Men go and come but the earth abides. - George R. Stewart (1949)
Based very loosely on the book Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, The Stand by Stephen King (who was inspired by Earth Abides), Emergence by David R Palmer, and the TV series Jerico. The game opens in the winter of 2012 to 2013 around early December. The population of the Earth has been devastated by a plague. (No, no nuclear wars or zombies.) It wiped out over 99% of mankind in a little over a month starting in early October. Most who were still alive at Thanksgiving were those still alive today. A harsh winter ahead is expected. Most people will be surviving off of scavenging.
It has been two months. The cities are no longer safe. Roads in areas not impassable due to snow are starting to crawl with vermin called Road Trash - gangs that have taken to marauding for spoils of civilization. Road blocks are starting to make travel through some areas impossible or unsafe. What the plague didn't kill off is starting to kill off whatever remains.
In remote areas there are small towns that have enforced a quarantine and shoot anyone who approaches, unwilling to take a chance on letting the plague in.
In other places, small bands of survivors have adopted a survivalist philosophy and trust noone but their own.
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This is the story of the birth of Eden, USA, a town that is forming, made up of survivors with an interest in building a future - or defending it. Some will be farmers. Others will bring technical skills. Still others may be more artistically gifted. And some may bring nothing but good hearts and a willingness to be part of the future. But the general goal is to salvage what was best of the past - while staving of the predators that will almost certainly seek to take what they can.
Eden USA is located in what was once Yosemite National Park. There will be several game locations rather than everything occurring in one place. The passes in and out of the park are being barricaded. They will send out a few recruiters to look for good candidates to help establish the town. These will be very well geared men (many will be cops, ex military, forestry service, etc) and they will travel across the USA in search of good people. Scavenger teams will also be sent out to gather supplies to build the town (food, seeds, books, power supplies, fuel, parts, medicines, etc). And of course there will be those who remain behind at Eden, to defend her, or build her.
NOTE: The Moderators are looking for a more suitable location. Yosemite offers a number of impractical facts (like no fuel stations in that area, poor farmland, travel access issues, etc). Its only value was being defensible and remote. So we WILL be entertaining better suggestions early on. Kalispell and Poulson, MT are being tossed around as possibilities. They are remote, but not so bad as Yosemite. And we will consider somewhere more central - corn farm territory - similar to Jerico. Much, much harder to defend ... Finally Southern Utah is a promising area.
Rules:
1. Run YOUR character, not others. (The Moderators will be doing a lot of JP's with each other and use all the GM-owned NPC's.)
2. YES, you may create and run more than one character. For example, you might run a Recruiter in one set of threads, a survivor that gets found by a recruiter in another place. And you may run someone back in Eden. But if you create them, please run them.
3. Players should be willing to post at least a couple times per week for each character they run. If they do NOT, rule #1 will be set aside and other players allowed to post for them that week to keep the plot moving along.
4. No killing or harming other characters without either the Owner or GM's permission. THIS INCLUDES ALL NPC's on the Character Lists. (It takes time to write those up, so we want to consider any permanent harm to those before allowing it.) If you wish to retire a character or hand it off to a different player, just let the GM know. We can move the character to the NPC group. This rule does NOT apply to Moderators.
5. Joint Posting is fine - even encouraged.
6. Back posting is fine. But try to maintain chronology and note the dates (approximations are fine) and perhaps BP (short for backpost) in the Title. But don't clog up the game with nothing but backposts. I want players to work together.
If you have any questions about this game, feel free to contact us at sharlene79@mindspring.com
