Asking for sugestions on how to start a "Survivalist" campaign

[tanksoldier]

How I make my players get surprised by all that in a way to avoid some smartasses in my group to "be prepared" for the setting

It's tough because even if you tell them it's one type of campaign it's GURPS and they know it's SOME kind of adventure. Characters won't be "average people" surviving the disaster or whatever... it will be "special ops team" surviving the disaster. It's not like you can tell them "hey, make up a character who is an accountant with a wife, two kids and a mortgage..." you'll have a ninja accountant with a kunoichi dependent/ally.

GURPS Riverworld provides some ways around this, where the available technology is TL0 at the start and few modern charaters would have applicable skills.

...but everybody is right, you have to be careful changing your campaign in mid-stream. Players signed on for one thing, not or another and having advantages and skills they carefully thought out become worthless can be upsetting.

[(E)]

How about having your first scenario being a "team building exercise" run by a large company/government department that the PCs all work for? The exercise will of course be a long weekend doing survival training with a celebrity survival coach (people with a high level of training need not apply). Either during or after this scenario the change of direction happens.

[dfinlay]

Assuming you have a group that you can trust (and if you don't, you probably shouldn't be running this sort of game), my advice is to be completely up front about what the campaign is (at least in the broad strokes) and then ask them to make characters that are not prepared.

From experience, trying to pull one over on your players is a good way to get players ticked off at you and to get characters that just don't work for the feel of the campaign (and not in the way you want).

Then (as you should always do anyway), help them make characters and be sure to make sure that they aren't playing super prepared characters. If they are highly resistant to this, that might be a sign that your players don't actually want to play this sort of campaign.

Gaming groups and campaigns run on both the players and the GM wanting to play the type of game that is being played and working together to make that happen. If you aren't honest about the genre of game, they can't properly make the decision to play it, which may reduce investment and interest in the game. On the other hand, if are genuinely interested in exploring this sort of thing, they will make characters that fit that.

Edit: Note that this doesn't mean you have to give everything away, but a "I'm thinking of running a survival horror game. It's important that your characters not be super-well prepared, so you'll need to make ordinary Joes and not survivalists. Would you guys be interested in something like that?" will go a long way.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Here's the lazy way: hand out characters. They don't get to create prepared characters. If they are acting abnormally prepared, dock them roleplaying points.

A better way is to give them a limited point budget and then allow them to chose a few 'options' lens for free. So if they are given 50 points to spend as they chose and can then pick from Accountant, Stay At Home Parent, Surf/Skater Bro, College Professor, Professional Youtuber, etc, you won't get anything crazy and they will feel like they had a strong hand in chargen.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Some players also love to create characters who are way more "generally paranoid" than regular folks.

What do you consider to be 'way more generally paranoid', he asks as he notes where his bug-out bag is and decides to it's time to trade out the bottles of water in it...

Originally Posted by dfinlay

Edit: Note that this doesn't mean you have to give everything away, but a "I'm thinking of running a survival horror game. It's important that your characters not be super-well prepared, so you'll need to make ordinary Joes and not survivalists. Would you guys be interested in something like that?" will go a long way.

I agree with everything dfinlay said.

[pestigor]

Man, I game with survivalist/preppers at a gun range after hours...That's my Gurps groups idea of "normal"...
They think I'm crazy because I don't own a dozen rifles and 2000 rounds of ammo under my bed.

Seriously though, like others have said make sure you know your group and that there's trust between players and GM otherwise you're in for an awful experience.

[AlexanderHowl]

Yeah, I have swords and knifes hidden around my house because my fiancee started training with blades at age 8...gamers tend to be odd ducks. I think that a better option for character creation would be to require that a minimum of 50% of their character point value has to go into skills and techniques and that a maximum of 20% of the points spent on skills can go the combat skills and combat techniques. That would limit combat skills and techniques to 15 CP for most 150 CP characters.

[lvalero]

Fantasy stone age. Wheel has not been invented and creating fire is a secret that only some shamans know. I have played a couple of times and it is quite lethal!

[khorboth]

I've had thoughts about running a zombie game. My idea for characters was:

Identify which players LIKE making characters. Tell each of them to make 10 (yes, 10!) 25-point everyday joes to help populate the world. If I identified them correctly, they will enjoy this. Have them include a 2-paragraph backstory with the rest to be filled in later. Then, have your players make 25-point normal characters. Tell them that there will be change-ups, and that it will be brutal. Expect mortality. When a PC dies, you will have a bank of a few dozen other viable PCs to hand out. Pick the most appropriate one, let the player have a few minutes and probably some extra points to spend on skills picked up since the fall. Someone new will join the group shortly.

Even munchkiny players probably won't really cheeze out 10 characters especially if they don't know for sure that they will be playing the character. PC mortality will probably add to the mood. Having them pre-genned but giving out a few points is a good middle-ground to get players back in the game quickly.

Unfortunately, my current group does not have the constitution for that kind of game.

[tanksoldier]

What do you consider to be 'way more generally paranoid', he asks as he notes where his bug-out bag is and decides to it's time to trade out the bottles of water in it...

Exactly.

If you told me to make an “average Joe” character and I came back with a DBA who is a retired Soldier, has been a cop, owns enough guns to equip a small army, carries a handgun everywhere and had long guns in every vehicle, competes in IDPA and other gun games, is a hiker and backpacker with bug out and bug in gear stashed everywhere you might think I’m jamming up your campaign concept.... but I might just be creating myself.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Nightmaster

By survivalist I mean a campaign where the players would be throw out of their confort zones (professions and such) and have to work hard to simple survive.

I have three main scenarios to put my players into but I am at a loss on how to setup things up so that my players dont know what the game is all about. I like to make surprises like a Fallout Campaign I have run a few years ago (they didnt had it coming =P).

The first scenario is a classical Zombie Apocalipse. The catch is that the Apocalipse would have already happened and not in its initial stages like most scenarios of that type are played out. Like a few years after it started.


The second scenario is the classical Fall of Civilization. In this case the event that trigger it would be a massive Solar Eletromagnetic Storm, like the one that occured in 1859 (Solar storm of 1859) except that much more powerful. The end result would be the same, Human Civilization falls, the damage is so extense to the power grids and telecomunications world wide that no country is able to recover (of course electricity still works but any electrical device/generator that was powered at the time was destroied beyond repair and spare parts for a disaster of that scale no country in the world have). Wars for basic resources happen and thanks for the lack of medical and food supplies at the very least 70% of the world population dies in the first years.


The third scenario is the Lost World scenario (kinda). The players find thenselves stranded in a different land, with creatures of ages past (Dinosaurs and etc) and they dont know how or why or by order of Who.


How I make my players get surprised by all that in a way to avoid some smartasses in my group to "be prepared" for the setting?

Hope you guys can lend me a hand with this

Punish them for being smartasses. I have lots of EDC because I collect it. That does not mean I could actually survive effectively in a civilizational collapse. I would have to learn by doing like everyone else and I would likely not. The people who think they are prepared could be taught that they really aren't.

By the way a fourth scenario is that civilization's instruments have themselves been turned against the PCs. One glimpse of that possibility comes from War and Remembrance where Natalie and her Uncle (who despite being Jews have so many contacts they could get into any party in America on the basis of their status) are stranded in Europe during WW2. Another I had was from Alan Furst's "The Polish Officer" where the hero (who is joining the Resistance) consults with a former Polish police detective for lessons in how to be a fugitive.