OOC ThreadThis is the emergency broadcast system. It has been a year as of speaking since the disaster. The disaster has caused widespread chaos. We have won the war. However, society has become destabilized in the process. In order to save our country, we have disposed of the civilian government and initiated martial law for the duration. We will be issuing orders to the civilian populace from here on out. The situation is under control. We are beginning a return to normality.
Please proceed to a nearby green zone. These are towns that have been cleared of bandits and other threats, and have been secured by military forces. You will be assigned a home for you and your family, and will enjoy a standard of living incomparable to living out in the yellow or red zones. You will be assigned citizenship papers that you must have on you at all times. If you do officially sanctioned jobs, you will be given a ration card. You may spend these cards when the army visits every week to hand out rationed materials.
There are only a few rules to living within green zones. Follow them, or face the punishments.
1. Do not kill or injure a fellow citizen of the green zone, or a soldier of any rank. They are your friends, and you should not hurt your friends.
2. Do not gain more food then supplied by your ration cards. Scavenging, racketeering, and thievery are unfairly putting yourself above your fellow citizens.
3. Do not spread deviant thoughts or support revolutionary movements. We are trying to help you. You should repay us in kind by trusting us.
That is all. Please proceed to your nearest green zone. We will feed you. We will house you. We will protect you. We are promising you a better life: who are you to refuse?
What is this?This is a forum game, inspired by Metro 2033 and the Road, that isn't about winning at all. This is a forum game that's all about losing in a lot of ways. You are a citizen after the end of the world, in a town that's under the harsh jackboot of the military. There's too little food, too many people around, and not enough jobs to get rations. In short, the world is fucked and so are you.
What makes this game unique? Well, a few things. One, this will be arranged in rounds. These rounds last until every player but one is dead or might as well be. After a round has finished, you can switch characters if you want to try something new, and I may swap players out for waitlisters. Another thing is that this game will alternate between GMs, like a succession game. Want to do a forum game but don't want the trouble of starting one and potentially burning out on it? Just post that you want to be put on the GM list (You can be a player and a GM, though obviously not in the same round) and I'll put you on it. When your turn comes up, you can start GMing right away.
Now, here's how the game's going to operate.
Combat & Health
Health is a measure of how much of a distance you are from total collapse, followed by death. It's not just a measure of your physical well-being, but how much you can take the pain, which is why painkillers do as much as bandages. Human characters have 10 health, dogs have five, particularly endurable mutants have fifteen. If you find armor, you can add a few "armor points" that will absorb damage for you, but you will take damage when the armor is destroyed.
Combat is the primary way you lose health, apart from accidents. When you fight another creature, both you and the attacker roll. Usually, the fight will be over in a single roll. However, force adds to the amount of dice rolled for someone, and if there's someone backing you up then you get more dice from his force. Here's how the rolls go.
1-3: You lose five health points.
4-6: You lose three health points.
7-9: You lose one health point.
10: You retreat from the area, causing you to lose a random recently picked up object in the retreat.
11-13: The enemy retreats from the area, and you gain a random item from their person.
14-16: The enemy loses one health point and stops attacking you.
17-19: The enemy loses three health points and will not attack you again for a while.
20 (For players): The enemy is killed, allowing you to loot their corpse. (For attackers) The enemy loses five health points.
Crafting & Scavenging
When crafting, you need two objects and way of attaching them. This can vary based on what exactly you're making: a hammer would do as a way of attaching nails to a baseball bat, and you'd need a welder if you wanted to metal objects to be fused. You can craft items and do other things as well.
If you want to craft something like a large machine or a car, you will need more ingredients and a base to work with. If you're making a water filter, you'd need a grille, assorted tubes, a plastic bottle, and a box to hold it all in. So, machines are much more complex then just tying a brick to a baseball bat.
When you wish to scavenge, you can choose to scavenge generally (just looking around for anything useful) or look around specifically for something. You may not always get what you want with the former, but the latter will get negative modifiers if you're looking in a place it's not likely to be found (like searching a house for a rocket launcher or looking around a junkyard for a working portable television). You can scavenge for regular and small items. Regular items are shovels, pistols, handheld computers, and other useful items. Small items are bullets, morphine syringes, food, and other single-use items.
Scavenging Results for Regular Items
1-2: You uncover a booby trap or fall prey to an environmental hazard. You will get a roll to dodge, but if you fail you will get one point of damage.
3-6: You find nothing but useless junk.
7-9: You find a broken item. It could be fixed, but it's useless for now. If you were looking for firearms, this would be a pistol that's been half-buried in sand for the past year that's rusted all to hell.
10-12: You find a used item. It won't work nearly as well as a regular item, but it'll do for now. If you were looking for firearms, this would be a zip gun that's liable to blow up in your hand if you look at it the wrong way.
13-15: You find an ordinary item. It's not the best it could be, but it'll do. If you were looking for firearms, this would be a civilian home protection pistol.
16-17: You find an above-average item. It's pretty good, in the upper tiers, but still not the best. If you were looking for firearms, this would be a police brand pistol.
18-19: You find an excellent item. This item does it's job, and does it well. If you were looking for firearms, this would be an army pistol with a laser sight attachment.
20: You find a brilliant item. Wowee zowee, you got lucky here! If you were looking for firearms, this would be a Hydrogen-Fed Fusion Blaster Mark X-86.
Scavenging Results for Small Items
1-2: You uncover a booby trap or fall prey to an environmental hazard. You will get a roll to dodge, but if you fail you will get one point of damage.
3-9: You find nothing but useless junk.
10: You find 1 of the item.
11-12: You find 2 of the item.
13-15: You find 3 of the item.
16-17: You find 5 of the item.
18-19: You find 7 of the item.
20: You find 10 of the item.
Hunger
Hunger is a big part of the game. You have to feed yourself, or you will starve. The effects of starving are not good. The longer you go on without food, the lower your maximum health will get. After four days without eating, you will die. However, rations are supplied by the military every eight days. These rations will feed you for a day, while regular food will require you to eat three of them to feed yourself for a day.
Character Sheet
Name: What's your character called?
Bio: Give a summary of your character, both in backstory and personality, with maybe a few ideas of their appearance.
Attributes: See attributes.
Skills: See skills.
Advantages: See advantages and disadvantages.
Disadvantages: Ditto.
Attributes
Attributes are the base abilities of your character. They do not provide direct bonuses, but they allow certain rules to happen that are beneficial to you. You have three points to spend in attributes, of which there are:
Endurance: The ability to take what you get. For every point spent in Endurance, you get an extra health point.
Force: The ability to give back what you take. For every point spent in Force, you get an extra die roll in attacks.
Fortitude: The ability to withstand for at least a while longer. For every point spent in Fortitude, you get an extra day before hunger sets in.
Inspection: The ability to see things others wouldn't. For every point spend in Inspection, you will get an extra die to rolling to scavenge.
Skills
Skills are much more general then attributes. You can select any and everything as a skill, from firearms to activating particle accelerators. You will get a bonus to using this skill in certain activities. However, there are rules. The more specific a skill is, the more bonuses you get. You would only get +1 to firearms, but you would get +4 to using scoped bolt-action rifles. You get to have two skills.
Advantages & Disadvantages
Advantages are things that happened to you because of circumstance or because you earned them, they're not skills. They are physical things or events that have happened to you and either benefit you or do not. You can have one advantage, but you also need to have a disadvantage as well. You can make up your own advantages and disadvantages, but here's an example of an advantage and a disadvantage.
Advantage: Shotgun. You have a shotgun with two bullets at the start.
Disadvantage: Spouse. You have a lover who needs to be fed as well as you do, and she may die.
I will be taking five players at the start, but the GM and wait list is unlimited.
Author
Topic: The Coil: A Post-Apocalyptic Succession Forum Game. Round 1: Waitlist Unlimited! (Read 6679 times)