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Premise: Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to Project Zomboid, season 3 of our glorious survival saga.
LOL.
We have some new players, so a brief introduction.
Project Zomboid is a hardcore (1 life per character) sandbox survival simulator of a zombie apocalypse in progress, with all kinds of crafting, hunting, building, farming, fishing, gathering, trapping, and combat going on. The game is generically built, allowing us to mold a story to any shape we choose.
We are operating under the vendor's initial canon premise. They are pretty specific about some things, like not explaining how the infection started or how it spread.
You are a survivor who has either "missed" the apocalypse somehow, or you're seasoned and have been living in the midst of it for some time.
Project Zomboid does not cover the "beginning", so that's up to us to decide.
Which, should be easy to do, as the game is set in Muldraugh, Kentucky. A small, very rural town north of Fort Knox along Dixie Highway.
Time frame, somewhere late 90s - mid 00s.
We will be running this as an in-character roleplaying game, our previous run of it was really fun. Hopefully things are more civil.
The game started on April 1st at 7:00 AM. It is currently coming up on April 18th. For all intents and purposes, since there are no vehicles implemented yet, we'll say that the highway is either jammed with dead traffic, or destroyed due to initiated air strikes. There are jets and helicopters flying overhead, so we know there's at least scouting action going on.
Fort Knox is silent and essentially unreachable. Some games have it completely overrun, some have it evacuated after deploying some kind of gas. The point is, there's a horde in the way and we can't get to it. There is no access to automatic weapons, but there is occasional gunfire heard. As far as we know, it all came from the south. The horde is coming from the highway. Highway 60 is fucked, not driveable. Your character can be outside of Kentucky, and could be privy to more information and have survived longer, or you could be from around here, in which case the events unfolded within literally a few days.
There is a severe lack of information and overall event coverage. Mass media was evasive and vague on the topic, and reports were sparse in the past month, even though the fact there is "an epidemic" was known for a month or so. Then, literally, in a few nights it exploded with mass hysteria, all over all the channels, before it all went static.
Internet, same deal. Error 404, no internet connection on all local lines. Possibly not global, internet backbone might be in tact, but Muldraugh has like one ISP, which is Time Warner Basic Internet Telecommunications company, and when that went down, that was essentially game. Cellular service had been going dead, smart phones were not in prime yet, especially not in a town like that. So there is a huge information vacuum.
It is unknown where it originated from, who "patient zero" was. Flares of it occured all over the U.S.
Some things are known from the last reports that did make it out.
1. It's not cancer or any other previously known disease. Speculation among the educated goes, it could be man made, but nobody can confirm it.
2. It's more likely a very resistant bacteria rather than a virus, because antibiotics slow its progress, though fail to kill it.
3. It spread rapidly, and was possibly airborne at one time, but some people were not affected that way.
4. It's definitely blood and saliva transmitted, people bitten by the infected died and became infected.
5. Incubation period is on average a week to ten days, and the end is not gentle.
6. There is no known cure.
So, if you're from Muldraugh, you probably had a week of hell. There's chaos in the streets, survivors are far apart and few, you've seen people get eaten. Last few nights were awful, and there were screams and all kinds of noises outside. You stayed inside for a while and tried to basically not go insane and stay alive, whether you're super well adjusted uberman or a panicked little girl, it's been a trial of a time. Last night - was the first quiet one, when the screams and death and murder finally calmed, and you actually could get some sleep. You're awake at 7 A.M. and a realization hits your rested head - that the night's been so quiet because everyone in the vicinity is dead.
Alternative character starts are most welcome. If you were in a hangover induced coma, and just woke up this morning for the first time in a while, a la Rick Grimes, go right for it. Then you really have a time of your life.
My character was actually out on a fishing trip, and that contributed to his terror and survival, seeing strange things happen as he floated downriver.
A few House Rules. Every person here has been selected through years of playing together with myself, and is inherently trusted, so we operate on the honor system. Nobody is going to enforce any sort of admin rules, but here are the basics that establish structure to the game:
1. Radios. Radios are coming in next updates, but are not yet implemented. We simulate radio communication by pressing Y and specifying which frequency we are using. Your character may respond if they are listening at the moment, and on the right frequency. You're free to play a bad connection or a missed connection, up to you.
To build a radio, you either have to find a "radio" item, which currently just does nothing, plus, a battery. Or you can build a radio from scrap.
To build a radio, collect 5 pieces of electronic scrap, a battery, and a screwdriver. Additional bonuses may be given if you show me a screenshot of your kit.
Stuff like CD players, cordless phones, earbuds, may grant additional functions.
Upon doing that your character is considered radio-capable.
2. PVP. Killing other characters is allowed in our game. But there must be roleplay associated with it. We are here to tell a story, so if killing is to be done, make it like an epic zombie movie. No random silent PK, no kill and run without a reason. And i trust everyone here with this.
However, shit does go down, conflicts arise, mistakes are made, and bullets do fly. Sometimes it hits us in the feels. For this, it may be advisable to keep your characters anonymous if you so choose, and if you are killed, don't take it personal.
3. Everyone who doesn't die from the start of the campaign is considered an original character. If you die, you can reroll multiple secondaries, but only your original character has a voting power to end the campaign. We reset when either all original characters die, only one original character is left alive, or multiple are alive and agree to vote on a reset.
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