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I'm planning an AU game set in the Last of Us world, but planning on it being an honest-to-god survival-horror format with a heavy emphasis on exploration and IC consequences. It takes place concurrently with the LOU game (20 years after the outbreak). A week before gamestart, the quarantine zone everyone had been living was overrun by infected and all survivors were forced to blindly flee into the wilderness. After wandering hopelessly for a week, they come upon a suburban stretch outside of a larger city. Characters must explore, hunt for food/supplies, and attempt to make this new area inhabitable. Can they make it? Will they work together? Or will they all backstab each other?

Everything characters do and do not do will have consequences that will alter events positively or negatively. Thus player plots are a big thing as they can influence the direction of the entire game. Of course, one person can also screw everything up.

-Community based
-Prose
-No network
-No powers
-AU (and people can be made any age)
-4:1 day ratio (though this can change after game opening depending on player pace)
-Permanent Character Death

Characters can either die or become infected (at which point, you can play out being infected). Players who have their characters die as part of certain plot events will be exempt from having to write samples if they app in a new character.

Already have most of the mechanics regarding how this would all work figured out, but still need to work on details like maps. And this probably wouldn't be ready for another few months. I'm on the lookout for co-mods though if anyone's interested.

you the anon from last time? I want this desperately. I don't know if I can help mod yet but I would definitely be up for helping where I can.

Yup, this is the same anon. I'm working on this slowly but I've definitely decided I want to go through with it. This is my sock if you want to PM me when you have time. Even if you can't mod, having someone who can offer a second opinion and general feedback regarding mechanics would be a huge help.

Anyone else who might be interested in modding or other discussion can pm this, too.

4:1 sounds like a horrible idea. Barely a week would pass each month? No thanks. What is the reasoning behind that if I can ask?

I don't have my heart set on that ratio and I was fully expecting it to change anyway. If it's really that horrible an idea from the outset, it can be changed before anything even starts, no problem.

I was leaning more toward a longer ratio partially because I wanted to give people plenty of time to do things within a day/night. But I have to admit another part has to do with prose rp generally being slower. I'm not sure if it's just that prose rpers tend to be slower or if it's the prose format itself or what. Either way, I wanted to allow a bit for that, which is why I was planning to just wait and see how the playerbase is doing first before changing it.

What do you think would work for this, anon? I admit 4:1 is pretty lengthy but I really hesitate to have it 1:1.

Personally, I like the idea of a 1 week : 1 month ratio, because it allows things to be resolved effectively before starting new threads. It's important to make sure you provide a fair amount of structure from the modly side of things if you're moving at a slow IC:OOC ratio, though; threats, needed missions (scavenging, zombie hunting, scouting, etc) OOC dates of IC events, etc.

Prose RP really does move quite a bit slower OOCly, and action-heavy games need to move fast ICly. 4:1 sounds doable to me.

4:1 sounds doable to me too. I wouldn't go any less than 3:1, at the shortest.

People keep harping on how much faster rations contribute to slice-of-life, too, since it's harder to resolve things at 1:1 or 2:1. It would be interesting to see some proof-of-concept on that front.

So if a person gets seriously injured, they'll basically never heal for the remainder of their entire stay at the game. Relationships will also never really be that close even after months and months of play.

I mean, 4:1 is just really, really steep to me.

Honestly, I think serious injury should be a big thing in a game with permadeath. With regards to growing close to other characters, stress, tense life-or-death situations, and so on can speed the process significantly beyond what you'd expect in a lower-stress, calm lifestyle.

That said, those are both normal drawbacks for a high ic:ooc ratio game. It's more suited for action over relationship development, as opposed to 1:1 or 2:1, which do encourage relationship development and SOL stuff over high-tension action scenarios.

Basically it depends on what you want out of a game, but to me, this concept seems to be better suited for the high ratio side of things.

-- Due to frustration issues for the players, it might be a good idea to include some medical equipment/scavenged stimulants/etc that could get people back on their feet for anything short of near-fatal injury after 1 - 2 weeks (or 1 - 2 months of ooc time spent with that character doing more social/at-home type of threads as opposed to action-y out and about stuff.)

(also I may be arguing with you but I really do think you're bringing up a lot of useful points! thank you, I appreciate your engaging on this ♥)

Everyone is bringing up some really great points and I'm loving the discussion on this point. I'm mostly staying back from this so the discussion can continue, but regarding your point via medical stuff:

It's definitely going to be a possibility for people to find medical stuff (both supplies and instructional things) to make it possible to recover from injuries. But those items can only be found if people are looking. And if the ones who find it are generous enough to give it to those who need rather than keeping it for themselves. Which I think could lead to some great IC conflict, depending on the characters involved! The supplies aren't going to be distributed like candy though, so it's going to be important to decide "Do we really want to use this *now* or save it for another time?"

tl;dr - Post-apocalypse sucks.

I think it's important to note, in regards to relationship development, this game is AU so some relationships can be defined in advance or planned out so that they make sense given the amount of time passing.

Why not have the introduction log play out the quarantine zone being overrun?

I hadn't actually considered that! Personally, I really love that idea, but I wonder how well that would play out afterward.

After escaping into the wilderness, people would have originally been wandering for a week before managing to find where the majority of the game is going to be taking place. But if the ooc/ic day ratio stays long, that would be a long time of people playing "wandering through the woods". It was going to be a week because, by that point, people will either figure it's far enough from the quarantine zone to be semi-safe or else they'll be too tired and bordering on starvation to care. ...If people are playing it out though, it could always be a little shorter than a week but I still wonder how well that would fly.

On the other hand, if that's played out, each player at game start would have the privilege of deciding on their own what supplies ad weapons the characters have on hand/what they'll take with them rather than starter packs like I was considering. And playing out the actual finding of the town could be wonderful.

Or actually, instead of using the regular time passing system, the actual act of traveling through the woods could just be one big post where people scene in threads like a meme. That could just be assumed to take place over the course of an entire week. Could leave that up for a while before finally saying people have been wandering enough and they can start finding the town and scening normally. That actually solves everything.

A post just for the traveling could work. Like if you did that and had the infection already making the situation in the qz look dire, it'd be action, survival and having to move on. It would also skip a lot of the SOL introductions if everyone is just trying to escape and they end up escaping with strangers.

That's very true. It's also a better tone setter for the game as a whole if people get to play out what they're supposed to be so afraid of rather than just being told. I'm really loving this. Thanks, anon!

Had another idea!

What if characters were split into two groups that would end up fighting for supplies or maintain an uneasy truce? Each one thinks the other is the hunters/raiders. So they would have to contend with the others and the infected still in the new city.

I was actually thinking of having two "groups" within the initial QZ group, actually. People apping in would have the opportunity to app both civilians and the military personnel that had been in charge of the QZ lockdown (since some of them had to be able to make it out too). There's enough dissonance between both groups that I can't really imagine either side trusting and working well with the other from the outset. If enough military people app in, they might even decide they're all going to be in charge of the new place and start trying to give orders and organize.

The two separate groups from two separate places is also a really good idea, though. Something like that might not be good from the beginning since everyone's going to be starting from the same place, but maybe further in, people apping can have the option to app as part of an alternate group. It's a big place, so they could've easily come from a different route and been living in another part without realizing the others were there.

...Or maybe they found it first and had already settled into another part of the town when these assholes decided to move in and start taking supplies.

how would apping and reserves work?

I'm not sure what you're asking, exactly. Do you mean what sort of things would be expected in apps? If so:

Aside from the basic info, people would be constructing an AU history, where their characters had been born and raised in this universe. The history should consist of the character's life up until gamestart, ie when the QZ is overrun. This part doesn't have to be horribly detailed as long as it makes sense and paints a clear picture of what the character's been through and how it made them who they are.

The outbreak happened 20 years before gamestart, so all characters about 23 and younger would have basically no memories of what life was like before and have solely been raised in this new lockdown era. People will be able to make their characters as old or as young as they want as long as they will be mentally and physically able to handle the environment. It'll be noted on the app, but severely young or severely old age choices will need to have a sentence or two of justification. (So yes, the character who is 18 in canon could be played as being 13 or 32 or 58 if you wanted.)

AU personalities will be the most important section. Obviously, personalities will be deviating from their canon counterparts, so they're going to be different. But even with differences, they should still be recognizable as being "that character if they had been raised in this setting." So Kairi from Kingdom Hearts shouldn't be acting like Hannibal Lector, but her behavior should make sense within the context of the history written for her. Hope that makes sense.

Aside from that, just a thing on what skills they know for reference's sake and a prose sample. The only canon information needed would be a wiki link.

Regarding reserves: There will be reserves, yes. Since this is an AU game, there wouldn't be app challenges since judging one AU as being "better" than another would be really subjective. Many wildly different variations of a character could work. So it'll be a first come first serve thing if one doesn't have a reserve.

Kind of rambled for a bit but hopefully I answered your question. If not, let me know.

Oh, and as stated above, people can choose whether characters are civilians living in the QZ or members of the military in charge of guarding it. There'll be reference pages for the sake of people who've never played LOU so they'll know what the state of things were, what military/civilian relationships are like, general infected info, etc.

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