Polyphemus

Zombie/ Community Management RP

Oh, what ever could this be?

Island in a Sea of Death

You are exhausted.

It's been a long two weeks since it happened. Most of the people you've known and loved are dead. Civilization has more or less crumbled. Your life is irreversibly changed.

Somehow, in some way, your steps have been guided to the tiny town of Nathanson, Kansas. Almost exactly halfway between Wichita (now covered in a choking cloud of chlorine and insecticide, thanks to the derailing of the worst possible trains) and Kansas City (now a warzone between countless well-armed factions). Compared to the place you left, Nathanson is pretty much a paradise.

The town proper may be full of the dead, but the little liberal arts college right on the edge of town was virtually empty- no students or faculty were around in the middle of summer, and the city park separating the town and campus provided a nice buffer. Taking the campus from the dead was a short and relatively painless affair.

Now, on June 24, 2016, Nathanson College is home to fifty-four people.

Time to make something of the place.

The Cataclysm

Pretty much everyone you've met calls it by a different name. The Reaping. The Devouring. The Annihilation. The Event. The Disaster. That Really Bad Thing that Happened Two Weeks Ago.

Whatever you might choose to call it, the facts are the same. At 9:12 AM Central Time on Friday, June 10, 2016, 80% of the world's population suddenly died.

There was no buildup, no warning, nothing. It was as though someone flipped a titanic “off” switch. Four out of every five people abruptly collapsed, deceased before they even hit the ground. There didn't seem to be any common ground among those affected. Black, white, yellow, young, old, male, female, healthy, infirm, indoors, outdoors, deserving, undeserving- didn't matter. There seemed to be no protection from it except pure blind luck.

Chaos instantly reigned. The roads immediately clogged with wrecks, countless more dying as suddenly driverless vehicles slammed into them. Planes fell from the skies, their pilots dead at the controls. Emergency switchboards failed in minutes as the survivors swamped the lines with distress calls. Fires and looting broke out and were not contained- civil services were overwhelmed by their own massive casualties.

As bad as all of that was, it got even worse at 9:18 AM. Any corpse that had not suffered massive brain damage stood back up and began to kill the living. The first victims were inevitably the Good Samaritans that had tried to aid or revive the fallen. The zombies were not unlike the creatures of fiction- lacking intelligence, desiring the flesh of the living, capable of crudely working together, immune to tissue damage that did not affect the brain. However, any resistance was doomed from the start. The survivors were immediately outnumbered four to one, and infrastructure was already failing as the few survivors capable of maintaining it abandoned their posts.

Needless to say, it was a pretty rough day, and the last couple weeks have only gotten worse. Many have elected to flee the larger cities for the more sparsely populated countryside- yourself among them.

Nathanson, KS/ Nathanson College

Somewhere along the way, you joined up with a small convoy of refugees heading into the Kansas interior along the less clogged back roads. You came into the little town of Nathanson at more or less the same time as another group coming from the other direction, and joined forces when you realized the valuable opportunity presented by the college.

The town itself only had a population of around 2000 before the Event, so a very rough estimate would put around 1600 corpses lurching around in the streets. Not much of a town, really- houses, a couple churches, a small school, a few student bars, and of course a Wal-Mart.

The campus, though, is a little more interesting. Rutland Park, a good 200 acres or so, separates the campus from the town of Nathanson- a natural buffer from the walking corpses, the numerous trees in the park blocking sound and sight of the campus. Most of the college buildings were erected in the late Sixties, a time when student unrest and campus riots were weighing heavily on the minds of planners. Accordingly, most of the structures were built with a riot in mind. Solid brick construction, sturdy doors, reinforced first-floor windows, all good things to have when walking corpses are on the doorstep. Not to mention the available facilities- laboratories, kitchens, workshops, furnished rooms, a library, a stock of easily weaponized sporting equipment and .22 rifles for ROTC.

However, that's not to say it's perfect. Phones, power, gas, and water are all out, like most of the rest of the country. With no students around, the dining hall kitchens are not stocked with any food. There's no real perimeter, no walls or fences to mark the boundary.

But with some work it could be a great place.

Notes

This RP is predominantly focused on leadership and decision-making. In this RP you will figure out the best way to handle the issues or crises facing the community. There will be a lot of discussion and a lot of difficult decisions to make. What's a bigger priority for the group, getting the power back on or the water running? Can we feed everyone? Do we accept that group who's asking for shelter? Do we reach out to other communities? And how about that very charismatic preacher who claims this is God's judgment?

Convincing others and making a compelling case for your agenda is tantamount. How you deal with any given situation will have far-reaching consequences.

You're basically building a new civilization from scratch. What kind of place is this going to be? A tolerant democracy? A repressive dictatorship? A cult compound? Or something else entirely?

Accordingly, my job as GM will be pretty much reactive to your decisions. For this RP to keep moving, I need interested and engaged players. Nathanson College and the people living there are in your hands.

Character Sheet

Please post under the Characters tab to be reviewed.

Name: Your character's name- or at least what they've told the rest of the community.

Appearance: A photo or detailed description is acceptable. No drawings or animation.

Age: Your character's age.

Gender: Self-explanatory.

Occupation: What they did before all this unpleasantness went down. I'd like to see a lot of variety here.

Hobbies: Anything they did in their spare time. In an RP where skills are valuable, it's good to know what people are capable of.

Values: Things your character thinks are important- for instance, always telling the truth, or being feared.

Goal: Something your character wants to accomplish in the settlement. Maybe it's a policy they want enacted, or a building they think is needed, or a role they think they should fill. The more specific, the better. A goal should not be something easily fulfilled, ideally it takes a lot of time and effort.

Associated NPCs: (optional) If your character has other people with them in the community, for instance a child, spouse, friend, or other person, briefly describe them here.

History: Nothing crazy, just a few sentences about your life before the Cataclysm and how you ended up here in Nathanson.

Rules

I'd like to keep the rules relaxed and informal here. Just treat each other with respect and play fair (no Mary Sues, no godmodding, etc.) and we shouldn't have any trouble.

However, keep in mind as GM that my word is law. If I tell you to do something or to not do something, listen.

Zombie/ Community Management RP

As far as character limits go, I'd like people to have one primary character they focus on. If you wish to make satellite characters, such as friends or family members, that's fine by me.

Yes, zombie fiction exists in this world.

The dead rose two weeks before the start, you've cleared out the campus the day before the roleplay starts.

I should warn you all, though, the exact circumstances surrounding the rise of the dead may be quite different from what you expect.

Zombie/ Community Management RP

Very glad to be getting so much interest and discussion, let me take a moment to address a few of your questions/ concerns.

Questions:
1. How active does a player have to be. My schedule is pretty tight these days and given my track record RPing i can probably make a decent length post (A good few paragraphs) twice a week.
2. What sort of roleplaying level are we thinking of here?
3. With regards to all the characters I'm assuming the player characters are "key" characters that make stuff happen, and have some sort of special characteristic.
4. This is kind of a suggestion more than anything, but wouldn't it be ideal for each character to have a set goal that they wish to accomplish, and have a set community goal, a form of crisis that everyone is also trying to accomplish, but the personal goals may get in the way.
* For Example let's say we have "Nurse Fred" his set goal is to secure a clinic for the sick and injured, but the current goal is to find food, immediately, as such he has to set aside his own plans for now to go with the group.
5. This is kind of a wild guess, but i'm getting a Dead of Winter vibe from this RP.

@FiroIV

1. As active as you are comfortable with. As far as post length goes, I'm more concerned with quality than meeting some kind of arbitrary minimum length.
2. I'm going for high casual. I want people who are able to deal with mature themes and serious consequences. If people are coming to this RP expecting to play a 16 year old katana-wielding Navy SEAL, they are in the wrong place.
3. Players are welcome to do as they will with their characters. If they'd rather sit back and watch everyone make decisions, they're free to do so, though I doubt that would be much fun.
4. This is a great idea! I think I will incorporate this.
5. Not familiar with this. Google tells me this is a board game, so I will ask my friends who are hobbyists in this field.

It sounds like a CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) instead of an RP... Which would be a problem. The former is just one guy writing a story with an audience who chooses the outcome of a chapter. It seemed like the focus will be put on the community rather than the individuals that comprise it, which would contribute to this issue. But of course, nothing much has been planned yet, so I wouldn't know.

You could always choose to combine both approaches I guess? In a normal RP, the GM chooses what happens next, but if we throw in a few CYOA elements, which is what you plan to do, then what happens next seems to be left up to the RPers. I find this approach interesting.

Just thought I'd throw this out there. I'm already involved in 2 Zombie RPs, one which is going slow and the other which seems to be stuck on an interest check, so... I guess I'll be open-minded and see where this interest check goes. Subscribed!

@Darkraven

Your concerns are not unfounded.

The way I envision this, my role as a GM is more reactive/ voice of reason. So, to use an example from before, say someone convinces everyone else to go along with their idea to handle a disease outbreak. It's my job as GM to say, "well, here's something you may not have thought about" or "here's how the NPCs react to your decision". It's up to me to be on my toes and develop the situation realistically. I have no intention of railroading people to fit my plot. The area I do intend to take tighter control is the action sequences, if you're in conflict with zombies or other survivors.

So yeah, in sum it's a little more like your proposed solutions. I hope I've explained myself a little better.

Anyways, with this level of interest I will begin work on an OOC as soon as I am able.

Zombie/ Community Management RP

This element will be really fun. How will you keep it active and flowing?

@teapotshark

Well, this is by design player-driven, so if everyone is engaged it'll be a snap. I'll mainly just try to figure out rewards or consequences for your actions and choices. Say, for instance, you decide to send out a radio broadcast to any other survivors that might be out there. That might cause an influx of refugees, or an attack by bandits. Figuring how to deal with either of those problems can make for good play.

Alternately, I might introduce external events or crises. For example, I might have an outbreak of disease in the community, it'll be up to you guys to decide on an appropriate course of action. Is it better to risk search parties looking for valuable medicine, or just euthanize the sick to prevent spread? These are the kinds of tough calls you have to make.

Zombie/ Community Management RP

Interested, do you have plans for what the colleges will look like/work like? Is their going to be some sort of government, council, sort of deal?

@DaDrummer676

I've got a map made of the campus which I will share with you all. As regards your second question, that is the point of this RP. It is going to be up to the players to set up a government or council. Alternately they could become despots, or just let everyone run around anarchically. All about that choice.

Zombie/ Community Management RP

So, a lot of zombie RPs here tend to fall into the same mold- group of people wanders aimlessly and kills a ton of zombies along the way. Which is well and good, but I'd like to try something a little different.

Specifically, in a lot of zombie fiction the main characters seem to come across other settlements or communities, typically always with some kind of gimmick. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're evil. I think it's time the story of that community is told.

What I have in mind is something like the television shows The Colony or perhaps Jericho. After the rise of the dead and other associated cataclysms, you and a few other refugees (perhaps forty or fifty) fled into the prairies of Kansas and taken over the campus of a small four-year college. Now it's just a matter of running the settlement.

There will be a lot of discussion and a lot of difficult decisions to make. What's a bigger priority for the group, getting the power back on or the water running? Can we feed everyone? Do we accept that group who's asking for shelter? Do we reach out to other communities? And how about that very charismatic preacher who claims this is God's judgment?

Of course, there will be fighting against zombies and possibly other survivors. What kind of place your little community becomes is up to you. Will it be peaceful and democratic, militant and despotic, a bunch of cannibals, or something else altogether?

So, anyone interested?

Perfect Crime .Inc

@polyphemus, I like the way you write McThing. He really seems like the giant you made him :D

@stickman

Glad you like him. It's tempting to make someone like that completely stupid, but I'm trying to make him smart enough to realize his role and not overreach.

Perfect Crime .Inc

"Kayfabe, Tim," the big man said to himself in the cracked motel mirror. His thick fingers struggled clumsily with the cheap tie. "Gotta stay in character. The quiet heel." He nodded to himself as he finally managed to make some semblance of a Windsor not, pulled his collar back down. He stepped back out into the room- it was a poor one, but it was a quiet and anonymous part of Staten Island. He definitely wanted to keep things hush-hush.

As he pulled on the tent-like blazer, he reflected on the whirlwind of the previous few days. First a note given to him at his apartment in Boston. He had assumed it had been Mr. Regan at first, the head of the city's Irish Mob had a touch of the theatrical to him.

But this hadn't been Regan. This was something different. Something bigger.

And now McThing found himself in New York City. He wasn't sure why.

And so the big man checked out of the motel, walked out into the street, hailed a taxi. The car sank down on its suspension as he climbed in. McThing didn't notice. He was used to it. Instead, he kept focused on the task at hand as he gave the driver an address a block away from the meetup.

This could easily be a trap. Get him to come to a strange city, away from friends and connections. But who? The FBI? Was Regan getting called up on RICO charges? Was McThing about to be leaned on for testimony? Didn't make any sense, though. He was way too low in the food chain. All McThing did was beat people up and lift heavy objects. He did it damn well, but the feds wouldn't waste their time on him.

So maybe this job or whatever was for real. In which case a whole new world was about to open up.

At any rate, there wasn't much McThing could do from the inside of this taxi, so he just sat back and enjoyed the long ride into Manhattan. On reaching his destination, he carelessly overtipped the driver and walked the remaining distance to where he had been told the rendezvous would be made. It was a nice enough day. Might as well walk.

The address proved to be yet another dilapidated warehouse, probably unused for years. The man waiting for him inside was either the fellow who had come to Boston or his identical twin. McThing was met with a small nod and a clearly rehearsed invitation to follow. Fully in character now, McThing did little more than arch an eyebrow on being led down an underground stairway- clearly newer and better maintained than the building above it. He wondered exactly how this construction had been carried out as he was shown into some kind of conference room.

There was a handful of people already there, as well as a place setting marked McMurphy- he wished his professional name had been used instead. He said nothing to the others, merely sat down in the chair and hearing it creak and sag beneath his huge weight. McThing stared wordlessly at each other person in the room in turn. An open challenge.

The Farmhouse (two idea variations)

I'm on board.