Re: Interest Check: Post-Apocalypse/Zombie/The Walking Dead[closed[

Started by Jecht, July 03, 2012, 12:58:34 AM

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chanellelynn

Our characters will be quite scared if we start at the beginning, which will be a great start to our story line. A practical city choice will be good, where there are a lot of nooks and crannies to find each character.

Jecht

I was thinking right after due to the fact it might be more difficult to explain why a model, a student, a police officer and a sniper would be in a group together. If we did it right as the outbreak started, it might be easier if a few of our characters know each other in some way. Just an idea.

3 spots left by the way.
So far its
Jecht
Ryan
Kingmaster
Damnedangel
Chanellelynn
In my restless dreams, I see that town... Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again some day... but you never did. Well, I'm alone there now in our special place... waiting for you.
Ons and Off
My ideas
I'm sorry

Ryan

Name: Lance Corporal Charlie ó Raghallaigh (O'Reilly)
Age: 24
Occupation before Outbreak: Scout Sniper in the United States Marine Corps
Picture
Background: Charlie wanted to be in the armed forces for as long as he could remember; it was back when he couldn't have been more than five years old and his 12 year old brother took him to a fair ground and led him to one of the old rifle games where you shoot tin cans and win prizes. His brother, Liam, handed over the carnie a few dollars and they sat side by side for hours, picking off tin cans - this was when Charlie's talent in marksmanship made itself known and he excitedly turned to his brother, another military nut, that he was going to be a soldier just like Liam was going to be when he grew up.

6 years later and Liam enrolled into the Marines as part of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal team and quickly rose up the ranks to become a Staff Sergeant. He did 2 tours of Iraq before coming home, telling his younger brother all of his stories and experiences in the Corps that only made Charlie more enthused to be a soldier. Liam then shipped out again to do a year long tour in Afghanistan and a week before he was due to come home, the ó Raghallaigh family received a letter of condolence, announcing that Liam had been killed in a roadside bombing in an attempt to diffuse a bomb strapped to an innocent man's chest. The entire family was devastated, perhaps none more so than Charlie. But the tragedy did nothing to put him off joining the forces, if anything, it only made him want to enrol more so.

Which is exactly what he did on the day of his 18th birthday and rose to Lance Corporal with ease, sending mutterings throughout the higher ups on his expert marksmanship and extreme determination.

Charlie was on leave when the outbreak struck; he was living on base when the zombies attacked but luckily, the base faired well given that it was full of weaponry, ammunition and men and women expertly trained to kill. After the base was once again secure, the base was given orders like all other bases within the country to gear up and fight against the threat like they had been trained to.

Sometime after leaving the base and travelling where they could in the armoured convoy, the relatively small team of Marines were attacked in the dead of night by a hoard of the creatures that overwhelmed them despite their efforts and despite their mass of ammunition. It was a bloodbath that continued for hours and when dawn broke, there were only 3 men left - Charlie, a Private who had managed to climb a tree just as Charlie had and one man on the ground, sobbing and moaning in agony, whimpering and calling for his mother. Charlie and the Private picked off the last of the lingering zombies from the trees and cautiously climbed down to the man on the floor. As they had seen through the days of infection, the man was slowly turning into one of the creatures; frantic and distraught, he grabbed Charlie's fatigues with a bloody hand and tearfully begged for death. The man nodded and carefully took off the soldier's dog tags, slipping them into his pocket before he shot the man in the head before he could turn.

Charlie and the Private - Benjamin - then collected as many dog tags as they could retrieve, as much supplies and ammunition as they could carry and set off on foot, knowing the vehicles weren't salvageable. It was mere days before horror struck again - in the midst of searching a Walmart for food, Benjamin was jumped by a zombie, knocking him to the ground and pinning him to the floor. He yelled and Charlie acted as fast as his could but it was too late, after kicking the twice-dead corpse off the young Private, it was there, clear as day on his left cheek - the bite mark that condemned him to death.

Charlie sat with the Private for a long while; they talked as his healthy slowly started to decline, talked about why they joined the Corps, what they'd seen, who'd they'd left behind, who they'd lost. It was only when the sunset that Benjamin passed away and Charlie finally got up, slipped Benjamin's dog tags off his neck and put them safely away then lodged a bullet in his brain before walking away to find shelter for the night.


(Here's mine! :D Good point, Jecht. We could all work on some background stuff together?)

kingmaster1

I think it would be good for some of us to know each other a bit...since we have a girl who is homeless I was thinking Marcus gave her food every day...just a thought  ::)

Damnedangel

Since Lillys a 'model' could be possible one of the men or women recognise her from photos?
Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum - If You Seek Peace Prepare For War.
We all have multiple personalities. The Average is three, but some people have more.
There's the face you wear for your friends and family, the one you let the outside world see.
Then there's the face you see everytime you look in the mirror.


Jecht

Zach would never look at those kinds of pictures  ;)

Kidding, he would totally look at those pictures.
In my restless dreams, I see that town... Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again some day... but you never did. Well, I'm alone there now in our special place... waiting for you.
Ons and Off
My ideas
I'm sorry

Damnedangel

Hehe, looks like we have one character who knows mine ;)

I think she'd be interested in a man in uniform, since they're her weakness :P
Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum - If You Seek Peace Prepare For War.
We all have multiple personalities. The Average is three, but some people have more.
There's the face you wear for your friends and family, the one you let the outside world see.
Then there's the face you see everytime you look in the mirror.


kingmaster1

I would think Marcus has a couple pictures of her...probably a folder on his pc...

OldSchoolGamer

Okay, I'm definitely interested.  Give me a few hours to cobble together a character...work just totally swamped me today.

kingmaster1


Jecht

So far we have 5. I thought we would have more jump on. We can start whenever if people don't want to wait. We can always add them later
In my restless dreams, I see that town... Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again some day... but you never did. Well, I'm alone there now in our special place... waiting for you.
Ons and Off
My ideas
I'm sorry

kingmaster1

I'm fine starting whenever, now or later is fine by me  :-)

Damnedangel

Same as King =)

I don't mind starting now or later.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum - If You Seek Peace Prepare For War.
We all have multiple personalities. The Average is three, but some people have more.
There's the face you wear for your friends and family, the one you let the outside world see.
Then there's the face you see everytime you look in the mirror.


kingmaster1


Haibane

Is another cop okay? I was basing the character on someone who has been surviving the zombie outbreak already for a week or two, but if you wanted to set the timing of the story to earlier in the outbreak I can make some edits.

Having recently got into playing the Dayz mod for ARMA II I think a more rural setting could be interesting, with the group of survivors being on the road and moving from place to place (small town America) scavenging, adding members to their group and seeking a good defensible location.

Anyway, happy to change Claire around as needed.



Name: Claire Louise Anderson
Age: 45
Personality: Claire is an honest woman and a good cop. She is/was a deputy of Tremaine County, a rural area of the state well out in the boonies. Her life has always been one of wanting to be a cop, and then, when she made the grade, being the best cop she could be. She is quiet and unassuming; placid and caring for the elderly and confused; firm and fair to the lawless. She is, however a straight thinking, straight talking logical woman with an analytical mind and boundaries set firmly within what is possible by physics and allowed by the law. She is therefore somewhat out of her depth in these hazardous and confusing times.
Bio: As a young girl growing up in a small rural community Claire was always taught to obey the Lawman. Fortunately for her, childhood happened in the still-golden years of the late 70s and early 80s when lawmen really were good and fair and helpful members of their community, looked up to by all and feared by the bad guy. Incorruptible and tough, the lawman always had a smile for the lost child and a supportive attitude to those unfortunate enough to face their official side. Young Claire doted on deputy Lawrence Simms who was the best cop she ever knew. When he retired she detected (at the age of seventeen) a change in the wind, a new style of policing was coming in with cops more distant from the community and more likely to shoot rather than ask. Claire determined to do her best to make this change as slow as she could.

Claire graduated from the police academy third in her class aged 21 and the next ten years saw her endure the system that was still chronically misogynist but she bore her slow career development with good grace and refused to sink to the level of the fat bad cops above her who abused their power.

You cannot keep a good girl down and when a post as Deputy Marshal came up in Tremaine County, where Claire was born, she jumped at the chance. Her bosses, embarrassed by the smiling efficient politically-clean woman, were only too happy to farm her out of their sight from the city to a place they could forget about her. In the rural communities of Tremaine County Claire blossomed and found her place, working diligently to restore what she knew cops should be to the people they served.
Skills: Claire is capable with a gun but no marksman. She is trained in their use but rarely uses one. Her driving though is excellent and she has taken three advanced driving courses with the police specifically covering off-roading skills, adverse weather and "high speed and safe." Clair is a fair cook and seamstress but her hunter-gatherer skills extend no further than the freezer cabinets of Walmart.
Belongings: 4x4 Police Cruiser, snub nosed .38 police-issue revolver and two cartons of bullets (48 rounds). Her cruiser's tank is half empty (good for 300 miles) and she hauls an ex-army single axle trailer that carries a self-sealing military fuel bladder with currently another 30 gallons of fuel in it. There is a hose and hand-pump filler nozzle she has used to draw gas from underground tanks at deserted gas stations.

She has some basic tools such as a wrench (for opening said gas station tank access caps) as well as a basic car repair and servicing kit with jack, etc (standard police issue). She's gathered a few cooking utensils and a couple of pans as well as a gas bottle and basic stove but mostly lets others she meets do the cooking – her side of the sharing of any group she bumps into is the transport. Her food supply consists of plenty of canned goods, such as soups, stews, curries and the like, and a few bags of rice and noodles, a few candy bars and some bags of potato chips.

She has a couple of gas cigarette lighters picked up from various half-looted stores.

She also found at a roadside hardware store a nail gun and she has a box of four inch nails for it. She's lashed together a basic shoulder stock for the thing out of scrap timber and can shoot it with tolerable accuracy at a head-sized target at around 10 yards. If she encounters zombies, Claire prefers to simply move on and not fight them, but if she has to, she prefers the nail gun to the .38 as she thinks ammunition for it will be easier to come by.

Jecht

You're good to go. We now have 6 is everyone Ok with that? It seems we have a good group.
In my restless dreams, I see that town... Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again some day... but you never did. Well, I'm alone there now in our special place... waiting for you.
Ons and Off
My ideas
I'm sorry

Acid Lips


Damnedangel

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum - If You Seek Peace Prepare For War.
We all have multiple personalities. The Average is three, but some people have more.
There's the face you wear for your friends and family, the one you let the outside world see.
Then there's the face you see everytime you look in the mirror.


kingmaster1


Acid Lips

waiting on the bosses post so I can start the character or not. I was thinking perhaps the younger sister of a already made character?

kingmaster1

I'd be fine with Marcus having a younger sister, it would give him someone to protect, like Clementine in the walking dead game.

Acid Lips

I was thinking she is young perhaps 16 so everybody would protect her sort of

kingmaster1

sounds good, there is always a young kid in zombie movies, like Carl in the walking dead :P

Haibane

Jecht, did you decide on a starting time (before/during/just after the outbreak) and a location (city/suburban/small town/rural) yet?

We also need to get our characters to link up. I have been in zombie outbreak games that folded even before the party all met up because people got bored writing posts of them doing stuff on their own. My vote would be that the game begins a couple of weeks after the outbreak and our group just happens together while scavenging. Or they simply are together already and we don't explain it at all (we can work out how they connected later on and reveal these backstories as extra character depth but I have thrown some really brief ideas around below).

It makes sense that the two cops could know each other and might even have worked in the same precinct (I can modify Claire's backstory to suit if needed).

I agree it also makes sense that the cops might know Desi but her bio implies she's been travelling a lot and cops don't do that, they are fixed in place. So Desi might be found later.

O'Reilly may have been seconded to a police unit during the chaos of the outbreak and they met up that way.

Lilly could have run into a police station for protection soon after the poop hit the fan and met up with Zach, Claire and Charlie that way (I have visions in my mind of an Assault on Precinct 13 scene in my head after which this group staged a breakout).

This group could finally have met up with Marcus on the road, Marcus being a lone scavenger.

Those are just ideas - others may have better ones.

While Claire has no outstanding skills to bring to the group (there are better shooters and better cooks present) she will bring a clear logical mind, wisdom from her age which I think should be deeper than others, and her transport. She's not a person to lead in a group if a more assertive leader shouts louder but she certainly can do so, though her style will be quieter and more reasoned.

You can fit six or seven into her cruiser if we consider it a people-carrier sized vehicle but beyond that I think we'd need a second vehicle. That might or might not be a good idea. One car keeps everyone together for conversation purposes, two cars gives the group more flexibility, especially if we can find a set of walkie talkies and a supply of batteries or 12v car accessory connectors ;)

Two cars limits the group dynamics a little while travelling, but could speed up posting rates if we had, say, 2 groups of 3/4 instead of one of 7. Even so, while on the road, slow posters could just be "asleep", or "gazing out the window" so it can stil work quite well.

Jecht - did you plan on GMing things in terms of what the group comes across and what supplies might be found in what places? I've had some bad zombie games where the group became better kitted out than a Special Forces team within a few hours because they just happened to run into an "abandoned army convoy," etc, etc. If you can limit the hardware the group has, or make it break/need servicing that can help add tension.

kingmaster1

I like those ideas, but I think acid lips is making a character that (I think) is going to be Marcus's little sister. So they would find them both.