Pre-Game Plotting Post

[decaymod]

Pre-Game Chatter Post

Hi everybody! I am so pleased and excited to welcome you all to State of Decay. This game has been a longtime labor of love for me, and I cannot wait to see what stories you all tell in the world I've curated for you.

While I will largely be running this game like the other collaborative journal games I know you all from, I'm also trying out some new things. Please anticipate a few growing pains as we try stuff, sort things out, and figure out what works. I am always looking for feedback & suggestions for improvement on how to streamline and organize things, so feel free to drop me a line if you have comments or suggestions. Thanks for bearing with me as I get my feet on the ground!

This game is currently closed to new players. Please don't hold, join our Discord, or comment on this post unless you've already been invited to join us.

🧟 updates
🧟‍♀️ npc planning
🧟‍♂️ questions
🧟 character concepts

♡

Comments

meggie's concepts

[transferswitch]

Gideon Ames (Josh Hutcherson) is an electrician who used to work in the outdoor recreation industry, and ended up escaping hoards of infected tourists by rafting to safety. He's Lundegaard's second-in-command, the one who's less keen on throwing the doors open to their neighbors compared to his counterpart. Gideon is clever, uptight, bossy, cowardly, and prone to overreacting, but is also a perfectionist who will look out for the community at any cost.

Linda Arozamena (Melissa Barrera) was going out of town for a major sports competition that unfortunately ended with her and her teammates getting stranded in the middle of a zombie outbreak. The athletes that survived became a semi-feral roving gang of raiders, but as their numbers dwindled they needed to seek out more security. The Container Fort ended up taking them in. Linda is overbearing, a primadonna, unsubtle, clingy/needy, emotional and terribly insecure. She desperately wants to prove herself and be a Hero.

As for connections, Gideon and the third in command are obviously going to have an important relationship and I'd love to discuss that if anyone's interested in them! Linda, meanwhile, could have people who were with her from when her team got stranded. Aside from that I'm interested and open to ideas!!

Re: meggie's concepts

[afairtrade]

i am very excited for roswell and his inner circle of shoulder devil/angels

Re: meggie's concepts

[transferswitch]

Only the best advice for their leader who may or may not be kind of going through it :)

Re: meggie's concepts

[lineman]

Hi! My character concept for John fits well with the character sketch JJ posted for Roswell's third, so I'm thinking of taking the spot. JJ suggested we sketch out the dynamic between John and Gideon, so here I am.

Completely unintentionally, I made John an electrician too (this was the character concept months ago, I swear), although John was an HV lineman during pre-zombie times compared to Gideon's electrical engineer. 2 very different lines of work, so not much risk of overlap here!

John (tries to) practice patience, but he is driven by his emotions and can be riled up/forced to die on conversational hills when he feels there is a moral issue he has to defend. Definitely a risk-seeker. His skepticism of Lundegaard's isolationist policies comes from a place of concern for the collective good/social obligation (weird mashup of philosophical strains from Weil, Kropotkin, etc) and he absolutely does not budge on this point.

I think in a lot of ways, not just philosophical, John is Gideon's opposite, which works well for the concept of Roswell and his shoulder angel/devil? John tries to be humble, approachable, of service to others, and he has a very warped understanding of/relationship to risk. But he's not a pushover, is strongly opinionated, and has his own vices and hypocrisies that I think will provide interesting texture between the two characters. In short, I think John does not go out of his way to antagonize Gideon and my initial impression is that he has no hard feelings toward Gideon, but they're such different people they end up clashing anyway.

Re: meggie's concepts

[transferswitch]

Oh hi awesome!!!

Yeah, no problem about that, they probably worked together setting up the lumberyard's electrical infrastructure. They may have their differences but they ARE guys who get shit done.

I agree, I think they're likely to lock horns over issues but only because they have such different ideas about what collective good/social obligation is. Gideon's more prickly and likes to play defense, and is risk-averse. Being a protective kind of leader is important to him (which can be overbearing), but his version of service to the community is to be the one who makes hard calls. So he's often the one who's arguing for isolation, turning away people their settlement can't support, euthanizing the infected, etc. He had to sacrifice a lot of people to keep others alive, so it's kind of crystalized in his head that this is the way life is now. Celia made some progress on getting him to reconsider his position, which is why he suspiciously didn't put up a huge fight about letting people in. He did some customary complaining and that's about it.

BUT I think he respects John and knows he's important to the group even if he really, really does not understand him. He's an atheist and is/was a regular at those infamous poker nights, as a cherry on top.

Re: meggie's concepts

[lineman]

Ooooh, idk how much backstory plotting you've hammered out, but I wonder if setting up the lumberyard's electrical infrastructure was how Gideon and John initially got to know each other, Roswell's right/lefthand men, and became trusted/valued enough in the community to be elected aldermen? Gideon's technical knowledge + John's willingness to rope himself to a big pole and climb on up... It makes sense to me! I think it also sets a strong base of mutual respect, so that when they do clash it's never personal, but like, "This person that I work well with to keep this community safe and functional thinks in ways that don't make sense to me."

Although going to poker night... John will never understand this. He closes his eyes to the fact of Gideon's presence there. He pretends not to see it.

Re: meggie's concepts

[transferswitch]

That fits in perfectly with what I had in mind. They know they can trust one another to do what will keep their community safe, even if they are wildly different philosophically. If/when Gideon learned John got electrocuted, he ranted about safety measures for at least an hour and was like WHO WAS YOUR FOREMAN, I'D SHOVE HIM OFF THAT POLE MYSELF. But... yeah, they both have the same goal they just chose different routes.

Hey... hey John? John? Have you ever just thought about having fun?

Re: meggie's concepts

[lineman]

I thiiiiiiink John is very secretive; showed up one day to what would become the Lundegaard group and was like "Hi. :)" I don't think he would NEVER tell Gideon personal details about his past but I think for the time being he's been focused on survival + the community, and maybe was juuuuust starting to open up about himself when the murders happened. So now he's like "Back to work :|"

John will have fun in the afterlife, Gideon. 😇

Re: meggie's concepts

[transferswitch]

This will probably be more relevant for the next round of characters, but!

Gideon has three siblings he doesn't know the status of, and also was a leaderish figure to a group of survivors the he escorted from the southwest to the PNW. He was pretty severe and made some harsh calls.