The older I got, the more I began to see that the world was full of wars, famine, and stupid politics that could boil over in a way that would kill us all. Yes, the whole nuclear war thing was big and it did dominate the headlines--but--it was just one of many risk factors that threatened to snuff out the world like a spent birthday candle.
Two things happened at roughly the same time. I began to indulge my interest in history, and I was introduced to role-playing games. One thing lead to another, I went from being a not-so-humble player to one of those much-feared DM's we've all heard so much about. It was a slow and gradual transformation, the evolution of decades. Problem was, I never did give up my taste for history. Every time we started a post-apocalyptic RPG of some kind, players asked questions about the world their characters lived in--and--it was my job to give them an answer.
You'd be right to think that should have been hard, but it wasn't. Me and my trusted typewriter turned out pages of simulated news print, book extracts, and faked-up government documents that were all made to look yellow with age...after half an hour in an oven at three hundred degrees (F). Once upon a time, I shocked everyone at the game table by describing a brief case filled with folders labelled "top secret." They wanted to know more what was inside, so--with some bravado--I put a beat-up old brief case on the table in front of them and...
You get the idea. All of that prepared me for the day when I started writing names, dates, and places in a notebook that would eventually contain the nuts and bolts of the backstory that was eventually used for A.C.: After Collapse. I hope you enjoy it!
