Enigmatik — Roleplayer Guild

They call you crazy. Mock you. Maybe you don’t reveal it, or have plans that nobody else knows about. Perhaps you’re going to bolt down your house, defend it with gun and explosive. Perhaps you’re heading underground, never to be seen until your cache finally runs out of supplies, and you face the new world. Perhaps you’ve rented a luxury survival condo, or are even planning on hitting the road. Nonetheless, this is you. Your life is influenced by the preparations you have made for the end- and you have stuck by your guns, perhaps literally, determined that you are not the crazy one, and that your preparations are important.

And, as it turns out, they just might be. The rumblings of something big are coming. Nobody knows what it is, but throughout the world, twinges of fear are felt in that core, reptilian element of brains. Animals are more skittery. Forests are subdued. Even on the seas, one can tell that things are… Different. wrong. North America is the epicentre. The feeling of unease is greatest, but daily life is not yet affected. There has been no run on the banks. No stock market crash. Despite the unease in the guts of people, life continues, much as it always has. However, this is not to be for long. Every day, the feeling of faint dread grows. Time will tell what will come of it.

Welcome to Life After. This will be a slightly unusual nation RP, in that it won’t actually handle nations at all. Instead, you will take the role of groups of preppers within the Continental United States (including Alaska,) and how they match up to the strains of life after a disaster that brings society to its knees. It is important that I am deliberately not revealing the nature of this disaster, to ensure disaster min-maxing does not occur.

For this RP, a number of stats will be used, but it will mostly, and indeed heavily be about writing. This is advanced for a reason, and I would appreciate that people only apply if they are interested in an RP that will involve a fairly large amount of writing, and (I hope,) last for a fair amount of time. The stats will be:

Number of Survivors: How many survivors are within your prepared area. This ranges from a single person, to a family of five, to even an entire community of people. In the case of the latter, I would prefer that only a few major characters are used for POV.

Nutrition: This will be somewhat abstracted. Food and water is combined into ‘units,’ and one adult can live off of one unit for a day. Babies (0-2) require 0 units, as long as there’s an adult female and children (3-14) require a half unit a day. A bunker for two people is likely to have around 1.2 thousand units. Storage will have to be determined.

Supplies: Again, this will be somewhat abstracted into four different types. Basic, Advanced, Trade and Tools. Basic supplies include wood, scrap metal, nails, lead and gunpowder. Advanced include medical supplies, mechanical equipment such as gears and motors, electrical equipment such as batteries and wires, and even medical supplies, especially antibiotics and serious medication. Tools includes everything from hammers to ham radios and generators. Finally, trade items include alcohol, cigarettes, jewellery, and more. Basic supplies are measured in rough amounts. Enough gunpowder for a box of ammunition, or enough wood to construct a shed, etc etc. Advanced is measured similarly. Enough mechanical supplies to make a combustion engine. Enough medical equipment to operate on five people. Tools are only given when extraordinary. We don’t need to know every hammer, wrench, and crowbar. Things that might be included here are ammunition reloading equipment, petrol generators, power tools and short-range radios. Trade tools are measured in $ worth, with new post-apocalyptic pricing. Give me a rough idea of what supplies you have, and I’ll do the maths for you. Once again, storage should be thought of.

Weaponry: Guns. Swords. Explosives. Hell, flamethrowers if you really want. Things you can use to kill, and kill effectively. Whilst some of these will be listed under supplies, a full arsenal is expected (unless you’re being a pacifist.) Storage of these weapons is also an important factor- not only how do you fit them into your shelter, but also how you ensure that they’re safe, secure, and yet can still be reached quickly in an emergency. 

Vehicles: Cars. Bikes. Horses. Gyrocopters. Preppers aren’t always fine to just have a sedan or a sports car. Hell, some have even been known to buy up old tanks, but those tend to have other issues beside mere logistics.

Stronghold: Where you’re preparing to survive in. This determines how exactly you will play. Bunker dwellers will have a much more monotonous and, well, boring time of it, but will be dramatically safer, whilst above-ground settlements will have far more interactions with the new world, but ‘enjoy’ a dramatically greater amount of danger. Walking nomads, road warriors, and more can also be played.

The meat of the RP will be, I hope, the daily struggle to survive. Just because one has prepared does not mean that the way of life they once enjoyed is still possible. Electricity and water will eventually stop, gasoline can take anywhere from 3-8 months to deteriorate, and life must continue despite this.  As mentioned earlier, the stronghold you pick will greatly determine how one will survive. For ease of communication, I’ll break down four subtypes (although one shouldn't feel restricted by this, and can hybridise, change and so on if they want,) and discuss how playstyle will depend on this. These subtypes are: Suburban Siegers, Vault Dwellers, Road Warriors and Lone Rangers.

Suburban Siegers should be a large proportion of preppers. They involve any amount of people- from one individual to a large family, who have turned their home into their castle. Despite the name, this also includes those who have property away from society, such as a cabin in the woods. Generally, Siegers have a large amount of supplies, the ability to gather more, but are also restricted to one place and must deal with threats rather than fleeing from them. Be it desperate people asking for supplies, raiders attempting to steal them, or one of the myriad new factions who have sprung up attempting to converse or recruit them, Suburban Siegers are the beating heart of the Prepping community.

Vault Dwellers, on the other hand, choose a different lifestyle. Burrowed hidey holes, hidden underneath a basement or entire shipping crates submerged beneath pastures, they tend to have tremendous amount of supplies, but unless they are willing to leave their abode, no way of replenishing them. Furthermore, cabin fever and sickness are major issues, and the ever-present risk of someone discovering the bunker, or worse, flushing one out is a threat that cannot be discounted.

Road Warriors choose a different path still. Choosing life with the open environment around them, they take to the roads in large convoys, or the seas in vast boats, they generally have less supplies on them, but can acquire a large amount easily. What’s more, they have the capability to not only fight off threats, but also flee them, if they even have to encounter them in the first place.

Lone Rangers are a different breed. Usually only one or two people, and easily the smallest proportion of the prepping community, the only things they can carry is the things on their back. They generally have a much easier time of gathering food, but cannot carry as much. Thy have the option of fleeing, hiding or fighting off threats, but the latter is often risky, especially when one cannot carry huge amounts of ammunition stocks, so every bullet counts. 

If you can think of a different type of Prepper that I haven’t thought of, feel free to tell me, and I’ll attempt to include them. Below is details on sheets, so stay tuned folks!

Sheet:

Unlike other sheets, this will be a little different. Here is what I would like from you fine folk, although this is just guidelines, and 
the entire thing can be changed around as much as you’d like.

The Stronghold:
 Or not as the case might be. The preparations you have undertaken. Resources you have stockpiled. Base you have. That sort of thing. As long as it covers the different supply types, and how you’re going to ride out the storm, I’m happy.

The Survivors:
A non-exhaustive list of the important people in your stronghold. At least two short paragraphs for any important folk, plus the survival skills they bring to the table. Really nothing special. This should include what disaster exactly you folks are preparing for.

The Lore:
A bit of creative writing. A few paragraphs of something related to prepping during the ‘Great Fear.’ A bug-out drill, lockdown procedures, supply runs, anything. Make it a good read, and that’ll be awesome.

The Stronghold:

Their home. A two-story ranch near the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. Made from stone and wood, nice and sturdy in the event of an attack. The windows have steel shutters that can be pulled down over them. The ranch has a decent amount of land, but it’s really not a huge amount, and since both of the pair work full time, demanding jobs, there’s not been a mass planting effort. Still, there’s a fair stash of lettuce and wheat seeds that can be planted, and the couple have a few chickens that scratch a living in a coop next to the house. The chickens produce around a unit a day all together, and can be butchered for more units. There is also a rooster that the couple owns, which could dramatically increase the number of hens they could have. Infection of their animals is a great concern of the couple, and they make sure to test them for avian flu often.

Of course, this is by no means it. The pair have around nine hundred units of food stored in the house, all in non-perishables, and perhaps sixty more units in perishable food. The non-perishable food is stored in the basement, which is accessed through a trapdoor hatch underneath a rug beneath their living room. In an emergency, this storage is also their last retreat, as only one or two people can enter the basement at a time. The ranch has a well at the back of it that goes down far below the water table, so only in the absolute driest of summers does the couple ever run out of fresh water.

Besides this, there is a large storage shed out back, which contains enough lumber, nails, scrap and so on to repair the house several times, as well as adding a second layer of protection to the windows. There is also a tremendous amount of tarpaulin, in case they need to isolate a room as a quarantine area. Common household supplies, like detergent and bleach have also been stockpiled, and the couple has no less than four Medical Life Support Bags, along with enough antibiotics and antivirals to treat themselves for several years of sickness. They hope they don’t have to use these though. Specialist equipment the couple have includes solar panels and a wind turbine to keep essential power on, several respirators, dozens of disposable NBC overalls, gas masks and several boxes of backup filters. The only power tools they keep is a chainsaw and plane saw for making new logs if needed, as well as a ham radio. 

For trade items, the couple has around $2000 worth of pre-Apocalypse trade items, which when combined with tradable tools, gives them around $15,000 of post-Apocalypse barter items. This goes up with the inclusion of their weapons: a semi-automatic Bushmaster AR15, which they have 6000 bullets for, a Remington 700 bolt-action rifle, for which they have 2000 bullets for, two Glock 22’s for which they have 5000 bullets for combined, and a Benelli Super 90 Semi-Automatic shotgun, which they have only 1000 rounds for. For close combat, they have axes, hatchets, the ever-present knives, and recently Trixie has been practising throwing and making tomahawks. 

As well as a more relaxed Ford Focus, the couple has recently invested in a 2017 Jeep Wrangler, for which they have enough fuel to use until it goes bad. Besides this, they have two mountain bicycles, with messenger packs for all of them. They have a small trailer that can be hooked up to their truck, but besides that, they don’t have a way of carrying huge amounts of supplies from one place to the other.

Survivors:

The ranch contains two survivors, more if you include the animals. Robin and his girlfriend Trixie, who are both firefighters, their dog, Rocky, and the four hens and rooster they own are the main inhabitants of the ranch. They are preparing for a pandemic to ravage the US, as well as having the capability to deal with the societal breakdown that will likely occur in such a scenario. Whilst they haven’t dedicated themselves to a single disease, their big worries are Influenza/H1N1, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, other viral plagues.
Robin is 27, and has been a firefighter since he was 19. He’s fit and strong, as would be expected, and has also picked up an eye for finding things even in high-stress situations. He’s an amateur handyman and gardener, but terrible with mechanical things. He has basic 
first aid training, but nowhere near that of his girlfriend.

Trixie, 24, is also a firefighter, but unlike Robin, she’s a trained paramedic as well, and has taken it upon herself to learn mechanical skills. She can’t repair an engine block or anything like that, but she can get their car from broken down to functional, won’t short the entire thing out if she needs to use jumper cables, and has also begun to learn how to throw tomahawks. Both of the pair have been going to 
a shooting range for the past few years in order to practise their aim, and consider themselves somewhat capable marksmen. 

The final member of the group is Rocky- a 3 year old German Shepherd. He’s been trained well, and although he eats into the food that the group has, Robin and Trixie wouldn’t have it any other way. 

The Lore:

“Ok, so, let’s just go through all of this again, right?”

“Alright.”  Trixie nodded, ruffling her hand through Rocky’s ears as she did so. “So, in the Focus, we’ve got one of the medical kits, the Benelli, and the anytime ready kit, yeah?”

Robin went though the list and ticked off a few items. “Yeah, that sounds about right, I’ll double check in a minute. In the Wrangler, we have what, another medical kit, the Remington and a spare hatchet, yeah? Plus the other anytime ready kit.”

“Yeah, I checked the other medical kit in there, it’s still good, so no worries there.”

“Anything in the trailer, or did we decide to keep that empty?”

“No, that’s empty.” 

“Alright. So, aim for this bug out is to have the trailer hooked up and for us to all be in the car in five minutes. Three. Two. One… BUG OUT, GO!” The firefighter clapped his hands together and took off, a quick whistle from Trixie enough to get Rocky moving. The dog knew that when this happened, he had to head to the red car and wait for them to open it for him, the owners of the house running ASAP. In the event of a bug out, they had a few waterproof barrels of food- around twenty or so units, stashed in their cupboard, and Trixie stacked up two of them, even as Robin picked up two rucksacks from their bedroom and hurried back down the stairs again. The door to the Wrangler opened with a loud bleep, and he swung the rear door open, tossing a treat to Rocky as the dog leapt up and into the back seat. The two rucksacks went in next to him, and he panted eagerly, Trixie placing the food barrels into the trailer, and then beginning to attach it to the rear of the car. 

“Two minutes, come on!” Clapping his hands twice, Robin returned to the house, fumbling a keychain and unlocking their gun cabinet. The AR was hefted out, along with a box of ammo, and he tossed the rifle over his shoulder, the strap making sure it stayed there. The two pistols were locked in their holsters, and so he simply had to pick up the belts, locking the door behind him as he got into the shotgun seat of the car. When he was strapped in, he clicked the stopwatch and nodded. “Three minutes twenty four. Point three one five.” He chuckled a little bit. “We did good. You get the water as well?”

“Yeah yeah, it’s in the trailer.”

“Amazing. We should do decontamination practise next, shouldn’t we?”

“Probably, but I’m pretty buggered out right now.”

“Well, that’s the way things are. We should at least try.”

“Alright, fine fine.” 

“Remember to repack the food!”
Enigmatik Member

Overly-Caffienated Thembie Supreme

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