Bay 12 Games Forum

One figure, inhumanly lithe, splashed its way to safety.

"The name's Lagolass, friends. From the western woods." The elf quickly inspected his bow for signs of water damage, then nocked an arrow to the string.

Xenology! Does this odd ship match any records regarding Haptis II? If not, has Maxwell seen this sort of ship before?

Quote from: Sirus on July 16, 2017, 08:20:44 pm

World War Z was great, don't get me wrong, but it's not quite what I'm looking for. Since all of the stories are being told from first-person perspectives, it doesn't really deliver the bigger picture regarding the actual spread of the zombie plague. There's a lot of hindsight contemplation, but nothing to really explain how the disease hit epidemic proportions in the first place (especially since, in the first story, it appears that Patient Zero was euthanized pretty quickly along with all of his victims).

It's in the Chinese stories, essentially China's government tried way too hard to cover up the infection, and when their containment collapsed the undead numbered millions.

I just don't see how it got out of their control, though. They showed up at an outbreak less than an hour after being informed of it, carted off the infected, checked the rest of the villagers for signs of infection, and killed the only active zombie. There's no logical connection between cover-up and millions-strong outbreak. China appeared to have things totally under control...until we get to the submarine story and suddenly China is overrun.

That story about transplanted Chinese organs being infected seems a somewhat more likely reason for the plague going world-wide.

I'm not a huge fan of D&D Basic so far. Maybe the actual gameplay is better but character creation is garbage x_x

If you haven't read any World War Z (An Oral History of the Zombie War), I can't recommend it enough.  The movie was "okay" but had nothing to do with the book, which is a collection of short stories from survivors of the zombie plague.  Some of the best involve the original infection.

Heh, my dad even remembered one of them to me recently, the otaku's story.  Perhaps the best informed, yet least aware...

World War Z was great, don't get me wrong, but it's not quite what I'm looking for. Since all of the stories are being told from first-person perspectives, it doesn't really deliver the bigger picture regarding the actual spread of the zombie plague. There's a lot of hindsight contemplation, but nothing to really explain how the disease hit epidemic proportions in the first place (especially since, in the first story, it appears that Patient Zero was euthanized pretty quickly along with all of his victims).

Let's go back to The Stand for a second. There's a sequence that goes pretty much like this:
"Sheriff Bob is sick with the superflu, though he doesn't know it yet. He pulls over a guy for speeding and gives him a ticket - and a death sentence. This guy is an insurance salesman named Bill, and after getting let go by Sheriff Bob he drives to a diner for lunch where he infects everyone, including the cute waitress and the tourist family he gives directions to on his way out. This tourist family, let's call them the Johnsons, drive west to Nevada and check into a hotel. The kids swim in the hotel pool (infecting all the other kids, who are heading off to all sorts of places with their own families) and get sick the next day. Mr Johnson is pissed that his perfect vacation is ruined, but he and the Missus take the kids to the local doctor's office. There were twenty other people there for various ailments, along with the doctor, the nurses, and the receptionist, and sweet old lady named Muriel. All of them are exposed. After work, Muriel heads off to her bridge club and wins handily, then she goes home and infects her daughter, who goes to school the next day..."

That's what I like. I like seeing exactly how the situation deteriorates.

This is a bit strange, but I'm finding that some of my favorite moments in fiction describe the spread of some fictitious disease.

Take The Stand, for instance. There's a neat little chapter that jumps from one character to another, describing what they were doing on what they assumed was a perfectly normal day, and not only explains exactly when they got infected with the superflu but also shows how many other people they pass the disease onto. Few if any of these characters ever appear after this chapter but the easy assumption is that every single one of them died within the next week or so. It might be my favorite chapter in the book because the reader knows (even if the characters themselves do not) what's about to happen despite the government's best attempts at containment. It's very grim.

There's a chapter or two in Pandemic that does the same thing, but in this case it's even worse/better because some of these infected characters go to international airports and quickly spread the disease around the world.

I want more stories about world-ending epidemics. I don't know why.

Erp ._.

Thank ye kindly.

(8,10), perform Sharne and Liam.