We're starting up the RP, but still very much looking for new players! Join here: roleplayerguild.com/topics/91824-after..
The year is unknown, and the world has fallen into chaos. Though none still alive recall the reason, nor whether it was a hundred or a thousand years ago, "modern" civilization befell a great catastrophe, and the shattered remnants of humanity were plunged suddenly into the dark ages. Once-gleaming metropolises are now left as either rubble, relics of an ancient culture half-revered and half-deified, or crudely fashioned into sprawling castles and keeps that fuse crumbling concrete with fresh-hewn stone bricks. Up and down the eastern coast of what was once known as North America, dozens or hundreds of squabbling city-states feud with one another over struggling farms and isolated villages and crumbling roads. Men fight and clash and die as the ancestors of their ancestors did, with sword and armor -- only the barest traces of musketry are beginning to reappear on the horizon. Most powerful, though, are the very few remaining artifacts of a time long past, rumored capable of spewing fire for hundreds of yards to fell armored knights mid-charge.
The year is unknown, yes, but one thing remains constant: the desire for glory. Half-crazed travelers have returned from a land far across the continent's inland wastes, claiming to have discovered riches beyond anyone's wildest dreams across the endless scrubby plains and toxic sands. And so your party has been assembled, from every corner of a hundred feuding realms, your mission to travel across what was once a proud and unfathomably advanced civilization, to find what truth there might be to these allegations of great treasures, and to return for the glory of your people.
But is anything ever quite so simple?
So there's the concept -- essentially, a post-post-apocalyptic world in which some unknown catastrophe befell the 21st-century world a significant amount of time ago and society has reverted to a much simpler medieval-ish level of technology. I'm aiming to go for primarily a low-fantasy setting, i.e. there probably won't be any spooky demons from beyond the abyss involved. Your characters will be relatively unknown individuals who have volunteered to attempt to cross the wastelands of central North America, and bring back the incredible treasures that are rumored to be on the other side of the continent.
One way that I hope to set this RP apart mechanically from the others is the introduction of a basic trait system. The point of these are to outline your character's primary skills and weaknesses in a way that makes them easy to process and for other players to understand. They shouldn't be viewed as the end-all-be-all of your character (that is, don't let yourself be limited by them) but rather as a few distilled bullet-points summarizing the ten-page-essay that is their life.
In addition, you might find that players who roleplay their character's actions in accord with their traits are rewarded, while things may not go so well for those who try to exploit or ignore them.
Everyone gets 7 points to work with. Positive traits cost points, while negative traits give you them. In other words, if you've already used up your seven but absolutely must have another positive trait, you can take some negatives to balance things out.
So there it is. Rather lengthy for an interest check, I will say, but the idea's been stewing in my head for a while. Leave your questions, comments, expression of interest, scathing criticism, and thrown poop below.
After the End -- A Post-Apocaylptic Fantasy RP
Background
The year is unknown, and the world has fallen into chaos. Though none still alive recall the reason, nor whether it was a hundred or a thousand years ago, "modern" civilization befell a great catastrophe, and the shattered remnants of humanity were plunged suddenly into the dark ages. Once-gleaming metropolises are now left as either rubble, relics of an ancient culture half-revered and half-deified, or crudely fashioned into sprawling castles and keeps that fuse crumbling concrete with fresh-hewn stone bricks. Up and down the eastern coast of what was once known as North America, dozens or hundreds of squabbling city-states feud with one another over struggling farms and isolated villages and crumbling roads. Men fight and clash and die as the ancestors of their ancestors did, with sword and armor -- only the barest traces of musketry are beginning to reappear on the horizon. Most powerful, though, are the very few remaining artifacts of a time long past, rumored capable of spewing fire for hundreds of yards to fell armored knights mid-charge.
The year is unknown, yes, but one thing remains constant: the desire for glory. Half-crazed travelers have returned from a land far across the continent's inland wastes, claiming to have discovered riches beyond anyone's wildest dreams across the endless scrubby plains and toxic sands. And so your party has been assembled, from every corner of a hundred feuding realms, your mission to travel across what was once a proud and unfathomably advanced civilization, to find what truth there might be to these allegations of great treasures, and to return for the glory of your people.
But is anything ever quite so simple?
OOC
So there's the concept -- essentially, a post-post-apocalyptic world in which some unknown catastrophe befell the 21st-century world a significant amount of time ago and society has reverted to a much simpler medieval-ish level of technology. I'm aiming to go for primarily a low-fantasy setting, i.e. there probably won't be any spooky demons from beyond the abyss involved. Your characters will be relatively unknown individuals who have volunteered to attempt to cross the wastelands of central North America, and bring back the incredible treasures that are rumored to be on the other side of the continent.
Traits
One way that I hope to set this RP apart mechanically from the others is the introduction of a basic trait system. The point of these are to outline your character's primary skills and weaknesses in a way that makes them easy to process and for other players to understand. They shouldn't be viewed as the end-all-be-all of your character (that is, don't let yourself be limited by them) but rather as a few distilled bullet-points summarizing the ten-page-essay that is their life.
In addition, you might find that players who roleplay their character's actions in accord with their traits are rewarded, while things may not go so well for those who try to exploit or ignore them.
Everyone gets 7 points to work with. Positive traits cost points, while negative traits give you them. In other words, if you've already used up your seven but absolutely must have another positive trait, you can take some negatives to balance things out.
The Setting
So there it is. Rather lengthy for an interest check, I will say, but the idea's been stewing in my head for a while. Leave your questions, comments, expression of interest, scathing criticism, and thrown poop below.
