Heroes style game with horror [EX, NC, etc.]

[TanaSilver]

I am looking to start a game of modern super powers, somewhat in the vein of Heroes, but with some major differences. The idea is this:

You wake up to discover everyone in your town is gone, but you. You soon learn that not quite everything is exactly the same as before, especially when you start developing "abilities" that you cannot always control.

Influences for this game are Heroes, Gantz, and Dark City. I am looking for three players to join me. The rest of the game will be populated by NPCs. Your character will start normal but will likely develop super powers. These powers will be dealt randomly, so you'll have to work with what you get.

This game will likely start out peaceful, but I expect it will get violent soon enough. Character death is likely, as there is some serious nastiness lurking in the city.

The game is labeled Extreme to allow anything to happen, and I expect most characters will die horribly in some way. Sex is allowed, encouraged even, but is not this game's primary focus.

Feel free to post any questions. If you want to join, post a paragraph or two about your character. Make this a writing sample, showing the character doing something which also gives me some idea about him or her. I will choose three players.

This will be a system run game, but all mechanics are behind the scenes by me, so you don't have to actually worry about any of it.

If everyone sticks around, this game will have a definite end.

That's it for now!

[mannik]

this sounds interesting to me. For the writing sample, do you want it set before or after waking up and finding everyone gone? How wide of an area is effected? If I was to turn on a TV would it just be static or could I actually see something being broadcast coast to coast? How long were we actually out? It is quite disheartening to wake up and find that all your food has rotted in the fridge (One of the first things to pop into my head to make my proposed character realise that something is very wrong). I assume figuring out what happened would be a major part of the story driving the RP, but a little more info on the perceived situation wouldn't hurt.

[dready]

(ooo i'm in for it!)

With a sigh as the shade of darkness begins to dampen under the pressure of light on the other side, Jackson sits up and yawns, looking to his cell phone on the side of the bed before getting out of his futon. With a pair of pants and shirt added to his body, his hazel eyes with green chiseled at the bottom iris' of each eye scans the room and then out the window. After an hour of eating, freshening up, and calling a few temp-help jobs in town he heads out for a job that was available, mp3 in pocket and headphones in ears. "it's a beautiful day," he sings along with the music, riding his bike to the site and then getting his gear, going to his post and then watching as wet and dry piece of painted metal roll by, spraying air on the wet ones to dry them out.

A few hours later at break he opens up his lunchbox and heads to the wreck room which he asked about earlier when he first got there, popping his lunch into the microwave and waiting for the timer to finish. "Hey, anything else we're going to be doing?" he asks the supervisor who is eating from the vending machines. After the break he returns to his post and waits for the parts to finish rolling, then heading up the line and assisting with loading the boxes onto the semi's out back so then they can get the new parts into the factory. Once finished, he heads back to his spot and starts a conversation about shoes with a temp friend, though not about fashion by why people choose the most inefficient types to show how they are. "Maybe they're trying to compensate for a crappy reason," Jack says with a small laugh before spotting the new parts rolling down the line, resuming his job without paying attention to anything else. Later that day he heads home and stays in, watching the tv before falling asleep on his futon again to resume another day.

[TanaSilver]

mannik: The post should be a moment from a day in the life, much like dready just did ... though that was a pretty boring day you picked there!  ;)  That's fine, though, just as long as it gives me some sense of what this person is all about, their personality, that kind of thing. And I am looking for normal people, as dready's character is, as opposed to something extreme. Having said that, if you come up with a serial killer or terrorist bomber and can make a good case for it, I might allow it.

I don't want to give too many details away. Suffice it to say that the power is on, everything in the fridge looks fine, but when you walk outside there are no people, no planes flying, no cars driving. The tv shows static, nothing on the radio, cell phones show no signal.

Initially, you'll all start in separate locations, but will likely meet up soon enough.

I am thinking of placing it in Los Angeles since I have some basic familiarity with the place.

[dready]

lol i like making things seem boring to people who read it, though only when doing a pre-game modern example since it shows how normal they are yet not at the same time.

[TanaSilver]

Gotcha, and I'm just messin' with ya. I like the character, and figure he's in.

[dready]

foiled again. DX

[mannik]

Alright then, I can do that. My few paragraphs might also be a little boring, but what do you expect from the uneventful lives of normal people?

---------------------

Eric Sires was your stereotypical geeky kid. He grew up on the bottom rung of the popularity ladder and as a result has some serious self confidence issues. Like the few friends he did have growing up, he took to computers. But unlike them, his intrest stretched beyond simply playing games and using them to add a little extra flair to English homework. He would stay late everyday helping out in the computer labs to set up networks and install programs. It wasn't long before he knew every password in the school. The other kids would beg him to hack into their teacher's computer to change their grades, but he wouldn't. No matter what they called him, or how many times they beat him up in the parking lot he refused to betray the trust that was given to him.

His life continued, pretty much uninterrupted down that path to where he is today. Nineteen years old fixing computers on the days he isn't shut away in his parent's basement programming something for some small business. "The problem is definitely the hard drive." He announced as the computer in front of him booted to the operating system. "Did you fix it?" His current customer, a single but beautiful young mother of twins asked as she entered the room. She looked to be only three years older than him. As usual he had to force himself not to stare at her chest. "Not exactly...this is the hard drive I just put in it to see weather or not it was the motherboard. Since it's booting, it's not the motherboard, which is good news." He explained. "Can you fix mine?" She asked. "No...unfortunately yours is completely fried. The computer doesn't even see it....can't very well tell a computer to reformat a hard drive it doesn't even know is there....but I'll sell you the one I just put in for twenty bucks." He said. "OK...how much do I owe you in total?" She asked. "Lets see....ten for labor and five for gas should cover it." He said, smiling shyly as her face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Really!? Wow! The last guy I had fix my computer charged me eighty for just pressing a few buttons!" She said in amazement. That wasn't an uncommon practice in the computer repair field, but he always had a hard time taking people's money for something he did for fun and the programming gig meant he didn't really have to. "Your not just trying to flirt with me are you?" The woman asked with a giggle as she left the room to get her money.

The light hearted question caught him by surprise. "Wh-w-what? N-no. Of course not." He answered nervously, before realizing she had already left the room. After another half an hour of installing drivers and needed programs the computer was ready for use. "Call me if you need anything else." He said with a smile as he gave her his business card and she gave him the money, then it was off to fix more computers. It wasn't until he was counting the money at home that night did he find a piece of paper folded up in the bills. On one side was a phone number on the other was a hand written note that read, 'doing anything Friday?'. He looked at his reflection in the mirror with a huge smile and said to himself, "See Eric. I told you computers were the way to go." before climbing into bed.

-----------

Well, there you have it. Three paragraphs of extraordinary normality.

[TanaSilver]

Eric is disgustingly normal, congratulations! Although, I'm not so sure how normal that is for a pretty girl to give her number to a computer geek, but this is science fiction.

Looks like we have two people, then. I'm going to go ahead and open up a thread for the game. I'll contact you guys with the link when I have it up.

For anyone else reading this, I would like to take in one more person. So please, feel free!

[TanaSilver]

Before I do that, I need to resolve the issue of the setting. I was originally thinking of Los Angeles, but I'm not so sure. I'm going to see what you guys think, so here is a list to pick from. Keep in mind that, from your point of view, the place seems totally deserted, at least at first. That will give you the entire area to run around in. Using a place like LA might be a bit too big, but it would be interesting too. And if you're wondering how "boundaries" are enforced, you'll find out in the game.

Anyway, here are the choices:

• Los Angeles, as already mentioned.
• A midwestern, small town, the antithesis of LA. It may take some time before you even notice people are missing, but a much smaller area to work in.
• A cruise ship. Completely contained, out in the open water, and an even smaller area.
• Manhattan. Same dense city atmosphere as LA, but since it's an island it already has established boundaries. Still, the same too much space problem, though.
• A particular building, like an office building, hotel or apartment. This would give a nice, "we're trapped in here!" feeling, though without the eerie city without people vibe.
• A college campus.

[dready]

hm... for a small town in the midwest: no idea. X3 though for the building part, why not have the creepies be outside and then making their way in, with us needing to survive in the building while fighting them off or retreating to a higher level of the building. :3

[mannik]

Eric is disgustingly normal, congratulations! Although, I'm not so sure how normal that is for a pretty girl to give her number to a computer geek, but this is science fiction.

Heh...fixing computers is the number one way for geeks to get dates. Besides...is it really that hard to imagine? She's got two kids, any other guy her age would run in the other direction...besides, he's not ugly, just nerdy. You asked for a feel of personality, not appearance.....

....that, and you can't really be sure who the note was from. He found it at the end of the day after servicing multiple people's computers. Any one of his clients could have left it.

• Los Angeles, as already mentioned.
• A midwestern, small town, the antithesis of LA. It may take some time before you even notice people are missing, but a much smaller area to work in.
• A cruise ship. Completely contained, out in the open water, and an even smaller area.
• Manhattan. Same dense city atmosphere as LA, but since it's an island it already has established boundaries. Still, the same too much space problem, though.
• A particular building, like an office building, hotel or apartment. This would give a nice, "we're trapped in here!" feeling, though without the eerie city without people vibe.
• A college campus.

As for the setting...College campus would work nicely with my character, and they are usually quite crowded so people dissapearing would definitly be noticed. But I don't really understand why too much space would be a problem. If anything, it gives you as the GM, more to work with.

The cruise ship I don't think would work. Mainly because my character has no reason to be there and it's a little too isolated. Not much chance of the evil force at work to spread, and any good horror theme should have spreading evil.

The small town isn't a bad choice either. The distance from major populated areas is another thing to consider. The likelyhood of someone outside of town noticeing something is wrong is much slimmer and help would likely never arive if you had no means to call it. Where as if there were still people on the planet they would notice if an entire city like LA or NY suddenly stop functioning over night.

And the office or apartment building idea...what's to stop it from ending up there anyway if we go for one of the cities? You said there would be monsters. It wouldn't take much to force us indoors, and once we are there...

[TanaSilver]

Good ideas, Mannik.

Let's do this ... I'm going to borrow a page from Stephen King and go with a small, New England coastal town.

I'll send you guys an email with a link when it's ready.

[dready]

woot and yay! ^^

[TanaSilver]

Just a note to anyone who may be looking at this thread, I'm still open to accepting one more player. The game has begun, but it's still early enough to add someone.

You can check it out at https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=28466.msg1082757

I will not be checking this thread any more, so if anyone is interested they should contact me directly through PM.

[TanaSilver]

This game is underway, but is not too far along if anyone wants to join. We have 2 players, but I would like to take up to 2 more. The setup for the game is you're stuck in a small, New England coastal town where everyone but a small handful of people have disappeared over night.

The game is part mystery, part horror, and part super hero powers as characters gain strange abilities and must survive.

You can check it out here: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=28466.0

If you're interested, message me directly please as I may not notice posts in this thread.

This game is located in the Extreme section as eventual extreme violence and situations are possible/likely.