I'll have a post in a bit - might be 4 more hours from now - hard to get enough time at work to write anything, and my turns are always to much typing cause I've got that to much type disease or something
I love the picture! So many wonderful details. I'm especially admiring the huge-looking pile of food, that's gotta be enough to last 10 people at least 3.5 days without needing short rations for anyone
I'd say NPC the silent ones, or since they really haven't 'been revealed' to their groups as a whole, maybe allow people who want into the game to adopt as their own - as long as any differences are minor and don't contradict what's already happened in play, then it's as if it hadn't changed at all?
Edited to add:
Is it OK for us to talk to each other as the turns progress, if our characters are in the same location and not otherwise occupied in a way that prevents conversation? Utopians especially, we came into the game with differing, possibly incompatible plans, limits, and motivations and we kinda need to get sorted out what we think of each other, what we think of how each other thinks and what each other wants, and how we are either going to compromise and cooperate, agree to disagree and aimiably separate, if some of us are going to try and trick and destroy some of the others, or whatever else actually ends up happening between us all.
Of course only our OP can answer for the NPCs - but each player can really only answer for themself, right?
Assuming our continued conversation makes sense and is OK -
imp-Jane Andrews actions
Jane continues to focus on keeping the conversation going, trying to encourage friendly interaction between everyone there, especially those who might be speaking less. She nods and smiles a lot, meeting everyone's gaze that she can, and appears to really appreciate Ruth's comment about power and Hoover Dam.
"I have fewer questions about the plans that involve leaving the city - that was how my thoughts were going and I think I have a sense of what is likely to go wrong or be important in trying to make that sort of move work, if we decide to try that, which I'm not convinced would be the best idea at all. So if I'm not asking you a lot of questions, please don't think that's because I've dismissed your ideas already - I just don't have as many questions about them because they were closer to what I was thinking."
She chuckles. "I like what John and Andrew are saying, but some of it scares me. I've got a few more questions."
"John, you mention hunting. We'd be living in this city - but getting from here to an area with prey would be dangerous and long, and then we'd have to get back here again with our catch, unless you mean hunting -in- town..."
"but there's nothing to hunt here except, well. Live and undead humans, right? I'm really scared of that path. There's also rats, a few. Maybe more over time, but I don't really like the idea of trying to eat those either. Squirrels and pigeons? I think since floods of human trash isn't ending up on the streets like it used to, we might not see as many city critters around until deer and such start moving in. That might not be until the zombies are long gone. Maybe they'll rot even as they walk or something. But could you explain more what you meant about hunting?"
"Andrew, I think I agree with almost everything you listed with the dangers, and there's probably even more than you listed, like wild animals, bad weather, and maybe some negected technologies, like nukes, power plants, chemical factories... stuff that's going to start breaking down if there's no one there maintaining it, and then flood the area around it with all kinds of problems."
"Why do you think the military has orders to kill us though, is someone with us some sort of hunted criminal or something? We look like everyone else that's still alive, right, we're just a group of people surviving as best we can? We're doing a lot better than most of the poor sods around, of course, every walking corpse is someone who didn't make it. You think the military, the police, if there's really any organization left, that they're going to be trying to destroy everyone left alive that they see?"
"I like the idea of trade, I really do. Any ideas how we're going to be able to do that? If you're right about everyone wanting to kill us, there's not going to be anyone to trade with... The only problem I see with killing raiders for bullets is that they're going to start running out of them too. If they start running out before us, why they may not live to attack us, and probably won't really try even if they do.. for sure we can't claim what they don't have. And if we start running out before anyone who has plenty.... Well, we'll need some other options for sure. There's probably a lot of choices, from medieval-like defenses, dumping hot water or oil or whatever we have... even just a chair or something from a couple stories up."
Jane shakes her head, then sums up, "I'd like to hear as many ideas as possible. Both the bad and the good, what's wrong with possible plans, what's right about them, what we can do about problems. Some problems we might not be able to do anything about, but at least we can try to see what's coming and aim for the best possible path for what we all want."