End Of Days
Basic Information
The End of Days refers to The End Of The World As We Know It, but with a decidedly religious context. In addition to the End Times foretold in the Abrahamic Religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a great many other religions and mythologies also have End of the World scenarios.
See Also:
After The End
The Antichrist
The End Of The World As We Know It
Eschatology
Ragnarok
The Rapture
Sources
Bibliography
1. Wikipedia - that page has summaries of the End of the World scenarios for many religions and mythologies.
Game and Story Use
- Choosing a particularly religious theme for your big disaster tale will make it seem more epic, and probably less avoidable. It's not just a extinction-level cometary impact, it's the trumpet announcing the end of the world.
- And if you mix in elements from every religious tradition you can get your hands on, then things get really bleak and final.
- In addition to bumping up the difficulty, there's an extra level of cool factor in Ragnarok, Armageddon, and similar scenarios.
- And if you switch from one to another partway through, or add crossover elements (Yggdrasil trembling is actually the sound of the Third Trump! The end of Dharma is a sign of Cthulhu rising!) , things can get really weird.
- Even if, from the omniscient viewpoint of being behind the GM's Screen, you know there's no religious truth to your scenario, there's still a very real possibility that some of the characters in the setting will assume there is. The reactions to an impending "biblical horror" are likely to be extreme.
- The guy on the corner carrying a sign saying "the end of the world is nigh"
- Widespread religious persecution, or societal retaliation on the group(s) believed to have caused this disaster
- Last-minute repenting; the deathbed conversion-in-advance, "just to be safe"
- Suicide pacts, apocalypse cults, etc
- The labeling of every third politician as The Antichrist
- If you're making your own campaign setting, you can import these with a few twists or write your own. You decide whether one of them, all of them, or none of them are true.
page revision: 3, last edited: 26 Sep 2012 03:55