After War Troper Base - Signups/Interest

The world has ended, there only exists a vast wasteland out there now. People moved forward, now they are setting up their own settlements, salvaging what they can and doing what they can to survive. Now it's up to you to make your own base and survive to the end of the story.

Hello and welcome, this is for a Post Apocalyptic Roleplay thread inspired by Battleworld and some neat ideas for dystopian cities in wasteland settings. Here you get to build your own base and run it by yourself and team up with other players. You get to build heroes to do active work while your NPCs at your base get passing mention. The heroes can do action, politics, salvaging, anything that fits with what you want them to do!

• Hero
  • Name:
  • Age:
  • Appearance:
  • Personality:
  • Powers:
  • Equipment:
  • Backstory:

• Base
  • Visual Style: What are you going for? A salvaged look? Futiristic squares? Atomic 50s? Leather and beaten cars?
  • Resources: Are they a high tech level? Do they have good food production and water filtering? Are they a armed and secure society? Come up with your own but remember to try and find some way to encourage interaction with others.
  • Quality of Life: What's it like living in the base? Is it Dystopia? Is it okay? Do the rules of the old west apply.
  • Size: Not as important, just a general idea here for reference.

Now, good luck, have fun and, get out of here TROPER.^note Tresspassers Researchers Observers Persistent Explorers and Robbers

edited 15th Apr '15 7:26:23 AM by EchoingSilence

• Hero
  • Name: Mellian "Scavenging" Terra

  • Age: 37

  • Appearance: The ragged explorer!

  • Personality: Unusually quiet and not very trusting. Her mentality sits in "Don't attack but be prepared to. Take no life but take no risk." As such she prefers to capture and restrain people rather than kill, but if need be killing she'll do. A very cautious person, a glance at her middle name could give you an impression why.

  • Powers: She has no special powers too speak of, except for a damn strong sense of survival. Does that count?

  • Equipment: Canister of water and binoculars aside, she carries around a basic 9mm pistol with a good 50 rounds and a machete for close encounters.

  • Backstory: She's a wanderer, and not much she wishes to reveal. All that is know is that she wandered the deserted lands for a good 24 years, ever since she was 13 and at 36 settled down in Valencia, a basic settlement which is named after the spanish historical city of Valencia. As far as the residents know, she seemed to be willing to help out once arrived due to it being one of the more friendly and advanced settlements to come across. Helping out with construction and supplies, Mellian likes it just the way it is.

• Base
  • Name: Valencia

  • Visual Style: Various clashing metals struck together by copper wire at worst make small homes. Compare with◊ Megaton from Fallout 3◊

  • Resources: They lack a way of reliably getting clean water and have poor defenses, but have a decent supply of food an managed to get electricity going. They use it for basic things such as lamps and heating, but it's a start. They also have toilets.

  • Quality of Life: It's reliant on mutual trust and the hope that a giant raiding group doesn't come and wipe all of them out. However it isn't bad living there, everyone seems willing to help out another to ensure mutual survival and they're very welcoming to travellers, hoping for some sort of commerce and trade of knowledge.

  • Size: Host to about 50 people Valencia is quite small, having basic scrap-iron walls and a basic gate. Houses are scattered around at random in the middle with more important facilities around the edge. It's shaped like a rounded square and about 225m Wide and 300 tall. The scrap walls can be broken down when needing to expand more territory, however. Important facilities they have: A meeting hall, a commerce center, power plant and two watchtowers to the south and north.

edited 16th Apr '15 12:54:30 AM by Nickpws

If the whole "multifandom" angle isn't acceptable I'll probably either think of another character or drop. Don't let that keep you from denying this if it doesn't fit, though.

• Hero
  • Name: Aurea Soban
  • Age: 27
  • Appearance: Aurea is fairly dark-skinned, with deep blue eyes. Her blonde hair camouflages a keen tactical mind, and her face appears fresh and somewhat young, but at the same time hardened with veterancy. Aurea herself is buff due to her Sparty-standard choice of occupation, but it barely ever shows - she doesn't usually wear revealing clothing.
  • Personality: Aurea is fairly cold and distant to those she is not friends with, and doesn't particularly speak much. That isn't to say that she doesn't care - she very much does. She's just one for actions rather than words. Those who persist will eventually earn Aurea's faith and trust - and a select few she may even die for.
  • Powers: Sort of a shared power among Hiigaran special forces - Aurea resists any and all attempts at mind control and mental manipulation. While that isn't to say you can't bluff her regularly, if you try to use psychic abilities to influence her decision-making, you will quickly find that she has no more time for your bullshit.
  • Equipment: Loads. She carries the usual field army kit, but there are only a few notable things;
    • A combat knife.◊ The knife has a blade that vibrates at high frequencies - while sharp alone, at full power it can cut through almost any material easily. This is tempered by the short range forced on it by its status as a knife.
    • A sidearm.◊ Though it has a shorter barrel and a built in "holographic" sight (in that it projects a crosshair), it is fast-firing, hard-hitting, and a reliable weapon for emergency situations.
    • A multipurpose carbine. In its current form it acts as a submachine gun - though being a railgun it has significant range on it. The barrel can be extended to turn it into a sniper rifle - capable of reaching out to quite a distance, it really just fires a ten-round burst. With fifty rounds per cartridge, that equates to five shots.
    • Frags and flashbangs. Both go boom. One kills, the other stuns.
    • Aurea wears armor with an exoskeleton attached. The helmet looks something like this.◊ The armor itself provides excellent protection - consisting of a chestplate, arm guards, and leg greaves. Any mobility loss is compensated for by the exoskeleton - which provides a significant boost to strength, but not to endurance.
  • Backstory: Aurea grew up as your usual Hiigaran child in the Soban Kiithid. As with all Sobani children she quickly grew up practicing martial arts and combat alongside her usual childhood - though she was always relatively quiet, preferring books. This didn't stop her from joining the Hiigaran Armed Forces, nor did it stop her from scoring in the 99th percentile on almost every test and being fast-tracked into Hiigaran Special Forces. Aurea did not have to wait long to test her skills - she served with distinction in the defense of Hiigara during the Vaygr War, at one point single-handedly holding off a full brigade of Vaygr berserkers to defend a crucial uplink while it was being offlined. After the conclusion of the Vaygr War she found herself transported, along with several men of a Marine unit, to an unknown world - where they will need to survive and thrive if they ever wish to see their Homeworld again.
• Base
  • Visual Style: At first it's going to be entirely pragmatic and military-issue. That being said, depending on how many people are attracted to it and how many surplus resources the Hiigarans get, it may eventually shift towards a "modern town with futuristic technology" vibe.
  • Resources: The Hiigarans will start off with very little resources. However, they also start off with something that can theoretically give them infinite supply - a Phased Disassembler Array. Given the proper materials a PDA can produce almost anything non-organic, from ammunition to housing materials - the issue not just being resources, but also the blueprints it has. The PDA only carries the blueprints for weapons and ammunition, allowing the Hiigarans a high level of safety, but forcing them to negotiate or scavenge for all other resources.
  • Quality of Life: Okayish. There's obviously not a lot of modern amenities, but you could do worse.
  • Size: Small to mid-sized. It's going to start off as an outpost, but again, immigration may end up making it into a small town of sorts.

edited 15th Apr '15 8:56:56 AM by SpartyMcFly

& Accepted.

Just remove the theoretically infinite resource bit. Might become gamebreaking endgame.

I could always say the PDA only has the blueprints for weapons and arms. This basically forces the Hiigarans to have to scrounge for basically everything else, from food to construction materials.

That sound better?

Much better thank you.

Edited to reflect.

Hmmm. So I know post apocalyptic settings are normally more sci-fi then fantasy, but, would you have any qualms about say a Necromancer Overlord type character?

This was no regular apocalypse. This was the trope apocalypse!

So yes no issue, just try not to have him be totally broken.

Hmm. Interest. Time to think up a sheet...

Would a town/city full of full-conversion cyborgs work?

Yep, be imaginative! This is the TROPER world now, they have a reputation for holding dangerous heroes, and ruining lives!

If you want to do a base full of the undead, go right ahead! If you want dragon people in your base, go for it! Just try and not make it broken!

Hero

• Name: Addisu Iskender.
• Age: 47.
• Appearance: A bald, African man (Ethiopian, to be specific) who has a jovial air about him and has the look of a formerly muscular man that has let himself go a bit, though his arms are still rather muscular. Also, he has no legs. To remedy this, he has a wheelchair that is in surprisingly good condition.
• Personality: Addisu is Big Fun incarnate. He constantly roams around his little town making sure that everyone is, at the least, not depressed, and if he finds someone who's sad or angry or what have you, he'll try his best to cheer them up. Whoever said There Are No Therapists has never met him. He's also a bit eccentric; he constantly refers to himself as the king of his little establishment. Fair warning, though: Don't hurt his people.
• Powers: Addisu can psychically control his wheelchair, as well as anything else with wheels, up to and including wheels on their own. This leads to a lot of Car Fu and things like rocks with wheels affixed to them scattered about the place so he can mentally lob them at invaders.
• Equipment: His wheelchair, the clothes on his back, some old metal toy cars that he keeps in his pocket as handy projectiles. That's pretty much it.
• Backstory: Addisu's life until the apocalypse was pretty much normal, to be honest. After it happened, he and his family, who he was traveling with for a while, got separated. He's pretty much resigned himself to the fact that they're probably dead, though it pains him to think of the possibility. While he traveled alone, he found a community in a ruined city that seemed far better than some of the other wretched places he'd seen, so he joined up with them. That was about ten years ago. He's since married, had a son, been christened the new leader of the community, and, since it had no name before, called it "Zalaalam dagmo Hulem" - Forever and always.

Base

• Name: Zalaalam dagmo Hulem, or just Hulem for short.
• Visual Style: Hulem is located in the bases of several ruined office buildings in the former financial sector of a city nobody there seems to know the name of.
• Resources: Due to the nearby park that has been converted into a farm, food is easy to get. However, most of what little water they have goes towards said farm, with barely enough left over for the population of Hulem. Most weapons are improvised, but they're still pretty nasty. Aluminum baseball bats can cave in a skull quite handily.
• Quality of Life: Pretty good. Not exactly the best, but as long as you can get water, you're living pretty well for an apocalypse survivor.
• Size: About 60 people, give or take the few deserters, wanderers, or new babies that come in or out every so often.

edited 15th Apr '15 6:22:38 PM by Tojin

Prepare for an invasion

Porque ;_;

Hero

• Name: Z
• Age: 877
• Appearance: Varies, but most commonly a pale, androgynous, dark-haired individual with piercing red eyes, covered neck-to-toe with dark coat, shirt, pants, boots, and fingerless gloves.
• Personality: A prankster at heart who has no sense of priorities, Z will take large risks for a shot at a cheap laugh. Perhaps due to his long life, he's been able to get away with this enough times that he's gotten a bit arrogant. He thinks himself superior to humans, and acts condescendingly towards them out of habit, a habit he is sincerely trying to kick, but whenever he feels challenged by a human he defaults to condescension.
• Powers: Z can shapeshift his body into any form. However, he has a finite amount of mass to work with (about 900 kg/1984 lbs), and if part of his body is taken away it will vanish instantly, which naturally prevents him from transforming into bullets or other projectile weapons. His mass regenerates over time (roughly 35 kg/hr, half as much if he's currently exerting himself).
• Equipment: None, as he usually can shift into whatever he needs.
• Backstory: There have always been tales of the changelings, who kidnap children and replace them with shapeshifters in disguise. As Z will tell you, that's mostly propaganda. In reality the changelings are immortal brats who compete to see who can mess with humanity the most, influencing important events in history in the process. After the apocalypse he sort of felt guilty for not trying to help humanity more often, so he and a few more of his kind helped them rebuild.

• Visual Style: Stone houses reminiscent of medieval castles in England or Scotland, albeit smaller and grouped together for safety.
• Resources: Quite a bit of farmland means adequate food for all, and despite the aesthetic they already have generators and water purifiers up and running (centuries of knowledge helps when repairing complex machinery). They don't have anything in the way of defense, because they rely upon the changelings to protect them.
• Quality of Life: Fairly high, thanks to the changelings.
• Size: 150 people approximately. Apart from Z there are 3 other changelings.

I was worried about the Shapeshifting being a bit of a gamebreaker ala Prototype but from what you have described it seems alright since there are only 3. Consider yourself in.

When Opportunity arises I might try to join in.

edited 16th Apr '15 11:12:11 AM by EchoingSilence

Is tv tropes a mainstream thing in this universe?

I suppose so. Why do you ask?

Because of the TROPERs

edited 17th Apr '15 11:15:22 AM by deadpool616

I just wanted to make a reference to STALKER with that.

Hero

• Name: Joe "Sharp" Strig
• Age: 25
• Appearance: A young man, of average height, Hispanic and Asian ancestry in his factions, tanned skin, wiry build, unkempt dark hair, a mustache and scruffy beard. He also happens to have his legs and right arm to be prosthetics, from the shoulders and above the knees. They are fully articulated and 'life-like' in the sense that the hand has fingers and the feet has toes, but otherwise they are covered by chrome rings and plates, or a metal looking like it.
• Personality: Honorable, and stoic, and loyal. At first fairly cold and distant to strangers, though polite. He is sociable too, its just he's jaded, but once warmed up he's quite a good company. Good host at home, Urban Samurai on the streets, as they say.
• Powers: He's a baseline human, but his arm and legs sport enhanced strength and resilience. The arm does have a small experimental generator, and contacts on his hand. Although its meant to power his equipment, but it can add a shock to his right hook.
• Equipment:
  • Crimson Fang: A sleek red beam katana, that being the body of the katana being made of a lightweight metal body, painted red, while the edge is basically made of emitted laser. The sword has an internal battery.The sheathe doubles as a charger and carries a battery.
  • Bite: Same concept as the Crimson fang but shorter and double edged, meant as a pairing dagger.
  • Peacekeeper: An energy pistol somewhat like this◊, battery operated and semi automatic, it has a red and silver color scheme.
  • Clothes: Usually stuff to protect him against the harsh wasteland and the dangers it holds. Things like dusters, scarves, goggles and the occasional wide brimmed hat.
  • Supplies: A canteen full of water, fuel cells for the generator in his arm, rations, and extra batteries
• Backstory: He was originally an enforcer for a military enclave that ruled over a group of towns, that is until they rebelled. They didn't kill him, but they did expel him into the wasteland in exile, his arm a wreck. His legs suffered through accidents and encounters with raiders in his trek through the wastes, but there was Point in which he could not keep going. He laid on his back then and there, resigning himself to death. When he woke up he had been saved, and owing his life to this "Mother" he began doing jobs around the town of spire, and helped defend it in more than one occasion. In the process he became the town's hero and Mother's lover, the one person she saw as an equal in her town. Joe never bought into the cult, but as it keeps people happy and healthy, he can't really object to it.

Base

• Name: The Spire
• Visual Style: A town, mainly made of prefabricated houses, walled off, and built around one great repaired and reconstructed skyscraper, like a Broken-Down-Future kind of vibe. Around it, the ruined remains of a small city
• Resources: The place has energy generation, a water source and water filtering, but that's the only thing that has a steady production. The weaponry they have is high tech but it was locked in a vault, most of the population doesn't know how to repair it, and the ones they do make from scratch is rudimentary by comparison. The food they produce from rudimentary hydroponic projects isn't enough, they do have a relatively big reserve of preserved food, but one can only have canned beans and pickles so many times. The main strength they have is that they aren't fully human, almost everyone is a full conversion cyborg. This comes from the fact the skyscraper was the HQ of a company that specialized in prosthetic equipment. The ones who aren't are either outsiders, or the small cadre of breeders to keep the city on a stable growth. The leader is a charismatic AI that calls herself "Mother"
• Quality of Life: It is relatively good, they have food, protection, water and even the luxury of leisure, but its run like a cultist commune. Everybody is happy if not exactly free. Unless you're assigned as a breeder your brain is fitted inside a case which then is implanted into a robotic body when you come of age
• Size: Its not a big town, around 90 people, not counting drifters, merchants and the such.

Hero

• Name- Nilth'Ruthun
• Age- 2345
• Appearance- The true appearance of Nilth is not known, but the most commonly seen form is a giant 16-legged spider. 20 feet tall with massive black eyes covering its entire body. Its body color is a combination of gold and white, the positioning of this coloring is never constant, confounding mortals.
• Personality- Nilth does not see in black and white, nor is it even interested in mortals. It likes to spend its time exploring the currents of the cosmos, searching for the cosmic remains of its dead parents. It's a generally benign being, viewing the mortals that worship it as distractions at best.
• Powers-The ability to "Bless" any being with some of its essence, turning it into a powerful half-breed. Being a cosmic entity, it can make lesser entities crazy by being anywhere close to it, manifesting as mental disorders. The general ability of being able to warp reality, not to a large degree, considering it's really young.
• Equipment- Nothing.
• Backstory- The world ending also affected the higher beings of the cosmos, leaving Nilth an orphan at the young age of 2000. This didn't bother it, considering nothing really bothers higher cosmic begins. Not having the individual power to remain in the cosmic "Sky" indefinitely, it decided to stay in an old temple embedded in a mountain that was dedicated to its parents. Its mere presence immediately attracted a small tribe of humans that viewed it as a way to survive the end, so they worshiped it. It didn't really care.

• Visual style- Lot's of spider statues, terrible paintings of blood sacrifice. Pretty much everything is made of marble or gold, giant arches and the like.
• Resources-The humans that worship it have to raid or scavenge to get all of their stuff, but Nilth may give them stuff from time to time for the lulz. They mostly just raid, though. They can get sacrifices that way.
• Quality of life- Terrible, the human society pretty much operates off of survival of the fittest, sacrificing the weakest links. Everyone is crazy, being in the proximity of Nilth.
• Size- The exact size isn't know, considering that the humans only use a few inner sanctums as homes. But the temple is literally built inside of a mountain, the entire thing being covered in entrances that all lead to the central chamber that holds Nilth. There are around 300 people, but 2/3 of them are children.

edited 17th Apr '15 1:22:39 PM by OhBoyTime

I laughed. In!

Also in.

Hero:

• Name: Jacob Williams
• Appearance: Existing somewhere between human and walking mass of scar tissue, Jacob wears a trench coat, a plain white-t, jeans with the pockets of cargo shorts sown onto them, and a book bag.
• Personality: Jacob is very enthusiastic about adventure and heroism. He doesn't like using lethal force and prefers to let his enemies live. Jacob is quick to try and make friends, half out of friendliness and half out of survival through safety in numbers.
• Powers: Badass Normal
• Equipment: A medical kit, a switchblade in his left sleeve, a small pistol in his right, two knives hidden in his belt buckle, a shotgun, three days of rations, a survival knife, matches, duct tape, super glue, throwing knives, exploding throwing knives, C4, a detonator, two collapsible batons, and a sniper rifle. He also has an iPhone with Avril Lavigne songs on it in a life proof case, headphones, and a solar-powered charger. Finally, he wears two grapple guns on his wrists, each with 100 feet of rope, a Kevlar vest, and stab-proof Kevlar clothing. Save for the shotgun, he prefers to keep his weapons and grapple guns hidden.
• Backstory: Before the tropocalypse, Jacob was a teenager with a rather boring life. He made decent grades, wasn't popular but wasn't picked on, never got a girlfriend, and had no idea what he was going to do with his life. After the tropocalypse, the town's survivors, mostly teenagers and children, but a few parents, sought shelter in the school. Jacob worked as a scavenger, hoping the outside would provide excitement.
• Visual Style: The base is Jacob's old high school, made self-sufficient by the surviving school body and whoever came around with whatever could be found at the local hardware store. It's a mixture of scavenger and steampunk.
• Resources: The base's technology is very improvised and crude, but it works. A lot of things are held together with duct tape and prayer (one room actually has a pillar that is too short so a bible is used to make up the difference), but somehow it all manages to stay together. Steam power is the primary source of electricity. Weapons were taken from a nearby (burned to the ground) military base and police station.
• Quality of Life: Pretty good. Running water and electricity are present, but the governing body is more than a little corrupt with the spoils system heavily used in a theoretically democratic society.
• Size: Close to a hundred people in the school and the surrounding square block

edited 17th Apr '15 5:10:03 PM by deadpool616