Wondering if people would be interested in RPing in this setting. I first tried doing this one a couple years ago to no avail so I decided to reboot it.





Beyond the City Walls takes place in the eponymous City, which is not just an impossibly large labyrinthian structure similar to a modern day metropolis, but a sentient force that can alter the majority (roughly ~90% of itself, known as the Active Zones) of its own structure at will, including its own internal laws of physics, create dangerous creatures that act as its tools in attacking those that live within itself, and absorbs any dead or discarded materials in its active, changeable areas to be reused to its benefit later.

It is roughly over one hundred years after the City first appeared sometime during the modern era in the central United States and began expanding all over the world until it's been all but consumed. It's unknown how many people currently live within the City, but civilization still exists.

While 90% of the City is considered Active and able to be manipulated by itself, the remaining 10%, large chunks of city and spiderwebbed lines running between them known as Dead Zones, are the areas used as outposts for the remnants of human civilization, known as Sectors. Most rely on trade, hunting, and searching for hidden stockpiles left by The City as traps to get by, but some have... diversified in strange and inhumane ways.



The absolute end goal of the game would be to escape the City or destroy it entirely. This, however, would take a lot of time and a lot of building up and working together to accomplish and as of yet nobody knows where to even begin. So currently, your initial job is to work for the well-being of your own Sector, Sector Three. The three primary jobs you can take are Retrieving, scouring the Active Zones for Caches of weapons, medicine, technology, and other such goodies; Hunting, taking bounties on dangerous criminals and inhuman beasts roaming the City; and taking post as a Soldier, protecting your Sector against invasion and war from enemy Sectors or more unnatural forces. The story is largely malleable, and as you keep going you can help figure out what direction the Sector is going to take and what your role in it will be. With any luck, by the end you'll have become veterans of the City, faced some of the nastier, more powerful denizens, and made a name for yourself across every Sector in the City. Depending on what you choose to do and how you go about it, you could discover the secrets of The City, become afflicted by the overall eldritch nature of the setting, make deals and pacts with things that don't bear mentioning until they come about, shift political tides, forge friends, stage coups, set up shops, do as you please the farther along you go.



Simply put, no matter how many people initially would sign up, splitting things across even two Sectors and three jobs would still be a six-way split, and then the story would be almost all waiting. As it grows both in terms of scope and momentum, more factions and jobs will be able to be taken both by your already established character, or by creating one character per faction (but not per job per faction) and using them simultaneously- generally as many as you can sanely do and keep track of in your head. The current limitations are to get the story moving fast from the get-go and then diversifying as it continues.



The City, to put it lightly, is massive. And a massive cosmic force that can shape itself and its own minions in any way it wishes can do quite a lot. Still, here's a few examples of the things you may find within the world: Sectors engaged in inhumane activities such as slavery, experimentation, cannibalism, or out-right City worship, strange creatures summoned by the City to protect its Caches or fight survivors, including the transforming, combining dark figures known as the Shadow Graphers and the avian, weather-changing Flock, as well as a slew of other creatures. You could go up against nomadic raiders, dangerous cults, and if you're very unlucky, you could find yourself face to face with one of the Afflicted, humans mutated by the influence of the City itself, physiologically and psychologically changing with a fighting benefit at the cost of their humanity and mental faculties, or the even more dangerous Constants, nigh-godlike beings that reside in Domains in the center of The City, not creations of it but powerful denizens of an indeterminate number that work symbiotically with it. You can find yourself in parts of the City where gravity itself shifts, where the world seems to be floating on platforms, where you can walk into a building and find things changed in bizarre ways. You could take part in wars or make your way as a trader or research the City or wander and give aid. The choices are up to you.



First and foremost, the site rules apply. No seriously graphic imagery, no nudity or explicit sexual content (it's not 18+), be courteous and polite to other RPers and while you can decide your own personal arc, you don't control others' of course. Don't be excessively OP and if you want to make significant changes to your character, such as becoming Afflicted, changing sides, plotting against his or her own Sector, or anything that would risk leading to an OP character or sending the status quo way out of whack, message me first and we'll work together on meeting in the middle to get that done. Other than that, there are a few rules on how many skills and what kind of equipment you start out with at the very beginning.

So if anyone's interested in this idea, let me know. It's a bit of an out there, more surreal take on the apocalypse, but hopefully it's unique enough for people to like the idea.

@ZacksQuestThis honestly seems really interesting. I've got a mean hunger for some apocalyptic stuff so this is right up my alley.

Would you consider throwing in some kind of loot system? It doesn't need to be complex or anything like that, roleplays often work best in simple narrative setups.

I looooooooove scavenging for loot. Finding weird stuff and having to make do can lead to some really neat, iconic things for characters in my experience. Making a home made knife out of a splinter of car frame, sawing down a single barreled shotgun, getting a bunch of old stockings and making a ballistic nylon coat, stuff like that.

However there's no real drama or intrigue when players can simply find food, ammo, weapons, armor, supplies, and whatever else they want whenever it's convenient for them. So I feel a loot list/system would help liven things up.

@Crosswire

That would actually liven up the roleplaying even further. I'll certainly put some thought into adding in a more comprehensive looting system for developing and customizing the kind of things your character can use as well as a basic idea of what different items sell for. Nothing outlandish or akin to Dead Rising but impromptu weaponsmithing and improvising would definitely work. Generally you won't be finding ammunition, guns, armor, medicine, or anything not generally mundane outside of taking it off of the dead or finding it in a Cache, so unless you have enough to buy what you're looking form when in a Sector, you really do just make do, and when you would find a Cache or loot a body, I would definitely list what's there. Thank you for the advice!

I will say that, no matter how big the Cache is, in the end it's mostly going to be stockpiled by the Sector that assigned you to the Cache. You might get one or two items in there if you're lucky, but generally you get paid your Cells for your hard work and go about your business until the next assignment or change of plans.

@ZacksQuest No problem! I'm glad you're open to suggestions and the like.

You might get one or two items in there if you're lucky, but generally you get paid your Cells for your hard work and go about your business until the next assignment or change of plans.

Well if you're the one who finds the cache then there's nothing to stop you from taking choice picks, right? After all unless you have a tattle-tale partner or someone looking over your shoulder constantly the Sector won't know exactly what's in the cache until you tell them. Provided they don't know the proper contents before hand.

So you're in a position to take what you want from the Cache and then hand in the remainder for cash. It's the best of both worlds, getting good loot and getting paid for the stuff you don't need/want.

Besides since the Caches (from what you describe) are typically well guarded and trapped by the City and it's many creatures, I feel a lot of Retrievers would value being better equipped then better paid. Money might be valuable but more often then not it's better to find then to pay for something.

But that's just my thoughts on the matter.

Oh and I have another question: Will there be cars?

I mean this is a massive, sprawling City after all. Sure lots of the areas are eldritch, have fucked up physics, and no gravity, but I'm sure there are still roads. Having to get everywhere on foot and having to haul back larger Caches on your back doesn't sound all that ideal.

Besides this role play is apocalyptic or at least has apocalyptic elements. Throwing in a few Mad Max esque elements couldn't hurt.

I remember this. You're doing it again? I'll be happy to bring back my old character.

@TheMadAsshatter

I absolutely am planning on bringing this back. You can feel free to use your old character again but it's starting anew so what happened with your character the first go probably won't this time? Also @Crosswire you probably could scavenge the parts for vehicles that aren't City-controlled (sometimes the things akin to streetlights, fire hydrants, and yes even cars in the City could very well be alive), and have a vehicle. When it comes to trading between the Sectors that are farther apart, these are almost a necessity. The only difficulty is how given the City's eponymous layout, and the fact that the lines between Active Zones and Dead Zones are jagged and probably marked off through trial and error, the safe roads that don't change layout and dimensions on you are winding and more suited to trade than full-on Road Warrior chases. Doesn't mean it's not possible, it certainly could work to your advantage, but you'd need to be able to not drive through a barricade between Active and Dead Zone and find yourself somewhere completely unknown to you with a hell of a time getting back.

I am very interested in this.

Sweet. Do we have an OOC yet?