@JLBH Thank you for the feedback and I am happy that you enjoy the sketch that I’ve written up here. As it is quite old, I may make some changes to this but I will see.
With regards to your questions (no need to apologise; more questions help me to flesh out the world in which our man/woman finds him/herself in ):
So romance was not something I wanted to play upon too much but not ban outright. After all, people can fall in love, even if it’s the end of the world right?
If it is possible, and I haven’t played with CS for a while, I will be randomising the gender of the people you come across (aside from a few important characters) and I personally prefer this to asking sexuality outright from the beginning.
Your companion and who you choose to follow you, if anyone at all, will be based upon a number of variables including who you choose to seduce/romance, what city you visit, your disposition etc. This also would determine the gender of your companion, I think.
You will meet people, yes. The world is down but not out so some small settlements might be features in your journey. There won’t be glittering metropolises but people get by. There’s also going to be drifters and the like who you may or may not choose to encounter. You will have to face tough decisions, whoever you play as but not everyone will be out to get you. Who is who though, I leave to you the player.
Weapons are a commodity to some degree. At the end of the world, of course every guy and girl wanted to protect themselves and hey, a gun isn’t a bad way of doing that. Nowadays, guns are often make-shift from other parts but the real gold is the ammo. If you find a genuine bullet, you may want to hold on to it. Or at least pull it out of the body you shot into. Bludgeons and the like (or ‘primitive weapons’) I might see if we can do some sort of crafting but I’m not sure. Certainly though, you may at times want to defend yourself, if that’s your thing.
Hope that answers your questions but feel free to leave more if you like!
@JTAL I agree completely with this. Too much despair and, well, what’s the point in playing at all, right? I think what I’m going to try and do is show hope through other people’s lives. So, people trying to carve a life out of this place. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. I think making it all doom and gloom though also makes it predictable. I want people to feel tense when they play this and that’s not going to happen when they know every single person they meet is going to kill them or be killed. Pointing that out though is important for me because it reminds of how I’m going to include that.
Man, there’s a lot of J’s on this thread.