Quote from: Kyle Aaron;689492So you co-operate, cool. But who do you co-operate with? Well, people like yourself, however wacky you are. New groups appear.

It's a good point. Historically serious widespread social disasters have been democratically deadly, but with certain groups making a deliberate and often elaborate effort to prepare for the worst, you know what maybe the road warrior scenario isn't so far fetched.

The nature of the disaster would still dictate the resultant society though. All the prep work and compound building in the world isn't going to help if a three megaton nuke pops over your head.

Alright, so I admit I got a little overwhelmed by the responses. I wanted to try and shoot as many individual replies out as possible, but unfortunately there's just no feasible way for me to do that. Instead, let me just say thank you all for your assistance. There were some really insightful comments made here, and they have been greatly appreciated.

I haven't had a chance to play the game again just yet (which sucks, because I really enjoyed it) but I printed out a bunch of the items you all listed off and included a few helpful tips to bear in mind, and I've been keeping my eye on the thread just to see if it might be possible to add to my lists. Chances are the GM will refuse a few of these items or roll on them if he feels like it's questionable, but at least I have something to go on.

I talked to the GM about the possibility of reducing the weight of the canned food and saving the space in my character's pack for other things, and the GM mentioned that by doing this, I would put an expiration date on my character's food. I have no doubt this is true, but it still hasn't persuaded me to cut out valuable space for heavy cans. Even so, does anyone have an idea of how long this food would take to go bad? Are we talking days, weeks, months, hours?

Also, it was mentioned the backpacking and auto-camping different hobbies. No distinction was made in the game, though; the word "camping" seemed to imply that the character's family loaded up a station wagon with food, shelter, backpacks stuffed with supplies (which, let's be honest, probably included a beer cooler and a bunch of other luxuries), found a place to park, and then hiked out and pitched their tents up within a few miles of their vehicle. I don't know whether that falls into the category of backpacking or auto-camping, but typically when I think of auto-campers I imagine a family that drives out to the beach or the woods or some other nice place in a huge, air-conditioned van and uses it as portable shelter.

With regard to the level of human violence, while I certainly agree that in most cases people tend to be more helpful than Hollywood portrays, the GM doesn't seem to think this way at all. I actually have some complaints about this, but I've since let them go. The GM isn't completely nonsensical in his approach (people don't just going on killing sprees for the hell of it), just a little unrealistic.

Before the weekend was up, the whole city was looting grocery stores and gas stations -- my character included. That wasn't a stretch. I mean, no one seemed to have a working vehicle and the pipes ran dry on day two, so if you were anything like my character and you didn't know how long your water supply was going to last and didn't see any hope of police response, you'd be an idiot not to rob your nearest Publix (or Sams, or Wal-Mart...pick your department store.)

I didn't take issue with the idea that everyone was looting within the first few days; it was the way everyone was so eager to kill each other to get what they wanted. My character walked over the corpses of sales associates at 7-Eleven, saw an old lady gunned down for her shopping cart at Publix, and even got into a standoff with some middle-aged man over a duffle bag full of Zephyrhills and candy. In the latter case, my biggest grievance was not that my character had a gun pulled on him, but that when he managed to get his gun drawn on the other guy, instead of listening to my character and just walking away, the guy's first reaction was to try and kill my character while surrounded by hundreds of other unarmed people.

I don't doubt that there are people who would kill an old lady for her shopping cart; I just think most people in desperate straits would much sooner shove her to the ground and run away with it. With the case of the man with the gun, he could literally have just backed off and proceeded to rob any of the hundreds of other people pouring out of the front doors. Is it foolish of me to believe that most people who are starving don't actually want to kill each other so much as they want to not starve?

The rate at which people started looting houses was also kind of ridiculous. Two days in and my character had to pull a gun on someone he went to high school with because dude broke his window and tried to creep in, and seemed to have no problem with this whatsoever. Seven days in and my character got into a shootout with three other people who all decided that robbing middle-income households in suburban communities was the best way to feed their families.

Granted, it wasn't inconsistent with the show. The show is filled with dumb shit like this. One guy threatened to crush a little girl's skull if her father didn't give him their wagon full of food...and then turned his back on the family after he took their stuff, like they were just going to let him walk away with the only thing that would keep their children from starvation. Revolution would have you believe that average people would be willing to shank an entire family (including small children) for their supplies and then just beat the hell out of random people for fun.

Anyway, suffice it to say that no, my character won't be taking a serene bike ride to Georgia on a bicycle while whistling the tune to Singin' in the Rain. But he has managed to barter with his neighbors and fully intends to invite a few people to travel upstate with him and his sister. And if one of those neighbors happens to have his father's shotgun, well, then so much the better.

Your GM is a cocksmock.