Basically you'll play as a head of your respective "family" within a tribe(a large group of survivors. Your main goal is to keep your own family alive (or yourself alone if you don't want one) and at the same time cooperate with other families to survive in this world.
The Greylands
"The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety"Long ago a great plague swept through the world and despite man's advanced mastery of science and medicine could not temper nature's wrath. Now, some 75 years after the last of the unlucky infected had died off, nature has taken steps in reclaiming what once was her's. Of course as a testament to humanity's stubbornness, resolve or perhaps their stupidity, small groups -tribes, if you will- crawled out from their hiding spot and despite near-extinction still demanded to see nature's manager for her unaccommodating attitude.
Families have regrown and some semblance of civilization are starting to form. However, with the good of man follows the evils. Roving bands of rogues, villains and highwaymen ravage the countryside to take from others for their own. Farmers, ranchers, fishermen or simple scavengers fall prey to these men.
Your Home
The Tribe will decide in a location to live and how they wish to make a living. As of now you guys will start on an old interstate, Ill give options for settlement in the IC once its up. Make sure you know what you want out of this and that it makes sense, going to the mountains makes for shit lives as scavengers and settling in the ruins of a city makes finding large tracks of farming land hard.
Your Tribe
There is safety in numbers and having others you can fall back unto eases the burden of survival. You will play the part of a family head (or loner) who must work with others to ensure your mutual survival.
Perhaps you may just be a quiet bystander only cooperating for your family's sake or perhaps you are the defacto voice of influence wishing to recreate the empires of old. Whatever your motives you are forced to interact with the other tribe families.
Your Family
Your tribe is the safety net, but your family (or your self) is the immediate treasure. You must make sure their needs are met: shelter, water, food, clothing, safety. You must provide for them or risk you legacy dying out in the wastes with them. If you choose to be a loner that's fine as it prevents you from having a large burden, but without a solid force to back you up you may have a harder time.
Gameplay
I as the GM will handle your family needs using a "chapter" method. Each will start with a general state of tribal affairs before a detailed family report for each player. Typically if you made the right decisions your tribe and family will prosper, but I may throw a few curveballs along the way. To keep the story flowing I chapters will time-skip a few weeks in a sort of quiet "down-time" that reflect your decisions that chapter. After said downtime problems with spring back up such as dwindling supplies, exhausted hunting grounds, social breaking points etc.
The chapter intro will include a general tribe "problem" that will need to be addressed. For example, the first problem will be the initial settlement and players will decide on possible settlements before dealing with problems getting there.
Random events are random, these happen during the downtime and are typically benign but are addressed in the next chapter if it's anything big. They won't be toooooo unfair.
