Geozaki
Baby Dragon
This Interest check is bare bones as I didn't want to do any major construction on the RP until I knew how much interest there would be.
This RP would be vaguely inspired by the Factions multiplayer mode in The Last of Us (Part 1). I don't intend on any of the major story beats of The Last Of Us to be included and the RP which would make it accessible to those who have never played the games before.
TLOU Factions:
For those of you either unfamiliar with The Last of Us as a whole, or just unfamiliar with the first game's multiplayer mode, here's a brief and very spoiler-free rundown. Factions puts you in the shoes of a leader of a small clan of survivors in the post-apocalyptic world of The Last of Us. It is your job to keep your clan alive, healthy and thriving. You start with a small group of people and must collect supplies to keep them alive. If you fail to gather enough supplies, the people of your clan will slowly grow hungry and/or sick and eventually die. However, if you gather enough then they stay fed, healthy and happy. (Or as happy as you can be in a post-apocalyptic world). Any excess supplies you gather are then converted into new members for your clan. As your clan grows, so do their needs and you have to keep your clan alive for as long as possible. The gameplay of Factions is primarily focused on small-scale PVP matches (generally in games of 4v4). The better you perform in these PVP matches, the more supplies you bring home to your clan. Each PVP match is counted as 1 day for your clan and your goal is to reach the highest number of days have survived.
The Basic Idea For This RP:
So how does a small PVP-focused game translate to an RP? The idea is as follows. The RP will focus on 2 or more small clans each with humble beginnings. Each clan will have to keep themselves fed, watered and generally alive. The RP will follow day-to-day life as well as the lengths to which these clans must go to survive in their harsh new world.
More In-Depth Ideas About The RP And Its Mechanics:
These are all just basic ideas of the sort of systems, mechanics and RP opportunities within this RP. So far they are just ideas and I am very welcome to suggestions.
Clans and Survivours: The focus of the RP is, of course, the people and the clans that they form. The number of clans that exist will more than likely directly correspond to the number of people who participate in the roleplay. The more RPers we have, the more scope for extra factions we would have. In the beginning, everyone would make their first characters and the clans would all be founded. (I'm thinking that each clan would likely start rather small, maybe with 3 or 4 people and enough supplies to last maybe a couple of days and very basic shelter). The aim will be that every clan starts on equal footing. Multiple characters per person will likely be encouraged, by not compulsory. There will be room for new characters to be added after the start of the RP as well.
Missions: Each clan will have to keep their supply levels as high as possible to ensure their survival. My thoughts on this are that each in-RP day we have a 'mission board' of sorts visible to all of the clans. Each objective on this board will offer different resources and the clans will have to decide which they want to go for. If an objective is only chosen by 1 clan then they can either claim the reward relatively easily or only have to face off against some of the infected if we decide to make them a component of the RP. If, however, multiple clans decide to go after the same resource, those clans will have to battle it out for the reward. This doesn't always mean there has to be violence, they could negotiate, maybe one clan gets in and out quickly enough before their rivals have the chance to get a look in, or maybe there is a bloodbath. Here is an example of some of the objectives I had in mind:
Supplies - These supplies could be food, meds, tools or other general survival supplies. Some missions may only include 1 type of supply while others may have amounts of all of them. In these missions, the clans will have to claim the supplies before the rival clan(s) do. In some cases, the supplies might all be gathered in one area and so the winner takes all, whereas in other cases the supplies might be scattered around a large area allowing for multiple clans to claim at least some of the spoils.
Survivours - Rather than new characters just being allowed to choose the faction they wish to join (as this could snowball very quickly into 1 clan massively outgrowing another without any real rhyme or reason, new characters could become marked as survivor objectives. Maybe they've been captured and are being held hostage and the team who rescues them can convince them to join their clan. I am also thinking that maybe there could be a one-use reward (Like a flare gun or a radio or something), that would allow a clan to immediately claim new characters which would be available from certain missions, but it would need some thought. I think that this sort of system could apply to both new people joining the RP and existing members who wish to make additional characters, as long as we can guarantee that if anyone has characters in multiple factions, each character would be loyal to their clan, unless there is a good in-character reason, of course.
Combat and Death: This RP would likely be very combat heavy and I feel that it would have to include death as a constant fear. When you are only thinking about your survival and the survival of your clan, people can get violent and desperate. I feel like a system for combat would need to be put in place, be it via dice rolls or something else. I wouldn't want it to become too similar to something like DND, I would still want RP to be the driving force, but for things like weapons to matter I feel like there would need to be some sort of system, especially when the death of a character is likely. As much as I would like to believe otherwise, having combat be solely based on RP outcomes is unrealistic at best, then you add to that the idea that the loser might die, and it would be difficult for anyone to just accept that. So I feel a system would need to be implemented to guide that. I haven't decided on anything but I am very open to suggestions. I also don't think death always has to be the outcome for the loser. Other options could include taking hostages, taking prisoners, coming to a diplomatic solution and so on. In some cases, death would be inevitable (say if someone was shot in the head), but in others, being defeated and surviving would also be possible, which could still lead to you being killed by your opponent, but also open up the other options.
War: War between the clans would be a fully valid option on any day. This war could be conducted in one of many ways. Maybe you send a small group of survivors to an enemy clan to raid their supplies silently, or maybe you launch a full-scale assault in an attempt to destroy them. This is something I feel would also benefit from having a system in place, but the clans would be fully open to warfare with each other. This would add the dynamic of always making sure your 'base' is as well defended as possible should you fall prey to an attack.
The Infected: The infected I feel are an optional element to the RP. They could be a constant threat on top of the other clans and make all objectives harder to varying degrees, they could sometimes choose to attach the clans, and more. Or we could decide that we would not like them to play a large role in the RP. I like the idea of them being involved as they could bring an extra dynamic, but I would understand if people disagree.
Other Notes:
- I think that every character having a fully fleshed-out CS would be important as I want this RP to focus pretty hard on the lives of the characters which can be hard if you know nothing about any of them. However, as there would always be the chance that a character might die, I wouldn't expect each character to be so detailed that you had to spend multiple days creating them (if you still wish to do this, however, I will not stop you), as long as they have enough to be characters and not forgettable NPC's I think that would be enough.
- Obviously, this RP, while likely very dark, will still be expected to comply with RPN rules.
- Clans may operate differently which will be entirely dependent on their members, maybe some might have sole leaders, while others choose a leaderless structure. Regardless, no characters will gain any 'plot armour'. A clan leader is just as vulnerable to dying as any other character, if you want a character to have added survivability, you must create it. Maybe a leader has a personal guard or gets first dibs at new weapons and armour.
- The RP will focus on both people out on missions and supply runs and the people who stay at their clan's base. So depending on who you decide your character(s) to be and what roles they occupy, you might have a more combat-heavy roleplay or a more dystopian slice-of-life type thing.
- I'm not dead set on this actually being a The Last Of Us RP, but figured I'd go with that as it was inspired by the game's multiplayer mode and the game's post-apocalyptic world.
- All of this is open to discussion, as I said before, I have no idea if this is something that anyone would be interested in so I'm only sharing my basic ideas for now.
I look forward to meeting anyone interested. If you made it this far, thanks for dealing with my disjointed thoughts and awful explanation skill lol
