Play to find out what happens after the apocalypse. What societies rise up from our ashes? Zoom into the personal drama of the people affecting history, and then back out to the decades and centuries that pass between the fall of one era and the rise of the next, as scenes of human drama dictate the fate of humanity.
Each player controls a family: a group of survivors bound together by blood, ideology or practicality. Your particular family playbook says how your family were changed by the fall, and what strength they used to survive - faith, science, might, or something stranger.
Your story starts with the first generation of survivors able to look beyond the next day and their immediate survival. Starting with that first age of discovery, you'll tell the story of your families building a new world from the old world's ashes.
Each age will present new challenges, and you'll move between the actions of the family at large and specific heroic characters from their ranks as you tell that age's story. Sometimes characters from multiple player's families will work together; other times the story will focus on a particular player's family, and other players will pick up more disposable quick characters to fill out the cast.
As your characters work to protect their family, undermine their enemies and explore the wasteland they may move between different roles in their family, changing the family's makeup and gaining more experience. As characters die or step back from an active role in the family, they leave behind a relic - a tool of theirs future family members can use to remember them and call on their skills.
When the drama of the current age has been resolved or someone completes a grand project, the ages turn. You move the clock forward a significant chunk of time - maybe a few years, a generation, even a century. Each family goes through trials and fortunes determined by their resources, and this determines how they begin the new age. The game moves back to the family and character levels, and the story continues.