This blog is set up to help facilitate roleplay and supply a medium for story telling using the game DayZ.
DayZ [Standalone] is a free roaming multiplayer zombie survival game. The stories and situations told here have been caused by player interactions in the game following a roleplay format (people act out characters, progress a storyline with arcs, etc.).
For people interested in joining this roleplay experience, who have the game already, keep reading this page below for more info. If you have questions or comments, message tap1993 [ nicknamed DAYZTAP ] over Steam.
Getting Started:
Anyone is welcome in joining the story that will be updated in this blog! You need the DayZ Standalone game provided over steam. Along with this you'd need to create a character with a backstory. To help with this, there are several steps to take. First, let's look at rules.
RULES:
These rules are here to provide structure and fairness to the roleplay.
1. Have fun!
-This is important. This story telling experience shouldn't be painful or tiring. If you aren't enjoying the experience, speak up! Let your peers know what's up, and feel free to opt out at any time.
2. Communicate!
-This seems self explanatory, but keep in mind that when roleplaying you're working on creating a story with other people. Have ideas, commentary, questions, or issues with the story events, let your fellow players know!
There are two kinds of interactions to keep in mind while roleplaying:
- Out of Character [OOC] talk - This is when you communicate out of character. Generally recognized when you talk out of character in the middle of a roleplay situation, it would be ideal to let people know when you aren't acting out your character and when you are.
- In Character [IC] talk - This is when your character (and essentially you) speak, during the act of a roleplay event. Whether using a mic or text is your preference, when you speak it's usually part of the story as dialogue. It would be important to differentiate between talking IC and OOC to avoid confusion!
3. Stick to your character.
- While roleplaying, it is good to keep in mind who your character is. Playing your character realistically will help with immersion and will make situations more intense and rewarding. Some tips include:
- Use a backstory and profession - Having a backstory and a history for your character will help you have something to start from. You're welcome to not include a backstory or keep the history surrounding your character a secret, but be prepared to lean on other elements of your character.
- Set out personality traits - Giving your character likes and dislikes that may or may not reflect your own can aid in their development. Does your character love bacon? Do they hate the word 'moist'? Do they have PTSD from gunshots? You can come up with any number of traits, keep in mind that a balance of positive and negative traits make for a well rounded character.
- Stick to your character's skills (And be open to learn) - I'm going to include a list of professions with skills they provide along with skills that wouldn't be normally accessible to every profession. With this, having your character adhere to their skills realistically and learn new skills with time will help with immersion. If your character is a doctor, they'd have top medical knowledge on how to treat wounds and use medical supplies, but this does not mean they would know how to wield a rifle or use complex gear.
- Have goals - This is one of the most important things when acting out a character. Your character needs to have goal(s)! Is your character looking for family? Do they want to get back to civilization or do they want to try their luck in the wilderness? Following goals closely and reacting to obstacles that impede those goals helps push the story along. If your character has no ambition or purpose at a first glance, look closer! If you can't think of any goals, the most vital goal for players in DayZ is to survive!
4. Feel free to discuss character endings [DEATH]
- When your roleplaying and something happens in the game that causes character death, that doesn't necessarily mean your character has to die then and there in the story! In most cases, dying from starvation, getting shot, zombies, and other reasonable causes would be considered a character death. However there are times when the game is buggy and when players get killed from other players at extreme random occurrences. Several examples can include getting broken legs/dying from a fall/ladder/stair glitch, dying for no explainable reason, being killed after logging off by a random player, or being killed in a random player encounter that can be considered OOC gameplay.
It's important to have this differentiation. If you feel that your character's recent death did not occur in the story, let your peers know immediately! When getting into confrontations with other players who may not be roleplaying, it would also be important to make a decision with your peers on whether or not to consider the other players in the story (ex. walking in Berenzino and sudden sniper fire kills your character in the middle of a dramatic engagement). Analyze character death to the best of your ability and when your character's proper time comes, and when consent is had, then they can bite the dust.
5. Don't Metagame/Godmod/Powergame.
- METAGAMING - The process of using OOC information in the story IC. EX: Someone tells your ooc that their character hates your's secretly, you would be metagaming if you have your character react with sudden unexplained knowledge that they are hated by someone.
- GODMODDING - This is when you have your character avoid situations in the story that otherwise would occur, in order to keep your character alive or unscaved. This could be misunderstood considering how easy it is to die in this game. Essentially, with rule 4. included, if you try to avoid RP conflict by combat logging, abusing glitches in the game, magically healing yourself with medical abilities your character wouldn't know about, etc, to avoid permanent character death or conflict, BUT when you provide conflict you expect your actions to affect other players, this is essentially godmodding and it is unfair.
- POWERGAMING - This is similar to Godmodding, however it's the process when you abuse situations or force players into situations that wouldn't normally occur. In normal roleplay circumstances this happens when someone plans on killing off a character with little to know chance for the target to escape death, OR when a player attempts to restrict another player's roleplay options to a certain limit when the other player could have more freedom in the matter. On this game, same applies if the story doesn't warrant it and if you don't communicate and get permission beforehand from a player to perform an act of killing, or forcing their hand. EX: Shooting someone in the group randomly for no reason, or with reason but without having consent or a warning to kill. EX 2: Attempting to tell a player they can't perform certain actions without good reason... if your character is held at gunpoint and you provide excuses OOC as to why the offender's gun won't work or why bullets won't be able to hit your character, as opposed to denying consent to be killed, then you're trying to powergame your way out. Same applies with mechanics of the game. Just because the shotgun doesn't kill someone in one shot doesn't mean it hardly hurts your character.
Now that you've (hopefully) read through these basic rules, below is instructions for applying a new character into the story.
Character Form:
Your steam username:
(The rest below applies for your character)
Name:
Age: (16 to 18+, there are only adult mature characters in the game!)
Gender:
Pre-Infection Profession: (profession your character had before the apocalypse)
Current Profession/Role:
Skills: (Choose these carefully according to profession)
Likes:
Dislikes:
Relationships: (Family members or friends they have accompanying them)
Bio: (What was your characters past before the apocalypse?)
Post-Infection history: (What happened to your character up to the point they joined in the story?)
Current Condition: (Alive to start. This will be updated with the story)
WHAT TO DO?!
Fill in the form as you desire and send me (on steam, currently DayZTAP) A google document with the character form. Once you have your form submitted you can discuss and plan a way for your character to join in the story, either through a simple scripted interaction, or let them run around in an area near a group for a random encounter!
Post-Infection History comes into play here. When your character starts out in the roleplay, how did they get to the point they are currently? It can be assumed that the infection spread either weeks or months ago, depending on canon with the current game (I'm going to start off with how it's been a few months since the outbreak, unless there's an official site explaining the timeframe of the game), if this is the case, then did your character survive with a group of people? Did they go lone wolf? Did they stay in one town for most of the outbreak or have they been following a sizeable group? This is where planning comes in, and once plans are set characters can be introduced.
Another thing to note. IF your character dies in the roleplay, you are more than welcome to make a new character as long as there is no metagaming involved (a.k.a going to retrieve loot from previous dead body without knowledge, befriending characters who were your old character's friends despite changes, etc.) It is heavily advised that when you start a new character you change their persona up to make things interesting!
I've probably left a lot out and if you have questions feel free to message me on steam, again it's DayZTAP.
With that I'll update this blog with relevant information to how the story is going to keep things in track, happy surviving!
P.S. As far as choosing a server, I have a few in mind, server hopping can happen, especially when things get to stagnant and the crowd demands for a higher population. We should all make sure to gather at the right server, etc. and try to avoid any unnecessary deaths as possible that aren't part of the story.
*EDIT* Almost forgot the professions! I'll add them in the next post for reference.
