OOC- Chapter 3- Over, Under, and Through- General Discussion

[Mr. Handy]

Thanks, but don't worry. Take your time catching up, and take over Joe Soarez when you're ready. Until then I'll just keep running him as an NPC.

[welsh]

I can probably do a lot of the Under and Through story lines later the summer, so you should have more time to play with Omaha. Its been awhile since I have tinkered with this, so it might be nice to get back to it. There are a couple of things I'd like to see happen in both sides. We also have to think about how the Over section/Omaha corresponds with the rest, but we can work that out later.

This might be wrong to do but- Under folks - Damn...

Anyway, anyone playing urban dead?

http://www.urbandead.com/

I am hoping to bring up my characters and then perhaps form a group of bounty hunters.

[Fearlessfred]

For Under

Spoiler:

we didn't stand a chance

As for urban dead I did play it for a bit and all three of my characters were part of the DEM. UD is the reason I found this role play in the first place. Mr. Handy made a post about this game and I started reading chapter one and was hooked.

[Mr. Handy]

Regarding Under:

Spoiler:

There were things you could have done. The key was to be prepared and all act in concert, but with different groups all doing their own thing, it became very difficult. The creature was also extremely lucky that it took out Duke and Jim (not to mention Alice) in round one. Those electric prods could have brought a speedy end to it. Once it started eating people and growing, however, it was too late.

Under and Through won't need too much work. I have fewer new characters planned for Under than were in Over in Chapter 3, and I don't know if we'll need any new ones for Through. A lot depends on how Through turns out, however, and I can't be sure if the Under group will survive either. Plot lines and events we can work out, and I already have some ideas of how to tie Over back to Under/Through. In Chapter 4 I'll probably use different names for the sections, especially considering how Over and Under are working out. "Over, Under, and Through" was my title for Chapter 3, but I never intended for the section names to be carried beyond this chapter.

I've been playing Urban Dead since early August 2006. I posted a thread on Brainstock advertising this game, which is how we got Fearlessfred. I think one of our newer players might have found the game that way too. My characters on UD are based on Zombie Apocalypse characters: a cop named Bo Richards and a NecroTech lab assistant named Stephanie Bridges. Both of them are part-time bounty hunters, but spend most of their time doing general pro-survivor activities. It only took about 3 months to get enough XP to reach level 41 for both of them. Stephanie is part of RCDC and operates in and around Rhodenbank. Bo isn't a member of any group, but he hangs out with Josephine's Generals in the SW part of Malton.

I also created a Monroeville character: a private named Frank Hodges. He did extremely well at first, killing three zombies on the second day. On the third he killed another, reaching level 3 and gaining Construction (he was probably among the first to get it). He reached level 9 in about two weeks and was close to level 10 when zombies overran his safehouse and naturally ate him first. Then he joined the Monroeville Many and did rather well at first. Even when Headshot became permanent there, he lasted a long time and took down over a dozen humans, including a headshotter. He finally got put down for good a month ago.

[Fearlessfred]

Once again about Under:

Spoiler:

Ya I think part of the problem was that half of the group was up holding back the zeds and didn't have a chance to find out about the creature. For the "once it started eating people it was to late" that should have been Joe's Idea.

For chapter four I think you should still try to keep the number of threads down and clearly state which group is in which one (numbering them may help for new players looking to join). I tried to read Ash and I didn't know were to start. I did however read The Haunting and loved how you opened the final window.

[Mr. Handy]

Spoiler:

The half of the group that did know about the creature should have told the other half, and the entire group should have stuck together from then on. That half of the group did detect it coming, but none of the characters except Max acted on it, and he could not really communicate. I cannot remember what Joe rolled Idea for, but he had no idea it had eaten anyone until it devoured Alice. Jenny saw everything, which is why she was able to conclude the cause if its growth - that and she rolled a 1 on her Idea.

The reason there are so many threads is that the characters have been split off into a bunch of different groups. They've been gradually coming together throughout the chapter (except Over has split up now), so the number of threads open at any one time has been greatly reduced. Most of the threads are old, locked ones. Currently we have three open threads each for Over and Through, and only one for Under. I do have a thread history in the Locations thread for each character, but numbering the threads is a good idea since it's easy to get lost. Ash is very confusing in that regard, especially with the changing titles. That's why I added links in the IC threads to tell each character where to go.

Thanks, that was an awesome moment in the conclusion of The Haunting. I'm just glad it worked!

[welsh]

Spoiler:

Nope... that's not what I meant. One of the things that's gone into each one of these chapters is that it is very possible for characters to survive. But it requires that they use their skills, work together, and take advantage of their circumstances - essentially to survive. Zombie Apoc was created as a survival game in which individuals must work together and their circumstances to survive. I am a bit reluctant to say this is a bit of metagaming- My spoilers points- (1) leaving people behind is a bad thing. Some of those people have the skills you need to survive. (2) There are weapons available to kill the monster in the lab. (Otherwise this game would be unfair). (3) The monster came from below, so how is going down there a good idea? Especially with most of the best fighters dead or wounded?

I have about 13 characters spread over Malton at the moment. All are fairly new- A few have been zombified, but most have recovered.

I will probably let half of them die out over the week and keep the better ones.
Hard to say. To be honest, its eating up too much time.

I would be interested in creating an informal group- perhaps a group of zombie killing bounty hunters and general good natured folks. Perhaps rebuild a ghost town and then defend it from the army of darkness?

(Hey we can think of the group simply as "that which shall not be named!")

As for this game. One thing we had considered is going back to the origins of this crisis.

Spoiler:

Part of this campaign actually begins in space- in both orbit and the moon

That might still be worth doing. Otherwise, I quite agree- much of the campaign will probably involve Omaha and the survivors at the T-Bone.

Spoiler:

While those of the Through have insights into this campaign, at the rate their going, they are pretty much doomed

[Fearlessfred]

Spoiler:

That Idea roll was just something I decided to add in case Joe realised that he could simply flip the creature over and attack it's weak spot for massive damage or something similar. It is good to know that Joe saved the only character that bothered to try and help anybody. I'll have to write something about his death.

For The Haunting it would have been intersting to tell the widow what happened "Ya I think you deserve the money.

Spoiler:

After all we did kind of use your husband's head as a battering ram.."

Welsh

Spoiler:

And here I was the through group was going to be one of the strongest

Spoiler:

So any chance I can know why I am wrong?

[Mr. Handy]

I wouldn't have time to play that many characters in Urban Dead. Just keeping them all far enough apart to avoid unintentionally zerging is hard enough. Two is the right balance for me. Bo might meet Doctor Smiley or Sally Strange, as they seem to be in his neck of the woods, but I don't remember encountering them before. Firefighters, doctors, and NT assistants can do very well at the start, as they begin with the means to earn lots of XP. Doctors need to restock on First Aid Kits regularly, however, while the other two classes can earn unlimited XP with their starting equipment. Consumers are tough to play from what I've heard. You can't easily get back into a mall once you've left until you get Free Running. The best way to get XP early on is still to heal people. You can always ask if anyone needs healing, and people you find outside generally do. You can even heal zombies for XP!

Exploring the origins of the crisis would be a good way to start when we "reanimate" Zombie Apocalypse after this run completes - if it ever does. As it is we'll have our hands full with the existing groups, unless we can manage to kill a bunch of them off.

I agree about Through (the same might apply to Under even moreso) - especially considering what we've already got planned.

Oh, and Fearlessfred, if you're interested in participating in Ash, ask Laraqua. I'm sure she can bring you up to speed, and you can jump in with little or no prior knowledge. It's an incredible game and well worth the effort, even better than Zombie Apocalypse in some ways.

[Fearlessfred]

Ya the begining would be interesting although I think it would be neat to see Zombie Apocalypse start again from the beggining of chapter one just to see how things play out differently.
I take it from your comments that I should be afraid. Things were just starting to look up.
I'm not interested in joining Ash I just wanted to read it as I had heard it was good but where to begin?
Well I think I'll go read some of Chapter 1 when times were simpler and somebody wasn't trying to claw your face off every bloody second, when the 40+ year old Ham and Cheese sandwiches where still just a thing out of nightmares.

[Mr. Handy]

If we do get around to restarting Zombie Apocalypse from the very beginning of the crisis, we do intend to eventually get around to redoing Chapter 1 of this game when its time rolls around. I'd also like to see how things would play out differently, as a lot of characters died early on who could have created some interesting possibilities had they lived longer.

If you want a good place to start in Ash, try the Hospital Car Park thread. That's where my character Sarah Carpenter's story begins (and almost ends!). She later moves between a bunch of other threads. There's also a background story for Sarah on page 3 of the Chit-Chat thread that I wrote while waiting for the game to start. My other character, Sarah's father Dr. Lionel Carpenter, begins in the Cinemaplex Car Park thread and remains there for the most or all of Chapter 1.

One way to go through these threads would be to open them all up on page 1 at the same time and go through the posts in chronological order. That's what I try to do when catching up on a game with multiple threads. Just find the earliest post among those at the tops of the threads, read it, scroll down, and repeat. Having a tabbed browser helps a lot here. To pick up where you left off, just remember the timestamp you've reached. Many of the threads start later, so you wouldn't even need to open them up for a while once you see the timestamps of their initial posts. There is a lot of reading, though, so it'll take a long time to get through Chapter 1 alone. Laraqua should be able to help you navigate the threads, as she runs the game.

[SuAside]

i always liked the idea of playing a zombie game as a modified version of yourself. maybe you should consider that.

[Fearlessfred]

i always liked the idea of playing a zombie game as a modified version of yourself. maybe you should consider that.

For a new role play or for new characters if the role play was restarted (or characters for the future?).

[Laraqua]

I'm sure she can bring you up to speed, and you can jump in with little or no prior knowledge. It's an incredible game and well worth the effort, even better than Zombie Apocalypse in some ways.

Blah blah blah ... sweet but so untrue. You just like it because of what Nurse Sarah was led to do on hints alone.

[Mr. Handy]

Oh, there's a lot more to like about Ash than how Sarah was masterfully manipulated (and she wouldn't have been acting truly in character if she hadn't panicked). She has changed a lot, though. I was just looking back at the beginning of her story in Chapter 1, and it's amazing how far she's come. I also love the whole time travel aspect, and there are many other things besides that as well.

By the way, I'm still waiting for a certain character to act in Through before I update. I'll definitely be updating by tomorrow whether he acts or not.

I remember seeing the idea of playing oneself in a zombie game a long time ago over at No Mutants Allowed. It might have been SuAside who suggested it. Interesting idea, but it's harder to implement with Zombie Apocalypse considering that we use pregenerated characters and we don't know in advance who will be playing. It would make an interesting stand-alone game, however.

[Mr. Handy]

Wow, that was fast! Thanks for posting up in Through, and don't worry about the delay or Invisible Castle being down. The M-24 only malfunctions on a 100, so that roll of 97 was just a very bad miss. I'll update Through later today, probably this afternoon.

[welsh]

We actually did allow players to pretty much play themselves at NMA, but it didn't work out.

Two reasons-
(1) No one really plays themselves, but the person they wish they were.
(2) We needed a structure which restricted free play roleplay- or cooperative story writing.

That's one of the reasons I got frustrated with RP at NMA and moved here. We needed a set of constrictive rules that kept players constrained, trapped, in circumstances not of their choising.

When I first came here there were few campaigns and I was involved with most as a player. Most of them crapped out. I stuck with Lure because the game was the most interesting- but then the admin crapped out and I took it over a few months later with the hope that he'd eventually return. He was a Brit soldier or something, and he never came back (hope nothing bad happened). Anyway the Cults of Cairo campaign grew simply because I needed something to fill the space and figured it would play as a nice prelude to some of the bigger "canned campaigns".

Zombie Apoc was created to impose a more constrained system. A lot of the regular role players didn't dig it and dropped out. I was really sad to see Zoe leave.

Yes, Handy, I agree. Zerging is a potential problem. As is time. Too much time at Urban is eating away at time better spent on more important things. I am trying to keep my characters spread out- but its kind of difficult. Already a few have levelled up, although my favorite- Harvey the Roach- is still struggling. I may play it that characters turned into Zed just stay zombies and let them die off.

[Mr. Handy]

It would be difficult to have a game where people play themselves for those reasons. Even in tabletop roleplaying, where you can assess many of the other players' stats personally to keep them honest (not that they'd necessarily lie deliberately, but a lot of people have higher opinions of themselves than is sometimes warranted), there are still problems.

It is a shame Zoe didn't stick around. It probably was that she was more used to freeform and it was difficult for her to adjust to a system of fixed rules.

With Urban Dead, you should probably just cut it down to a couple of characters and keep metagaming to a minimum (that eats up more time than playing). If your characters get killed, you do have options. You can go to a revive point, and it's generally easy to get a quick revive unless the area is swarming with zombies (even for notorious PKers!). You can just let the character stay dead. You can also play as a zombie (until someone combat revives you), which can be fun too. I always get my two Malton characters revived promptly, but with my Monroeville character that wasn't an option, so I played him as a zombie and got to see how the other half lived. The whole game changed when they made Headshot a permakill there, though, and we had to constantly run and hide to avoid getting picked off, using hit and run tactics to take down humans and hoping they would stand up as zombies. A lot of Monroeville zombies are just staying down after being killed bu non-headshots and letting the humans kill each other, but I always got back up once I had 50 AP. I still managed to last a while and kill a grand total of 15 humans before I got put down for good.

[SuAside]

Two reasons-
(1) No one really plays themselves, but the person they wish they were.

well, obviously. if you wanted to be yourself and shoot stuff, you'd just go to the range, wouldn't you?

which is why i said a modified version. hell, you couldn't even play yourself if you wanted to... your self-image is by definition different from your true self.

(2) We needed a structure which restricted free play roleplay- or cooperative story writing.

nothing keeps you from playing something kinda like yourself (the bonus being you actually know what you're doing... if i play an archeologist i'm just pissing in the wind tbh), with those strict rules applied?

He was a Brit soldier or something, and he never came back (hope nothing bad happened).

chances of that are rather slim. i just think his priorities shifted a whole lot. that tends to happen to a lot of people and i certainly wouldnt find that weird for a soldier.

[welsh]

Yes, probably. But to be honest, I really did want to start a different campaign- a modern/delta green beginning with an art theft and then a chance to recover lost antiquities and then a race to stop the end of the world... Oh well.

Lure has been fun. It's nearly half-way there. Three characters are taking a big detour, the others are racing off to either Giza or Port Said.

One of the things about both Lure and Zombie Apoc is that the campaigns are very free form. In zombie apoc you have a small group that have a mission, but most of the rest of the characters are just trying to get by. In Lure, they have a rather convoluted mystery to work out and bad guys trying to whack them, but generally speaking the enemy is unknown. The tentacled beast in the well was quite a lot of fun. Most CoC campaigns have a pretty clear direction and one clue leads to another, there's a progression plus things are happening around you as well. Time moves very quickly. In contrast, we're pretty much on the beggining of Day 2 on Lure (and its only been 2 1/2 years!) and in zombie apoc, its still around mid-day. So these are pretty condensed games.

As for Urban Undead- a lot of my characters have made it to level 2 or 3 by now. A few are still struggling. One is currently in Ft Creedy and its under seige. Another is waiting for a revive in Pegton- and the zeds are going West to the base. My dedicated zombie keeps getting head shot! But I am spreading them out around the city. The one thing about UD is.... its kind of pointless or a game about joining or aligning to groups. Its like a big internet social party around a theme of zombie killing.

Why? Well there is no existential challenge. At the individual- If you die, you can be reborn as a zombie, and then revived as a character. Otherwise, its about ego- your ability to collect supplies, kill others, get skills in order to.... get more XP? Alternatively, you join groups that try to govern territory, interact with other groups, provide services, punish deviants and socialize = its a social party.

Honestly, I think creating some form of existential challenge- if your a survivor, you can headshot a zombie for a permanent kill. If you're a zombie you can tear a survivor, limb from limb- for a permanent survivor.

Otherwise, UD is about ego and socializing.

In contrast- Zombie Apocalypse kicks its ass.