Walking Dead RP (High Casual)

[Chanda]

With season three of AMC's popular The Walking Dead nearing its completion, I simply couldn't resist the urge to try my hand at a zombie RP set in the Walking Dead universe. I'm well aware that most zombie RPs are usually short-lived, poorly managed messes (and that there are a lot of such RPs in the casual section at the moment), but I hope to avert that by making the best management choices I possibly can.

I ran another RP with a similar model a while back, and it was pretty successful, but when my co-GM disappeared, the entire thing fell apart. But that won't happen this time, because the wonderful and amazing FMAlchemist will be joining me in GMing this RP.

Essential Info:

-Infection follows the Walking Dead rules; bites and scratches infect victims with a fast-acting, deadly fever. After the victim dies of the fever, they return to life as a zombie. Zombies are slow and dumb, operating on the mental faculties of only the brain stem. They are drawn to loud sounds and the smell of the living, and can only starve to death very, very slowly. They can only be killed by the destruction of the brain. Unbeknownst to most of the survivors, everyone is a carrier of the infection; dying in any way, from starvation to a stab wound, will result in resurrection provided the brain remains intact.

-The RP will start in the small town of Akron, Colorado, but, as it is a character driven plot, it's very likely that the group(s) may choose to leave at some point. In order to get an exact feel of the geography of the setting, constant reference will be made to real-world maps. At the top of each post you'll be asked to denote where exactly you are; this is to avoid "teleporting" around the map and will hold players accountable for how they manage to traverse the zombie-filled countryside in the post-apocalyptic world. If any of you have watched the show, you know that it's not as simple as walking down the sidewalk when you're surrounded by hordes of the undead; even the smallest trips can come down to life or death situations.

-I will be accepting 6-8 player characters through an AUDITION process with a set deadline. Players will be chosen based on the quality of their submissions, not the order in which they applied. I want a varied cast of characters who'll contribute to the plot, not just the first eight people who happened to see my topic. Believable characters are a must, and also what makes the Walking Dead series so interesting-- I've seen far too many ex-military badasses who can rip apart zombies with their bare hands, crazy scientists who've got a basement full of neuro-weapons, and ninja girls with a katana in one hand and a Desert Eagle in the other. However, just as bad are the bland, uninteresting characters that are also far too common in zombie RPs these days. The heroic, do-no-wrong country boy with a lot of hunting experience, the cop with natural leadership skills, and the cold, distant survivalist with a basement full of guns, among others. It's finding a balance between believability and uniqueness that gives you the edge over other applicants.

-Guns and ammunition will be heavily regulated, and no one is permitted to begin with a firearm or ranged weapon (this includes tasers and crossbows, and unloaded weapons). This is to place dramatic weight on owning a gun; if everyone walks around packing heat, then there's nothing special about having a gun. Every bullet should count, and every pull of the trigger should carry with it consequences. This is also to increase the threat level of zombies early on in the story; walkers are a lot more fearsome when you can't just shoot them. It shouldn't be about killing as many zombies as possible -- it's about survival. Even if your character has a job that it is likely to have a gun, like a cop or a soldier, their lack of a weapon can easily be explained. Maybe the outbreak hit when they were off duty. Maybe they got overrun by a pack of walkers and had to drop their peace. Maybe some douchebag held them up and stole their gun. Either way, no one starts with a gun -- no exceptions.

-It has been a month and a half since the outbreak. The military is fragmented and ineffective, almost every major city has been completely overrun, and little remains of the central government of the United States. While some manage to survive in the cities, most have taken to the countryside and rural areas, either in large survival camps or on their own. Small towns, like Akron, are especially prized for their richness in materials for scavenging and relatively low zombie populations. While society has not lost its humanity entirely, everyone is wary of treachery in this post-apocalyptic existence.

-There will be no pre-established PC relationships, and everyone will start alone. No exceptions. I want first impressions and trust of strangers to be major issues in the plot, and if everyone starts off all buddy buddy, it kind of defeats the purpose of such an exercise. Your characters have been around for a month and a half since the outbreak -- they should know that it's a bit naive to blindly trust everyone they meet by now.

Those are the essentials. Questions? Interest?

[FMAlchemist]

Oh hey wow-- Chanda, you macilent superman and ballroom class-taking gammerstang, you've done such a widdiful job on this interest check. Isn't he just awesome, guys?

BTW, to those of you whom it may concern-- the CS and audition info will be up within the hour. Assuming, of course, the onerable Chanda is true to his word.

[Chanda]

Audition Info: I will be accepting 6-8 characters through an AUDITION process. You cannot reserve spots; I will take any and all applications before the deadline (which will be set once the OC goes up) and then decide on who I want to keep. If you aren't chosen, I expect you to clear out of here without a fuss; throwing a hissy fit over not getting picked won't help your case. If someone drops out, I will find alternates myself, so please don't bug me about it.

WHAT I LOOK FOR IN A GOOD APPLICATION:
-Perfect spelling/grammar. This is a high-casual RP, and I expect you to be able to put forth the basest of efforts in keeping clean, well-written posts.
-Overall neatness/consistent formatting. Never underscore the importance of presentation, especially in auditions. This does not, however, mean you need to go overboard with fonts and colors and the like. If you use the blank template I provided and make sure everything looks neat, you'll be fine in this category.
-Unique/interesting/compelling personality. Find a good balance between avoiding and embracing cliches. The nature of the Walking Dead Universe centers on the personalities and interactions of the survivors, so do your best to make your character someone people will actually be interested in hearing about.
-Reasonable but intriguing history. Your characters past life and the morals they gained from it will form the foundation for the way they live in post apocalyptic times. Once again, avoid cliches and overused backstories.
-Background check. If I'm considering you for a spot, I'll probably poke around in your posting history to make sure you're not an asshole or a flake. Just a precaution to make sure I'm choosing people I can rely on.

Without further adieu, here's the CS.

Name:

Age:

Gender:

Appearance: (In at least one decent length paragraph, describe your character's physical appearance. Body build, eye color, hair color, skin color, tattoos, scars, birthmarks, facial features, etc. A picture is acceptable, but avoid anime/overly cartoony images and make sure to denote differences between the picture and your intended appearance in text.)

Clothing/Gear: (In at least one decent length paragraph, describe your character's clothing. Keep utility and practicality in mind; lots of exposed skin or overly intricate clothing will only serve as a hindrance. Nobody goes out zombie slaying in bikinis or tuxedos, after all. Once again, a picture is acceptable, and it may be the same picture as the one you used for the appearance. Once again, denote any differences in text if applicable.)

Weapons: (No lethal ranged weapons [guns, bows] allowed at character creation, period. There's more leeway with melee weapons, but still keep it within reason; samurai swords aren't exactly something you scavenge from your local department store, after all. I also don't want to see people rolling out with ten knives strapped to your chest; we're aiming for at least a certain degree of realism here.)

Inventory: (What your character carries on them aside from their clothes and weapons. While you never know what you may need in the walker-filled wasteland, do remember that sometimes it's better to pack light. A hefty backpack filled with all sorts of stuff may be the death of you if you need to run or fight. ALSO, AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, SO LISTEN UP: Please describe SPECIFICALLY where you character keeps these items. This is, once again, for consistency's sake. If it comes down to the wire, I'll have an easier time believing you pulled a pocket knife in a split second if you keep it in your pocket and not at the bottom of your backpack.)

Personality: (How does your character think and conduct themselves with others? Are they trusting of others? How has the outbreak changed them, if at all? Make sure to include their motivations-- and heavily consider them. We won't let you get away with having your character always do the "noble" and "likeable" thing when it directly contradicts their motives. That isn't to say motives can never change, but sudden, unexplained urges to jump into a dangerous, life-threatening situation and save the damsel in distress when your characters main motive is self-preservation won't be tolerated. Get creative here; a bland, tired, cliche personality will really hurt your chances of being accepted. That being said, I don't want everyone to be emotional trainwrecks with more psychological illnesses than I can count; finding that balance and making it fresh and interesting will considerably improve your chances.)

History: (In at least two decent length paragraphs, detail the events of your character's life up until now. What was their life like before the outbreak? What was their job? Did they have friends or family that were lost? What happened that made them the person they are today? What have they been doing for the last month and a half since the outbreak? How did they end up in Akron? Once again, this is one of those "make-it-or-break-it" sections, so do your best!)

For the sake of convenience, here's a blank, tagged version you may wish to use (mainly because it looks nicer). MAKE SURE YOU READ THE ABOVE BEFORE MAKING YOUR PROFILE.

[B]Name:[/B]

[B]Age:[/B]

[B]Gender:[/B]

[B]Appearance:[/B]

[B]Clothing/Gear:[/B]

[B]Weapons:[/B]

[B]Inventory:[/B]

[B]Personality:[/B]

[B]History:[/B]

Feel free to submit your profiles here if you'd like to get a preliminary opinion, but they won't be considered actual applications until they're officially submitted in the pending OOC.

[FMAlchemist]

Bump.

[BeanieBaggie]

this sounds sofa king cool dude Let's see if I've still the capacity to RP this way
So for clarification, we may post our applications here? Would we be able to PM them to you if we wish?
~
Edit
Never mind I took a break and reread everything and answered my own question

[BeanieBaggie]

Name: Claire Broten

Age: 28

Gender: Female

Appearance: Often called a beanpole, Claire hasn't got what one would call...Curves. er limbs are long, her height is roughly five foot eight inches, but the lack of a chest often hides her femininity. Her jaw is sharp, and her facial structure looks as if she's almost completely German. Her eyes, light blue in colour, are framed with the residue of her black eyeliner, which she's not washed off out of sheer laziness. Her eyebrows are thick, but after years of waxing they don't meet in the middle any more. Her hair is short, about a quarter inch long on the sides, the top much longer. It hangs in an unkempt style, the dark blonde locks often being pushed to the side and going unstyled for (the best example I could find of her hair online is this but her eyebrows aren't thick enough, and her eyes are to dark. Bleh and her hair's too light by a lot too). She wears mostly bulky sweaters, layered upon each other (at the base it's just a plain white tank top underneath a white button up blouse) and tight pants, made of denim and stretchy synthetic fibers, and sneakers. She has a tattoo of a triforce on her right hand, with the wisdom third gone over in a glow-in-the-dark ink. It hardly glows though, with how she has a sweater covering it most of the time. Oh, yeah, did I mention she's white as fuck? Think shut in Caucasian and you got it.

Clothing/Gear: Claire's "sweater" comprises of a small beige cardigan vest, an extremely thick red checkered sweater with long sleeves, a white long sleeve button down dress shirt, with the collar picking out of the sweater's neck-hole, and a white tank top underneath. She rarely goes without her sweater, as it keeps her warm and she feels that about an inch of wool would be pretty hard to bite through. Her pants are also black, cuffed at the ankles because they were made for super tall Nordic gals with "12 foot legs". She can easily run in them, unless they get soaked. Her shoes are regular old red converses, decked out in little sharpie doodles from the time she was stuck in an traffic jam for an hour or so.
She carries around a regular old white backpack she had since college, which contains a bottle of water, several granola bars, a roll of toilet paper,a small history magazine and a normal sized swiss army knife.

Weapons: Her main weapon is an aluminium baseball bat she yoinked from the school she worked in before the zombies started roaming. It's dented and scratched, but she's managed to survive with it so far. Only problem is that if she misses and hits something hard, it makes a very loud noise. Her swiss army knife has been used once, too, to kill a zombie, though she doesn't use it much(or any time since she got her bat, anyways). Other than that, she's unarmed; relying on sneaking the fuck away from zombies and hiding on roof tops till the path's clear enough.


Inventory: As stated above (because i'm an idiot and forget just as fast as I read) Claire keeps a history magazine, some water, a swiss army knife, and a roll of toilet paper with her in her backpack. She picks up trivial things here and there- Like socks, TP, feminine sanitary stuff, condoms...You get the idea-because usually, when you need them the most, you don't have them. She keeps them in her backpack.

Personality: Claire, being a high-school teacher, is pretty used to the idea that most teenagers and younger folk are "YOLO"-minded, short sighted creatures that can provide a laugh from time to time, but shouldn't be trusted with anyone's lives. So thus, she tries her hardest to be a mature, serious leader, though in reality she just wants to stay at home and play video games for hours and not give a fuck. She tries her hardest, also, to trust others, but finds herself skeptical more often than not, and asking "What's the catch?". The outbreak has gotten her a little more used to real-life violence, but she hardly sleeps because of the constant fear of being eaten in her sleep, like her students from her class were. She believes in eugenics, and as much as it pains her, if it's a choice between saving an able bodied child over an autistic one or even just genetically flawed one, she'll go for the former. She likes to pretend she's a big tough badass, when actually she's scared as fuck. The only time she considered sacrificing her own life for the survival of others was when her class was still alive.
Sometimes she makes sick little jokes, and although she intends them to be a morale raiser, they often just offend or confuse others. She has a soft spot for smaller, more innocent and less "YOLO"-minded children. On the flip side of that, she finds zombified children easy to kill, but only because she views them as suffering and it's her duty to end the suffering the only way she knows how.
Also she's got pansexual tendencies, though more often than not her love interests are female.

History: ((I am assuming the school layout is similar to my middle school, for the record))
Claire moved down to Colorado straight out of college, perusing a career at teaching high-school history. Eventually, after going about the state subbing for almost a year, she settled in the little town of Akron, teaching ninth grade history. About two years into her career, the virus came around. Recalling her experience playing video games, she took her smaller class and slipped them out of the gym (after yoinking her bat, which was after she knifed a zombie which tried to eat one of her students) and barricaded them in the extra gym, in the off chance any one in the main gym was infected and turned. Later on, in the middle of the night, one of the students committed suicide in the bathroom, and came back. Claire woke up to screaming as the corpse started to infect her students. Knowing she couldn't kill all of the now infected, zombifying corpses, she opened the door to the outside, instructed the few kids she thought could survive to run and hide on roof tops, and fled herself. She has not seen hair or hide of any of her students since then.
In the month and a half since then, she's been keeping an eye out for her students. She's rightly convinced that the rest of the school is either dead, dying, or already zombified.
Her life before even setting foot in Colorado was pretty nice. She lived in an upper class suburb, playing many video games and finding herself drawn into the lore and survival aspects within them. She began to study how all of the protagonists were to survive, out of boredom, and as many teens do, made plans in case of zombies. She wanted to be a video game plot writer, but upon finding how hard it is to make a living is, she decided to become a history teacher instead. Her mother was extremely devoted to the idea of eugenics, rubbing off on her daughter- just as political views do with normal parent/child relationships.
Her loathing of "Yolo"mindedness folk stems from her love of lore and books, and how they seem to be making it all dumb down to fit their simple minds (and they're also annoying to her because they never shut up about their "Swag"...)

((The term I wanted to use was "SwagFag", but it offends people and I would rather not risk offence as much as I can so I changed it to "Yolo"minded. Other than that, how is it?))

[Crossfire]

Interested as well, heres my application:

Name: Jason Daniels

Age: 27

Gender: Male

Appearance:

Spoiler

Shorter, jet-black hair.

Clothing/Gear: Same as picture above.

Weapons: Carries a Busse Team Gemini knife and a hatchet (both pictured below)

Inventory: Carries a small backpack (slightly larger than the one linked to below) containing a small amount of food and water (mostly granola bars, salted crackers, and trail mix) and a heavily folded blanket. In the middle pouch, he carries a fire-starting kit, and in the front pocket, he has stashed an old, torn photo of his family.

Personality: Jason has a hard time learning to trust people because he has never been able to count on anybody. Underneath a usually tough exterior, he has a tender heart for the innocent. Despite this, he's not a selfless hero, sometimes you need to put yourself first. The outbreak has really highlighted the fact that Jason could be representative of the best traits of humanity... or the worst. His motivation right now is simply to survive.

History: Jason was born and raised in Fort Morgan, Colorado. His family life was relatively quiet throughout his childhood. His mother and father got along well. He and his sister were as close as siblings could be, and they both had a good relationship with his stepbrother (his mother's son from another marriage). His father taught him how to hunt, fish, and survive in the wilderness, and Jason really thrived in the outdoors. Things all changed for Jason at 16 when his mother and sister tragically passed away in a car crash. The accident drove Jason into an "emotional coma" during which he went through the stages of grief over and over, and retreated away from humanity. While Jason was dealing with this, his father sunk into an alcohol-induced depression, and soon after, he started to get physical. Jason's stepbrother Michael moved out of the house around this time, and though he urged Jason to go with him, he couldn't leave home.
Over the next couple of years, Jason started to strike out from home, he started working long shifts at a sporting goods store, to spend as much time away from home as possible. All the time, he and his father grew further and further apart. When the outbreak occurred, Jason was out on a hunting trip for the first 48 hours following the initial case in Colorado. He returned home to find his world completely turned upside down. In the six weeks following the outbreak, Jason has been learning the new rules to survival and picking his way across the state, living off the land for the most part and adapting to the new world order. He has just arrived outside of Akron.

Backpack: http://img.alibaba.com/wsphoto/35476...l-backpack.jpg

Knife: http://sphotos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphoto...04007170_n.jpg

Axe: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/w...11/hatchet.jpg

[Chanda]

Although I will take a longer look at it later, I would appreciate if you would choose another picture for your character besides one of the characters from the show.

I'm not saying your character IS Daryl, but seriously, come on. Have to draw a line somewhere. I also saw in your other Walking Dead RP you used a picture of Rick for your character. Let's try to think a bit more outside the box, okay?

[Crossfire]

That picture of Rick was more of a placeholder til I found something better, but yeah, if you really want me to get a new picture, I had a backup lined up, so I could switch it out now, or add it in when I post in the official OOC (if I'm accepted!)

[Chanda]

You can wait until you post it in the OOC if you'd prefer. Submissions here in the int check mean nothing; they were basically so I could give you a quick review while we wait for FM to post the OOC.

Your submission isn't considered official until you actually post it in the OOC, where I'll give it a full review to weed out any mistakes prior to the audition. Posting it in the OOC doesn't mean it's your final, end-all-be-all, set-in-stone submission, though, so don't worry. You're welcome to make any edits to it before the deadline is up.