As a way to have fun, be creative, and help expand the Swamp experience, it is my pleasure to host a Swamp fan-fiction competition. Participants are asked to write up a short story, diary, or piece of writing that lets us follow your character and get a feel of what life is like for them. You can use your own character or make up some new person just for the sake of your writing. Participants will have 2 weeks to complete their stories and at the end I’ll put them all together for people to vote on. The prize will be having a building named after you in Swamp! There is no minimum or maximum length requirement for the stories but I do recommend that people take the time to spell check their work. This just makes it more professional for everyone to read. The stories can be emailed to me, posted online, or even posted here somewhere, but I must be given the link to the story before the end of the day on April 22nd. If you wish to post it publicly to get feedback and ideas from other people that is totally fine. When the deadline is reached I will make a copy of each story and place it on my own website so that it can no longer be changed. You can continue to modify or work on your story but people will be asked to vote on the unchanging copy that I will have on my site. Instead of being asked to vote for only 1 story, voters will be allowed to give a score for each story that is turned in. Voters will have 1 week to read the stories, and I will announce the winner at the end.
To write your stories, authors might find that they need a bit more back story than the game currently provides. The zombie condition is viral and is transmits through bites. Because the origins of the virus have not been revealed in the game, I strongly recommend that you don’t write about the outbreak’s beginning or trying to write an explanation about how it all started. While not specifically stated in the game, the assumption is that people being killed later rise as new zombies. The various zombie types are the result of time passing. It hasn’t been explained in the game yet, so I discourage people from going too much in to this either, but as time passes the virus mutates and changes the zombie corpses. The normal zombies represent people who have only recently risen as zombies, and ones like the giant and tyrant have been zombies for much longer. Before writing you should check the story in both safe zones and also check both outposts. This will ensure that you have the most up to date idea of the current game story. Often time rumors that show up in the forums don’t actually match the story as written in the game. For example I’ve heard many people who think the zombie infection broke out here in your town but the in game story explains that the major cities were hit first and caused millions of people to die. When the zombies couldn’t find anyone else to eat in the overrun cities, huge swarms branched out in all directions and began sweeping through the suburbs, country side, and smaller towns. Your town was one of the places in the path of this undead wave. I think telling your story as a log from your person’s perspective would be pretty cool. Of course it could be told from a narrator’s perspective or any other way you think would be interesting. You actually have several choices about how your character fits in to the situation. The town knew the undead were coming and the army tried to set up blockades to hold them back. The second map’s safe zone is actually a failed military barricade. Check the in-game story for more details, but the army failed and the lines broke. Most soldiers died but others scattered around the town among the survivors. You could be a surviving soldier, one of the town’s police officers, or a regular citizen who armed himself. I think the stories will be more special if everyone isn’t the most heroic soldier in the army. Sometimes you care more when you’re living out the experiences of the bowling alley employee who armed himself and has worked to keep his 2 kids and wife alive. The zombie struggle is certainly the most obvious theme, but thirst, starvation, cold, and human interaction can play huge roles. If you’ve paid attention to the mission descriptions you may have figured out that the people in the safe zone are at the verge of starvation. These are desperate people trying to survive with very little. When the zombies were coming the stores were looted and many people tried to flee the town, so even when men and women risk the undead to search, they can barely find anything. Things are literally so bad that dog food is being eaten to keep people alive. While also not specifically stated in the game, each safe zone is holding approximately 30 or 40 people packed uncomfortably together. With distraught people that have seen horrors and lost family, cold and uncomfortable people sharing too few blankets and pillows, and with too little food to go around, there is plenty of room for drama and interesting human interaction. The people in the second safe zone have far more space to live in. The police station has had its cells converted in to housing for people to stay in and sleep. People in the first safe zone are basically crammed together in what used to be a small store. The second safe zone is also more likely to have surviving soldiers since it is the scene of a military barricade that collapsed. The nearby hospital probably means that they have more of an option to sneak in and bring back medical supplies. More and more it sounds like the second safe zone is a better place to be, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be more interesting to write about. The first safe zone is located a little farther out in the town’s edges so it is more likely to house families and children from the closer neighborhoods. My goal for this fan fiction is to end up with some thrilling and thought provoking stories that really help us understand the horror and struggles these people have had to go through. While we run through Swamp we can easily lose track of what this would all really be like. Picking up loot seems so simple, but imagine what it would be like to actually search the pockets of a man or woman who had been torn half apart by teeth and claws. These are rotting, stinking, fly ridden corpses that may or may not rise and attack you after you begin searching them. Searching the Kai mart for some bottled water can be scary at times, but imagine trying to be quiet as you wander the dark hallways whose floors are littered with trash and debris from the massive looting. Bodies of people would lie everywhere, and you’d never know if the next turn was going to put you face to face with a monster. As exciting and scary as they already are, missions would be a whole different experience in real life as undead begin pouring through busted windows! Have fun, do some brainstorming, and see what you can come up with! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. 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