The Dead Will Feast On The Living
Generally I’ve a strong aversion to the acronym RPG, in which the letters stand for Role Playing Game rather than Rocket Propelled Grenade, and for the very odd, annoying and often malodorous people I’ve known who indulge.
It’s my own bigoted prejudice, nursed with silent glee amongst stated high standards of tolerance and respect. Anti-racism, anti-homophobia? Sign me up. Role-playing? Listen, that’s just different and no sir, I don’t like it.
There’s nothing that stirs terror in me more than a grown adult with a pack of printed cards without any spades, diamonds, clubs or hearts. If it’s a game that can’t be turned to gambling purposes I can never quite see the point of the exercise. To paraphrase the Reichsführer Hermann Göring, whenever I hear the words “rule book” I reach for my revolver.
However I’m prepared to break all of my own principles, standards and rules of behaviour in the search of my own personal black grail: kitsch.
I’ve come across in the last few minutes care of Anna Winter, and apparently behind the fashion as usual, a web-based game called Urban Dead, in which the poor individual can play either a zombie or a human stuck in a city full of zombies. The intro is worth quoting in full for sheer shlock value:
In death, the city stirs. Its borders still locked down after a sudden government quarantine last year, Malton’s trapped civilians make their way through the derelict buildings, surviving the winter to rebuild their fragmented society from the rubble upwards. Military cleanup squads patrol the empty streets, stationed in the city for the long haul, while embedded scientific groups continue the experiments that brought them here.
And the dead rise up and thrive, trailing through the ruined streets of the city, milling between buildings and clawing through makeshift barricades and diversions, reclaiming the city as their own.
And the prepositions will begin the sentences. Thus, forever will be the city’s grammar mutilated. Presumably the imaginary city’s living inhabitants look a great deal like these happy football fans pictured here.
I haven’t tried the game out yet, as I’m working simultaneously on a chapter and conference paper. Having not been outside for a while other than to go to work, and going for more than usually without exercise or fresh air, though, I can see that a pattern is starting to form.
Brains?
EvilPundit wrote:
Interestingly, Urban Dead is very popular among the members of the discussion forum I co-administer, Political Animal.
I don’t play it myself, but about 20 members have formed a team. The main thread is here.
liam wrote:
Ah, yes, that explains my attraction to the game. Brain death and excessive interest in politics: a horrible combination.
…
Your second link doesn’t work, and I despair of the phpBB search function. I can’t find it.
adam wrote:
I’ve secretly been addicted to Urban Dead for quite some time now… Not a member of any organised gangs though, just freelance brain munching. It’s surprisingly fun, for such a simple concept.
I think EP’s second link might be a thread something like this one; well, in any case, there’s a lot of UD discussion going on there…
EvilPundit wrote:
Sorry about that broken link – Adam has posted the correct one.
Here’s another, with more background. It’s an Australian political stoushing zombie group!
Minotaur wrote:
I don’t think it’s such a large leap from politics to fantasy schlock - or rather, it is, and that’s why it’s so popular amongst the political community. I’ve discussed this with many people who work on the political cliff face, and it’s amazing how many have some secret obsession with, for example, `Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. When you deal in the real and the problematic all day, there’s nothing better than escaping into the purely fantastic.
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