Fast-paced zombie role-play revival

This will be a relatively fast-paced zombie role-play, based off of the world of the graphic novel The Walking Dead. The idea is not for a small group of characters to survive from the beginning of the story to the end, but to constantly introduce new characters and have them meet their inevitable fate in the jaws of a zombie or at the hands of another deranged human being. Each player will start out with 1-3 characters. Introduction posts will start out from a specific point after the outbreak, because I don’t want long introduction posts detailing the moment of the outbreak until now to slow down the beginning of the role-play. And besides, those kinds of stories are always better when told orally, as stories but in-character.

A small percentage of characters will not survive more than a few days. A larger percentage of characters will not survive more than a few months. Possibly 100 percent of the characters will not survive to the end of the story. There will be a lot of survivors out there, so we will always have the opportunity to introduce new ones when our previous characters are killed off. We just need to think of interesting ways to introduce them into the story.

As for the character sheets, they shouldn’t be too long or descriptive. Don’t burn yourself out or become too attached to a single character. The way zombie encounters work will be behind-the-scenes dice rolls. I know it isn’t really fair to have to rely on me saying who does and does not die, but it really isn’t fun for me to lie about it. I prefer the unreliability of chance.

So here is an example encounter (using characters from The Walking Dead).
Rick, Morgan, Carl, and Dale are traveling on foot to the police station in a nearby town, which Rick has the keys to. They reach the police station with little resistance, shooting any zombies that get in their way. However, the gun shots attract more of the nearby zombies, and on their return trip they encounter a full horde blocking their path. The characters have the decision to circumnavigate the horde or to try and press through them, relying on their speed and wit to make it through.
At this point I will be rolling the dice to see who survives and who doesn’t. Unless they are multiple specific mini-encounters within the overall encounter, I will only be rolling the dice once for each character. A mini-encounter example would be Rick having to go back into the horde to try and save his son Carl. He then risks dying again, and thus another dice roll.

If unlucky dice rolls end up killing off all of the characters, I will decide who has the greatest chance of survival until meeting up with the next (currently unannounced) survivors. That character will defy the dice roll and survive…for now. However, if there is still another group of players elsewhere and everyone in this group dies…well that’s it. Again, I don’t want anyone to get too attached to their characters, because there will be deaths. Lots of deaths. This is, after all, a zombie role-play.

As far as bad dice rolls go…I will PM the result of each roll to each character involved. That way the player can decide how their character dies, and it will still be a surprise to the rest of the players. This way it will feel a bit more seamless and less like a board game. Hopefully.

Anyone interested?

Example Character (from The Walking Dead series)


Name: Rick Grimes
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Pre-Outbreak Occupation: Police Officer
Appearance: White male with blue eyes, blond hair, 5'6".
Descriptive Keywords (personality, skills, etc): A natural leader with experience in handling firearms and enforcing security.

Its really simple. Most of the character will be developed in the story itself, if they last long enough for that.

sounds interesting, I'm in should this come to fruition

I'm in because I basically forced you to start it

OH! I have one quick question I forgot to mention. Do we need knowledge of the Walking Dead to play?

No, no knowledge of that is necessary. I used it as a base for explanation simply because I had just finished reading it when I decided to make this (the first time, quite a while ago).

I remember reading the first volume, and I quite liked it. I also like this idea, count me in. Is there an OOC or anything else up?

Not yet. He was waiting for more interest. I'm not in this (yet) but thought I would answer your question since Silvone will be gone all day today (and I'm, y'know, his right hand woman).

Yeah, I am waiting on more interest. But I think four people might be enough to get it started. I am hoping that if I get it started, and people see just how awesomesauce it is, we'll find more people doing the happy-new-zombie-food dance.

Very interested. I've been needing something to get my creative juices going. I think this would be perfect to get the ball rolling.

I will bother Silvone into putting up an OOC asap (but he's working long hours, so asap is not going to be that soon). Hopefully, in a couple of days.

Sounds awesome. Consider me in.

Yeah! Interest!

Unfortunately, I have been rather busy. I will do my best to have the OOC up no later than Tuesday.

Sorry about the delay. I haven't forgotten this yet.

No worries, I likely won't have internet access again until Monday.

The OOC is up! The title is "Life Sucks and Then You Die..." Lets move all discussion to that thread, please.

I'm asking it here so as to not clutter the other thread...should everyone have their own character index post or are they all going into yours?

You can all have your own, obviously, and I will just compile it into the main one.