I just got finished reading 'The Knowledge: How to rebuild our world from the ground up.' and have been thinking about that situation: If humanity got hit by a contagion on the level of the pnumonic plague what would happen?

Let me outline the basic situation for you as described in the book: It is the near future, perhaps 2020 or so. Not much progress has been made technologically, I mean there are a few minor improvements to what we already have, better cellphones, more fuel efficient cars, electric cars have taken off in a big way as gas prices continued to rise, The 'Outer Net' is fully implemented and provides Wi-Fi all over the planet, America and China are still the top dogs, the economy is still struggling but not as bad as it was, everyone is still on Facebook and still playing stupid video games: Basically not much has significantly changed in the past 6 years.

Then it happens: It starts in London, though they think he caught it somewhere in the pacific: this one guy get's sick with a virus no one has ever seen. It's an antigen shifter, like aids or the flu, and it has a very long incubation period, then mild flu like symptoms, but when it goes full bore it is as lethal as Ebola, and while it's still incubating it is HIGHLY infectious, being both airborne and waterborne, And here's the kicker, the guy worked as a security guard and the London Airport.

Soon cases are cropping up everywhere, Paris, New York, Munich, Beijing, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Mecca, the list goes on and on. The hospitals are flooded, and shortly so are the morgues, and then everything breaks down. Quarantines are enacted, but most of the time they don't help, The Contagion has snuck past them long since. Many people prophesy the end of days.

But that doesn't happen. This is not the wrath of god come to punish us for our sins, nor is it the zombie apocalypse, this is just a nasty virus, not anything supernatural: and that means, there are natural resisters.

If your body was not capable of simply kicking the infection in the jimmies when you were first exposed and then beating it while it was down you died, but some people could do that, and they lived. Out of all the people then living only 1 in 20000 lived, and that was with good medical care, but these survivors found each other and set up colonies.

Now it is two years later: I and any other players are part of one such colony. We are living in former Amish country, surviving as agrarian farmers and trying real hard to hold onto what technology we can in the face of lack of fuel and infrastructure.

We have little problem with raiders, everyone is armed and trained to fight, and besides, that whole scenario imagines that food and arable land is scarce, which is the opposite of the situation: we will NEVER run out of spam, at least not in our lifetimes, our challenge mostly comes from each other and trying to rebuild our tech base. Most of the old countries are still there, and the UN is now a true world government, after the new President of the USA, the Tzar of the new Russian Monarchy, and the Primer of China stood together before what was left of the UN and declared that they were putting their full armed forces at the UN's disposal in perpetuity almost everyone else fell into line and accepted that there now was a unified human government. However keeping the global trade networks and the like going has proved impossible. We can communicate with most of the planet through radio relays but that's about it, intercontinental trade and the like is on the rocks for the foreseeable future, and each 'Ruby' as the US government calls them is effectively on its own. As far as we know we are the only colony in the state of Pennsylvania, and with all the roads full of inoperable wreckage where we have not been able to clear it there is no chance we are sending anyone anywhere except on foot.

Our objective is to fix this situation: rebuild our tech base, survive the winters and summers with only wood to heat and no air conditioning at all, pull ourselves up inch by bloody inch from the new dark age and reclaim what we had before.



Mechanics: I am thinking GURPS 4th for the system, it's the most realistic and complete for handling this situation.

Characters would be built on 100 points plus up to 50 disads: but with a 50 point 'Standard Abilities' package for the things that everyone is trained how to do including basic competency with several types of firearms and 'Immunity: Disease': we survived The Contagion, nothing less even phases us.

Anyone think they would like to try running this?

I would play but I don't know GURPS well enough. It actually sounds like The Stand minus the supernatural stuff. I love that book.

The situation outlined in 'The Knowledge' basically IS 'The Stand' minus the supernatural stuff. It's an analysis of how humanity could recover and rebuild if our modern world were destroyed by a plague: or perhaps some other calamity as long as it eliminated enough people that they would not run through all the supplies too fast but still left enough people alive to reconnect and rebuild and didn't make the world uninhabitable.

As for not knowing GURPS, it's fairly easy to pick up the basics and a lot of the more complicated stuff we would not be dealing with anyway: there's no magic, no cybernetics or robots, no psionics, we are all immune to disease: the only hard parts are the invention rules, TL rules, and the social rules, and as hard parts go those are EASY. I would encourage you to give it a try, and would like to add therefore to my list of requirements for this game that the GM be tolerant of people new to the system. (Probably would have to be anyway, there aren't that many vet GURPS players on this site in the first place, myself excepted...)

Or Earth Abides by Stewert.

the interesting thing on that is first there were waves of vermin; rats or ants or whatever got into food, breed like mad, then ran out.

and later, the big problem was that they had all they needed.  There was plenty of guns, candles, clothing for the taking.  Few of the children showed any interest in learning science, and few of the adults showed interest in rebuilding the tech base.

There are other interesting problems as well. For instance, after 30 days people on anti-psychotics would run out of meds...that's one a of people overlook.

In reply to doom29169 (msg # 5):

I love the post apocalyptic genre and gave a few games on here but not that familiar with GURPS. Also what you be looking at for a focus, adventure (I.e lots of dice rolling and stats, or more interaction (writing heavy). Also what were you thinking about fir a rating, mature adult etc?

Some answers to your questions:

Well, as for not being familiar with GURPS I have already made noob friendly GM a requirement, so that is no big thing.

As to the other things: I am thinking that this is going to be more interaction and social focus, as combat and the like don't flow well in this medium, but I am sure there will be some of that in the game, in a setting like this they are hard to avoid.

Which brings me to the matter of rating: while I personally am not adverse to an adult tag I think that keeping this at mature would open it to more players, so that is the rating I will advise, but ultimately it is up to the GM. General however is probably inappropriate for a post-apocalypse setting.

Bumping this idea to see if a new GM will appear...

Must it be GURPS? Could Fate Core or WoD do the trick?

What about Morrow Project?

Your scenario is exactly what Morrow Project was based on. And when I played Gamma World, one of the tweaks I felt was needed was that colony aspect that was saying there is hope.

Not sure if I'm up to running it, but my friend is a big Morrow Project fan. I'll ask him if he's interested.

In reply to Tzuppy (msg # 9):

I loathe and despise FATE and have found that it works poorly on this site, which rather is what led to my dislike.

As for WoD, there is too much of the supernatural woven into the system for this kind of game, this is supposed to be a hard SF game.



I have never even heard of this game, so I cannot say IF it would or would not work, but I prefer GURPS due to already having those books in my collection.

I looked in on this as a matter of curiosity to see what you had in mind.

However,



This may be a bigger problem than you think.
I suspect it may apply not only to the characters, but to the players and potential GMs, too.

The zombies and raiders are there for a reason, they give purpose and adventure to the story. The Grapes of Wrath might have won a pulitzer prize, but I can't see it making an exciting and fun-filled game. A frequent comment about the Amish communities is "How can they live like that? I'd be so bored."

As a GM, I'd be out of ideas with this one - even if I were familiar with Gurps.

I'm not meaning to put down your idea, but instead of thinking 'Meh' and walking away, I'm giving you some feedback from a GM perspective on why you might be struggling to find a GM (and later, players). Hopefully it'll help with your pitch. :)

I thank you for your comments and understand what you are saying. You may be right that this is what is going on, and it has gotten me thinking about alternatives, some of which I may post for tonight...

A game currently in the Players Wanted thread that may interest you.

link to another game

You might want to look at a rather contemplative post-apoc game called "The Quiet Year" which concentrates on the internal conflicts of a community struggling to survive and rebuild.

It is a map-drawing game, which would require some cunning to emulate in this environment, but otherwise it entirely conforms to your specification.

http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year/