Doomsday By Design -- Collaborative Story [ WORKING THREAD] [Updated!]

a reply to: XxNightAngelusxX

If its any consolation we arranged for our characters to meet through u2u. But my question is how do we handle dialogue between players? Separate posts or...?

Think got it .. the following are character stats and bit of backstory ..

Name : Ryujin.
Age: 17
Gender : Male
Stats :
Strength 5.
perception - 7.
endurance -6.
charisma - 3
Intelligence - 7.
agility - 7.
luck - 5
Appearance : japanese , height 5'5" , athletic build , hair worn the traditional japanese way .. usually dressed in black tshirt and jeans wearing jikatabi as more comfortable and better footing .. often listening to punk music on portable mp3player..

Disposition : Quiet, observant.. a mix between traditional and modern largely due the influence of his late grandfather and of the old clan retainer gozaimon. Rather independent as learned early to take care of himself instead of rely on others .

Background : mother -japanese national died in earthquake when ryujin was seven leaving him to be raised by his grandfather before he passed away and the old clan retainer gozaimon who had taken over training him after his grandfathers death.

Father - japanese national works for the koanchosa-cho ( public security intelligence agency ) assigned embassy duty at embassy in washington d.c , workaholic after the death of ryujins mother to cover his grief.

Older brother - japanese national officer with jdf before being killed in action fighting the north koreans .

gozaimon - old clan retainer took over raising and training ryujin after his grandfathers death as even though lived with his father he rarely saw him due his work ..

Backstory ..

Arrived in town a week earlier after being awakened by gozaimon in the middle of the night taking him to an airfield and waiting aircraft inflight all gozaimon would say is it was his fathers orders they were going to a safehouse and that his father would join them when he was able .. the usual .. new town .. new school and trying to figure out where he fit in ..

a reply to: tothetenthpower
Name -
Age -36
Gender - male
Disposition - passive, belligerent, aggressive, and believes it what he is doing
Appearance - 6' 5" 270 pounds all muscle

Strength - 10
Perception - 5
Endurance -
Charisma - 7
Intelligence - 6
Agility - 7
Luck - 5 -
Jason Striker was a team leader with the Special Tactical Unit (S.T.U.) that rolled into town. The orders were to start with the school; leave no survivors and withdraw to the staging area until the parents and town officials showed up.

Most of the town would turn out and rush for the school, or so the planners had said; parents, and anyone else who finally arrived at the school were to be all put down. All buildings and everything breathing would be a target after the school.
Background from Jason's memory:
The town had been identified as a group of like minded misfits/preppers and conspiracy nuts. Some residents in the town might be armed so all tactical precautions were to be maintained.

The briefing had continued with, "this is a terrorist cult town" (TCT) who hates the government and thinks there are way to many people in the world. Someone or some organization in the town has managed to splice viruses (bugs in Jason's mind)) together and they are mailing bug coated letters all over the world through the normal mail. Furthermore, even those who know nothing of the TCT activities are infected and would continue to spread the deadly virus unless they were stopped. Every citizen is a disease packet (D.P.) just waiting to be turned loose on the world.

S.T.U.s job was to stop the process.

This is a bad evil group in the process of releasing the Red Flu to all of the world. There is something in the towns drinking water which has apparently made everyone immune to the effects of the virus.. Nevertheless they were all carriers was the briefed supposition and thus the extreme measures that were to be carried out were absolutely necessary. More Blah, Blah, Blah as far as Jason was concerned... He was an action kind of guy. Point him in the right direction and don't fill his head with a bunch of touchy feely B.S.

Lead, follow, or get out of his way !

One thing he did take away from the briefing that he found astounding was that the mortality rate of the Flu at this stage was around 80% even with early intervention.

Once the teams job was finished a special Hazmat team would move in to dispose of what bodies that were not to be used for autopsy and other medical purposes. Hazmat and other special Ops folks would then basically roll up the sidewalks of this once isolated little town as if it never existed.

Jason's initial after action report:
We rolled into town at precisely 08:45 and dismounted with 10 teams. Our mission plan was to hit the school and kill everything and everyone within sight: Planned mission time was 25 mikes. Everything was going as planned until we started taking sniper fire from a heavy caliber rifle. The first to fall was my second in command Lt. Baker. He was right next to me when his head basically exploded. It was so violent and quick his body actually continue to run for a few steps before falling over. We already had teams one through eight in the building so the rest of my team along with team ten tried to set up a return fire defensive perimeter in front of the school and behind our APCs . Whoever the sniper was he was good. 4 more team members were down and out. Our issued body armor was like a cotton shirt to the weapon he was using. IMO without hearing the medical report it would be my guess he was using .50 caliber H.E. rounds or maybe something even larger. We wanted to return fire but there was no indication of the direction the fire was coming; the weapon was silenced, a very long way off, or all the shooting at the school drowned out his firing sequence ? Teams one through eight continued in the school but we were unable to close off all exits in the rear because of the sniper. No doubt some D.P.s got away..
Over the next 10 mikes we started receiving small caliber fire from some of the towns folk which we suppressed by return fire and drone one and two. Someone was able to down drone two and I assume it was the sniper ?
We have pulled back to our staging area and are requesting a reinforcement of at least 3 additional teams and 2 drones on station with IR. The operation is not going as planned yet we can salvage the rest if we have the additional teams and drones.
Capt J. Striker commander team nine and communications officer reporting

Jason hit enter and sent his team statement back to C&C (command and control in his mind) but was actually called the "TARC" which stood for Tactical Armed Response Center which was all under Home Land Security (HLS).
One thing about working for the government there were a lot of alphabetic B.S. one had to learn.

As he sat in the APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) Jason went back over the planned attack.. He had never liked the mission parameters.. Rolling into a one horse town with ten teams as a show of force when his team and possibly one other could have accomplished the whole mission at the school with silenced weapons and no one would have been the wiser..

"Ours is not to question why but to do or die", came back to his mind as he sat there rehashing what has transpired less than two hours ago.

Now it was a waiting game. Let the parents and other local yokels gather at the school so they could be terminated.

Jason was not in the school shooting teachers and kids; he had only heard some of the funny stories of the looks on the teachers and kids faces as they were shot down like dogs.. He felt nothing for the D.P.s They were just people on the wrong side of the line. Lt. Baker was another matter though. Jason would have to write the letter to his wife.

"War is hell" he thought. This was a war that if he and his team members did not win then quite possibly 80% of all humanity would be infected and die. Not once did it cross Jason Striker's mind that this mission was not as was briefed or as appeared. He had moved up the ranks of S.T.U. because he knew how to get things done for his superiors. Whether breaking heads of the TRIAD, Mexican Cartels, or anyplace around the world Jason in his mind was defending the flag and the rule of law set forth by his superiors. He slept well at night.

Really not surprising as he had always wanted to be part of something with a higher purpose. Upon his stent as an Army Ranger he had been told if he stayed with the service there would be a Star in his future one day. But Jason found the Army Ranger life to boring and to restricted for his taste. S.T.U. had offered him real clear cut missions at least once a month and all the training a guy could ask for without the Frigging rules of engagement the Army was so fond of..

It was within the first year at S.T.U. that two teams were pinned down and the Team One commander had been killed. Jason was communications officer with team two. Team two commander had his head down and for all intents and purposes was trying to dig a fox hole with his teeth. The incoming fire was horrendous form a well armed drug gang of Honduras. Jason was tired of being pinned down so he and John Stark grabbed their automatics and low crawled to a firing solution where they were able to kill all 8 of the bad guys. Within two years both Jason and John were team leaders.
"No guts no glory".

a reply to: 727Sky

*gulp*

What a badass. Every good story has to have a villain I suppose, heh heh...

I just saw the update in the OP.

I would like to request an insert of Jack's mother Carol, then later possibly his father Gene. (I've already inserted Carol and have engaged in dialogue with her. I did not see the rules update, please confirm if its ok to keep her in the story or not.)

originally posted by: CagliostroTheGreat
a reply to: XxNightAngelusxX

If its any consolation we arranged for our characters to meet through u2u. But my question is how do we handle dialogue between players? Separate posts or...?

Usually it would be separate posts, but if you guys arranged it through u2u, then I don't suppose it matters how you do it, as long as you have permission to slightly affect one another's characters.

@Expat888

Excellent! You're all set. Let me know if there's anywhere in particular you'd like to join the story.

@727Sky

Strength - 10
Perception - 5
Endurance - 10
Charisma - 7
Intelligence - 6
Agility - 7
Luck - 5 -

You're ten points overboard, bud.

You're only supposed to have 40 stat points, not 50.

Apart from that, you have a great character.

Please edit your stats before you post anymore

@Wookiep

Its cool to control NPC's that are your family members. You may not, however, keep them in the story as a sort of *secondary body* .... meaning, you make the NPC's do things your characters can't do. That'd be cheating.

Appearances and dialogue are okay though

a reply to: 727Sky

Tried to edit the original post but: I could delete numbers but not add any back so:
Gender - male
Disposition - passive in that he can follow orders, belligerent for seeing the orders are carried out, explosive aggression if needed, a believer it what he is doing
Appearance - 6' 6" 270 pounds all muscle

Strength - 10
Perception - 5
Endurance -5
Charisma - 5
Intelligence - 5
Agility - 5
Luck - 5 -

a reply to: tothetenthpower
The Hawkeye drone had been on station @ 23,000 gathering images of the carnage at Las Nueva Era for the last 10 hours. It flew a normal figure 8 pattern whereby it's flight path crossed directly over the school every 15 minutes; which was considered a tight orbit at that altitude..

Even at 23,000 the Hawkeye camera could distinguish people on the ground and what type of weapons they were carrying. It had captured,"for the record" the D.P.s that had escaped the initial assault on the school and the directions they fled. All of this was fed back to TARC which would be edited and the pertinent info would then be passed on to the officers in the field. Due to the heat on the ground the IR sensor had been all but useless.

In the past there had been a direct feed to the operators but the guys on the ground felt they were getting hours of information overload with nothing of a tactical importance. So TARC had a full team of watchers during a mission that edited what was useful and then that "key" or "tactically significant" info would be forwarded to the teams via their helmet mounted receivers and flip down tactical glass. The operators or ground guys knew something of importance was being sent by a small beeping in their headsets.

New helmets were being tested where the info was beamed directly to the face shield the guys wore in a ground pounders version of a heads up display.. But again there were complaints about distractions, lighting, weight of the helmet and link breakage/reception. Tech is cool if it works and adds to the situational awareness...But so far things seemed to look good on paper during funding but once applied or tested no amount of money seemed to make it work beneficially for the end user guys in the field.

When the guys were all suited up in their battle rattle suits they were already carrying around 48 pounds without the weight of their assigned weapons. Body armor was heavy (and frigging hot) so S.T.U. was working with many sub DARPA contractors, but as of yet if you wanted something to stop a normal high power round the science and development was not up to the job without the weight.

Nothing they wore would have stopped the rounds fired by that sniper dude ! A concerted effort had been made to find the bastards location by one of the Little Birds but the outcome had been the loss of one drone.

John (team leader 4) had a grudging respect for an enemy with tactical expertise and it certainly made the game more interesting. It would not stop John from killing this guy but he would feel respect once the deed was done for at least the Sniper was a worthy opponent.

Unlike the Sniper, the majority of the D.P.s the teams had faced had be lacking in concentration of fire power and concealment. Their tactics seemed to be shoot and die for their town, which they were doing with monotonous regularity. For the most part they had been easy targets for the men on the ground and the little birds.

"For all the D.P.s; you can run but it will just make you tired when we kill you", thought John.

Visions of the school mayhem came back to John as they moved up a back street to another house they were going to search. Back at the school this morning one little girl and boy were in a corner holding on to each other crying as John leveled his rifle at them; they might have been twins or just to kids scared sh!tless. Two head shots and they would cry no more. At the time John had figured he was stopping them from being used to spread the Red Flu... Now upon reflection of this entire mission he was wishing he had been on leave of absence when this crap came down the pike.

John was battle hardened and did not mind the necessity of some of the killing, which he was very good at (as were the rest of the teams) but there were usually well defined bad guys to go after, not frigging kids!

Whoever was using this town as a bio-lab for world destruction was one sick f*er. John just hoped he could find the perp (s) and hand out some of his own special kind of justice in slow motion and much pain; making them cry for their mommas over and over again... Whatever was left he would turn over to the intell boys for the work to continue.

Teams 1 through 5 were getting close to their pumpkin time and would need to return for a de-mask and new breathing filters and mask in their rear staged HAZMAT APC. Time was always the enemy it seemed.

Location of the D.P.s could be identified by the one remaining drones or the data feed from the Hawkeye but at 9 hours the Little Bird was pushing it's airborne on station loiter time. The bird had ran out of ordnance/ammo a couple of hours ago so John made the decision to send "Little Bird" back to the roost to rearm and refuel; they would us Hawkeye info and data until Little Bird could return and be more useful than just taking pictures and video. The replacement drones that Captain Striker had requested had not arrive on station as of yet and as far as John knew neither had the back up teams.

"What a sh!t mission this was turning into".

Back at the TOFC (tactical operations field command) Jason was into doing some reflections and waiting for a reply for the extra Drones and teams..WTF!

Jason hated to run. He felt running was for little F*ers where gravity did not seem to effect them. Even so 3 times a week in full battle dress he would run 3 miles. He hated it but knew it was necessary. His old buddy John now team 4 commander was his running buddy and at 5'11" 200 pounds Jason considered him one of the little F*ers. There had been a manly bond established way back in the days of the Honduran drug Ops which had held fast to this present day. John and Team 4 were working the town with teams 1,2,3, and 5. There was light resistance and the occasional D.P. small arms fire but nothing the teams could not handle. Two of the APCs had been moved into town as extra fire power and support for the teams. With the APCs heavy weapons they could splinter a brick and mortar house faster than someone could run away; normal simple ops except for the few D.P.s that seemed to want to fight back.

Jason was getting pissed at the delay of a response to his request for additional teams and the Little Birds so he fired off another copy of his request.

The reply he received was, "STANDBY".

What a goat rope this was turning into.

Jason keyed his headset mike and asked John when they would return to the HAZMAT APC. By his watch they were getting close to needed a RFJ (re-filter job)..

John's reply had been in 45 mikes so Jason sent out a command order for teams 5 through 10 to RFJ and be ready to move out in 30 mikes. When Jason left the TOFC John as a senior commander would take Jason's place as como officer. Maybe he would have more luck with new little birds and replacement teams ?

originally posted by: CagliostroTheGreat
a reply to: XxNightAngelusxX

If its any consolation we arranged for our characters to meet through u2u. But my question is how do we handle dialogue between players? Separate posts or...?

This is why NPC's are important. They are the anchors to carry on dialogue in. Allow the other player characters to then fill in what they would have said or done in that situation, in their own subsequent posts. If you are both experiencing the same thing.

~Tenth

originally posted by: tothetenthpower

originally posted by: CagliostroTheGreat
a reply to: XxNightAngelusxX

If its any consolation we arranged for our characters to meet through u2u. But my question is how do we handle dialogue between players? Separate posts or...?

This is why NPC's are important. They are the anchors to carry on dialogue in. Allow the other player characters to then fill in what they would have said or done in that situation, in their own subsequent posts. If you are both experiencing the same thing.

~Tenth

2 things spring to my mind when you offer up this solution.

#1. What if there are no NPCS present when needing a response from a player?

and #2. If I am understanding correctly, players can't control NPC's unless they are specific ones like family members etc that were approved in this thread.

I apologize for my ignorance but some of this is confusing. I have not participated in a collaborative story with this format and rules.

I will say that so far I have noticed the trickiest thing is trying to time everything properly with other players. Also when other players don't read everything that has happened, they can actually un-intentionally change little parts of the story. This has happened already in small ways, I do not believe intentionally, however.

I would just advise that all players should make sure they read every post before posting new ones so that everything can be seemingly as in sync as possible.

double post

As of now, no one's doing much talking.

Honestly, I'm waiting for the different characters to cross paths, and to maybe stumble across Sandra in town, that way she may be able to lead them back to the bunker that they otherwise wouldn't be able to locate.

a reply to: XxNightAngelusxX

Jack is in the process of crossing paths with Marcus, I think it will be interesting to see how that goes. It will become tricky though if players don't log in for days etc, especially in situations where multiple players are engaging in dialogue. Real life happens though, so finding ways to improvise while players go absent should be interesting as well.

a reply to: XxNightAngelusxX

Thank you .. took a bit and still working on couple things .. good idea that phoenix and you had trying to work it in .. not wanting to confuse people will try stick to english overall ..

Added bit last night character was on way to school .. working on next part now .. taking while reading over everything to work into the storyline better ..

originally posted by: Expat888
a reply to: XxNightAngelusxX

Thank you .. took a bit and still working on couple things .. good idea that phoenix and you had trying to work it in .. not wanting to confuse people will try stick to english overall ..

Added bit last night character was on way to school .. working on next part now .. taking while reading over everything to work into the storyline better ..

Your English is better than some of my Fellow Americans' English. No worries.



@Wookiep

That's a fair point. When one or two characters are afk, I figured I would simply imply that they're doing every day things while sticking with the group (later on, after we all meet up), like eating, bathing, sleeping, etc. Our characters have gotta have some down time, so why not?

a reply to: XxNightAngelusxX

True, I think that probably in most cases, you are correct, that is a logical strategy. In action sequences or other critical times when a response is needed, improvisation may be needed. For example - "Jack wiped some blood from Sandra's brow and frantically but forcefully said "Sandra?? Can you hear me?"

(No response from sandra for days, her writer has been offline) lol.. that kinda thing.

ETA - Would it be viable to suggest that in these situations we could establish a rule, where after a specific time frame passes with no response given, the player directly involved be given permission to take control for just that one instance? It's just something that could hinder some players from continuing to write more content in unique cases like the above. He/She is sorta forced to not write more content and wait until they return before writing more.

I hope I made that make sense..

originally posted by: XxNightAngelusxX
As of now, no one's doing much talking.

Honestly, I'm waiting for the different characters to cross paths, and to maybe stumble across Sandra in town, that way she may be able to lead them back to the bunker that they otherwise wouldn't be able to locate.

Sue-Lin knows where the bunker is to about 50 yards so she can take some with her and you can pick up the rest. We will have to come to town again although Sue-Lin's father seems to be having a ball on over watch so he can signal when new players leave town and someone can go out and get them.

I suggest we all head back to the bunker about now.

P

a reply to: pheonix358

Sue-Lin knows where the bunker is to about 50 yards

How?? Jack is struggling to figure out where it is based on "Right off on Williams Street!" Lol, Then again, Jack has several points less intelligence than Sue-Lin, so kudos to her!

originally posted by: Wookiep
a reply to: pheonix358

Sue-Lin knows where the bunker is to about 50 yards

How?? Jack is struggling to figure out where it is based on "Right off on Williams Street!" Lol, Then again, Jack has several points less intelligence than Sue-Lin, so kudos to her!

Her Dad took a deep breath before he answered, "OK, stay safe, I will set up a semi permanent over watch to cover that area and the town. Dorian is at map reference g.5, 14.3. The bunker is at 14.5, I watched at long range as Dorian dug it. I think it is a nice bunker. Didn't see him digging a back door so check that out if you can.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

P

a reply to: pheonix358

Her Dad took a deep breath before he answered, "OK, stay safe, I will set up a semi permanent over watch to cover that area and the town. Dorian is at map reference g.5, 14.3. The bunker is at 14.5, I watched at long range as Dorian dug it. I think it is a nice bunker. Didn't see him digging a back door so check that out if you can.

Ah, yes I do remember that. I won't even ask how he knew to watch Dorian lol..The guy is a badass, I think there is a guy named Jason he might want to take out soon!

Edit - J/K I know that's against the rules...