Post-Apocalyptic Roleplay Ideas: 20 Survival Plots
A good post-apocalyptic roleplay idea gives the characters something that is running out and a reason not to trust each other yet. Below are 20 original survival plots in five settings, each with a premise, a conflict and a first line you can send as it is. The last two sections cover stakes that hold up with an AI partner and keeping the story hopeful.
Updated by the tempteo editorial team
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Zombie apocalypse roleplay ideas
Outbreak stories work best in the first week, before anyone knows the rules. Keep the infected at a distance and let the trouble come from the people inside.
The pharmacy counter
Day five. The pharmacist on your street has barricaded herself in with the town's last medicine.
Conflict: the whole street wants the same shelf.
First line
I'm not here to rob you. I can pay in batteries.
The quiet hour
Around noon the infected stand still for about an hour, and the character plans every supply run around it.
Conflict: the hour keeps shrinking, and the next run is the long one.
First line
Fifty-one minutes today. Yesterday it was fifty-eight.
The van below
You're stuck on a supermarket roof with a delivery driver whose van is parked below, tank full.
Conflict: the crowd between you and the van isn't leaving.
First line
Full tank, you said. How fast can you run in those boots?
The cold store
A researcher at your shelter wants to keep one of the infected in the old cold store for vaccine work.
Conflict: the shelter voted no, and she's asking you anyway.
First line
The council said no. Why come to me?
After the collapse: roleplay ideas set years later
Twenty years on, nobody runs anymore. The problems move slower, like who gets the water and whether a stranger can stay the winter.
The census
A stranger walks into your valley counting survivors for a government nobody has heard from in fifteen years.
Conflict: the valley has stayed safe by staying off maps.
First line
Nobody's counted us since the fall. Who sent you?
Two letters for the dam
She's the last engineer who can open the old dam, and in a dry summer the towns above and below both want the water.
Conflict: there's enough for one release.
First line
Both mayors wrote. Whose letter are you opening first?
Row F, seat 12
She kept an unused concert ticket from the night before the collapse and wants to see the venue, two hundred miles away.
Conflict: the cart holds food for eight days.
First line
The band isn't playing. You just want to sit in the seat?
The last mechanic
The only person who can keep the town's tractor running has packed for the coast.
Conflict: harvest starts in two weeks, and she won't say why she's going.
First line
Who keeps the tractor going if you leave?
Dystopian city roleplay ideas
The danger in a dystopian city carries a rubber stamp. Give the character a job in the system, so every favor she does for you puts her at risk.
The red stamp
She stamps ration cards at the district office, and yours came back red.
Conflict: one extra stamp would feed you for a month and could cost her the job.
First line
My card came back red. You marked it, didn't you?
The blank reports
Every flat has two tenants who report on each other weekly. Your flatmate has started handing hers in blank.
Conflict: the office notices blank pages faster than lies.
First line
Blank again. Do you want them knocking on our door?
The gate lottery
Once a year the walled city lets ten lottery winners out. You won, and the clerk says no winner has ever written back.
Conflict: go, or stay and never know.
First line
You drew my name. Why do you look sorry?
Contraband blue
Only grey clothing is legal, and the character runs a secret dye bath. You bought a blue scarf from her.
Conflict: the inspectors come Thursday.
First line
Someone at work saw the scarf. Who else have you sold blue to?
Strange apocalypse ideas beyond zombies
The world can also end quietly. Pick one strange rule and work out what it does to food and trust.
The lamplighter
The sun hasn't risen in three years, and the character lights the streetlamps with the city's last oil.
Conflict: the council wants the east side dark by Friday.
First line
They're cutting the east side. That's my street, and yours.
The notebook
Everyone wakes up having forgotten a little more. The character reads a notebook about you every morning.
Conflict: it's the only copy, and pages are going missing.
First line
Page one says you trust me. Does it still say that?
The walking forest
Every night the forests move a few yards toward the towns. The character, a botanist, thinks they're only migrating.
Conflict: the town plans to burn the tree line tomorrow.
First line
The oaks moved forty feet last night. Still think they're harmless?
The hill lines
Fog has covered the lowlands for years, so people live on hilltops and trade along cables.
Conflict: the next line went slack, and your hill is out of salt.
First line
The Crow Hill line went slack an hour ago. Somebody has to walk it.
Rebuilding and trade roleplay ideas
Once people stop running, they start trading, and every trade tests whether they trust each other.
Two wagons short
The trade caravan comes once a season. This time the trader is three weeks late with half her wagons.
Conflict: she won't say what happened on the road.
First line
Three weeks late and two wagons short. What happened out there?
Counterfeit buttons
Your town uses stamped buttons as money. The character runs the press, and more buttons are circulating than she made.
Conflict: the forger lives inside the walls.
First line
We stamped four hundred. Why are there six hundred?
The first post round
She carries mail between five settlements by bicycle and has brought your letter to your sister back sealed.
Conflict: an old feud between the two towns.
First line
Did my sister refuse it, or did someone stop you?
One windmill, forty houses
She got the town's first windmill turning, and now everyone wants power.
Conflict: tonight there's enough for the clinic fridge or the dance hall lights.
First line
One windmill, forty houses. Who gets the power tonight?
What survival stakes work in an AI roleplay?
An AI partner likes to solve problems. Ask whether there's food and the next reply may find a full storeroom. Stakes last longer as facts in your setup that the character has to work around.
- Scarcity in numbers: nine tins, half a tank, batteries for two nights. A number is harder to wave away than "not much food".
- Trust with a reason: the character owes the next settlement a debt, so helping you costs her something.
- A map with blank spots: name two places nobody has mapped since the fall and leave them unexplained until you go.
- Settlement rules: a curfew bell, no strangers inside the fence overnight. Rules give the character something to defend or break.
Reply that solves too much
Halla forces the storeroom door. Shelves of tins, bottled water, a generator with a full can of fuel. "We're set for winter."
Reply that keeps the stakes
Halla counts the tins twice. "Nine." She leaves the torch off. "We need batteries more than beans. The old airport market might have some, if anyone still goes there."
How to keep a post-apocalyptic roleplay hopeful enough to continue
Survival stories turn grim fast, and a grim story is hard to come back to. The AI tends to follow your mood, so a run of losses pulls each scene darker.
Give each session one small win, like clean water from the pump or a letter answered. Give the characters a place worth protecting too, such as the orchard or the kitchen where everyone eats. Danger means more when there's something to lose.
Set the tone with one OOC line in your setup. On tempteo you can edit one of the three opening scenes on the roleplay page and save it as a draft, so the line is in before you press send.
Setup line that keeps violence offscreen
OOC: Survival story with hope underneath. Keep danger offscreen: we hear it and find the broken fence next morning, but nobody gets hurt on the page. End each scene with one small win.
A small win to close a scene
Halla works the pump a dozen times. The water comes up brown, then clear. She hands you the first cup. "That's one thing we don't have to trade for."
