Doomsday diseases

[xiphias]

Of all the doomsday disease scenarios I've read about -- ebola mutating to be infectious in the incubatory stage, airborne AIDS -- the one I'd never seen was zombie mutation malaria.

I certainly hope that there are massive inaccuracies in this report. And that something entirely not that is actually happening. Malaria is bad, bad stuff. Malaria which is fatal in two days is nightmarish. Malaria which is fatal in two days and then brings the victims back as zombies is just. . . I lack adjectives to describe what it is, because I lack CONCEPTS to describe what it is. But "bad" is probably part of it.

At one point, I'd wanted to run a GURPS campaign based on news headlines. Just find the weirdest headlines I could find, and use those for plots. There would be some sort of great Illuminati-type black magic conspiracy behind them. jehanna, copperpoint, and vonbeck all made characters for it. We played like one session.

But every time I see news articles like this one, I kind of regret that I'm not running this game.

I even remember the news story that made me want to do this campaign. As a matter of fact, a couple years later, when I took an Intro to Journalism class at Northeastern, the instructor used that story as the example of the best lede (opening sentence) of any news story he'd read.

The AP article starts out, "BOSTON (AP) -- An insurance executive was charged with tearing out his wife's
heart and lungs and impaling them on a stake in a fight about overcooked ziti."

The instructor's point was that, if the story is dramatic enough, you don't actually need to work too hard to write the lede. It pretty much writes itself.

(That particular story only gets weirder the more you look into it. Apparently, Richard Rosenthal claimed that he killed his wife because she was really an alien vampire. And he was arrested because, after killing his wife, he followed another couple home and started talking to them about gun control, because their license plate was 357-BAN.)

Anyway. My point is, it must be tough being a writer. And the world is very scary. And ZOMBIE FRICKIN' MALARIA.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Of course, the article is a hoax. The zombie malaria one, that is. Richard Rosenthal did batter his wife to death and then impale her heart and lungs on a stake in a neighbor's garden.

[copperpoint.livejournal.com]

Well I'm still in. I'd probably have to make a new character though.

[vonbeck.livejournal.com]

If you wanted to run again and this sort of thing could work great for a periodic/pickup campain, I am interested in playing. I may even rebuild my old character.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

you suck! here i was all excited about zombie malaria, but nooooo. ;)

[rosefox]

There was a game put out a few decades ago where the idea was to make the best tabloid headline. I believe the sponsor was the National Enquirer, though I always thought it would work better for the Weekly World News.

Ah yes, here it is. I love BGG.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

Do note the date of the article.

Have you looked at the RPG "Over the Edge?" It's definitely good for the conspiracy theorist, though it tends towards X-Files spooky rather than Weekly World News nutjob. It's also got one of the best character generation schemes around, equally good for quick pick-up games and long campaigns, depending on how much work one wants to put into a character.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I've read it. The only things I remember are that, in combat, you get a bonus to your attack for giving an entertaining description of what you're doing, and a penalty for a boring one. Oh, and there was a collectible card game that used the same setting.

[rosefox]

Ah, fond memories. That was a damn fun game to play. Too bad the particular group I was in fell apart in RL just as things were getting good in game.

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

The MIT Assassins' Guild ran a game titled Tabloid! several years back. All parts were based on actual tabloid headlines.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

um. the second thing I noticed about that article was its April 1 date.

Ill tell what the doomsday disease is with no cure

[(Anonymous)]

Its an evolved staff infection called MERCER...This disease will eat from the inside out with no cure...Unless treated quickly very quickly there is nothing to be done...Think about it...MERCER is the new plague