Okay, I'm back. I know you probably didn't miss me, but eh, I probably didn't miss you either.
I have an idea for my setting and I have decided on the system I am going to use. I gave it some serious thought and realized that I can't really tweak the system until I have the setting a lot more fleshed out. In fact I will probably have to have the setting almost complete before I can really start working on the system but we will see.
Whenever I sit down to create a new setting the first thing I do is come up with a concept and then go from there. Right now I am working the concept of an undead apocalypse. While this sounds great, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. I need to decide the who, what, when, where, why and how of it all. I know some stuff already such as the game is going to be placed in our world, but I don't really know about most of it.
The who and what are pretty simple. Something happened that caused a mass outbreak of undead that caused the collapse of human civilization. I am going to assume that a large part of humanity died shortly after the ground zero event (still working on that little nugget in my head) and that there will be a large variety of undead type of critters crawling around. That gives me a good starting place as I consider when.
I am deciding that the ground zero event happened today (in fact think I think that is the official game name for it) so that gives me a launching point. Now I need to decide what time period the campaign is placed in. Since the past is pretty much out that means I can either go with the present or I go with in the future. Both definitely have their ups and downs.
The up side of starting the game in the present or near future is that the world is very well known to both myself and my players. Also, it would probably be a pretty fast paced game focused on immediate survival. In fact building a campaign would also be pretty simple. I create a timeline of events that begin with the Ground Zero event and then go from there. While this idea is simple and could be a lot of fun, I really feel like stretching my creativity a bit.
This means I need to set the game in the future, but what future should that be? I could go thousands of years in the future, but not only would that be a lot of work creating a history, but it would kind of change the post apocalyptic feel I am going for. I think I am leaning towards placing the campaign after the fall of mankind and during the time it has started to rebuild.
I have the when, and the where is going to be North America, but I don't know where in North America. Since I am currently assuming the Ground Zero event was some kind of scientific accident there won't be a lot of change to the continental structure of things. Since so much of the setting is till unknown I don't want to really narrow down the where more than that at the moment.
The real big question at the moment is the why and how of everything. Why and how did the undead apocalypse occur? We know that some kind of scientific accident is what caused it, but why did this accident happen and how did it cause the end of civilization?
I know that the virus explanation is in vogue right now, but I don't want to do the same thing everyone else is doing. I also don't want to use some kind of easy button trick like a sudden magical awakening of the planet, and would prefer to avoid using a religious cause. Also complicating the issue is the fact that I don't want just one kind of undead, I want zombies, vampires, and even ghosts if possible. In fact I also wouldn't mind being able to throw other kinds of things in such as super mutants and the like but we will have to see how it all turns out.
So I need something that changes people into monsters, spreads quickly, and is somehow resisted by a small part of the planet. I also need it to be scientific, but not a virus. I am thinking that it is some kind of medicine gone wrong. Right now there is a lot of research going into gene therapy and the like. One of the things that people are always looking for is a way to not grow old. So, I am thinking that some pharmaceutical company had a research project devoted to cell regeneration as a means to stop the aging process and something went very, very wrong...
Okay I got a great idea and will finish this post up and start working on the next one...
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