Information

[shitstorm_eve]

World For as long as humanity can remember, there's been a day that the world knows as a day of chaos. A day where an affliction that's race blind, gender ignorant, that cares nothing for age attacks a small portion of the population and makes them lash out violently. Many studies have been conducted over time. The Roman's thought they were punishments sent by the gods. The Catholics thought they were brief bouts of possession. Modern scientists have pinpointed it to an abrupt increase in sensory sensitivity. Eyes, nose, ears, skin all becoming intolerant to stimulus and causing the victim to experience boundless rage in wanting silence and stillness and dark. The victim willing to lash out and do anything to achieve that. The source of the problem has yet to be identified. As mysterious as any strange sound from the depths of the ocean or flash of radio signals from the cosmos, the fact that humanity (and nothing else) experienced this is strange enough. Heredity has been ruled out. Prions, parasites, and toxins have been ruled out. Sexual cycles and social class and diet have been ruled out. Vesanalia is a day of blanket forgiveness. Acts committed on Vesanalia are so often attributed to the negative effects that naturally happen that quite a few people simply pretend they were affected as well. That way they can go out and wreak whatever havoc that they want. It gives law enforcement and military a rough job controlling those that are actually afflicted and those simply determined to lash out with a made-up excuse. Otherwise, everything is pretty much the same. There are the same arguments over gun control laws and territory. Over religion and nationalism and socialism and atheism. Everyone swears they have the answer. No one has an answer. But the lack of answer plays into advertising campaigns by the same old companies. Going to be prepping for that big night locked in? Buy McDonalds and don't bother with the stove. Going to be cleaning up after a family member psychotically stuffed every potted plant in the house down the toilet to stop the smell? Roto-rooter is there to help. And don't worry, Geico will cover your car from vandalism for a minimal premium. Save for wealthy industrialist and heir President Richard Peck and his VP Tom Belcher, even the politicians are the same. There's always an edge to their platform, though, that they'll take into account what happens during the great and terrible national holiday of Vesanalia. Gameplay Characters arrive in the average midwestern town of Carlyle, Montana. Complete with your usual good Christian Folk, eccentric fun townspeople, disaffected teenagers dreaming of a better life, and militamen trying to build off the grid. Well, that's how it was before the arrivals. The first wave happened about a month or so before the current arrivals. People woke in random locations, such as laying in the Johnson's living room or the playground of the school. No one saw them appear, and the people who found themselves displaced only remember blacking out and then coming to. These people disappeared under similarly mysterious circumstances. A nearby militia blamed the government for it, local religious folks cited divine intervention saved them from Vesanalia and sent them back home. But the small time Marshall assigned to the case, Marty Madsen, has been concerned that he should look out for anyone else that showed up. After some viral campaigning and inciting some legislative pressure, he's managed to acquire some sponsors for any newcomers. The day after Vesanalia, during the annual clean-up, is when people started to show up again. Again, where no one could see, so no one can rightfully explain how they got there. Laying in the middle of the sidewalk or sitting upright on a church pew, waking to find themselves in a new world. They'll get their own smartphones and custom facebook accounts (therefore all network posts work like Facebook posts and comments would be text and possibly emojis, but a character can post a photo, video, or text post to the network) because Facebook realizes that it needs the positive publicity right now. Marty, however, will advise people to show discretion because he's still not sure what happened to the first group. A kindly motel owner has opened up their hotel to newcomers for as long as they need to stay, if they should like. They will find many debates concerning them online. What if they bring diseases? What if they are criminals? Are they a sign from God? Are they a part of an alien invasion? What sort of perception hole are they falling through? And various memes already. Because what would the internet be if it didn't meme something. FAQ Characters can acquire whatever wealth they see fit. The existence of outsiders won't be a secret, and as particularly rich individuals may start using them as a way to achieve ends (usually in the form of publicity and advertisement, at least at the start) so a character can start earning pretty good sums of money up front. Or a character can take a simple job and do their level best to try and avoid suspicious media or the paparazzi. Powers are okay. We just ask that you not use these powers to destroy the world. Time travel might be difficult to make work, but if the effects are small scale, they don't interfere with the game's 1:1 day ratio or skip forward to Vesanalia, and enough people are on board with a plot you can explore that. Characters will also likely become famous just because of the media coverage of the influx event, but they can do their very best to keep a low profile, sneak around, struggle to hide in anonymity. This does make it a little more difficult for criminals to run empires or villains to concoct master plans, but it is feasible. Characters are allowed to have whatever items that are on their person when they come in. If they have their flashy thing, their ray gun, their magic scepter, they can keep it. They can also keep their powers. All that's asked is players find excuses for them not to immediately destroy the town, thank you. The accumulation of wealth mentioned above is also so that characters who can build specialized equipment can build it again. While it would be nice if it was done in an amount of time reasonable to the character, we want to give everyone lots of plotting opportunities. There's no way to acquire new powers in the natural game world setting as everyone in this world is bog standard human, but there other player characters can build specialized equipment, use characters as test subjects, make them werewolves or vampires, etc. Any size, any shape, any species of character is allowed. Which might make going into hiding more pressing. A stranger coming in and giving a poignant speech immediately may avoid being dragged off for government testing because of public pressure, but certainly a bizarre alien or a giant robot might have a rough time introducing themselves. Keep this in mind if thinking of introducing a strangely shaped character. You can also bring OCs, minors, and AU/CRAU versions of existing characters. If they are an AU version, you must do so with the permission of the existing player. Please respect it if they say they're unsure or not comfortable. You can also play Game OCs, or original characters from the game world. They must be baseline human when they start, but like other characters they can acquire powers from supernatural or pseudoscientific sources. Those raised in the world have known the effects of Vesanalia their entire lives, and may see at something terrifying, fun, or a vague annoyance. They would be used to the prep work, and would be unable to recognize anyone that came in as fictional specifically, but they could know about concepts such as zombies, vampires, superheroes, and aliens as fictional (or unproven paranormal) ideas. If you app someone from a new or recently updated canon, and are taking them from the most recent canon point, just spoiler warn within the first month. If you want to tag in on someone and are worried they might be offended by spoilers, ask them if it's okay first. The general rule is that new canons are still welcome. NPCs are squishy. They can die. Saving NPCs will be considered good by the media. Killing them will be twice as bad, because politicians love to blame outsiders of any ilk. Plot reasonably and you can discretely kill some. You can even kill celebrities and famous people. The main exception is that you are not allowed to kill Marty. If someone tries, he will be completely safe through some wild stroke of luck. You can use charicatures of real people as NPCs (save for the current president and vp, because I didn't want any accidentally suspicious materials showing up in sensitive inboxes). It's also fine to just make a spoof of someone. We'll try to keep the info page with any significant world changes caused or mentioned, because during AC we will asked if anything useful came up. Official DW Disclaimer: No person mentioned here represents the actual person, and is a fictional version thereof. Everything is satire and falsehood and play. PCs are also squishy. They can die as well. If a character dies, it's permadeath for that version of the character as far as the game is concerned. There's no gamewide resurrection system in place. However, other player characters can interfere with death. If a character dies and a player character has the capacity to res them, and the permission of the mortally afflicted character's mun, then they're allowed to. Smut and violence and general adult content is allowed. Use content warnings wherever you can. Adult content is not allowed to involve PC or NPC minors, though. If your character is the type to attempt this, please know that other characters will react realistically and assume that circumstances would interfere with every attempt. If your character is a monster that hunts and eats children, they might want to research an alternate food source. Pets are allowed, but a pet that isn't ridden or isn't carried by a character has to show up after the player does their intro threads. That way the pet has somewhere to go once its discovered arriving separately from the owner. If the character was on a horse or had a parrot on their shoulder or some similar pet they would have been touching, then that animal can come with them. It will be in the same location as them and also unconcious. A player can adopt a pet in game but if they leave the pet will be adopted out to a loving family and stay with them. If you should need to go on hiatus you have two options, your character can autopilot for a week. Do their usual activities and it may be assumed that they are living and breathing and eating normally, and are immune from any disasters that might occur by circumstantial convenience as the player sees fit. Or? They end up staring into the middle distance tirelessly for the duration of it, repeating the same phrase over and over in whatever dead language is relevant to them. For example, if they're Italian, it would be Latin. If they were Saudi Arabian, then Sumerian. If they were a mystical elf? Then some dead magic language of their ancestors. If they were a machine? It might even be a radio signal or dial-up. The phrase would always be something to the effect of, "It's everywhere and I can feel it." During this time the character would experience no ill effects of insomnia, hunger, lack of bodily function, and they wouldn't even get hoarse until the effect faded. They would remember nothing of the experience. Every new character will be provided with a smartphone once they go through quarantine and intake. If a character should sneak in, Marty will still try to get them one. He'll also warn people, discretely, that the NSA will be watching their social media accounts. Inboxes are allowed for characters and their threads will count towards AC (some people prefer some discussions to happen in those rather than in communities) but they're not required. For the sake of characters that might want to come in with a relatively clean slate, there will be no canon-puncturing from NPCs. In fact, like with the great president of the United States, Richard Peck, someone researching their canon will find things remarkably similar to their stories but with characters with slightly differing names that remarkably resemble theres. For example, Bruce Wayne might find the comic of Nightman, a billionaire who lost his parents to criminals and swore to bring justice to the troubled city of New Amsterdam. 4th-walling is allowed from PCs with permission, though. This game is only meant to go on for a year and isn't expected to be very large so it's not really worth the hassle of applications and thus it's invite only. Just ask on the public invite page. If someone super can't stand another player, to the point that they're absolutely sure their presence would destroy their enjoyment, they can protest the invite on the comment screened mod contact page.