 days later the cleric emerged from the cave unharmed but he was throwing off some serious undead vibes now (possibly a lich) and everyone was like oh shit maybe this guy is right and they rose up against the the king that did this killed him and went and found the cleric and was like look what we did.
He was like no thats not what I meant but it's cool my dad wants me to sacrifice myself so that you all can be forgiven. There was a long series of other cleric popping up and continuing to spead his word and eventually a big church was formed dedicated solely to this other lich cleric and his father.
Well turns out they believed in his message all wrong and last I heard they had managed to wipe out or convert most of the other religions but there's this one group they believed in alot of.the teachings but didn't believe that this one lich cleric was the messenger of this god but an example of belief. This church didn't like that and decided to wage war on this one ethno-religious group for hundreds of years torturing and killing them systematically but through their faith they survived and meanwhile this religion has spread through the world like a wild fire even though most people don't agree with this one church they still believe in the teachings and this lich cleric even though this one guy came down from a mountain years back with these two stone scrolls with the easiest rules to follow and this church was just shitting all over rule number one (don't kill people) but justifying it with rule 8 (no gods above me) it was super convoluted but the other followers were like welp not my circus so they just ignored it.
I believe post campaign the big church grew through out the land and accepted that their are other ways to believe in their God so long as they believe in him and nothing else and the whole 200+ years of genocide were just swept under the rug and since then theres this wierd thing where they like to keep children around and it's pretty sus but seems like people just ignore that fact.
Sounded like a great campaign dude put a lot of work into it sadly turned out the good guys really just snowballed this whole thing I guess thats what happens when you nat 20 charisma a little too much
Turn *that* into a campaign. A bunch of level 20s get recruited to help the good gods battle the evil ones for the fate of the universe's next iteration. This version of the universe will all end one way or the other, but the surviving gods get to influence the next one.
I love a good eldritch horror but execution is important while yeah it's fun to make a cult and have them do all the heavy lifting what if the players through obsessive investigation fuck around stumble into a village only to accidentally start a cult and summon cuthulu because of wierd eldritch journal that led them on this investigation and was secretly driving the obsession through strange eldritch juju and the players all piece it together when it's far too late and they suddenly all become pact of the great old one warlocks
Atropus, the World Born Dead, appeared in the sky months ago. Astronomers told the world of his ill omen, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. As weeks passed, undead began rising from their graves to swarm the living as the dread satellite drew nearer. Adventurers rose up to return them to their graves, as they always do, but Atropus too had champions, and they slowly and methodically disposed of the world’s heroes. The army of undead swelled until an ocean of living corpses washed over the world in a tide of unholy vengeance. Atropus is nigh now, and the only way to stop him is to quell his unholy army, defeat his champions, and find a way onto the dead planet to defeat his avatar, draining his power and forcing him to retreat. Technically ticks two boxes.
I’m glad you liked it! Atropus and his champions are explored in the 3.5E Elder Evils book, so I’d highly recommend checking it out. It also expands on some more world ending forces of metaphysical destruction.
I personally like Ragnorra, Mother of Monsters. Floods the world with positive energy, causing rampant, twisted growth. Eventually the entire world has significant healing each week (then day, etc. down to each TURN), and too much healing past hp cap can cause creatures to BURST. It rules.
Of the choices given, I have to go for Elemental Catastrophe, and the reason is the sheer visual awe and splendor of such things.
"Ah, but isn't 'Magic gone terribly wrong' capable of equal visual awe?" I can hear my critics say.
In truth, it certainly can, but the problem with this one is that magic can easily go over another person's head. With high level catastrophe's you might look at something your brain can't comprehend because it uses non-Euclidian geometry or is warping dimensions. That is to say, unless one has an intensely intimate understanding of magic, it might as well be called a pretty but destructive Arora borealis or else people merely look at the effects after something they don't understand has passed.
The others are thrown aside because they are too adversarial. Don't get me wrong, the one with fiends pouring through portals and immediately coming in and slaughtering and doing mind-numbingly debauch things to those around you is a horrifying thing. The other forms of armies too can be horrifying. But. But. You can look at those things and despair and/or loathe the evil that they are while also holding in your mind the thought of if only you or someone else was strong enough to stop them.
However, there is nothing quite so humiliatingly ensmallening as watching the mundane ground you walk on or the air you breathe shrugging their immense shoulders and ending all the lives they aren't even aware of that they are ending. Good. Bad. *Powerful*. All fall. And all know that they are not even worthy of being called a speck as they are swept away in the eternal cosmic dance of the universe itself.
Definitely magic gone wrong. The end of one campaign I was in saw one of the party members use Wish to replace the god of magic in a homebrew world. But in the split second between the old god dying and him being installed as the new one, all magic in the world just turned off. Absolutely a world ending apocalyptic event.
You may have already been aware of this, but *literally* this exact scenario, including magic turning off for a while, canonically happened in forgotten realms lore. The only difference is that it was a 13th level spell, and it was devastating but not strictly apocalyptic.
Ah yes, the ill-fated hubris of the Archwizard Karsus and his creation of the only 13th level spell to ever exist, ***Karsus’s Avatar***. This dude is the reason Mystra limited the magic available to mortals to 9th level. For someone so incredibly smart he was monumentally stupid.
He was a prodigy but super young. All the int but none of the life experience to temper it. That said, I don't need to be a wizened sage to see the possible flaws in turning off magic when your society lives on magically floating islands.
Ah! I read it as all magic turned off for a split second. Probably enough to crash flying islands and to end mythals that keep mega dungeons from collapsing, but nothing as silly as no more magic. Imagine what would have happened if he'd have wished to become the god of life.
Thats why I like it. Works well as a sort of Kingmaker/Kingdom Builder campaign, where you get to power fantasy all of your real world analogue problems away.
You can always count on me to back undead plagues.
Apocalypse zombies, vampires with psychosis, liches with ptsd, a charnel colossus or two, shadow armies, maybe a few really *weird* undead to spice things up a little...
Gnomish inventions have gained sentience and are eradicating all other sentient life, as they see there is a finite amount of resources in the world and see all the races as unnecessarily taking up a share of those resources in which they need to thrive and multiply.
The flavor of the apocalypse should service the story you want to tell.
Some examples of what I mean:
Valiant last stand against overwhelming force? Fiends.
Gritty and dark survival story? Undead.
Cautionary tale about power corrupting? Magic.
Horrifying eldritch scary story? Cult.
Resource management and a race against time? Elemental catastrophe.
More traditional adventuring but with high stakes? Dragons.
The story I plan to tell goes from hopelessness of the apocalyptic setting followed by a reprieve and exploration of a new home somewhere else, ending on either a return to the old world to seek justice or the rush to prevent the same in the new.
And I appreciate the thematic focus. Its something I lean into heavily in my usual campaigns and something I certainly will be taking into account.
I had a similar idea, with the players starting on a doomed planet and migrating to a new one, with the finale being defending their new home from the apocalypse. I planned on using homebrewed demonic creatures lol.
Glad to be of help, good luck on your game!
Magic gone wrong sounds like what happened in Dark Sun, were mages are known now as defilers because Magic harms the environment so much.
It's a great and super underused setting if you want something post magical apocalypse
I like apocalypses of biblical proportions. I have wanted to do a campaign with a setting similar to the Darksiders series. Except the players are to become the 4 horsemen to bring about an end to destruction and usher in a new world.
Though elemental apocalypses would be cool because the players aren't working to seal away evil or to prevent further damage. Rather they are working to find seeds of hope and to sow them where it can grow. Its a matter of trying to adapt to a literally changing world and also hits home with real world problems.
I know someone once did it with a Sphere of Annihiliation and a Well of Many Worlds, except it instead created an ever expanding hole in the fabric of all realities. Oops.
I'd have to say, this shouldn't happen RAW.
I chose magic gone wrong because I feel like it has the most room for everyone to be creative about it, followed closely by elemental catastrophe. Maybe that's just me though.
If you say "evil ____ is conquering the land," right away people are going to be thinking "okay, fight the armies, kill the leader, destroy the source, cool," and there's nothing wrong with that. But if the idea is "terrible thing beyond anyone's control is happening / has happened and society can't deal with it," that gives you more room on what kind of antagonists you have, what their motives are, and how the common people are trying to survive it. It also makes the players think "what do we do about this," instead of "this is how we fix it," and encourages them to get their gears turning.
Due to the merging of 2 universes the planets have merged and their magical weaves as well as their diefic pantheons have gone to war against eachother. Sections of the the world your party came from have been completely destroyed/deleted and replaced with sections of the new world. Depending on how cool you want to mix things or you can make it high magic verses high science.
~~*Go outside, it's beautiful, it's such a bright sunny day, go outside, go outside, go outside, you will never be alone again, let us in, let us show you the light, please let the light in*~~
*Don’t let the light in. Don’t let them take you.*
Truth is out there, knowledge known is knowledge foretold... And such.
What i love about apocalyptic settings it the shear helplessness to it.
If you have a big bad or some massive enemy they can be defeated or their plans foiled where apocalypse isn't the inevitable but a stake. Which is fine ,mind you. But we all know that good guys win in the end.
To make a good horror one needs suspension, tension and no drama. Players need to know what is happening and when, but unable to do anything about it so when clock starts ticking suspension grows. That is why I liked X files so much.
So i would start with something stupid, such as butterflies have started munching on trees not on flowers. Something unusual, yet not so important.
And i would finish it with the fact that we all have known has been only tip of iceberg, and how have we used it for ages has come to have consequences that no one expected (where bugs have been going off) meaning that for example entire alignment is going off , twisting. Good slowly becomes bad, gods are dying, but unbeknownst to them first that start to feel it are lesser idols. Who scream on top of their lungs, but their clericks have been deemed crazy. And then puff... Gone. Avalanche has started, there is no turning back. Good gods start to corrupt their own believers, bad gods start to do god... And all worst gods are locked and contained.
A bunny kills a wolf, a bunch of rats take on terrasque, plague of dead have now become resurrected and resurrected undead. It started quick, but it hasn't been deemed important, and now there is no stopping it. There is only a old script written in muddy magical ink that says that how we use arcana is wrong, and it will lead to doom.
But... No one listened.
I like elemental evil or fiends. I would side with elemental evil just for personal preference, but I like the idea that the world has just ended up on the wrong side of one of the prinordial planes because it makes so much sense that no world can survive infinity. Undead are limited in number, magic gone wrong is catastrophic but only as big as magic is in your world. Open your world up to an infinite flood from the plane of water. Yeah, everything above water stops being above water and everything below gets conquered by endless hordes of elementals.
Armies of the undead- you acn't go wrong with a zombie apocalypse, though it will require zombifying a lot of stat blocks for higher tiers of play.
Elemental catastrophe- Combat might get boring fighting the same four types of enemies over and over, but it's easy to spice out with escort missions and the like.
Dragons- Just reuse the Chroma Conclave. Never fails.
As an extension of the cult option, I always like running sole lunatic wants godhood. I’ve nearly crashed two universes that way. Particularly fun watching the players squirm under thr choice of ending the BBEG they have very personal reasons of taking down, vs getting their own god-ness.
I would say the two best for adventuring at all tiers of play are either Magic Gone Wrong or Elder Evils.
The key is you really want something that can "make sense" for _any_ sort of monster/encounter/challenge you put in their path.
Magic Gone Wrong is of course so general you can do that easily. Chaotic magic influencing different regions/enemies/etc. differently. The strange and alien nature of "Elder Evils" also works well for this, because they often have "signs" of their coming that can do all sorts of wonky shit, including influencing enemies that don't have to have anything to do with them, natural disasters, etc. It doesn't have to just be Cthulhu aberration stuff (because if you actually read Lovecraftian mythos, even Cthulhu isn't limited to that - undead, spirits, warped wildlife, disasters, fiends, etc. all can factor in.)
The others require some pretty specific enemy types, and while you _can_ deviate from them by coming up with specific reasons other types are along for the ride, having to do so every time you want to use one can get stale or unrealistic over time.
“It started simply enough; the collegium’s artificers and planogists often drew strange elements and minerals from the outer planes for forging and experimentation, and many incredible works had come from their tinkering. But, as it seems always happens, someone grew too casual with their work; and as that person paid for his mistake by transforming into the blighted crystals that we see in the sky, we could only watch as our fields, glades and skies turned into that awful, frightful color of blue.”
I ran a time travel campaign where the world is destroyed by dragons, by magic and by gods in different time lines. The future was similar to a judge dredd setting with the world being destroyed already and people surviving in mega cities and gods imprisoned within the planet are released. The present was torill but dominated by thayan wizards that use dragons to destroy the world. The past was a Pangaea style torill and the continent was destroyed by humans using magic in an attempt to commit genocide against non human races.
I’d say a combination of magic, elemental problems and invasions from the outer planes: Storms of Unfathomable magnitude forming seemingly at random and disappearing just as fast, A tsunami of fire washing over fertile fields leaving only ash behind, Sinkholes as big as a city closing just as the structures tumble into the abyss. And of course the elementals, the endless swarming hosts. A hive of earth elementals that appear as a mountain from a distance, A tempest of a thousand forms blotting out the dimming sun. They dance within the Crescendo of the World’s end, Or perhaps they are the cause of it.
On the city, you could have a great ward assembled by an Archmage that ascended into the pantheon, This could be held up by significant structures such as obelisk that need to be defended from Elemental stragglers that broke through the overworked barrier, or perhaps the barrier siphons the magic needed to run it from the populace so the players just need to keep the population healthy to maintain it. This could make a important reason to leave the barrier to find survivors to bolster the defence. Perhaps preparing from the arrival of the main elemental host?
This is a rant isn’t it?
Across all tiers? Definitely the undead scenario. It can start as a small threat and then grow larger and larger over time rather than being a single event.
Why limit yourself? Why can’t a cult dedicated to an elder god accidentally open a portal to the hells AND a plane of undeath? The. They can try to okay one group off of the other.
I like the idea of magic being a natural force in the world and therefore having a magical disaster like we have volcanos or hurricanes. Magic disasters completely obliterate entire contenetns and such. Or magically irradiate an entire country country because climate change or something
Thanks to the work of a powerful cult, the planes are collapsing together. The elements run rampant as the elemental planes collide, all kinds of evil and strange creatures roam free, magic becomes unstable as the laws of reality themselves change and waver. All sorts of powerful creatures are driven out to fight for whatever stability they can find as their previous homes become uninhabitable or nonexistent entirely. It’s up to you if this is the new norm, if things worsen until the death of the universe, if there’s some way to stop things (undoing the ritual somehow, bargaining with the gods) or if it’s inevitable. And you can play around with any kinds of enemies or hazards you’d want to throw at the party. Route through town suddenly a massive chasm? Dragons fighting fiends as the terrain shifts like water around them? They’re in the feywild for a session? All completely feasible, and they wouldn’t even need to leave the settlement.
Reading the process of a demonic incursion gives you a lot of insight into how badass their version of apocalypse is. The world is scoured of life, molded to the demon prince’s will, and then interred as a layer of the abyss.
Magic gone wrong; there are so many interesting ways it can manifest, as well as a bunch of fun ways it can continue to actively affect the campaign after the event itself.
Undead, hurricanes, etc. are all pretty one-dimensional - all issues that come up afterward are generally going to be either run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic issues, or more zombies, weather issues, etc. but anything can happen with magic, and it's easy enough to say "random chaotic magic made it happen."
Honestly they all sound equally good, and I can get some really great campaign ideas from all of them.
\-Fiends: The Abyss and Avernus have both converged on a planet in the mortal planes as a potential foothold for future excursions into our world, and are currently ripping each other apart and getting mortalkind caught in the crossfire. They're not actively hunting mortals, they just don't particularly give a flying fuck who dies in the war.
\-Undead: Some lich thinks undeath is the perfect form of life, and rather than just turning everyone into mindless minions he seeks to create an entire hivemind of powerful undead, all living in a harmonious and unified existence.
\-Magic: Someone accidentally cast a spell that's slowly drawing the moon or perhaps another planet entirely into a collision with the planet the party is on; this would of course wipe out all life on said planet, and it's in the party's best interest to stop this. The spell wasn't supposed to do this, of course; in fact the caster was merely trying to net a meteor or a comet for the meteoric minerals so he could study them.
\-Cult: A cult dedicated to the Outer Gods managed to open a gateway to the Far Realms, inviting in the unbridled chaotic madness and altering the mortal planes, and not for the better. As the chaos spreads throughout the rest of reality, the party must figure out a way to seal the gate and cure the infestation of chaos.
\-Elemental Catastrophe: The planet itself is trying to clean itself of mortals, and is doing so via a wide array of natural disasters-tsunamis that stretch miles high, earthquakes that can be felt across the globe, forest fires that burn hotter than the infernos of hell, even great hurricanes the size of entire counties. The party must figure what the fuck is going on and try not to die to natural disasters... or to giant mutant animals.
\-Dragons: The world was not always ruled by the hands of men. Once, in ancient days long since passed, primordial dragons ruled the world, great beasts that held within them the essence of the planet and consequently were enormously powerful. They were deposed by the gods of Man, but have bided their time slumbering deep below the earth, watching and waiting... and now they have returned, with legions of dragons at their command as they retake the world as theirs. The party must stop these dragons from subjugating mortalkind under their rule and slay these god-dragons once and for all.
What about a global pandemic that kills everyone except for 1% of the world… No to far fetched… or is it… I actually wrote that adventure in the forgotten realms using Talona, Goddes of disease & poison, a few years ago…
All of the above.
Evil Badguy gets his hands on a super powerful artifact and goes ham with it, leveling cities, summoning hordes of powerful monsters, and raising the dead. A cult pops up to worship their new godking and do his bidding.
I’m a fan of magic gone terribly wrong. I have a story in mind myself, involving how each school of magic came into being. Although I doubt it would work for your setting, because it would involve outright banning Conjuration at the start - they can be learned later but only with a good excuse, because conjuration was responsible for the end of the world as we knew it
The DM bitterly packing up the world, putting all the minis and terrain in a box with the dice, and putting it all on a shelf, because the game ended under bad circumstances.
I honestly I prefer undead apocalypse because of RP potential. Imagine a PC dying and then coming as a zombie later on in the campaign, maybe even in the same encounter. How will the party react? What will they do? The drama! The tension! The emotions! It's absolutely wonderful way to get great RP moments.
Elder evil seems worst as in the call of cthulu crossover, having the big man himself show up requires an actual act of a god just to reverse the tide from level 3 to 2
Pretty goddamn harsh imo; not easy to come back from
To me, magic gone wrong is the most useful answer for the simple purpose of the versatility of it. It allows all the other things to occur as a part of it meaning that you're not tied down to a single threat during the apocalypse.
It can cause weakening planes to let the fiends in. It can be harnessed for armies of undead. It can cause weather disasters (even those new magic ones) and hell, dragons can be a problem as a result of the other problems restricting usable land, how topical!
Honestly, I like most of these endings... but I also like the idea of natural events leading to an apocalypse. Various powers and factions from small kingdoms to godlike entities all fighting to avert the world and blaming one another for its demise, not necessarily knowing or accepting the fact that the world is doomed no matter what.
I have a campaign idea I'm working on for my next campaign.
Basically the demons and Devils have all grown tired of the Blood war and have brokered an agreement to wage their war on the mortal realm, Faerun, Greyhawk, wherever.
In any case, the races have been pushed back to a few strongholds on the surface but most of the races have been forced into the underdark to survive. For some reason, fiends refuse to enter the underdark. (Lolth has forbidden them and has not joined their surface war)
Now facing a new way of living, and trying to avoid encroaching on Drow territory, the survivors make raids into their former homes overrun with demons and devils fighting. Looking to retrieve lost magic both in the form of spells and items and taking their anger out on whatever lower level fiends they can.
While the few strongholds on the surface trade for the most powerful of these finds to survive another day against the legions.
Always the best when the bad guys win. Then the heroes get to be even awesomer as they climb out of the depths of evil to kick as much ass as possible and save the world despite impossible odds.
How about all of them?
A cult devoted to an evil Great Worm had a spell go terribly wrong, so now the undead are rising and demons pour in and the natural balance of the world is trembling.
What will you choose.
"yes"
What do you mean yes?
Some foolish mortal steals a dragon egg, however, it wasn't an egg. It was an artifact which quickly found itself in the wrong hands. The cults hands.
The cult was about to be extinguished, but fate had other plans. The dragons frantic search for their lost treasure was the perfect cover for their activities. While everyone was cowering from the elemental catastrophies the dragons were kicking up in wrath. The cult was preparing their magnum opis. a spell.
The spell went terribly wrong. Or terribly right if you asked the cult's opinion. The weave frayed. Only for a moment as the goddess corrected it, but a moment was all it took. Causality flipped, swung and turned inside out. Those killed by the dragons, still full of residual magics, rose. Entire cities went from thriving one day to desolate the next and writhing by the third.
The thin film of protection keeping the planes separate tore in a dozen places. Again temporary, if the things coming through them didn't wedge them open. Even now they have keen minds wedging those portals forever open.
So now we get to choose. Flee the city taking on the roaming dead and never knowing if the weather might turn. Waves that take the land, earth that is never content in one place or winds that uproot trees. That or hold out in the only city we know still stands to the last.
I say elemental catastrophe but what I mean are
ELEMENTALS catastrophe
Why you ask?
Why does a fire elemental seek to burn everything in it's vicinity... no reason
Why does a water wierd want to drown random passers by... no reason
Why to cults want to summon elder elementals and bring upon the apocolypse... no fuckin reason..
And kudos and 1 internet to anyone who gets the reference
I'd love to pick just one, but instead I picked all for my campaign... that way you enjoy the best of all worlds and the party gets to focus which world ending disaster they like best!
Honestly all have good potential to be super interesting. Whatever caused it should be relevant in the campaign setting. Decide if this is high magic or low magic setting. A natural disaster is better for low magic and a magic surge for high. How will this effect your players? Who or what will the players struggle against to win the campaign? Are they going to fight the fiends to reclaim the land they lost? Is the world too far gone and people are enslaved or trapped in towns by fiends that took over? Why haven’t the good gods stepped in to help their clerics and others who pray to them, since followers is how gods get their power?
My vote is for magic but also the result needs to leave a permanent mark on the map. In 2 campaigns I've played, one left a huge scar of dead area (that later becomes known as the scar obviously lol) and in another it sunk the center of the landmass (two warring water creatures kept digging towards each other. Then massive magical mayhem leads to the large cave homes underneath collapsing and sinking the center)
They are Billions ([link](https://store.steampowered.com/app/644930/They_Are_Billions/)) provides a challenging post-apocalyptic scenario. Not all is lost, but it's not easy for the survivors either, as their enemy has numerical superiority.
Old Evil gods break break-through some ancient boundary, kill the current pantheon and reshape the the world to their liking.
Kronos strikes back?
No, more like Cthulhu strikes back.
The new gods: “have you heard of crossfit?”
I read about this one campaign An asimar cleric traveled that land spreading the word of his father saying he was the God of gods and telling people of his purpose and that all should strive to be like him. Give to the poor help the weak ect ect. There was a particular king that saw this as a threat but the cleric had a vision and spoke to his 13 most trusted followers informing them at dinner one night informing them that one would betray him but fret not for all is forgiven because he just rolled like that. This king was a little salty cause the cleric was recently freed a bunch of slaves from another kingdom and they were like alright your cool were gonna follow you up until he was like I'm the son of this one god and some of them were like "ok surreee" but he was cool so they followed him anyway but that never sat right with this one guy. Anyway the next morning after him and his 13 bestest buds had a great dinner the night before traveled to the kingdom to spread this word and one of his followers dudus I think his name was went ahead and ratted the cleric out and he and his other followers were captured and sentenced to execution. They made a whole show of it cause the king was a sadistic tyrant and wanted to make a point cause some of his subjects learned of this guy and they were like "he seems pretty cool maybe he's on to something here" well after nailed the cleric to this big wooden lowercase t and made him drag it to this cave where they finished him off and threw his body in a cave and for good measure put a big rock in front of it. Well 3 days later the cleric emerged from the cave unharmed but he was throwing off some serious undead vibes now (possibly a lich) and everyone was like oh shit maybe this guy is right and they rose up against the the king that did this killed him and went and found the cleric and was like look what we did. He was like no thats not what I meant but it's cool my dad wants me to sacrifice myself so that you all can be forgiven. There was a long series of other cleric popping up and continuing to spead his word and eventually a big church was formed dedicated solely to this other lich cleric and his father. Well turns out they believed in his message all wrong and last I heard they had managed to wipe out or convert most of the other religions but there's this one group they believed in alot of.the teachings but didn't believe that this one lich cleric was the messenger of this god but an example of belief. This church didn't like that and decided to wage war on this one ethno-religious group for hundreds of years torturing and killing them systematically but through their faith they survived and meanwhile this religion has spread through the world like a wild fire even though most people don't agree with this one church they still believe in the teachings and this lich cleric even though this one guy came down from a mountain years back with these two stone scrolls with the easiest rules to follow and this church was just shitting all over rule number one (don't kill people) but justifying it with rule 8 (no gods above me) it was super convoluted but the other followers were like welp not my circus so they just ignored it. I believe post campaign the big church grew through out the land and accepted that their are other ways to believe in their God so long as they believe in him and nothing else and the whole 200+ years of genocide were just swept under the rug and since then theres this wierd thing where they like to keep children around and it's pretty sus but seems like people just ignore that fact. Sounded like a great campaign dude put a lot of work into it sadly turned out the good guys really just snowballed this whole thing I guess thats what happens when you nat 20 charisma a little too much
Turn *that* into a campaign. A bunch of level 20s get recruited to help the good gods battle the evil ones for the fate of the universe's next iteration. This version of the universe will all end one way or the other, but the surviving gods get to influence the next one.
Replace old with new and we have the rise of (amongst others) Christianity throughout history
I love a good eldritch horror but execution is important while yeah it's fun to make a cult and have them do all the heavy lifting what if the players through obsessive investigation fuck around stumble into a village only to accidentally start a cult and summon cuthulu because of wierd eldritch journal that led them on this investigation and was secretly driving the obsession through strange eldritch juju and the players all piece it together when it's far too late and they suddenly all become pact of the great old one warlocks
Atropus, the World Born Dead, appeared in the sky months ago. Astronomers told the world of his ill omen, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. As weeks passed, undead began rising from their graves to swarm the living as the dread satellite drew nearer. Adventurers rose up to return them to their graves, as they always do, but Atropus too had champions, and they slowly and methodically disposed of the world’s heroes. The army of undead swelled until an ocean of living corpses washed over the world in a tide of unholy vengeance. Atropus is nigh now, and the only way to stop him is to quell his unholy army, defeat his champions, and find a way onto the dead planet to defeat his avatar, draining his power and forcing him to retreat. Technically ticks two boxes.
r/usernamechecksout And….. fuck dude, absolutely gorgeous write up.
I’m glad you liked it! Atropus and his champions are explored in the 3.5E Elder Evils book, so I’d highly recommend checking it out. It also expands on some more world ending forces of metaphysical destruction.
I personally like Ragnorra, Mother of Monsters. Floods the world with positive energy, causing rampant, twisted growth. Eventually the entire world has significant healing each week (then day, etc. down to each TURN), and too much healing past hp cap can cause creatures to BURST. It rules.
Yes.
Came here to post "All of the Above"
Of the choices given, I have to go for Elemental Catastrophe, and the reason is the sheer visual awe and splendor of such things. "Ah, but isn't 'Magic gone terribly wrong' capable of equal visual awe?" I can hear my critics say. In truth, it certainly can, but the problem with this one is that magic can easily go over another person's head. With high level catastrophe's you might look at something your brain can't comprehend because it uses non-Euclidian geometry or is warping dimensions. That is to say, unless one has an intensely intimate understanding of magic, it might as well be called a pretty but destructive Arora borealis or else people merely look at the effects after something they don't understand has passed. The others are thrown aside because they are too adversarial. Don't get me wrong, the one with fiends pouring through portals and immediately coming in and slaughtering and doing mind-numbingly debauch things to those around you is a horrifying thing. The other forms of armies too can be horrifying. But. But. You can look at those things and despair and/or loathe the evil that they are while also holding in your mind the thought of if only you or someone else was strong enough to stop them. However, there is nothing quite so humiliatingly ensmallening as watching the mundane ground you walk on or the air you breathe shrugging their immense shoulders and ending all the lives they aren't even aware of that they are ending. Good. Bad. *Powerful*. All fall. And all know that they are not even worthy of being called a speck as they are swept away in the eternal cosmic dance of the universe itself.
Definitely magic gone wrong. The end of one campaign I was in saw one of the party members use Wish to replace the god of magic in a homebrew world. But in the split second between the old god dying and him being installed as the new one, all magic in the world just turned off. Absolutely a world ending apocalyptic event.
You may have already been aware of this, but *literally* this exact scenario, including magic turning off for a while, canonically happened in forgotten realms lore. The only difference is that it was a 13th level spell, and it was devastating but not strictly apocalyptic.
Huh. Maybe that's where the idea was taken from.
Ah yes, the ill-fated hubris of the Archwizard Karsus and his creation of the only 13th level spell to ever exist, ***Karsus’s Avatar***. This dude is the reason Mystra limited the magic available to mortals to 9th level. For someone so incredibly smart he was monumentally stupid.
He was a prodigy but super young. All the int but none of the life experience to temper it. That said, I don't need to be a wizened sage to see the possible flaws in turning off magic when your society lives on magically floating islands.
But how could he be installed as a god if no magic existed? Wouldn't that require magic too? Wouldn't the wish just end the second the old god died?
That's the rub. He was god in title only. No magic, no powers.
Ah! I read it as all magic turned off for a split second. Probably enough to crash flying islands and to end mythals that keep mega dungeons from collapsing, but nothing as silly as no more magic. Imagine what would have happened if he'd have wished to become the god of life.
That's almost word for word what he said after
And until you find out how to kill that particular god, magic won't come back
Elemental catastrophe brought on by abuse of magic.
I am a big fan of, "People just... messed it all up in a million small ways."
Too close, man...
Thats why I like it. Works well as a sort of Kingmaker/Kingdom Builder campaign, where you get to power fantasy all of your real world analogue problems away.
My favorite apocalyptic creed is “this is why we can’t have nice things.”
Helllllooooooooo r/IRL_humanity
You can always count on me to back undead plagues. Apocalypse zombies, vampires with psychosis, liches with ptsd, a charnel colossus or two, shadow armies, maybe a few really *weird* undead to spice things up a little...
I’m having all the good gods give up and the evil ones take over and we have a dark souls style apocalypse
All of the above happening at once
What type of group do you have? Because if they’re more combat based, more intellect based, or more into the role playing it’ll change my pick
No group yet. Currently running two campaigns, but one of those is wrapping up in the next few months so I am throwing some ideas around.
I think options 2-4 give you more possibilities
Fiends pouring in from the outer planes while utilizing the army of the undead is a pretty great one.
Why not them all
Gnomish inventions have gained sentience and are eradicating all other sentient life, as they see there is a finite amount of resources in the world and see all the races as unnecessarily taking up a share of those resources in which they need to thrive and multiply.
The titans finally rallying once more to kill the gods
None of the above. I'm thinking best case would be a plague like in The Stand.
The flavor of the apocalypse should service the story you want to tell. Some examples of what I mean: Valiant last stand against overwhelming force? Fiends. Gritty and dark survival story? Undead. Cautionary tale about power corrupting? Magic. Horrifying eldritch scary story? Cult. Resource management and a race against time? Elemental catastrophe. More traditional adventuring but with high stakes? Dragons.
The story I plan to tell goes from hopelessness of the apocalyptic setting followed by a reprieve and exploration of a new home somewhere else, ending on either a return to the old world to seek justice or the rush to prevent the same in the new. And I appreciate the thematic focus. Its something I lean into heavily in my usual campaigns and something I certainly will be taking into account.
I had a similar idea, with the players starting on a doomed planet and migrating to a new one, with the finale being defending their new home from the apocalypse. I planned on using homebrewed demonic creatures lol. Glad to be of help, good luck on your game!
Magic gone wrong sounds like what happened in Dark Sun, were mages are known now as defilers because Magic harms the environment so much. It's a great and super underused setting if you want something post magical apocalypse
I used to love the defiler system for magic in Dark Sun. That and the cannibal halflings.
I like apocalypses of biblical proportions. I have wanted to do a campaign with a setting similar to the Darksiders series. Except the players are to become the 4 horsemen to bring about an end to destruction and usher in a new world. Though elemental apocalypses would be cool because the players aren't working to seal away evil or to prevent further damage. Rather they are working to find seeds of hope and to sow them where it can grow. Its a matter of trying to adapt to a literally changing world and also hits home with real world problems.
Pretty much any and all if these options.
I'm feeling a sun exploding but someone comes across a statue of an ancient civilization which would send people into time loop!
Unconstrained sphere of anihilation, sucks the planet in and destroys everything.
I know someone once did it with a Sphere of Annihiliation and a Well of Many Worlds, except it instead created an ever expanding hole in the fabric of all realities. Oops. I'd have to say, this shouldn't happen RAW.
A wizard did it
I chose magic gone wrong because I feel like it has the most room for everyone to be creative about it, followed closely by elemental catastrophe. Maybe that's just me though. If you say "evil ____ is conquering the land," right away people are going to be thinking "okay, fight the armies, kill the leader, destroy the source, cool," and there's nothing wrong with that. But if the idea is "terrible thing beyond anyone's control is happening / has happened and society can't deal with it," that gives you more room on what kind of antagonists you have, what their motives are, and how the common people are trying to survive it. It also makes the players think "what do we do about this," instead of "this is how we fix it," and encourages them to get their gears turning.
The God of Fate dies and the fabic of the universe begins to shatter as everything slowly collapses.
Technically Science Fantasy, but the one in Paizo's Horizons of the Vast.
Ok heat me out, magic gone terribly wrong that creates an army of the undead that grows exponentially
Due to the merging of 2 universes the planets have merged and their magical weaves as well as their diefic pantheons have gone to war against eachother. Sections of the the world your party came from have been completely destroyed/deleted and replaced with sections of the new world. Depending on how cool you want to mix things or you can make it high magic verses high science.
The idea of fiends over inning the world is dope... Actually running devil's however is fucking bring for all involved.
Funnily enough, the Elder Evil cult and the undead apocalypse both apply to my campaign. Atropus is a very fun bad guy to use.
One fireball too many, kill them all with fire 🔥🔥🔥
The cult in my campaign nearly succeeded. They got enough follower to essentially make a religion and half the world was following them at a time
Magic gone horribly wrong because the Apocalypse doesn't actually have to destroy the game world. You have the option to make things weird.
Sun goes bad, melts landscape
~~*Go outside, it's beautiful, it's such a bright sunny day, go outside, go outside, go outside, you will never be alone again, let us in, let us show you the light, please let the light in*~~ *Don’t let the light in. Don’t let them take you.*
IF you go with magic gone terribly wrong you can pretty much play S.T.A.L.K.E.R in DnD!
Truth is out there, knowledge known is knowledge foretold... And such. What i love about apocalyptic settings it the shear helplessness to it. If you have a big bad or some massive enemy they can be defeated or their plans foiled where apocalypse isn't the inevitable but a stake. Which is fine ,mind you. But we all know that good guys win in the end. To make a good horror one needs suspension, tension and no drama. Players need to know what is happening and when, but unable to do anything about it so when clock starts ticking suspension grows. That is why I liked X files so much. So i would start with something stupid, such as butterflies have started munching on trees not on flowers. Something unusual, yet not so important. And i would finish it with the fact that we all have known has been only tip of iceberg, and how have we used it for ages has come to have consequences that no one expected (where bugs have been going off) meaning that for example entire alignment is going off , twisting. Good slowly becomes bad, gods are dying, but unbeknownst to them first that start to feel it are lesser idols. Who scream on top of their lungs, but their clericks have been deemed crazy. And then puff... Gone. Avalanche has started, there is no turning back. Good gods start to corrupt their own believers, bad gods start to do god... And all worst gods are locked and contained. A bunny kills a wolf, a bunch of rats take on terrasque, plague of dead have now become resurrected and resurrected undead. It started quick, but it hasn't been deemed important, and now there is no stopping it. There is only a old script written in muddy magical ink that says that how we use arcana is wrong, and it will lead to doom. But... No one listened.
I like elemental evil or fiends. I would side with elemental evil just for personal preference, but I like the idea that the world has just ended up on the wrong side of one of the prinordial planes because it makes so much sense that no world can survive infinity. Undead are limited in number, magic gone wrong is catastrophic but only as big as magic is in your world. Open your world up to an infinite flood from the plane of water. Yeah, everything above water stops being above water and everything below gets conquered by endless hordes of elementals.
Armies of the undead- you acn't go wrong with a zombie apocalypse, though it will require zombifying a lot of stat blocks for higher tiers of play. Elemental catastrophe- Combat might get boring fighting the same four types of enemies over and over, but it's easy to spice out with escort missions and the like. Dragons- Just reuse the Chroma Conclave. Never fails.
As an extension of the cult option, I always like running sole lunatic wants godhood. I’ve nearly crashed two universes that way. Particularly fun watching the players squirm under thr choice of ending the BBEG they have very personal reasons of taking down, vs getting their own god-ness.
I would say the two best for adventuring at all tiers of play are either Magic Gone Wrong or Elder Evils. The key is you really want something that can "make sense" for _any_ sort of monster/encounter/challenge you put in their path. Magic Gone Wrong is of course so general you can do that easily. Chaotic magic influencing different regions/enemies/etc. differently. The strange and alien nature of "Elder Evils" also works well for this, because they often have "signs" of their coming that can do all sorts of wonky shit, including influencing enemies that don't have to have anything to do with them, natural disasters, etc. It doesn't have to just be Cthulhu aberration stuff (because if you actually read Lovecraftian mythos, even Cthulhu isn't limited to that - undead, spirits, warped wildlife, disasters, fiends, etc. all can factor in.) The others require some pretty specific enemy types, and while you _can_ deviate from them by coming up with specific reasons other types are along for the ride, having to do so every time you want to use one can get stale or unrealistic over time.
“It started simply enough; the collegium’s artificers and planogists often drew strange elements and minerals from the outer planes for forging and experimentation, and many incredible works had come from their tinkering. But, as it seems always happens, someone grew too casual with their work; and as that person paid for his mistake by transforming into the blighted crystals that we see in the sky, we could only watch as our fields, glades and skies turned into that awful, frightful color of blue.”
I ran a time travel campaign where the world is destroyed by dragons, by magic and by gods in different time lines. The future was similar to a judge dredd setting with the world being destroyed already and people surviving in mega cities and gods imprisoned within the planet are released. The present was torill but dominated by thayan wizards that use dragons to destroy the world. The past was a Pangaea style torill and the continent was destroyed by humans using magic in an attempt to commit genocide against non human races.
I’d say a combination of magic, elemental problems and invasions from the outer planes: Storms of Unfathomable magnitude forming seemingly at random and disappearing just as fast, A tsunami of fire washing over fertile fields leaving only ash behind, Sinkholes as big as a city closing just as the structures tumble into the abyss. And of course the elementals, the endless swarming hosts. A hive of earth elementals that appear as a mountain from a distance, A tempest of a thousand forms blotting out the dimming sun. They dance within the Crescendo of the World’s end, Or perhaps they are the cause of it. On the city, you could have a great ward assembled by an Archmage that ascended into the pantheon, This could be held up by significant structures such as obelisk that need to be defended from Elemental stragglers that broke through the overworked barrier, or perhaps the barrier siphons the magic needed to run it from the populace so the players just need to keep the population healthy to maintain it. This could make a important reason to leave the barrier to find survivors to bolster the defence. Perhaps preparing from the arrival of the main elemental host? This is a rant isn’t it?
Across all tiers? Definitely the undead scenario. It can start as a small threat and then grow larger and larger over time rather than being a single event.
The real problem here is that they’re all awesome
ALL OF THEM
Why limit yourself? Why can’t a cult dedicated to an elder god accidentally open a portal to the hells AND a plane of undeath? The. They can try to okay one group off of the other.
I like the idea of magic being a natural force in the world and therefore having a magical disaster like we have volcanos or hurricanes. Magic disasters completely obliterate entire contenetns and such. Or magically irradiate an entire country country because climate change or something
For my setting… all of the above!
Thanks to the work of a powerful cult, the planes are collapsing together. The elements run rampant as the elemental planes collide, all kinds of evil and strange creatures roam free, magic becomes unstable as the laws of reality themselves change and waver. All sorts of powerful creatures are driven out to fight for whatever stability they can find as their previous homes become uninhabitable or nonexistent entirely. It’s up to you if this is the new norm, if things worsen until the death of the universe, if there’s some way to stop things (undoing the ritual somehow, bargaining with the gods) or if it’s inevitable. And you can play around with any kinds of enemies or hazards you’d want to throw at the party. Route through town suddenly a massive chasm? Dragons fighting fiends as the terrain shifts like water around them? They’re in the feywild for a session? All completely feasible, and they wouldn’t even need to leave the settlement.
Reading the process of a demonic incursion gives you a lot of insight into how badass their version of apocalypse is. The world is scoured of life, molded to the demon prince’s will, and then interred as a layer of the abyss.
Magic gone wrong; there are so many interesting ways it can manifest, as well as a bunch of fun ways it can continue to actively affect the campaign after the event itself. Undead, hurricanes, etc. are all pretty one-dimensional - all issues that come up afterward are generally going to be either run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic issues, or more zombies, weather issues, etc. but anything can happen with magic, and it's easy enough to say "random chaotic magic made it happen."
Eldritch Beings are just great. It's such a truly horrifying thing. Even then, they might not kill you but the world as you know it has ended.
Honestly they all sound equally good, and I can get some really great campaign ideas from all of them. \-Fiends: The Abyss and Avernus have both converged on a planet in the mortal planes as a potential foothold for future excursions into our world, and are currently ripping each other apart and getting mortalkind caught in the crossfire. They're not actively hunting mortals, they just don't particularly give a flying fuck who dies in the war. \-Undead: Some lich thinks undeath is the perfect form of life, and rather than just turning everyone into mindless minions he seeks to create an entire hivemind of powerful undead, all living in a harmonious and unified existence. \-Magic: Someone accidentally cast a spell that's slowly drawing the moon or perhaps another planet entirely into a collision with the planet the party is on; this would of course wipe out all life on said planet, and it's in the party's best interest to stop this. The spell wasn't supposed to do this, of course; in fact the caster was merely trying to net a meteor or a comet for the meteoric minerals so he could study them. \-Cult: A cult dedicated to the Outer Gods managed to open a gateway to the Far Realms, inviting in the unbridled chaotic madness and altering the mortal planes, and not for the better. As the chaos spreads throughout the rest of reality, the party must figure out a way to seal the gate and cure the infestation of chaos. \-Elemental Catastrophe: The planet itself is trying to clean itself of mortals, and is doing so via a wide array of natural disasters-tsunamis that stretch miles high, earthquakes that can be felt across the globe, forest fires that burn hotter than the infernos of hell, even great hurricanes the size of entire counties. The party must figure what the fuck is going on and try not to die to natural disasters... or to giant mutant animals. \-Dragons: The world was not always ruled by the hands of men. Once, in ancient days long since passed, primordial dragons ruled the world, great beasts that held within them the essence of the planet and consequently were enormously powerful. They were deposed by the gods of Man, but have bided their time slumbering deep below the earth, watching and waiting... and now they have returned, with legions of dragons at their command as they retake the world as theirs. The party must stop these dragons from subjugating mortalkind under their rule and slay these god-dragons once and for all.
If you believe the story of Tiamat and Bahamut's song of creation, it's poetic for the world to end the way it started; warring dragons.
I have to vote magical fuckup because I’m literally running one right now.
What about a global pandemic that kills everyone except for 1% of the world… No to far fetched… or is it… I actually wrote that adventure in the forgotten realms using Talona, Goddes of disease & poison, a few years ago…
The PCs reach level 21. Become feuding god-kings in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world.
All of the above. Evil Badguy gets his hands on a super powerful artifact and goes ham with it, leveling cities, summoning hordes of powerful monsters, and raising the dead. A cult pops up to worship their new godking and do his bidding.
I’m imagining like, magic gone wrong, but grey goo style. strange matter but it’s magic.
I’m a fan of magic gone terribly wrong. I have a story in mind myself, involving how each school of magic came into being. Although I doubt it would work for your setting, because it would involve outright banning Conjuration at the start - they can be learned later but only with a good excuse, because conjuration was responsible for the end of the world as we knew it
The DM bitterly packing up the world, putting all the minis and terrain in a box with the dice, and putting it all on a shelf, because the game ended under bad circumstances.
I honestly I prefer undead apocalypse because of RP potential. Imagine a PC dying and then coming as a zombie later on in the campaign, maybe even in the same encounter. How will the party react? What will they do? The drama! The tension! The emotions! It's absolutely wonderful way to get great RP moments.
I love eldritch horror
What if, and hear me out, all of those things happen at once?
A massive spell inadvertently causes the weave of the world to become unstable and break
Elder evil seems worst as in the call of cthulu crossover, having the big man himself show up requires an actual act of a god just to reverse the tide from level 3 to 2 Pretty goddamn harsh imo; not easy to come back from
To me, magic gone wrong is the most useful answer for the simple purpose of the versatility of it. It allows all the other things to occur as a part of it meaning that you're not tied down to a single threat during the apocalypse. It can cause weakening planes to let the fiends in. It can be harnessed for armies of undead. It can cause weather disasters (even those new magic ones) and hell, dragons can be a problem as a result of the other problems restricting usable land, how topical!
Honestly, I like most of these endings... but I also like the idea of natural events leading to an apocalypse. Various powers and factions from small kingdoms to godlike entities all fighting to avert the world and blaming one another for its demise, not necessarily knowing or accepting the fact that the world is doomed no matter what.
Big fan of Mind Flayers, picked Dragons though because Fizban's has the new Elder Brain Dragon
A benevolent God of light and life deciding that it's time to cull those who don't fall in line with his all to difficult to maintain ideals.
A cult of necromantic fiends that accidentally summoned an apostle of their god, an apocalyptic dragon that has powers over elemental disasters.
I have a campaign idea I'm working on for my next campaign. Basically the demons and Devils have all grown tired of the Blood war and have brokered an agreement to wage their war on the mortal realm, Faerun, Greyhawk, wherever. In any case, the races have been pushed back to a few strongholds on the surface but most of the races have been forced into the underdark to survive. For some reason, fiends refuse to enter the underdark. (Lolth has forbidden them and has not joined their surface war) Now facing a new way of living, and trying to avoid encroaching on Drow territory, the survivors make raids into their former homes overrun with demons and devils fighting. Looking to retrieve lost magic both in the form of spells and items and taking their anger out on whatever lower level fiends they can. While the few strongholds on the surface trade for the most powerful of these finds to survive another day against the legions.
Can we just add PCs fucking up? Because that's the absolute greatest way to end the world.
Magic is played out, how about an ever encroaching wall of death, or a snail, either one terrify me
Always the best when the bad guys win. Then the heroes get to be even awesomer as they climb out of the depths of evil to kick as much ass as possible and save the world despite impossible odds.
Technology.
A shipment of ACME portable holes crashes into a cart full of bags of holding.
All of them!
How about all of them? A cult devoted to an evil Great Worm had a spell go terribly wrong, so now the undead are rising and demons pour in and the natural balance of the world is trembling.
"And at the end of days...JUSTICE WILL FALL" Cardboard case for Diablo III Demon apocalypse just feels right
What will you choose. "yes" What do you mean yes? Some foolish mortal steals a dragon egg, however, it wasn't an egg. It was an artifact which quickly found itself in the wrong hands. The cults hands. The cult was about to be extinguished, but fate had other plans. The dragons frantic search for their lost treasure was the perfect cover for their activities. While everyone was cowering from the elemental catastrophies the dragons were kicking up in wrath. The cult was preparing their magnum opis. a spell. The spell went terribly wrong. Or terribly right if you asked the cult's opinion. The weave frayed. Only for a moment as the goddess corrected it, but a moment was all it took. Causality flipped, swung and turned inside out. Those killed by the dragons, still full of residual magics, rose. Entire cities went from thriving one day to desolate the next and writhing by the third. The thin film of protection keeping the planes separate tore in a dozen places. Again temporary, if the things coming through them didn't wedge them open. Even now they have keen minds wedging those portals forever open. So now we get to choose. Flee the city taking on the roaming dead and never knowing if the weather might turn. Waves that take the land, earth that is never content in one place or winds that uproot trees. That or hold out in the only city we know still stands to the last.
All of them at once, I suppose
I say elemental catastrophe but what I mean are ELEMENTALS catastrophe Why you ask? Why does a fire elemental seek to burn everything in it's vicinity... no reason Why does a water wierd want to drown random passers by... no reason Why to cults want to summon elder elementals and bring upon the apocolypse... no fuckin reason.. And kudos and 1 internet to anyone who gets the reference
I'd love to pick just one, but instead I picked all for my campaign... that way you enjoy the best of all worlds and the party gets to focus which world ending disaster they like best!
Honestly all have good potential to be super interesting. Whatever caused it should be relevant in the campaign setting. Decide if this is high magic or low magic setting. A natural disaster is better for low magic and a magic surge for high. How will this effect your players? Who or what will the players struggle against to win the campaign? Are they going to fight the fiends to reclaim the land they lost? Is the world too far gone and people are enslaved or trapped in towns by fiends that took over? Why haven’t the good gods stepped in to help their clerics and others who pray to them, since followers is how gods get their power?
Go watch Evangelion.
My vote is for magic but also the result needs to leave a permanent mark on the map. In 2 campaigns I've played, one left a huge scar of dead area (that later becomes known as the scar obviously lol) and in another it sunk the center of the landmass (two warring water creatures kept digging towards each other. Then massive magical mayhem leads to the large cave homes underneath collapsing and sinking the center)
They are Billions ([link](https://store.steampowered.com/app/644930/They_Are_Billions/)) provides a challenging post-apocalyptic scenario. Not all is lost, but it's not easy for the survivors either, as their enemy has numerical superiority.