Alright, it seems like all the Role-players of the Forum are here and accounted for, so I’m going to post up the rules of the game and a run-down of how the main mechanics will work.
Note: This came out way longer than I expected, so if you don't have the time to read it all then you can just read the dot points for the Rules, they're all pretty simple anyway. You will however have to read the Mechanics section, it's pretty important.
Exodus
Zombie Survival RPG
This will be a semi-linear, character driven narrative based game. The aim of the game will be survival, but the focus will be on character interaction and humanity. I intend to pressure the players into crafting a solid character with developed morals and identity, preferably your characters will then clash and create conflict, because ultimately, when it comes to a Zombie Apocalypse your true colours will show, and they won’t all show to be the same.
RulesThere will be several key rules to playing, but largely I will try not to impinge too much on the creativity of the storylines the players create:
• No God-Modding.
• No Power-Modding.
• Abide by the honesty system.
• You must uphold a high level of spelling and grammar.
• Be respectful.
God Modding and Power ModdingI’m going to moderating this, I will decide what happens and what doesn’t, both for the purposes of the narrative and for the purposes of creating a well-balanced character. This is going to be fairly important at some points, not so much at others. Just don’t do things that make your character overly awesome, we’re all humans here so none of us are perfect.
Here is an example of god-modding:
“Derek lifted his revolver, cocked the hammer and let fly six deadly bullets at the advancing horde, six shots, six dead walkers”.Here is an example of what isn’t considered god-modding:
“Derek lent down to pick up the pencil, he really needed that pencil to complete Faber-Castell’s 75 shades of aqua set”.Don’t god-mod in situations of life and death, situations that require an NPC or other player to also interact, or anything along those lines. This is mainly to ensure that you don’t spoil what could be really interesting moments by going and completing them all by yourself. On the other, I’m not modding every tiny thing, if you want that pencil, you pick it up, I trust you with that.
Power-modding is essentially the same thing, it just means don’t determine what happens to other players for them, if you’re interacting with them; wait for them to respond to see what happens.
Honesty SystemThis game is going to feature several mechanics that require the player to act on the honesty system, I can’t monitor what you are doing, but in the spirit of the game preferably everyone will play fair. Spoiler tags will hide information only available to some characters, timers will limit time to make decisions and such, things like this will require the player to do the right thing. That said, you guys seem like you’ll be fine with this.
Spelling and GrammarYou don’t have to be a master sentence crafter, but using your basic writing techniques is a must, paragraphs, capital letters, full stops and such make reading long sections of text so much easier, so let’s try and stick to it.
RespectBe nice to other people while OOC, I don’t expect that any of you guys are really capable of being truly mean anyway, but it’s a rule just in case! However while we’re in game and in character I fully expect you guys to play to whatever your character believes, this is a Zombie Apocalypse, people are going to be grumpy.
MechanicsI will be implementing a few mechanics that could be a bit tricky, I haven’t moderated a game before, but hopefully I’ve thought everything through well enough. I want to try some interesting new things, and here they are.
Hidden PerspectiveThis game will feature a system that essentially makes your character a human being. It will isolate you from everything that isn’t directly affecting you. This will mean that every character is an individual and that if you want to learn something about a character then you have to learn it yourself, not just read about what somebody else has said to that person and such. This will also mean that characters will develop specific relationships with other characters at their own leisure, and that the relationship you make with a character could be different to the relationship someone else has with that character. This will allow for secrets, private conversations, alliances and all the fun stuff that makes humans human. This will affect both character interaction and exploration. If you want do something by yourself then only you will be given the information pertaining to the situation. Obviously this will make my job very hard and require a lot of book keeping, but I’m up for that!
Kindred has installed Spoiler Tags for us, so everybody make sure they’re working correctly for you.
Here’s a few examples of how this will work in regards to my posts as the Moderator. When I update I will split the post into section, some parts will be privy to all players, such as broad descriptions of areas and the like, as well as conversations that everyone is participating in and things like that.
Some parts will be privy to multiple characters but not all, such as private conversation between players, situations were one player can see or hear what another player is doing and things of the like.
Then there will be the situations were only one player is privy to the information, such as while searching, while talking to an NPC, while alone and anything of the such.
I will write up an example of a post I may make which has something of each in it:
“The apartment block is quiet at night, most of the group are sleeping, the comfort of a bed lets even the most restless fall asleep tonight, after countless waking hours. Darkness looms outside, ever present throughout the night. The room feels massive with the inner wall torn down, although it means plenty of room for everyone, it also means that you can’t feel the warmth of bodies you become so accustomed to other past few weeks. The silence is eerie on one side of the room, only barely disrupted by the deep whispers of Derek, Abraham(NPC) and Graham far on the other side. Henrietta sits at the window; curtain slightly peeled back, just enough to see out into the darkness.”This section privy only to: Derek and Graham.
[Spoiler]
””Do you think I should tell the group?” whispered Abraham, his tired eyes barely capable of staying open. He desperately needed to sleep, but his guilty conscience was keeping him awake.”[/spoiler]
This section privy only to: Henrietta.
[Spoiler]
”You stare out into the darkness, it’s been so long since you’ve slept, but someone has to keep watch and it’s your turn. The first night of what appears to be true safety, and you cannot sleep, not yet. Despite how long you’ve been staring out the window your eyes just aren’t adjusting, the darkness houses only the purples swirls and dizzying movements that come with sleepless eyes.”[/spoiler]
As you can see here the first section is open to everybody, however the second section is only open to two of the players. Those players will need to respond to the NPC to continue on with this section. The third section is privy only to one player, as it a description of her state and what she can see outside.
Now, that is how I will write up my posts, and you will have to do the same. The two players talking to the NPC will label their spoiler tags as privy to each other and to me. The player looking out the window would write her actions to me alone, she might include her thoughts into this section or any minor movements or such that she wished to do. If I deemed that she did something that everyone could see then I would write that up in my post, or if she did something that only a select few other players could see then I would write that up to them specifically also. This would work the same way for instance if Henrietta wanted to eavesdrop on the conversation between the Derek, Abraham and Graham.
This will be the hardest part of the game to keep working properly, but should add a new layer of group dynamic to the game if it works out well. So if you don’t understand something please ask and I’ll sort it out.
Timed EventsThe other big thing will be timed events. At times I’m going to limit your ability to think and see how you react; I will do this in two ways. The first way is to provide you with a link to a timer, you will instantly click it, start the timer and then you will have until it times out to decide what to do. Once the timer stops you must have made your decision, no changing your mind once you start typing out your post. These events will usually happen to single players.
Here’s an example:
“The greens of the forest meld into a blur ahead as the diminishing sunlight sends rays directly towards you. Your heart beats rapidly in your chest as the hurried motion of the group around dizzies your head, moans and groans are within close earshot behind, panic is building as the group tries to keep quiet as they run, puffing and panting along the way. You look behind you quickly, tens of the dead are shambling towards you, they may be slow but they aren’t suffering from the severe malnutrition your group is, and they can walk forever. As you turn your head forward a brown blur appears ahead and to the left of you, several walkers are going to cross the path of the group, you hear a thud behind you and a groan of pain, Abraham has tripped, blood is trickling down his head, he isn’t getting back up, you stop and a massive force butts into your side. You stumble to your right as you look to see that Fiona been engaged by the group of walkers that cut the group off, she is fending one off but more are piling in. The rest of the group is running towards to edge of the woods, Abraham is dirtied and bloodied on the forest floor, the dead are approaching and Fiona is screaming and struggling to break away from three soon to be four walkers.”You have 60 seconds to decide what to do:
1 Minute Timer - TimerCountdown.netThat’s how it will happen, you have 60 seconds to decide what you are going to do, run, grab Abraham, or help Fiona. Once the timer is up it will pop-up on the screen and you must make the final decision then and there.
If you think you have a smart fourth option up your sleeve then go for it, but I won’t go easy on a hero, so you better have a very good idea!
The other kind of timed event is simple in that rather than having a timer I will give certain actions a time value and then you can take as many of them as you want, but if you take too long then you’ll be in trouble, or not long enough and you may have wasted a valuable opportunity.
An example of this may been in a situation where you are scavenging, zombies are coming, they are maybe three minutes away from what you can see. There are ten drawers and cupboards in the pharmacy to search; they will take rough thirty seconds each to search. Then you choose which ones to search from a list. The safe number of drawers to search being five or less, six would be pushing it and seven or more would be asking for trouble.
Those are the main two big mechanics in the game, everything else will be reasonably standard, things like the passing of time, the need for simultaneous posting and such will depend on the situation. Anything else you encounter I will explain as the game goes on.
Thanks for reading through this massive block of text, sorry it was so long, I thought I could've condensed it more than that, my bad. When everybody has read through and understand can you post in the thread and we'll see when everyone wants to create a character and get ready to go!