Could a Character Based On Yourself Survive The End of the World?

[roseofbattle]

Could a Character Based On Yourself Survive The End of the World?

Roleplaying game The End of the World challenges you to survive the apocalypse as yourself, with your friends, in your hometown.

Chances are that if a zombie apocalypse happened, many of us would be wholly unprepared. Fantasy Flight Games' roleplaying game The End of the World is a set of four different horror situations where players' characters are themselves.

Many roleplaying games involve characters assuming roles such as dwarves or elves, but The End of the World uses your characteristics and skills to build a character based on yourself. Characters have the following characteristics: dexterity, vitality, logic, willpower, charisma, and empathy. Along with positive and negative detailed aspects of yourself, your character and your friends' characters will have to try to survive with the limited gear actually around you.

Survival isn't about shooting zombies in the face. Players will need to deal with scavenging for food, water, and medicine and find shelter, as well as surviving physical and mental traumas.

The End of the World is a set of four books -- Zombie Apocalypse, Wrath of the Gods, Alien Invasion, and Revolt of the Machines -- each with five unique scenarios inside relating to the book's theme.

The Zombie Apocalypse book will release before the end of this year, and the remaining End of the World books will be released at a later date. Fantasy Flight Games promises countless struggles.

Source: Fantasy Flight Games [http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5027]


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[FalloutJack]

Sounds like something that will eventually land in my local gaming club, especially the zombie one.

 

[C.TYR]

But how in the world are the points actually allocated in these circumstances? I can't imagine that you'd create them yourself, or else everyone would say that they're either the assiest of assholes or the sweetest of saints.

 

[kael013]

Interesting idea, but most tabletop players I know prefer the escapism of fantasy worlds and the creativity involved in crafting interesting characters and stories. This doesn't provide that (story aside), but I don't know, maybe it'll find a good niche.

OTOH, who's gonna be honest during character creation? Everyone's a god in their own mind.

 

[The_Darkness]

Oh that sounds fun...

And PLEASE tell me that you can start the game with "You and your friends were just sitting down to play a role-playing-game when you were interrupted by (insert Aliens/Zombies/Gods/Robots here)." You could even have the DM be the first victim - handily explaining why they're not 'playing'.

 

[Gennadios]

Maybe the other 3 players will vote on your skillset? I can't see people creating themselves in an RPG without godmoding it somehow.

As far as the playing as yourself thing, hell yeah. I'm one of a rare players who just roleplays themselves in whatever setting they end up in, so yeah, it's doable. Most of the guys I play with are the same deal, so this is definitely happening.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

This seems perfect for me and my group of friends!
I might actually buy this.

 

[Valanthe]

This looks a lot like the All Things Zombies wargame I played for a while earlier this year. That one was fun for a bit, but got a little monotonous as it was just a miniatures wargame with some interesting plot elements, and by taking advantage of a few rules, my party and I quickly made survival quite trivial.

That said, if this is more of a pen and paper RPG like Dungeons and Dragons, I'd definitely be interested, even if it does let you make your own characters, it's always fun to see exactly what people think of themselves when asked to write themselves as a character.

 

[briankoontz]

The better question is - who would *want* to survive a horrific dystopia? Right now 1 in every 9000 living people each year commit suicide, and that rate would go way up in the types of dystopias described here.

There's such a worship of "survivalism" and "bravery" in this type of narrative that all manner of common sense is discarded. These systems always focus on the "survivors" or those who choose to want to continue to live in this world, without addressing WHY they want to continue to live in this world.

It's *assumed* that surviving is better than dying, so by this logic in The Matrix it's ASSUMED that the people who become human batteries were wise for choosing that over suicide.

There's an underlying concept of eternal hope which fuels these dystopias. There's an underlying concept of transforming the dystopia into something at least approximating normality, summed up in the phrases "repopulating the human race" and "making the desert bloom".

Dystopias are being used as a Biblical Flood - they are *desired* by some people in order to cleanse the world of "unworthies", thus allowing the "humans" to repopulate the world in THEIR image.

It's like a Jason Vorhees movie. The reason Mr. Vorhees's victims are silly, freewheeling, oversexed, no-responsibility young people is the same reason that children are told about the boogeyman - to scare them straight.

Dystopias are supposed to scare us straight - into becoming protectors of the world, into "making the desert bloom", into "repopulating the human race". In dystopias we can no longer *afford* to be silly, freewheeling, oversexed, no-responsibility people.

The dour, sour, finger-waving, piously moralizing among us celebrate the slashes of Mr. Vorhees for cleansing the world of immorality, and they celebrate dystopia for cleansing the world of "unworthies" - just like Noah after the Great Flood the humans left alive will be free of "scum" which was holding them back from "repopulating the human race" and "making the desert bloom".

Such is the myth that is being created and will be further extended in the dying earth of the 21st century. The reality is that the people left alive during the 21st century dystopia will be the wealthy - those who are POWERFUL enough to survive, who can hide behind their gated communities maybe long enough to escape the earth, or at least long enough to see themselves as King of the Burning Hill prior to their own immolation.

At the heart of the global empire, in the land of Hollywood and Goldman Sachs, these myths allow the wealthy to hide while the servants of the wealthy are treated to idealized images of themselves as rugged McGuyveresque survivors who through their own capability can, too, survive the dystopia of the 21st century, at the expense of billions of "unworthies" who are humans transformed into "zombies", "aliens", "monsters" - whatever justifies their mass murder.

In dystopias, just like in video games, "we" save the world, one corpse at a time. Those human beings with a conscience give a lot of thought to whether they want to be part of the "we".

The enemy aren't the poor people who we callously transform into zombies so that we don't feel bad about murdering them - the enemy are the people driving all of this - who care about nothing beyond their own survival and whose only desire is to be King of the Burning Hill. They are only giving us these flattering images of ourselves as rugged survivors in order to extend their own lives - we'll be sacrificed as "monsters" just like the poor are, only a few decades later.

If all that matters to you are those few decades and you're willing to sacrifice the lives of billions of people to get it, then reach for your shotgun, get your supply of duct tape and canned food in order, and cheer for the apocalypse. You'll be the "human" blowing the heads off the "zombies" while fantasies of "repopulating the human race" pass through your ravaged mind. You'll be all you ever wanted yourself to be. You'll, finally, be happy.

I'll be a zombie.

 

[aba1]

But how in the world are the points actually allocated in these circumstances? I can't imagine that you'd create them yourself, or else everyone would say that they're either the assiest of assholes or the sweetest of saints.

If I try this I might get it so everyone as a group decides each others stats n such. I mean how I think I am is different than how I actually am and having close friends say na I find you are more like this might give a more balanced result.

OT: This does look fun admittedly though I will likely go for it

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

That sounds kind of cool! Shame i don't know anyone local who does any role playing. :/

 

[Dying_Jester]

My Empathy score would be so low that the other players would either kill me off ASAP for fear I might just kill them as soon as they break their leg. Wouldn't be to far off probably. When talking about or playing through scenarios I have no problem killing off another person if they were infected, ate up more resources then they were worth because of an injury, or if they were being dragged off by aliens. When it comes to "what if?" Scenarios I always end up making the decisions that turn my character into a cold hearted "my survival is more important to me then yours and I won't hide it" bastard that made my friends stop asking for my take on different situations, hahahaha.
But if any of this happened in real life could I make those same decisions? I don't know. Call me soulless but I hope I can.

 

[Fayathon]

I had me a chuckle when I saw this, I'm actually building a GURPS game around this where it's my friends playing as themselves with me GMing.

Oh that sounds fun...

And PLEASE tell me that you can start the game with "You and your friends were just sitting down to play a role-playing-game when you were interrupted by (insert Aliens/Zombies/Gods/Robots here)." You could even have the DM be the first victim - handily explaining why they're not 'playing'.

And that's how it's starting, more specifically it's we all sit down to play my end of the world GURPS game, and the end of the world happens. Complete with REM playing in the background, because we all agree that we can't skip that. Meta game humor FTW.

 

[llubtoille]

In movies, most tend to survive the initial catastrophe through shear luck, so assuming that luck is included on our characters, then I think we'd have a fair shot.

 

[UberPubert]

The better question is - who would *want* to survive a horrific dystopia? Right now 1 in every 9000 living people each year commit suicide, and that rate would go way up in the types of dystopias described here.

Isn't that a little presumptuous? People commit suicide for all sorts of different reasons, and other people in much worse circumstances continue living, even when suicide is an option. Doubtless many might kill themselves to spare the pain of living in a much more horrible world than the one they're used to, or when all else they know is gone - but they still have their lives, and hope for a better future. It's about perspective.

There's such a worship of "survivalism" and "bravery" in this type of narrative that all manner of common sense is discarded. These systems always focus on the "survivors" or those who choose to want to continue to live in this world, without addressing WHY they want to continue to live in this world.

That's not necessarily true, though most post-apocalyptic RPG systems I've encountered assume the PCs want to live in their world (their players did buy the book, after all) it's typically encouraged for them to have motivations for doing so.

It's *assumed* that surviving is better than dying, so by this logic in The Matrix it's ASSUMED that the people who become human batteries were wise for choosing that over suicide.

Well yeah, that's kind of why they did it. The Animatrix made it clear humans faced becoming batteries or becoming extinct. It's a rather silly premise, since I doubt machines would need humans but that's besides the point.

There's an underlying concept of eternal hope which fuels these dystopias. There's an underlying concept of transforming the dystopia into something at least approximating normality, summed up in the phrases "repopulating the human race" and "making the desert bloom".

Depending on who's depicting the dystopia. The writer may just want to say something about human nature or they might be writing Mad Max.

Dystopias are being used as a Biblical Flood - they are *desired* by some people in order to cleanse the world of "unworthies", thus allowing the "humans" to repopulate the world in THEIR image.

I don't think religious fundamentalists hoping for a world cleansing are the intended audience for these kinds of narratives, but even so, what about when bad people are left over once the apocalypse has run it's course? Or better yet...

It's like a Jason Vorhees movie. The reason Mr. Vorhees's victims are silly, freewheeling, oversexed, no-responsibility young people is the same reason that children are told about the boogeyman - to scare them straight.

...what if the people being depicted as harmed are actually good people and loved ones? You're being incredibly presumptuous in assuming everyone who dies in a narrative apocalypse is being depicted as "bad".

Dystopias are supposed to scare us straight - into becoming protectors of the world, into "making the desert bloom", into "repopulating the human race". In dystopias we can no longer *afford* to be silly, freewheeling, oversexed, no-responsibility people.

Well that may be something more like a responsibility in the case of an apocalypse if you intend to survive or continue the human race. Being irresponsible can hurt you and others when the stakes are survival, and settings where these actions have extreme consequences make for good drama.

The dour, sour, finger-waving, piously moralizing among us celebrate the slashes of Mr. Vorhees for cleansing the world of immorality, and they celebrate dystopia for cleansing the world of "unworthies" - just like Noah after the Great Flood the humans left alive will be free of "scum" which was holding them back from "repopulating the human race" and "making the desert bloom".

You're kind of ignoring how religious fundamentalists actually decry friday the 13th and other films like it for being hyper-violent trash, and while there's some subtext about slashers and monsters murdering "sinful" people, you're forgetting they're still slashers and monsters that are typically looked down upon in real life.

Such is the myth that is being created and will be further extended in the dying earth of the 21st century. The reality is that the people left alive during the 21st century dystopia will be the wealthy - those who are POWERFUL enough to survive, who can hide behind their gated communities maybe long enough to escape the earth, or at least long enough to see themselves as King of the Burning Hill prior to their own immolation.

hang on a sec, you're basically describing 2012. I'm dead serious: All the rich people get on a super ark and wait the apocalypse out. I don't know who you think you are proselytizing anti-apocalypse rhetoric in this topic when your theory amounts to the heavy-handed metaphor that serves as the plot of a Roland Emmerich movie, but it's hilarious.

At the heart of the global empire, in the land of Hollywood and Goldman Sachs, these myths allow the wealthy to hide while the servants of the wealthy are treated to idealized images of themselves as rugged McGuyveresque survivors who through their own capability can, too, survive the dystopia of the 21st century, at the expense of billions of "unworthies" who are humans transformed into "zombies", "aliens", "monsters" - whatever justifies their mass murder.

In dystopias, just like in video games, "we" save the world, one corpse at a time. Those human beings with a conscience give a lot of thought to whether they want to be part of the "we".

Again, this mostly depends on the narrative being presented and it changes from author to author. For some the rugged hero isn't saving anything except their own skin, or in the case of Fallout war and human nature is viewed as the inevitable downfall, a pretty non-violent message that's further reinforced through the player's ability to talk through most situations rather than kill.

The enemy aren't the poor people who we callously transform into zombies so that we don't feel bad about murdering them - the enemy are the people driving all of this - who care about nothing beyond their own survival and whose only desire is to be King of the Burning Hill. They are only giving us these flattering images of ourselves as rugged survivors in order to extend their own lives - we'll be sacrificed as "monsters" just like the poor are, only a few decades later.

This seems rather contradictory to your earlier statement. If the rugged hero who murders all the bad guys is supposed to be the idealized "servant of the rich man" - I assume you're referring to us, and also referring to the writers who create these worlds in the first place - why would they take pleasure in murdering "the poor"?

If all that matters to you are those few decades and you're willing to sacrifice the lives of billions of people to get it, then reach for your shotgun, get your supply of duct tape and canned food in order, and cheer for the apocalypse. You'll be the "human" blowing the heads off the "zombies" while fantasies of "repopulating the human race" pass through your ravaged mind. You'll be all you ever wanted yourself to be. You'll, finally, be happy.

I don't think there's anything harmful about imagining the apocalypse, not anymore than any other dangerous fantasy world where actions carry more weight and people can become heroes. It's harmless escapism; I think you're reading a little too deeply into this, and taking things a little too seriously.

I'll be a zombie.

Special Infected are also fun to play as but I prefer the feeling of being an underdog against the horde, y'know?

 

[Baresark]

I am filled with doubts on this. You cannot set generic stats that are like anything in life. You aren't playing yourself, you are giving an approximation of yourself in some basic BS stats. For instance, I have extensive self defense training. How does that fit in?

Let me frame this situation to you. Extensive self defense training IS NOT the ability to kick a zombie in the face. It's an awareness of a situation and an understanding of how to handle it. In the case of zombies, that will encompass things such knowing that positioning yourself so you are only facing a single opponent and not getting surrounded by a hoard of them. It also means always being prepared to have an "equalizer" (IE. something that prevents your opponent, zombie or otherwise, from having the upper hand). It also means having the ability to disable your opponent (which will be a massive energy saver when facing zombies and not having easy access to food and water).

That is just one example of this that does not work with a set of generic stats. I love the idea of it, but to say you are roll playing yourself in that situation is not accurate in a system like that. There is a lot of things in life that are not a dice roll, combat is not, human interaction is not... I just don't know how these games work in that context. That is probably why these things work in a fantasy setting, but nothing realistic (IE. Playing one's self in a game).

On the other hand, just because I don't know how they would do it doesn't mean it won't be awesome. I will have to watch some videos of how this plays when it comes out.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

SNIP

Wow. You may be the biggest stick in the mud to ever walk the face of the earth.

Anyhoo, many years ago, a friend of mine did a role-playing game similar to this. When we arrived, the gear you had was whatever you had in your pockets (luckily I had my pocket knife) and he based your stats essentially on what he knew about you (if he knew you were athletic, he assigned you high physical skills, people with great grades got high intelligence scores, etc). It was actually pretty fun, though it was sort of a given that a lot of us weren't going to survive. Still, fairly interesting idea that went beyond "you're an Elf with a +1 Mace".

 

[UberPubert]

I am filled with doubts on this. You cannot set generic stats that are like anything in life. You aren't playing yourself, you are giving an approximation of yourself in some basic BS stats. For instance, I have extensive self defense training. How does that fit in?

In my experience I find that systems that do spend a lot of time extrapolating different kinds of stats characters tend to have just bog down the game and fail to actually address the kinds of concerns you're expressing here. There's just not enough room in a book or even several that can cover every possibly useful function of a human being, never mind depict it accurately. Some of the most inoffensive "realistic" systems I've ever played kept stats and their functions intentionally vague and allow players to fill in the details as to how they actually worked, and then justifying them by statting their characters accordingly.

Anyway, I'm a fan of Fantasy Flight Game's Warhammer40k series and this seems like it could be fun. A bit awkward to play with my online friends, but I'm sure we could figure something out.

 

[Micalas]

lolwut

This is some of the most overdramatic, intense shit I've ever read. You sir, are hilarious.

 

[Tom Roberts]

Is there going to be an option to be the guy who, for one, welcomes our new alien/machine (or old god) overlords?