Your Thoughts!

[Hurricane]

What are your thoughts on realistic survival role-play? It can be from surviving a nuclear fallout, viral outbreak, military invasion and or even natural disasters! Shoot me your thoughts and different ideas! Even tell me what your thoughts are on a survival check list!


Thanks!

 

[ShredKnives]

Thoughts? I would just think:


"Why not?" But I don't prefer to role-play in a truly realistic world. That's just me, though. My thoughts are just neutral, but generally encourage it.

 

[ARSENIC]

Anyone who hasn't thought of what they'd do in the event of some sort of horrible disaster like a nuclear or zombie apocalypse either has a terrible imagination or is completely detached from reality as a whole. But there's a difference between coming up with an imaginary contingency plan, or even dreaming about it, and making a full-fledged roleplay dedicated to it.


Most survival roleplays suffer because the fear of death is rarely something a lot of them take seriously, and that's the biggest part of it. Scrounging for food, ruining friendships and debasing yourself completely for just another week, another day to live - and while a lot of that is entertaining to watch, the whole design of roleplaying makes it difficult to play, and a fractured party often leads to a dead RP. It's far easier to play the happy little MMO-group that sticks to the party and gets by on the power of friendship and togetherness. PvP honestly only really works in free-format RPs when either the result is agreed on beforehand (such as when a player is looking to get his character dramatically killed in a blaze of glory), or it involves more cunning schemes and less open violence.

 

[ShredKnives]

Especially since combat will get a tad more difficult with the addition of new people joining in on the battle.

 

[littleboy]

Why would any one want to survive in this lousy world...

 

[ShredKnives]

@Naughtylittleboy For something better. I think your glass is half-empty.

 

[ProRPer]

A combination of all would be really interesting. But you really want to think outside of the box when it comes to survival. We all know that there are already too many zombie apocalypse and nuclear fallout RPs out there, so it would be kind of a lost cause. Also, a survival RP without story and just surviving will die down quickly. It'll be fun for characters to build houses and hunt and stuff, but is there any other interesting conflict aside from the elements?

 

[Daekra]

Survival in my opinion is important because it creates necessity which leads to critical choices that can influence stories.


Certain situations such as disasters, nuclear fallouts and even war can create compelling and hardcore stories especially when aspects of reality are applied to create a hyped euphoria of hard decision making and questioning of morality.


Even to see other characters react to scenarios that place them in a difficult position to think not only IC but OOC as well is quite entertaining to people witnessing stories develop.


Just imagine your favourite television shows or anime with the absence of survival or realism, would they still appeal to you this day? Would they have the ability to trigger fear or suspense?

 

[Coward]

IMO where most survival-type games fall flat is ignoring what makes these situations appealing in the first place. Why do people watch the Walking Dead, for example? It's not because the characters have it easy and mow down hordes of zombies. These are stories about humans being pushed to their limit and confronting their weaknesses, and roleplays often ignore that in favour of the characters being competent badasses.


There are some things I think you can add to make it work.


1. Scarcity.


It baffles me how often this is ignored in these supposedly harsh settings.


Do your characters know where their next meal is coming from? How about where they're going to sleep tonight to avoid being eaten? If they have everything they need all the time it's not really about survival anymore.


To avoid the RP getting bland, scarcity should only be a problem some of the time. If things are too easy, though, maybe it's time for the supply shed to burn down.


2. Interpersonal conflict.


These people are stressed, and when you're stressed 99% of people don't become rational conflict-resolving peacemakers. Everyone in a group will have a different idea about the best decisions, and a prospective leader will have to either prove themselves or use force to maintain control.


This doesn't mean the group will fracture. Think about how it works in films in books - the characters complain, and then they fall in line. But there's the inkling that, somewhere, there's a breaking point where they'll just go off on their own.


3. Enemies with brains.


Ultimately, zombies are not the villains of zombie apocalypses. It's the other humans you have to watch out for.


4. Characters showing genuine weakness.


I'm not talking about getting an injury and sitting it out all manly. I'm talking about your character reaching a personal breaking point, whether through fear, loss, anger. I'm talking about characters running away and leaving their friends to die, because they panicked. I'm talking about stealing the last can of beans because you lost self control. I'm talking huddling in a corner holding your dead child's shoe, while your group needs to move.


If everyone acts like a macho badass the survival genre is incredibly boring. This is the main one.

 

[Grey]

The Apocalypse, Zombie, and Antagonist tabs here might be useful to you/


Roleplay - So You Want To Write...

 

[Edrondol]

I have played in a couple of these types of games - Gamma World was an early one by TSR, who also made early D&D. The problem was always that it was more of "D&D with guns" than an actual survival horror game. It's too easy to miss the point of your character scratching and kicking to stay alive when you are comfortably in your room sipping Mountain Dew while you play. There's just not the tension needed to make it truly work. A GM saying, "You find yourself looking longingly at the piles of bodies. You can't recall the last time you ate more than a cracker or the random rat you were able to catch. You find that more and more the bodies weren't other people and are now, in fact, just meat. Your mouth begins to water."


So do you resort to cannibalism? It happens in games - Fallout famously has a perk where you can consume the dead for health - but in real life? Probably not going to happen. It HAS happened(see the siege of Leningrad from WWII), but can you truly RP the desperation that you'd need to get to that point?


I think there's two ways to run something like this, and neither are ideal or easy.


First, have a dual campaign with two GMs. One does the survivors and the other does the zombies/etc. Kind of like a multi-player L4D2 RP.


The second would be to put such dismal constraints on the players that it might kill the fun. Such as, "You haven't eaten in days. You are finding it hard to move, let alone run. As darkness falls you hear scratches from just outside your door. Another rat to help you live for another day or could they have found you at long last?" When the character tries to flee they are severely hampered due to malnutrition.


I think it's an interesting concept and believe that it's possible, but I also think running one effectively would be damned difficult.

 

[Coward]

I think there's a difference between 'fun' entertaining starvation and dismal, real world starvation.


Fun is like, you go without for two days and then find a shop looted of everything but canned spam. You eat nothing but spam for a week.


Dismal is 'my songbird trap is empty again so I guess it's grass and bootleather for dinner'.


Everything in moderation, including horrible scarcity :V

 

[Edrondol]

I think there's a difference between 'fun' entertaining starvation and dismal, real world starvation.
Fun is like, you go without for two days and then find a shop looted of everything but canned spam. You eat nothing but spam for a week.


Dismal is 'my songbird trap is empty again so I guess it's grass and bootleather for dinner'.


Everything in moderation, including horrible scarcity :V

The question, though, is how far you can stretch a campaign with just either. I don't think you can. Remember, he said "realistic" survival. Realistic survival is freaking horrible.

 

[Coward]

Oh, yeah, for sure. I guess I was imagining the survival being only one aspect rather than the entirety of the plot. Now I realize that might not have been the question, though. I think a pure survival game would be devastatingly boring, if that's the only point of interest. Get food eat food, build shelter... If that's all you have you may as well just play minecraft.

 

[Edrondol]

Oh, yeah, for sure. I guess I was imagining the survival being only one aspect rather than the entirety of the plot. Now I realize that might not have been the question, though. I think a pure survival game would be devastatingly boring, if that's the only point of interest. Get food eat food, build shelter... If that's all you have you may as well just play minecraft.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. You need to have a point other than survival - something overarching. Like finding a cure, locating or protecting someone that could help build a safehouse. Stuff like that. I mean, when I play games like Minecraft or Don't Starve it's fun at first, but once you get to where there's little chance of your dying, it gets almost boring. Of course, it helps that I have no imagination building things.


In fact, I think there would be a way to make this work. You start the campaign off with the target already painted red for the players.


"It's been thirteen days since the last time you saw another human that wasn't trying to kill you and eat your brains. You find yourself more and more caring less about finding survivors and more about discovering a store that hasn't been looted. You are short of ammo and food. Water is plentiful, but that has brought its own problems. You duck into a store marked 'Ben's Gas & Grub' only to find it torn to shreds. You look at the other members of your party and shrug. You turn to leave when something catches your ear. From the back there's a hiss of static and then a voice. It takes you a few moments to remember what a radio is, but there it is. A voice is speaking to you on a loop. 'If you can hear this, we're alive! We have food and shelter! Better yet, we have a doctor that knows how to cure this thing. But we're short on the supplies needed to produce it. Please! For the sake of the world, we need your help! If you can hear this...'


"You turn to the others and see something in them you haven't seen since the world went dark. Hope..."

 

[Coward]

^ This, this is what you need. Exactly the sort of kick to make it worth playing.


Whenever I think about the real winners of the zombie genre I think of things like the Walking Dead (6 seasons of survival, appeals to someone at least), 28 Days Later.


All of them have 'gritty realism', but the characters aren't just aimlessly surviving. There's something they want, or that they're working towards. Whenever the goal gets too boring the writers tear it down, put something new in place. I think one of the real advantages of the genre is you are never stuck for an excuse to kill something off that isn't working. Character is dull? Dead. Group are languishing in safety after completing their goal? Zombie herd.

 

[prkris]

Definitely a good setting is important. Without the setting it's hard to take a survival seriously.