[CDDA] Tales of the Apocalypse - Season of Terror

[Marauder Moe]

Anyone else who wants to post CDDA discussion/roleplaying here, feel free.

DAY 1:
Dr. Paige woke in darkness.  The previous day was a blur in her memory.  The power going out in the middle of surgery... her patient waking up and attacking her staff... news of the infection... the evacuation...

Right.  The evacuation shelter.  Where were the other survivors, though?  She found her way to the windows and peeked through the curtain.  The shelter was at the edge of a swamp.  There were bodies on the nearby road.  Dutifully, she went outside and checked them more closely.  There was no need to check for any pulses.  ID cards she found showed they were soldiers and scientists.  One of them was even carrying a Leukocyte Breeder implant, pretty advanced stuff.

Her immediate needs were, however, decidedly more primitive.  Dr. Paige extended a bionic scalpel from her fingertip and sharpened the point of a makeshift spear.  It pained her to abuse the finely-honed instrument so, but she knew she needed to defend herself if she ran into more of the infected. 

She then activated her implanted headlamp and went to explore the shelter basement.  It was empty save for a bottle of calcium supplements.  She wrapped what few medical supplies she had in one of the shelter's curtains and ventured outside into the rainy morning...

[Marauder Moe]

NIGHT 1:
The apartment building stank of death.  Dr. Paige had been forced to euthanize several of the infected.  The amount of tissue necrosis suggested they were far beyond saving anyway, if not actually clinically dead, despite their animated state.  Those years on the fencing team during pre-med actually paid off!  One by one, she had skewered them through a doorway with her makeshift spear.  She also made sure to eradicate the brainstem of each victim to prevent any further post-mortem activity.

As the darkness settled, she explored several nearby buildings, gathering bits of supplies and clothing as she went.  However, the number of shuffling figures seen in the distance suggested the town was far, far from safe.  She tried to get some sleep, but one of the victims seemed to have wandered into the next apartment.  Dr. Paige had planned to relocate to a nearby farm in the morning, but decided perhaps now would be a better time.  She gathered as many of the supplies as she could carry and quietly snuck out the window.

It was raining again as she crept through the field.  Eventually she met the road and followed it east, though she could barely see past the edge.  When the road met the farm, she followed the fence surrounding it.  As she wandered past several grain silos and further into the field, she started to wonder if this was even the sort of farm with a house and a barn, or was it just an industrial patch of dirt?  After stumbling around in the dark for over an hour, she concluded that indeed there was no shelter.  She followed the road back to the evacuation shelter and spent the rest of the night there.

[valeria]

Loving this! I've been thinking of getting back in to CDDA but probably won't with nanowrimo looming. But I'm totally looking forward to your next installment.

[Marauder Moe]

DAY 2:
Her back ached from sleeping on the hard bench.  If this was to be home for a while, she'd need to get some more pillows or better yet a mattress.

After organizing her supplies on a counter, Dr. Paige prepared to go back to the town.  She re-built her spear with a metal spike made from scraps of the empty supply lockers.  It was still raining, but the yellow coat kept her comfortably dry, though it was not very stealthy.

An infected had wandered near the shelter, but with her new weapon she dispatched it with ease.  Tucked into its waistband was a gun!  Dr. Paige didn't know much about guns, but figured it could be helpful in a pinch.

She made one trip into down, bringing back more cooking supplies and some pillows and blankets.  The day was still early, so she decided to head out again to the apartment she'd stayed in the day before.  She made it to the window undetected but once inside she saw something she was, somehow, completely unprepared for.  Infected children.  The poor creatures swarmed her and despite eventually overpowering them, she was injured.  As a doctor, she was able to treat her wounds easily enough but it would still take time to heal.  She decided to cut the trip short and head back to the shelter.

Unfortunately, a few more full-grown infected had wandered into the area behind her.  She tried to run through, exacerbating the wound to her leg, but unfortunately could not shake them.  She turned and readied her spear to make a stand.

She valiantly dispatched one of the undead, but the others simply mobbed her.



----

This was a relatively good run for a mostly-random character.  Bionic Surgeon has some good perks and great set of starting medical supplies.  Definitely recommend as a not-overpowered bionic character. 

Raiding during the day was probably my mistake.  I didn't expect the zombies to spread out so far from town.  I also totally forgot my character had a gun.   

Anyone got any recommendations for what I should try next?  More randomness?

[Akaramu]

Maaaan, I wish my days had at least 10 more hours of free time...

It's been so long since I played, I don't even remember the various builds and concepts, but personally I had the most fun when I defined additional RP goals and limits for myself. Like my cyborg, who would have 'won' the game if he managed to build one of those robot hacking devices with a laptop and brought it to a radio tower. Or my magic kid, who I really played as a kid - no car driving, relied on having an NPC adult with him etc.

That said, I assume the magic addon has also evolved along with the base game, and recommend checking it out.

Also, schizophrenia is all kinds of fun(tm).

[valeria]

RIP  I always hate it when I forget I have a gun.

Anyone got any recommendations for what I should try next?  More randomness?

If you're in the latest experimental, I'd recommend "roadie" or "musician," only because Zoltan modded them in 

[Akaramu]

Whaaaaat. Zoltan is modding for CDDA? 

[Marauder Moe]

I've been trying to hard to make a "High Tech, Low Life"/Cyberjunkie run work, but starting/living in a town is really hard.  Damned zombies get everywhere.  The faulty implants are also problematic.

[Gentleboy]

I love me some CCDA, but I’m very new at it so I still cheat.

[valeria]

Broken bionics is hardcore mode.

Whaaaaat. Zoltan is modding for CDDA? 

He was really into it for a while. He put in those two professions, a tour bus, a recording studio, and updated a bunch of the music venue buildings to have roofs. He got stuck on a flamethrower guitar and moved on. Which is pretty much how he rolls.

[Akaramu]

He was really into it for a while. He put in those two professions, a tour bus, a recording studio, and updated a bunch of the music venue buildings to have roofs. He got stuck on a flamethrower guitar and moved on. Which is pretty much how he rolls.

Cool. Looks like this is another one of those games half the Arm community was addicted to at some point. 

The broken cyborg is almost unplayable imo. Back when I played mine, I cheated at the very beginning (console commands) to remove the most annoying (not all) of the broken parts. I started with an NPC friend who had insane medical skills (I've never seen a CDDA NPC whose stats came even close, I swear his skill was like 17 or so), so I RPed it as NPC buddy helping out with some day one surgery.

[Marauder Moe]

I give up on "High Tech, Low Life" start.  Too many things have to line up right to survive the first day in town, and the scenario's [SPOILER] spawn makes things even harder.

[Marauder Moe]

DAY 1:
'Blitz' had a shitty mechanic.  Oh sure, he "knew a guy" that got him the latest experimental imports, but half of her gear didn't fucking work!  Still, when the world went to hell, she couldn't think of anywhere else to go lay low.

The mechanic's house was on the edge of town.  Blitz snuck in the back door.  Didn't seem like anyone was home.  She made a quick check of the basement, also no sign of her mechanic.  Upstairs again, she peeked out the window.  "Shit... shit shit shit shit shit."

The psycho-infection had spread here too.  Human figures roamed the streets between wrecked vehicles.  She rushed from window to window and closed the blinds.  As she was closing up the bedroom, she heard a *CRASH* of glass back in the living room.  "Oooooh fuck!" she whispered.  She ran into the garage looking for... ah-hah!  This will do.  A heavy wrench.

Slowly and quietly she peeked around the corner.  The man... no, it was more like a walking corpse, was stumbling around the living room.  Blitz froze.  It didn't seem to notice her.  She watched it a while.  Without intelligence, it continued to just bump into one piece of furniture after another.  Something steely tightened within her chest, a feeling that she would not allow this pile of rotting meat to drive her away... thought it might also have been a faulty bionic.  Blitz stepped fully into the room.  The creature saw her and started shambling forward.  She stepped back into the hallway, waited, and when it rounded the corner *BAM*!  She beaned it with the wrench.

To her momentary shock, it didn't crumple to the ground like most people would have.  She swung again, and again and again.  She didn't stop until it's head was a smear across the floor, and the walls, and a bit on the ceiling.  Blitz retreated to the bedroom to catch her breath and her wits.

The wrench worked in a pinch, but she needed something bigger.  The garage held some tool lockers that, when forcefully disassembled, yielded some heavy metal pipes.  She pounded one end flat to better pierce a skull or maybe pry open a door.  Much better.  Blitz also found some sports arm-guards in the closet, along with a few medical supplies.  Convinced that she'd made a good sweep of the upstairs, she went back to the basement.

Exercise equipment, downstairs bathroom, television, there was nothing immediately useful save for a few snacks.  She opened the door to the mechanic's workshop and-

"CONNECTION FAILURE! ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?!" screamed the human head wired to the top of the thing.  It was a collection of robotic scraps bolted together into a shambling body.  It lurched through the doorway and grabbed at her.  Blitz had no time to scream, no time to curse.  She wasn't sure if she peed herself a little or if it was one of her implants malfunctioning again.  Backed up against the refrigerator, all she could do was swing her pipe.  *CLANG* against a metal appendage.  *CLANG CLONK PING* as metal impacted on metal.  Finally, she hit it in the face with a whet *SCLORCH*!

"No, turn left!  Turn left!" the face pleaded.  Still, the thing clawed at Blitz.  It wasn't very agile, but it was tough.

"WHY" *CLANG* "WON'T *CRUNCH* "YOU" *CLONG* "FUCKING" *TINK* "DIE?!" Blitz screamed as she beat the monstrosity over and over and over again.  Finally, something came loose.  With a spray of fluid, the insane cyborg collapsed and the life left the eyes of the tormented human head. 

Blitz slumped back against the wall, feeling numb.  Then she realized she had activated her sensory dulling implant during the fight.  She deactivated it to conserve power.  Now she felt pain.  She took some time to collect herself again, just staring at the cyborg wreck in front of her.  What the FUCK kind of sick shit was her mechanic getting in to?

After resting, Blitz proceeded into the workshop, where she was thankful to find the autodoc still intact.  It had a built-in power source so she was able to access its systems.  While she knew enough about technology and medicine to understand basically how it worked, she did not feel confident operating it herself.  One wrong command and she could be gutted.  She let it be and went to do a more detailed inventory of the house...

----

Finally one of these runs worked out.  The starting house was not too badly compromised, it's at the edge of town, I found a weapon, and I managed to kill the cyborg before it made enough noise to attract more zombies.

[valeria]

Go Blitz go!

[Marauder Moe]

Blitz spent the rest of the day more thoroughly counting her supplies.  For food, all she had was a mostly-empty bag of chips, which she ate.  Three more infected creatures had wandered into the house, though each also had their brains scattered across the walls.  Her mechanic's place seemed to be getting less and less secure by the hour.

Still, scavenging would have to wait until nightfall.  The infected where everywhere and her experience taught her they still had decent vision.

Blitz tried sleeping, but her bionics kept bothering her.  She read a little bit by the light of a window facing the neighboring house.  It was getting cold.  Ordinarily she'd activate her internal climate control bionic, but her faulty systems had just about drained her power.  With nothing to eat, activating her bionic interchange to turn her own digestion system into a power plant would just make her starve.  In the end, she just had to wait quietly.

NIGHT 1:
Out the back door and to the neighbor's house.  She felt like a cat burglar from a TV show, skulking around in the dark.  She finds some sewing supplies and a bag of dried lentils, but not much else of use.  Downstairs, wow, this guy has a really big basement.  Too bad there's nothing here but junk and... oh shit!  That must be the neighbor.  In the struggle, the creature gets a solid bite on Blitz's hip.  She tries hard not to scream as she finishes caving in the infected's skull.  Afterwards, she took some of the atreyapan antibiotic she found in her mechanic's basement and hoped for the best.  Meanwhile, the scavenging had to continue.

The next house was really sparse upstairs, but with a basement packed full of stuff... and more infected.  After the scuffle, Blitz was disappointed to find out most of the stuff was junk, though there was a significant amount of water in the house's water purifier system.

Third house... a sweet pair of rollerblades!  Also some fruit, quickly eaten.  The basement, though, was full of tech!  Nothing immediately useful, more like a HAM radio enthusiast's workshop, if she had to guess.

Fourth house still had its' occupants living upstairs.  Sadly, both infected.  Blitz was getting about as good at evading the psycho's as killing them, though, so she led them out the window and then ran around to the front of the house to loot it.  Not much of note other than a sandwich (yum!) and some cool combat boots and leg armor.

She deposited most of her bounty back at the mechanics's house and then ventured back northwards.  An apartment building yielded a lot of still-good food, though not much else.  Next door to it was a farm, though not like a Green Acres farm, more like a rich folk farm.  The house was quaintly-decorated but large.  She found some good food, medicine, and some books.  Looks like the "farmer's" son was a fan of electronics.  Blitz made a quick scouting of the fields.  Chickens.... horses... meh.  She went back to the farmhouse and prepared to spend the night.

[Marauder Moe]

But sleep did not come.  Her bite wound continued to bother her.  From what medical knowledge she had, being a bionic enthusiast, she knew atreyupan was not a very powerful drug.  Then Blitz remembered she had seen an ambulance nearby during the day.  Creeping between houses, she made it to the street.  Fuck yeah!  There it was.  She climbed in the back.  There was much left but a cabinet did have exactly what she needed: disinfectant.  She washed the wound out right away and waited in the ambulance a while to catch her breath.

After that, she made her way back to the farmhouse, looting some snacks and goodies along the way.  Blitz tried to sleep in the master bedroom upstairs, but a gang of infected were wandering near the house making a lot of noise.  Eventually, she moved to a room on the other side of the house and managed to fall asleep.

DAY 2:
The physco-infected had made a mess of "her" farmhouse.  They'd trampled sections of the fence, smashed in windows, and generally bled all over the place.  Strangely enough the invaders were still there, but fallen.  Had they cut themselves on glass?  Or had someone... something?  Come by during the night and put them down?  Regardless, Blitz took no chances and smashed the skulls of each corpse she could find.  Then she went to make breakfast.

Blitz spent most of the day reading.  Her shitty broken bionics itched, they burned, they fucked with her vision.  She read the electronics book cover to cover hoping there might be a chapter or even a paragraph on autodoc operation.  There wasn't, but she learned a few things anyway.  For a change of pace, she read a few survival tips out of a magazine.

As the sun set, Blitz made her plans for the night.  Firstly, she needed to go get some more water, as the farmhouse didn't seem to have clean water storage.  She would also stop by her mechanic's place and gather up some of the things she'd left there.  Next she would need more tools to board up broken windows.  While the town of... what was this town's name again?.. was a decent sized place, she didn't know it well enough to get to a hardware store.  Her best bet would be to just go from house to house as she had been.  After that, books!  She would kill for a medical textbook to help her program the autodoc to get this broken shit out without severing major arteries.  With a dry chuckle, Blitz realized she probably would have to kill many more psycho-infected to get what she needed.  She mentally added weapons to the shopping list.

---------

Day 2, seem to be semi-stable.  I have a lot of food and water available and a great stash of medicine.  I haven't looked closely at vehicles, though I think I saw an intact bicycle.  Not entirely sure it would be wise to get behind the wheel while there's still a chance of being randomly stunned by broken bionics, however.  Blitz's life may be very limited/dangerous until I can get skills up enough to safely operate the autodoc.

[Marauder Moe]

NIGHT 2:
At first the night was uneventful.  Blitz brought back water and supplies from her previous hideout.  Then she finished cleaning out the apartment building next to the farm.  The first infected of the night were hanging around an RV parked outside the apartments.  The inside turned out to be a meth lab.  She left the drugs be; her vice was metal and silicon.  Also marshmallows, which she found in the next house over.  Fucking heavenly.

Inside another house over, Blitz spots what looks like an infected firefighter.  Fortunately, it doesn't seem to notice her.  She is confident enough to sneak into the kitchen and chow down on a leftover hamburger while the creature stumbles around in the living room.  Then she sees the house has a basement.  Score.  People seem to keep the cool stuff in their basements.  She creeps down the stairs.  It's nicely furnished, with a pool table and everything.  Hey wait, didn't this guy have a pool table UPSTAIRS too?  Weird.

While she was wondering how many pool tables a person really needs, an infected stumbled out of the shadows and towards her.  Shit, this one was in full military gear!  She whacked at it with her makeshift pipe weapon, but its helmet was secure and seemed maybe it had body armor too.  Shit shit shit!  She activated her sensory dulling implant and kept trying to hit a soft spot.  Unfortunately, it seemed she had way more soft spots than it.  For the first time, Blitz felt she could not handle this fight and she ran.

Back at the farm, Blitz decided she'd had enough of bashing in infected skulls tonight.  She went to make something to eat.  The infected weren't done with her, though, and one of them crawled through the kitchen window.  She lured it back outside and de-brained it with a meaty *SCLORCH*.

Blitz had a salad for dinner and went to bed.

[Marauder Moe]

DAY 3:
Once again, it seemed more infected wandered by during the night.  Some lifeless, some animated but seemingly injured.  Blitz found shell casings near the forest.  Were they there before or had she somehow slept through gunfire?

She took a daytime tour of the farm grounds.  Most of the animals had escaped.  One unlucky horse had not.

The infected had little regard for the property's fences and it was breached in many places.  Blitz used the plants to board up the broken windows of the house.  After lunch, she did a little reading and sorted through the pile of junk she'd collected.  Not much seemed to be good for a weapon upgrade.  She tried to rig up some replacement clothing for her torn outfit but couldn't come up with anything comfortable.  She'd have to keep at it later, though.  Night had come.

NIGHT 3:
Blitz found a cake.  A whole chocolate cake.  Just sitting there on a table in an ransacked house.  Someone had a bad birthday, but Blitz had a good night.

[valeria]

A whole cake 

[Marauder Moe]

DAY 7:
Wake up.  Have breakfast.  Go patrol looking for any infected that wandered by overnight.  That was shaping up to be Blitz's morning routine.

Last night had been particularly rough.  Blitz's attempt to go further into the town, which a restaurant guide she found told her was called 'Stomeham', was thwarted by the infected population being too thick.  She was battered and bruised, on top of her regular itchy and glitchy.

Pushing towards the commercial parts of towns, with stores instead of just housing, would require killing.  Killing would require new tactics.  Fortunately, someone in the farmhouse Blitz was living in had been an archery enthusiast.  While they hadn't left behind any bows, they did leave behind some books that showed how to make some basic bows and tips for firing them.  It took several tries and a lot of wasted wood and string before Blitz got a longbow put together that seemed solid enough.  Making the arrows was much simpler.

First she tested it out firing at a log target.  So far so good.

Next step, out into the streets.  There were a fair number of infected that, some way or another, had lost most of their heads.  While still somehow animated, without eyes they were far less dangerous and couldn't really follow Blitz if she ran.  These infected made excellent target practice.

Blitz even tried shooting some more-intact victims, though each one got too close before being felled by bows and she had to finish them the more traditional way.  Still, archery practice ended up being a fun and relatively safe way to spend the afternoon.

"How fucking dumb am I?" Blitz said to herself, with a smack on the forehead, as she made a discovery.  Turns out that mailboxes can contain things besides useless mail!  Books and magazines were also frequently delivered by the post office.  Blitz gleefully checked every box on the block on her way back from archery and returned home with several useful books.

[Akaramu]

Really appreciate the updates, they're almost as good as playing the game myself. 

If you get a chance to experience the new basebuilding and follower mechanics, let us know what you think!

[Marauder Moe]

I wasn't planning on a base-building run this game, but if it make sense I'll do it..  I actually turned NPC spawn down, though, because I thought they were a bit too common before.

DAY 9:
Blitz decided to take a nice walk through the woods today.  She kept her sensory dulling implant active to keep from feeling the wounds of yesterday's battle with an electrified infected.  In addition to taking it easy, Blitz wanted to collect some cattails from a nearby marsh.  She had read in a book how to wind the plant fibers into thread-like cordage.  Living in the apocalypse had been hard on her clothing and gear and she was running very low on modern manufactured thread.

Along the way she found a small pond that seemed very busy with fish.  This might be an important place once her scavenged food ran out.  The cold early-Spring temperatures had kept perishables cool, but fresh food was becoming more and more scarce.

Blitz came back with her duffel bag full of cattails and some other edible plants she recognized from her books.  Stripping the plants and winding them into usable length turned out to be fairly easy.  She now had more than enough fiber to keep her gear together.

Next, she lit a fire in the kitchen's oven and started following through with a recipe for cattail flour.  It took most of the day to work everything out, but in the end she had a good, dry supply of it.  Blitz was fucking owning this whole survival shit.

NIGHT 9:
Ugh.  Blitz woke up with a nasty cough.  She lamented not scavenging more cold syrup.  Went next door to try to find some.  Only had non-drowsy.  Took 5 houses to find night-time cough medicine.  One infected followed her home on the way.  Bashed its head in and then went back to bed.


----

Bonus art!  Blitz, novice suburban survivor:

[Hauwke]

I might try a run myself. How do you turn spawn rate down?

[Marauder Moe]

It's all in the world settings before you generate.  Read tooltips carefully, though; for some settings, higher value means "less".

[Hauwke]

Sweet. Thanks!