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Swarm 2012

Genre

Horror

Theme

The world is a setting that pulls a Jeckel and Hide from Day to night.  Though the day is far from safe it is a calmer time and the ability to see the colors and life that has been birthed back into the cement and metal world of man gives it an almost peaceful feel.  By contrast the night is filled with creatures specifically bent on hunting down and killing every last surviving human as violently as possible.  The constant feel should be a dark gloom of hopelessness lightened only by memories of a dead world.

Background

The discovery channels "life after people" documentary is the base building block to the entire concept, just add wackey fantasy, shake don't stir, and presto!  you have giant root systems having torn up streets, sky scapes entwined with giant trees mystical beast formed from the animals of a normal world; werewolves,  giant carniverous moles, eagle dragons, swarms of vicious fairies born of smaller birds, cockroaches that eat cats, even plants that conciously try to kill.

  What is the reason for this massacre?  Many speculate that it is natures revenge for centeries of abuse, others call it a fluke, some sort of jump in evolution or government experiment gone bad, most point to the prophecies revolving around the year 2012 (the year this would take place) and this is believed to be just the begining.  There are pockets of survivors scattered throughout the ruins and the concept it to lean more toward action RPG trying to keep a quick pace feel to game play.

Antagonists & Conflict

The major conflict is obviously the survival of the human race, antagonists would be the Dragoons, a race of dragonlike humans (perhaps they had been humans) that lead the major assault against humanity.  They follow a faith that centers around a date in december of 2012 to what goal I do not know, perhaps their leader intends to become a God, whatever the reason the players do not know either because the dragoons rarely take the time to talk before killing a human they encounter..  On a more personal level each character would have a history that they live with, a mistake they made that each must resolve in their individual story; A garbage man whom lost his family seeks to defend the group he's with, an actress screaming about her son that got taken needs to come to terms with the fact that her son is dead and that she killed him, the preacher hides his past as he speds the word of the bible afraid to tell anyone he was on death row scheduled to die the day of the event, each person has a unique  backstory they struggle with adding depth both to the characters and to the game.

Special Features

the game needs to have a free roam concept to it making it so that players actually have to go out and find supplies.  There are guns of coarse but many of the braver(crazier?) people have reverted to using melee weapons to fight back against the beast.  It would seem humans were not entirly uneffected by the changes in the world because they are capable of reaching far greater physical potential then ever before in shorter amounst of time.

 

((I took out the concept of potential adding magic and steampunk technology, I think the entire idea of magic gives to powerful of a feel to the player, in a game like this were emphasis is to be horror it is best to leave the player feeling weak and desperate as much as possible.))

PC Role

Food and water are the two most important things, so it would make sense that part of the new forming small survival community everyone must contribute some set about to the food and water of the collective either daily or weekly.  Aside from this fact people would specialize in other things, supply gathers would be the equizilent of the treasure hunters of the game, some might always train in preparation to defend the community, maybe work for the priest, search for other survivor, look for new safe houses, work on the defense that is the stucture of the community or the politics of it,  found your own collony wage war against the dragoons, wage war against the survivors, all within the context of self preservation.

Comments

RE: robosnakes reply

Submitted by redeamed on Sun, 10/25/2009 - 00:44.

yeah I was going with a bit of a Lost feel with some of those ideas, I have some more in depth character concepts but I took them out of the submitted work because I thought it better to keep it more generic.

the name

Submitted by redeamed on Wed, 10/21/2009 - 02:09.

So before anyone asks I couldn't think of a name, saw swarm put it with 2012 and thought it actually rather fitting for the concept.

Author

redeamed

Setting Concept Score

3.01667
3
Read review by cptbeefalo
Posted 27 weeks 1 day ago
by cptbeefalo
4
5
4

Interesting concept. The "world changing while man adapts" angle is the cornerstone of many RPG worlds, and it is used well here. Not sure why the dragonmen-like Dragoons are in this setting right now, but I guess it does give a bigger boogeyman to fight eventually, and perhaps some future explanation for why it all is happening.

Pretty original concept. I like it as is, cleaner this way with no magic and steampunk stuff. Simple, yet interesting. I also REALLY like a system that forces people to take flaws, because if you really want good roleplay you have to have bad things happen to the PC's. Course, not everyone who plays these games likes that, but perhaps we could make it so that if you roleplay (NOT RESOLVE) your particular problem well you gain some super excellent bonus to your PC with XP or something. *shrug*

Fairly inspiring. I can imagine some pretty nifty badguys and monsters, and many of them can be outside the more traditional fantasy aspects due to the nature of the concept. I think the Dragoons could be used to do great things in the story, or they could be cliched retreads. Up to us, I suppose.

Decent writing, a few difficulties in run-on sentences. I like the author giving us his intentions of it being a game of personal horror and about having the player feeling weak and desperate. Those kind of games can be awesome and make lasting impressions on players, though some players who want to escape and be uber will likely avoid it.

Read review by Fenris
Posted 27 weeks 3 days ago
by Fenris
2
2
2

The name is Jeckyll and  Hyde. It is a bit difficult to take this setting very serious with this kind of mistake in the first line. 

The other problem is, that this setting is going to age very quickly and not very good. In two years, it is going to be overtaken by time, and lose much of its appeal, especially when the world is not destroyed after all.

Read review by Satyr
Posted 29 weeks 4 days ago
by Satyr
3
3
3

My first impression was of an "Anti-Avatar" game, where a peaceful urbanized worlds of noble civilzed people is hunted down by an evil jungle, and of Steven King's The Fog.  

I chuckled a lot at this idea, and  I think that this setting has  some kind potential, when we find good answers to questions like "What happened to all the people?" And "What is a threat of a big evil forest if we have Agent Orange?" 

I would probably focus less on the conflict between people and the nature, or the mosterous creatures, but between different survivor groups, The interaction between people is usually more interesting.

And just don't spoil it with steampunk nonsense. Simple technology is a good idea, but steampunk usually insults people's intelligence.

And besides, if you put up the tales here and now, there is enough awesome real technology around, so you dan't have to invent nonsensical pseudo artifacts.

Read review by mikeb
Posted 44 weeks 2 days ago
by mikeb
2
3
3

It seems like there would be little in terms of human settlements as any large congregation would likely draw the attention of the Dragoons. Without communities or otherwise needing backgrounds and descriptions, I am not sure what we would be writing as the Swarm. If you increase the opportunity for the Swarm to contribute to flesh out the setting details, I will definitely alter my review.

Read review by robosnake
Posted 44 weeks 6 days ago
by robosnake
3
3
3

 Have you seen the indie game Summerland?  It is a game that came out this year, I believe, with a similar premise to this setting.  Even given that, this is pretty original - I would just like to see it a lot more fleshed-out (beyond the documentary + fantasy shake-and-stir).  I also like every character having some kind of pain or mistake from their past that they are dealing with while trying to survive.  It actually sounds a lot like the first couple seasons of Lost, which I think is a good thing.  Anyway, I'd like to see more of what you have in mind here.

Read review by Zack Faust
Posted 45 weeks 2 days ago
by Zack Faust
3
4
3

I like this setting that you have. I looks like you might still be fleshing it out, but I wanted to give you some input. I have always been a fan of apocolyptic settings and even helped a freind of mine last year work on creating the world for his D20 apocolypse game. That being said, I have never seen one were nature was the cause for the downfall of man! It sounds like it could be a very fun game, especialy if you through in some religous, social, and personal conflict as well like it sounds like you are hinting at with the Dragoon wanting to become a god. On an aside, you've made a few grammatical and spelling errors in your descrptions that you might want to fix (the fire calling the kettle black here, my grammar is the worse!). All in all, it sounds like fun! :)