New Setting: After the Fall?

[Dasquian Belargic]

Some mood music...
CAEUnn0HNLM

On December 21st 2012 at precisely 00:33 GMT, the world as we know it ended.

From deep in space – from an unknown point of origin – a beam of blinding light sheared through the heavens at struck the Earth. Though it's initial point of impact was in Africa, the effects of the beam were felt worldwide.

Three hundred and thirty million people were simply gone. Vanished from their beds, their homes, their work places; as whole families or as individuals, they were – are – gone.

For those who remained – suddenly bereft of their families, their children – the time to grieve was short. The light gave as much as it took, and soon the streets of cities all over the world were full of confusion and anger as people of all ages began to demonstrate abilities beyond the realm of human understanding or found their bodies somehow transformed into forms awe-inspiring or grotesque. At least, that was the only way that they could explain the appearance of the bizarre creatures now walking among them.

For some, the light purified and cleansed away disease and illness; for others, it inflamed their sickness and soon unstoppable waves of virulent plagues began to decimate entire cities. Some say that even the dead stirred in their graves.

What's left of Earth is a fractured, confused mess. Some governments – or corporations – were quick to react and create high-security quarantine zones, whilst others lost complete control of their people to rioting and anarchy.

Groups both large and form small formed, banding together amid the wreckage to fight against the rising chaos. Rallied by religion, by fear, by anger, by their new-found powers, by suspicion or greed, by hope and hopelessness alike.

The world as we know it ended. Now it's time to start again.



***


Anyone interested in exploring this GenRP idea? :)

I suppose the plot would revolve around the different factions that have risen up as a result of the change in the world, people coming to terms with their new lives / powers, people trying to understand what has happened to the love-ones that they 'lost' and so on.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I'm up for it. I need some posts in current RPs though, unless DC is dead and I don't know it yet? :ohno

[Captain Untouchable]

This sounds like an awesome idea, though I have absolutely no idea where to start in terms of cooking up characters / groups / etc. Did you have any ideas yet on the kinds of groups that might form, or the kinds of powers that people might have?

[Dasquian Belargic]

A few thoughts on groups that might come out of a situation like this would be...

A private security firm or government military annexing a portion of land, creating a quarantined zone where people are very protective of their seclusion from the rest of the world.

Some kind of religious movement, who think that the Rapture has occurred. Or a group who thinks that people were abducted by aliens.

Anti-powers activists. People who do have powers banding together to form some kind of elitist faction.

I didn't have specific thoughts on powers. I was just figuring it could be almost anything that people wanted it to be, since the source of the powers is a mystery (for now!)

[Hector Hall]

This reminds me a little of The 4400. One of the movements that show spawned was a kind of commune of people with powers living together and using them for mutual benefit. Something like that might work.

It makes me think of Dark Angel, too. We need a shady eugenics group that forces Jessica Alba to wear tight pants.

[Dragon]

I, similarly, think this is a sweet idea, but really don't know where I'd start. I think narrowing the scope would be a big help in terms of generating characters and plots. The premise is global, but we would likely need a regional focus, like LA for Mutants Unite, or Gotham for DC.

I like Jace's commune idea as a starting point. A small cluster of humanity trying to preserve order and common decency in the middle of a wasteland of anarchy and oppression. Which could be a literal wasteland, patrolled by bandits and military/paramilitary forces, or perhaps an Orwellian regime maintaining control by any means necessary. It could even be as simple as a refugee camp with the area still in a state of crisis. The worldwide impact may not be immediately apparent to the characters.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Does anyone have a preference for geographical setting?

I'd say somewhere different to where we have located the Mutant RPs, just for varieties sake :)

[Dragon]

Are you saying you don't want an enormous, privately funded school for children with powers? :mischief

If we want a post-apocalyptic wasteland, we could use the American Southwest, maybe with Texas to the East and California to the West as competing military-economic powers (and VERY different cultures/political makeups, which could be interesting).

If we wanted to get out of the States, we could look for a British Isles setting for a change, though I know Droo and Jace had designs on an Orwellian plot arc for the UK in Mutants, Unite. Alternately, we could land anywhere in a Balkanized Europe.

At the risk of cribbing Peter Jackson's style, South Africa also occurred to me. It could be near the epicenter of the event, and what world governments remain could have sent forces in to seal off the area and study it, trampling the locals in the process. Of course, of the three, that's the country I know the least.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I like all of those ideas. I'd probably go for either the American Southwest or the UK, or maybe both, with the potential for characters to travel elsewhere (e.g. to investigate Africa) as international travel becomes viable again.

[Amos Iakona]

The American Southwest makes sense to me, though we might want to be careful about Fallout overlap.

My knowledge of America isn't great, but isn't most of America's farming in the Midwest (Kansas / etc)? It might be interesting to see society dividing along the lines of industry/wealth/etc. California might have to use it's wealth to buy everything, while Texas trades oil for grain from Kansas, etc. Kind of a giant post-apocalyptic game of Settlers of Catan.

[Dragon]

Not just food - the Southwestern states, notably Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and California, are dependent on other states for water, since their populations use more than their land can produce. That's already a source of political tension among the western states. In an apocalyptic setting, I could see that escalating into military action if things get really bad.

Texas would probably have the easiest time forming an independent state (some of its residents already think they'e be better off that way). They have plenty of farmland, industrial infrastructure, and a strong military presence, whereas California is much more dependent. I'd actually see California being more aggressive and expansionistic, with Texas being more isolationist and xenophobic.

I do like the Catan comparison. The sheep must flow!

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Now I want to RP a post-apocalypse cattle drive to California. :D

[Dasquian Belargic]

Does anyone have ideas for a character they might like to play, if we were to set it in California, Texas, etc?

Also, just to clarify: I don't envisage this being like the 'post apocalypse' as seen in Fallout. The 'event' which altered the world has happened very, very recently. Many places in the world would probably be in crisis mode, and whilst there will have been impacts on technology - I imagine a collapse of world media, plus probable damage to communication technology - I don't imagine people 'living in the past' (a la Fallout) just yet.

Does that make sense? Obviously this is all open to interpretation. I am just wary of starting anything that mirrors Fallout, because my initial inspiration for this was grounded very much in a modern day setting that is not a post-nuclear wasteland.

[Dragon]

Sure, I was just airing ideas. If this is a recent event, it would make sense to walk back a ways from the sort of conflict I was describing. And I definitely don't want to dominate this discussion, since I'm not sure if I'll even be able to participate.

If I do, I'm going to be much more interested in playing somebody with feet on the ground trying to survive rather than somebody in a position of administrative authority. I prefer writing a small-scale focus to large-scale. So I'd still lean toward the refugee camp/commune idea, or even a disaster-stricken community awaiting relief, like New Orleans after Katrina. And that could work just as well in the UK as in the US. The appeal of the US for me, besides familiarity, is that there can be more of a sense of isolation given the scale of the land.

Here's a crazy and mostly unrelated idea... a cruise ship in international waters loses power and communications during the event and has to limp along with a depleted crew and panicky passengers, some of whom develop powers? If there's any interest in that idea, it could progress independently of any other storylines until the ship finally makes it to a civilized port.

[Vince]

Now I want to RP a post-apocalypse cattle drive to California. :D

If I do anything with this, it'll be a cattle drive. That idea is simply amazing.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Here's a crazy and mostly unrelated idea... a cruise ship in international waters loses power and communications during the event and has to limp along with a depleted crew and panicky passengers, some of whom develop powers? If there's any interest in that idea, it could progress independently of any other storylines until the ship finally makes it to a civilized port.

That sounds like a good 'pilot' story to function as an introduction to the world at large. Start off with the characters on this isolated cruise and when they come back onto land, it could branch off into whatever else. But it would give us a good, tense starting point!

[Dee]

That sounds amazing. Not sure why watching Lockout inspired me to this setting, but it did.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I'd like to make a suggestion: how about we try this with each of us only have one character? Or a maximum of two characters. I'm keen to keep this tightly focused on an interesting group, and I think limiting ourselves like this might be a good way to ensure that we have an interesting, varied group!

[Mara Tallen]

Jenny, I think that's a perfect idea. Personally, I'm going with one.

[Droo]

I love the cruise ship idea and, like Jenny said, it could potentially serve as an excellent introduction to the characters. And in that circumstance, the situation facilitates the mingling of characters from all walks of life, rather than them all happening to be living in the same area. Also, the idea of these unfortunate souls departing on their holibobs one day, only to endure the cruise from hell, and then at last dock in a strange new world is pretty awesome. Where it can go from there is anyone's guess.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Now I want to RP a post-apocalypse cattle drive to California. :D

If I do anything with this, it'll be a cattle drive. That idea is simply amazing.

:D! Glad you like.

I am game for starting on a cruise ship (coming into port in the Gulf?). I'll have my chick be on vacation, she's from a ranch in Texas, and then once she finally gets home we could do the drive at some point. Maybe?

[Genesis]

So would the ship be a microcosm of what happens to the world? Like ten percent disappear, another ten percent get really sick and the others get powers/grotesque? I guess that would mean everyone gets sick, technically, just some get better.

Edit: this is Holly >_>

[Dasquian Belargic]

Not everyone would get sick. Some people would be completely unchanged and unaffected.

Do we want to set up an establishing scene of who these people are before the event happens? It would be a good way of providing contrast to how they appear and act after / if they change :)

[Genesis]

Perhaps it's a fancy dinner on board so we mingle for a bit before disaster strikes? A week into a two week cruise?

[Dasquian the Elf]

^ This was what Droo and I discussed earlier.

Based on the time the event hits, it would be about 10:30pm and we'd be out in the middle of the ocean, on the way back from South America to Florida. Everyone would be at some dinner/party when everything... changed :uhoh

There would be some time before we got back to port, allowing time for the initial panic on land to decrease some and of course for all of us on board to freak out plenty.

We also discussed that we think it would be cool if we did not reveal a lot about our characters OOC, in the way that we normally do, and instead allowed their histories and such to unfold IC. Make it all more mysterious!

[Genesis]

Sounds good to me. So stop asking me about my character! ;)

[James Bermondsey]

I hope that there are young, attractive lady masseurs on this boat. I may not be able to feel anything from my waist down, but that doesn't mean nobody else should.



:mischief

[Droo]

http://www.sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23134

Thread's up. Sorry about the wait.

[Genesis]

Hooray! :D

[Dasquian Belargic]

Great posts so far everyone :)

If everyone is okay with the idea, I'd like to propose that we each have two posts before the event hits. Just to give a little glimpse into the 'status quo' is, without going into too much detail.

[Droo]

I'm good with that. Since we're pretty much soloing our intro posts anyway, if people want to include more, they can always just write longer posts. :)

[Captain Untouchable]

I know that a lot of us either dislike or can't be bothered with keeping wiki pages up to date. However, with us revealing information about our characters a tiny piece at a time, it's going to be super-important to make sure all of that stuff is written down, just in case someone doesn't read that particular thread, doesn't remember every single post that we ever write, etc.

Would it make life easier if one person kept the wiki up to date on everyone's behalf? I have the free time for that, and it'll make it much easier to keep tabs on what has been updated and what hasn't: the alternative is that with too many cooks working on the same broth we may end up with both putting salt in not realising that the other has, neither putting the carrots in because they assume the other one has, the stock cube getting knocked down the side of the oven because the cooks were focusing on something else, etc.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I'm not going to make a wiki for this roleplay, to be honest, and I won't be reading anyone elses wiki entries for their characters for this story. I want my character to learn things about people/places/organisations solely by interacting with them. I am trying to keep the amount of stuff that I know OOC down to a minimum.

But that's just me :)

[Droo]

I'm not exactly sure how you'd propose going about that but it sounds like quite an undertaking. Would your suggestion involve writing character wiki pages or summaries of the threads themselves?

Right now, with the setting in its infancy, and with the proposal in place to keep OOC knowledge of characters deliberately obscure, I don't really see the need for something like this right now, or more to the point, in the near future. As it stands, I don't see this becoming overly complicated, what with our small cast of characters. Any niggling questions could always be directed to the roleplayer. I'm not totally against the idea, I do like the wiki a lot, but as things stand with this new setting, I don't think it's something we need to be concerned with at the moment.

[Peter McCoy]

...it's going to be super-important to make sure all of that stuff is written down, just in case someone doesn't read that particular thread, doesn't remember every single post that we ever write, etc.

The most likely threads you won't read are the ones your character isn't in. And if they aren't involved in it, then the IC information would be unknown to them, so when you ar eunable to refer to said info in the future, thats perfectly fine since your character never found it out to begin with.

And BTW I will be in on this, just haven't decided on a "thing" yet. Plus I'm pondering over The Bat so mneh! :p

[Captain Untouchable]

My reservation is that we're going to make this setting extremely difficult for people to join in the future. We're making it really tricky for people to know what sorts of characters there are, what voids there are that they could conceivably fill, and so on. Yes, people can ask if they need to... but we could also just as easily write things down. No one is going to need an in-depth encyclopaedia, but I don't see the harm in a few simple bullet-point pages to make people's lives easier. I'm not just talking about characters either.

I seem to be the only one worried about though, so ho-hum.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

The activity level is tiny, we can count active RPers on our two hands, so no, I am not overly worried about people suddenly showing up and not being able to talk to someone else and figure out where to jump in.

Peter post as Batman :shakefist

Edit: cruise ship disaster underway right now, read for awful ideas of what to have happen in the RP http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/12/travel/cruise-ship-fire/index.html?hpt=tr_c1

[Amelia Murray]

I don't know why I took such a long time to post to this :whaa but I just did.

[Blues]

If it is still open to join, this role play sounds like it could use more Proto Man.

[Dasquian Belargic]

BUMP

would anyone object to me repurposing/tweaking this idea slightly?

With the resurgence in interest in MU, I was thinking that the cause of the weird event might be mutant based and localised to the cruise ship. Specifically, Francoise Dupont is on board the ship and causes a shift in planes so that the passengers basically become alternate reality, mutant versions of themselves. So people who were 'mundane' before are now mutants, and some people just... go poof and don't exist at all, because they don't exist in the alternate reality.

Does that make sense? Does anyone have any major objections?

Here's our original passenger list: http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?23132-After-the-Fall-Cruise-Passenger-List

And our thread: http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?23134-Prologue-Come-the-Fall (which we can always continue?)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

No objections. If you want to continue the thread, I am in.

[Droo]

I honestly don't know whether or not I can commit the time to this, as much as I'd like to, and the last thing I'd want to do is leave anyone waiting on me. The setting and my character appeal to me, so there is interest, but I'm just not sure. I have no objection to the changes, of course, although I'm a bit confused about something: has the ship and its passengers been shifted into another reality entirely, or has the ship and its passengers merely been affected by an alternate reality imprint, so to speak, meaning they would be alternate reality versions of themselves (if at all they existed in the alternate reality) but in their own world?

[Dasquian Belargic]

The second option.

So they continue to exist in the world they were in to begin with. Some people who weren't mutants before would come mutants. Maybe some were secretly mutants and now they aren't - or maybe their mutation has become much more physically apparent! Lastly, some people just cease to exist.