1) This is a dark, gritty game where you are a simple peasant trying to fight off a horde of zombies that are attacking your town. You have no knights or wizards to help you. Instead, you and your friends must sharpen your tools and hope for the best.

2) You are a simple tradesman in an enchanted world. The trees come to life and fight back against the lumberjacks. The rocks wage holy war against the miners. All the fish and vegetables you must farm are all of the man-eating variety. Think Harvest Moon except that normally mundane activities require you to fight against pumpkin monsters and whatnot.

Option 2, but mainly if a) the medium was highly visual (video game, good cardboard figues, good art) b) if the fighting was evocative of the specific scenarios. No I don't know what that means exactly, but I mean somethign that parleys either the specifics of the tasks like scything for harvesting grain, or the symbolism (in that case it seems to recall the scyth of death or Chronos).

Maybe I just like pumpkin monsters.

Also option 1 has been done often, and I think the key part of survival horror is the mentality of the proantagonists, which is both mildly alien (medieval) and more practical, used to death, and used to the ravages of the natural world. There is no driving to the next town in a stolen 18 wheeler to survive another day. The world is subsistance level already because of the technology level, and the villagers have the basic skills to survive in it.

For visuals:

Would miniatures work and  'terrain cards' work?
A friend of mine wants to start up a business making miniatures and he has been teaching me molding techniques and how to sculpt with green stuff. I think option 2 would probably fit my style a little better (as far as character designs and sculpting go) but I imagine it would probably make it a little expensive to get into this game.

I'd go with option 2, for slightly different reasons though.

I'd have to agree that option 1 has been done a few times in the past, and many of the times that I've seen it done they have been done badly.

But then again, dark low-fantasy seems to be coming back into favour.

I find option 2 to be more instantly evocative and it sparked my imagination much quicker.

I wouldn't worry about the miniatures and terrain too much at this point, but they'd be great things to consider when expanding the direction for your game.

V

Hi Kevin!

Why are you asking?

I'm just trying to figure out which direction would be best to go in with this. I'm leaning toward the second, personally, but I thought it might be too cheesy.
I guess it's like,
Do I want to push it in more of an earthy, down to earth direction since the characters are supposed to be earthy, regular folk?
Or do I want to push it in more of an over the top, Disgaea-esque direction where Blacksmiths are using fire and hammer attacks to beat ore-monsters into submission?

Kevin,
  I really want to see you pump up the surreality.
  Man eating pumpkins, etc.
  But that's just me.
  What really matters is, do what you love. And that love will shine through and attract people with the same notions...

Cheese is great.

(I should clarify this. Cheese is great when done properly...whether this is tongue in cheek, satire or even a self-awareness within the product. Cheese is really bad when the game is trying to be serious, I'm sure we've all seen a few of these games/television shows/movies/etc.)

V

:)

Looks like I've got to start working on a power 19 now. I'll have it for you guys tomorrow.