OOC-Chapter 7-The Morning After-General Discussion

[Mr. Handy]

I'm sorry for the delay in updating Gold, but I need to set up a new thread and I've run out of time. I'll try to get it done as soon as possible.

[Dave Syrinx]

No worries, doing a great job in keeping this going.

[Mr. Handy]

I'm afraid I didn't have as much time this weekend as I had hoped, and the updates are taking longer than expected. It will probably not be until next weekend when I can finally update Gold, and I also need to wait to update Deadly Mission in Sword (where Laraqua hasn't posted for Katarina in a while anyway). I also have a bunch of secrets that I haven't yet sent out, but those will have to wait too.

[Laraqua]

Anyone else watch Walking Dead?

Man, that show's so brutal it must've been co-written by Mr. Handy.

[Mr. Handy]

Thanks!

Of course I watch and love it. It reminds me so much of Zombie Apocalypse. It's funny, but back in 2008 Welsh and I were talking about making Zombie Apocalypse into a TV series.

[ImpInTraining]

I watch it on occasion, but not religiously. Just too much drama going on for my appreciation. And not the cool kind of "Oh my god... are we gonna live through this?" drama... the "I can't believe you're my wive's baby-daddy" drama. It's like a zombie flick created for the entertainment of women.

I imagine if a Zombie Apocalypse actually did happen, it'd be a lot like Walking Dead... I just don't like so much drama in my movies. I tend to immerse myself in what I watch. So if it's a real shocker, I'm on the edge of my seat - jumping at every scare practically, wincing at the gory parts. My adrenalin gets worked up and I dig it. If it's a sob story, I start feeling terrible about it, my eyes mist up, I almost feel guilty that there's nothing I can do to help. I don't need that shit. Got enough guilt trip in my life without getting it from the boob tube.

[Laraqua]

lol, it's odd that you say it's for the entertainment of women because, while I agree on one hand, the women are generally a bit useless on that movie and are expected to wash socks with only one woman doing an Annie Oakley and breaking that mould. I'm surprised No-Guns-Shirley would be a mould. I tell you, I'd be out practising how to shoot and taking turns with guard duty. Sure, folk need to get their food cooked, but it ain't clever to overly rely on anyone there as their injuries are going to eventually pile up on them and everyone needs a chore-filled holiday compared to scraping by life by the skin of your teeth. But hey, I can imagine a lot of women would prefer to be like that rather than risk their lives but I still think they'd be happy to have a gun in their hands.

I guess part of the trick is that zombies, in and of themselves, aren't considered to be that scary. It's the people you gotta fight and face that causes a lot of the problems, but I wouldn't mind if they were a bit less dickish and a bit more focus. I've always been interested in the survival aspects of zombies. Like, getting food and medicine (there is some of that) and putting up security and then the security being overwhelmed and having to react to that. Of course, I was a huge fan of it up until the last couple episodes where I started finding them all a bit unlikeable due to the drama - except for Darryl who's sheer survivability just makes him strangely attractive (that guy is cleverer than he looks) and Glenn (who only gets trouble when going into town when he brings folk with him).

But yeah, I'm still enjoying it but am hoping they tone down the drama a bit before they do a True Blood and make everyone so irritating and broken that I start hoping they'll die....

I know, I am terrible like that!

[ImpInTraining]

I hear ya.

Tell you what though, the way they ended last season was pretty awesome... and that shadowy figure dragging two zombies on chains behind her is one bad-ass girl if they stay true to the novel.

[SSior.27]

Ummmm yeah, I could barely get through the first season of the walking dead. Just couldn't get into it no matter how hard I tried. Still, I might go back and read the TPB of the comic eventually.

[Laraqua]

I hope the third season has more of the first half of Season 1 and the early parts of Season 2. It's more about survival, and getting supplies, and avoiding zombies. That way they don't have to make the characters all be dicks to each other anymore, because I find that hard to watch, and in the end it just leaves a show full of dicks. I mean, most of the real bullies are gone, so hopefully the group can play nice and focus on getting rid of the enemy. And I'd like to see Carol go all Andrea and arm up. And more Daryl (but not in drama way).

Explosions wouldn't go amiss, either.

[Mr. Handy]

Yeah, the first episodes were the best. The second half of Season 1 fell off from that, but Season 2 was better than those. The badass lady who showed up in the finale is giong to be awesome, I'm sure.

The part of The Walking Dead that reminds me the most of Zombie Apocalypse is that it's the living who are the real threat, as the players have learned (many the hard way). The zombies are more of an environmental hazard and the catalyst for the collapse of civilization. But there are all sorts of things that could cause that collapse, and the struggle for survival would unfold similarly regardless of the cause.

Welsh and I both like women who kick butt, and we've had our share in this game. Stephanie Bridges, who normally wouldn't be involved in combat, got to be a hero in Chapter 1 with a few well-timed impales from her pistol. Rachel Cohen hasn't fired a single shot so far, but she's probably the most badass character. She's a master of martial arts, and she used them to good effect late in Chapter 4 to prevent a shootout and bloodbath. And of course helpless-seeming Katarina took out a big bad guy with a grenade towards the end of Chapter 5. Sometimes characters can really surprise you with what they can do (with a little help from the dice).

I'm sorry I haven't been able to update for a while, but I've had a little more sleep lately (still not enough, though) and I have a 3-day weekend coming up. I'll make it a priority to finally update Gold, which has been stalled for weeks, as well as all the other active threads. I'll try to get some threads started tonight, but I probably won't get much done until tomorrow night.

[kabukiman]

I just read the comic and stopped after reading the part of the governor who was truly demented. It's a very good story but also depressing, each volume was like a punch in stomach.

[Mr. Handy]

I'm sorry for the lengthy delay, but I was finally able to update Gold and get some new threads started there. I hope to be able to keep all active threads moving at a decent pace.

[Laraqua]

Seems like the television series has been true to it then. It's about as hopeful as that moment in Sophie's Choice ... over and over and over again.

[Laraqua]

What I love about this game is how it plays with the main zombie trope which is how the methods that have worked for us as a species before work against us now.

The ideal situation other than everyone getting along is everyone getting along with the nasties. Rescue missions end with near total party kills and a general erosion of the human population. You're better off hunkering down and ignoring other people, or accepting what they sling at you, because revenge and attempts to protect others or save others' lives lead to clashes with other people and zombies and gunshots and further deaths. It adds a certain nihilism to the horror that's pretty cool.

[Mr. Handy]

Thanks! I love how that works out in this game too. Even when characters don't die, they are often horribly wounded and maimed, leaving them zombie bait and slowing down the group. Several characters have either lost or broken a leg, which often proves fatal in the end. Sally was the key exception, as she managed to survive and accomplish a great deal in spite of her broken leg. So far Ron Moore has (barely) survived the loss of his leg, but it remains to be seen how long he lasts. Only one character, Dr. Brigetta Hausmann, broke an arm back in Chapter 1, but that's not as much of an obstacle and she has managed to survive until now.

There have been a number of occasions already where rescue missions or attempts at personal revenge have ended in disaster. Even the rescue of Kathryn in Chapter 3, where the only character death was her kidnapper Gardner, resulted in Gardner first blowing off one character's leg with a well-placed critical hit that miraculously didn't quite kill him. This situation later helped set up the clusterbleep at the Perkins farm up the road, where one zombie quickly became three zombies, which spelled the end for a number of characters and could have killed everyone there. I'm eager to see how the planned rescue mission in Sword plays out.

Certainly people would usually be better off setting aside their differences and working together, or even sometimes having one side surrender to the other in a conflict. One player astutely remarked in a PM that the PCs in one situation would have a better chance at survival joining forces with the bad guys, though that player's character could never do it. Similar situations to the conflicts in the game can often arise in the real world, even without zombies. War is extremely destructive and consumes many resources that might be put to better use, and even the winning side can be said to lose too. Sometimes only the people who loan money to and sell arms to the warring powers truly win. In a zombie apocalypse, where there are so few humans and most resources cannot be replenished once exhausted due to the loss of the infrastructure that civilization or what passes for it once provided, the negative effects of conflict are even more pronounced. On the other hand, if you do team up with the nasties and survive to eventually rebuild civilization, will it be one worth preserving any more?

This is one of the themes I've (not completely consciously) been exploring with this game. How far will people go to survive? Will practicality trump idealism? Will freedom be sacrificed for the sake of survival? If they could, would they even make a deal with the entities that caused the zombie apocalypse and shattered the world, or would they sooner fight to the bitter end?

[Laraqua]

I imagine, sadly enough, that there'll be more people willing to make deals with the aliens who caused this than their friend's rapist or that group who kidnapped. Samuel got ravaged, as did his friend, in a rescue operation where the survivors got whittled down through various attempts to escape and to take the lives of their captors. Brian had the right idea, but of course the tripline of 'he's raping her right now' made him make a desperate bid to escape that ended up rather timely. Of course, it wouldn't have gotten to that point without an escalation of both sides. Not to say that the players running those characters made bad decisions, they might well be the right ones, but the consequences are trouble all over. I do think that's one of the main themes of zombie stuff in general. Not all of them are about that, but oftentimes (28 Days Later) it boils down to that though in movies at least the good guys might get away because there's fewer of them to start off with and therefore killing them all off isn't an option.

[Mr. Handy]

Brian has made some good moves. Of course, running away and abandoning others can cause Sanity loss - sometimes you can't win no matter what. Brian (and Heather) didn't lose any because the rescuers happened to come, but the cavalry isn't always coming.

The Jamaicans' actions also had consequences that ultimately led to their deaths. The "smart" thing to do would have been to kill their prisoners when they got "uppity," but Lisa talked them out of it. Still, Lisa has proven that she can kill when pushed too hard. She does have some of her father in her, even though she tries to do the right thing. The poor kid is pretty messed up, though she has at least survived so far. The Marley posse also had the means to flee the area, but they believed that their location was still unknown and were reluctant to give up their base of operations and their supplies (they would not have been able to bring everything with, not even close). They had no way of knowing that the cops already knew about the warehouse or that they were still functional enough to do something about them.

The strategic choice of whether to defend a fixed location and fortify it or to stay on the move is related to that decision, and it's another thing that characters need to decide about in order to survive against the zombies - and the other humans. The Rough Riders in Chapter 3 believed in mobility as the best defense, and while most of them were killed, it was while they were helping to secure a strongpoint. Those that survived did so because they ran like hell. There have been a bunch of situations in this game where people have tried to defend fortified positions, and it usually ends in them dying or fleeing eventually. Even in Omaha in Chapter 4, where the survivors held out against the zombie siege and were victorious, they still decided in the end to evacuate for health concerns. Thousands of dead bodies lying around all over the place simply aren't sanitary.

[Mr. Handy]

Unfortunately, I did not get to update the game this weekend. I'll try to do it during the week if it's at all possible. There's a chance I can do it on Tuesday, but I'm not certain.

[ImpInTraining]

Heading out to California for some work - not sure how it will effect my gaming. But feel free to NPC me if necessary.