Interest in a Zombie Apoc Setting Collaboration?

[loogie]

So, for those of you who have been around for a while will probably know me as that guy that show up every so often with a cool project or two.. who quickly gets too busy, over their head, or just bored...

I HAVE ANOTHER PROJECT!

I've recently been asked to run a game, and I've pretty much decided on running a super gritty, hopefully "real" styled apoc survival game, based on one of my favourite horror types... Zombies. Now, I am a BIG zombie fan, and I'm not talking the popular Zombie, Pirate, Ninja, Unicorn way... I like the classic zombie movies, and have watched more than I can count... Played more games than I can count too.. 80% of which are just pointless...

Unlike most people, I pretty much despise The Walking Dead series, mainly cause of it's completely predictable, pointless characters, and an utter flop of a show... It's a drama with some zombies in the backround, and I don't see why it's such a common practice to seemingly get bored of zombies as the stories main aggressor and instead elevate some evil person to the new "real enemy" position... It's just lame... been done everywhere, all to often.. and you end up having to make them extremely disturbed to make a point of saying "no.. really.. this guys IS actually worse then the zombies... SEE! HE SACRIFICES KIDS!" or some such... despite my hate, i continue to watch, cause i just REALLY wish they'd get beyond the weak storylines and make it good... with the turnover of writers on that show.. it's completely possible.

*Sigh*

ok ranting aside (i just want to inform you of my position) I am looking to create a setting... A zombie apoc world, wherein i (and anyone else interested) can set their story, campaign, or anything else they wish...

By a setting, I mean basically having a collaborative world, a world where we can have a common disease cause, common infection history, general information... and of course where we can share information from our campaigns... What's the benefit? content... your stories content can be used in my story... my stories content can be used in yours, the world is a collective, which can create a static and synced world event system which creates an overall richer experience... I'm not a team of writes working on the world.. so the more people collaborating, the more detailed and rich experience we can get.

I'm figuring mapping can be done in part with googlemaps screen caps, a bit of a general discussion about events and such...

This is just a call out to see who would be interested in such a project, and get the ball rolling if there is interest... does this seem like something people might want to attempt?

[Korash]

Are we talking real world gone to hell in a hand basket, or are you thinking of throwing in some hocus pocus as a cause of the contagion? I am not a huge fan of Zombie flicks because like you said, they quickly become predictable, but might like to work on a setting... Be warned, if you want hard scientific explainations for a real world cause, I more than likely am NOT you man

[Jaxilon]

I'm not a big fan of the genre but I do like the sci-fi versions as in the "I am Legend" movie. So I guess I'm the opposite of Korash on this point. That said, it might be hard to bring together fantasy backgrounds and sci-fi backgrounds but as far as the world and mapping goes I think it would be cool. Also, such maps could work for a big variety of games. (eg. any post apocalyptic world)

[loogie]

what i was thinking of doing was utilizing things like google maps etc to get some base data, cities etc.. while we won't be 100% on what each building is etc... we can be creative beyond that and make up the floorplan or actual use of a specific building footprint...

As for game style, what i'm planning is a bit more gritty than the usual, sort of a realistic thriller puzzle rather than a traditional zombie storyline of "wha! what are these slow shambling dead-looking things! i'm going to stamp on it's foot to make it go away!"... where you are trying to survive, where every human you meet along the way is even worse then the thousands of dead... i'm planning on making the zombies the thing to fear, and require you to use your surroundings to survive.

Basically, i'm expecting people to know what they're talking about... if you want to make it easy on yourself... play yourself.. or someone very similar to you.. that way you can try to survive using your own experiences and skills... if you want to be creative, and pretend you're a scientist, a survival guy, a soldier... be ready to do some research because i want you to be able to backup your actions... by this i mean i want people to be able to describe what they do.. not just be "i'm an electrician, so i rig up some electric fences around our shelter..."... i want to know where you get your power source, how you're running the current, how much power there is, and how you go about handing that power yourself... I really enjoy the creativity people come up with in a pinch, and i think that it'll give a gritty, realistic sense to the whole game..

basically, i want it to be like a reality show, except that we're not holding back to make sure people don't die.

this being said.. i'm not planning on holding many punches, so my players may well die often.. so i'd like it to be fairly quick to get back in the game as another player. I'd like to base the general outbreak in say... uk or maybe europe... mainly since i figure there would be less guns around, and therefore require more creativity to stay alive.

I understand the dislike of the genre.. it's not for everyone.. while i'd be all for people contributing or using the maps for other purposes, what i'm hoping to create is a sort of... content-set of crisscrossing paths... where we have an idea whats happening in the overall area, big horde movements or some such... any special events... as well as the general actions in each story... but.. due to each stories actions, they'll create debris, dead bodies, discarded items, notes, trails, etc... that can be found by another story, and therefore each story acts as sort of a... extension of the setting of the others... also, obviously, its possible storylines could cross, or what have you.. if we can work out how that'd work...

Thats what i'm thinking anyways.