Random Game Premise/Idea

[Ian Freeman]

Okay, here's a random idea: The Undying.

Setting is modern day earth plus a lil' virus.

This virus is slowly but surely covering the earth, and the infection tends to spread farely evenly throughout the earth.

It is comunicable, but not very. No one knows how the virus is transferred but contact with infected people will increase one's chance of catching it.

There is no known test to detect the virus, and no one knows how it works or how it incubates. As a matter of fact, no one knows whether it is in fact a virus or whatever, but it's the closeset applicable analogy to how it spreads.

And what does the virus do? It makes you immortal, natch, impervious to any injury and it stops your aging.

Which may sound all fine and dandy, but it also stops the possiblity of reproduction. Infected babies (presumably picking it up from their mothers), can't age and stay stuck in the womens womb and never advance beyond the fetal phase.

Now, the conflict in the setting arises because of how slowly the virus spreads. It's been around for about 4 years, and only 1% of the population has been "infected". And most of them don't know, as the only test tends to involve serious physical trauma.

There have, of course, been a few accidental suicides with people believing to be infected and such.

There is a "reverse panic" spreading across the world as people attempt to get as close as possible to undying individuals, trying to get themselves infected. Everyone from young babies to exceedingly old people have stopped aging. Some people are less than pleased about becoming immortal, especially those who were waiting for a kind of afterlife...

Undying criminals are becoming a problem.
Undying are favored in the military.
Undying parents cannot give birth.
Undying can explore any hostile envirnoment without risk.

The world is changing very, very fast.

All i need now is something to get the player's invloved...

[hardcoremoose]

Kind of reminds me of a low-budget horror flick called Shatter Dead.  The idea was similar...no one could die.   They also never healed, so if they suffered some kind of trauma, they were stuck with it forever.  The movie was cheaply made, but the idea was interesting, and some of the ramifications it posited were very interesting.

Now let me think...how could you get the players involved?

Maybe, for whatever reason, they are part of a select group who knows the *real* story behind the Undying "virus", and it's not good.  I'm not sure what that story would be, but making PCs privy to secial information is always a good motivator.  Maybe they are trying to find a cure for this "virus", which of course would meet with all sorts of resistance.  And they couldn't just tell someone why a cure is needed - no one would want to believe it anyway.

As a side note, if the Undying virus doesn't stop biological processes (other than aging), what would it do to something like cancer?  Allowed to live long enough, everyone will pretty much develop cancer, and if you couldn't die, what would you look like after some rapid tumor growth?  Insane masses of maligant cancer cells...nasty.

Take care,
Scott