Process

I had pitched the initial idea for the campaign, a story where a group of regular people, strangers to one another, had to survive the beginning of the cordyceps pandemic by relying on nothing but their mundane skills. The veterinary has to become the medic, the businessman the fighter, and the news reporter the negotiator.

After the pitch had been approved, I guided the team through the brainstorming session for the characters. It was important for me to center the emotional journeys of the characters around the central theme, and therefore each of the characters’ belief systems had to say something about the theme at hand.

The theme we had chosen was “hope in a hopeless world”, with the overall value shift going from lack of hope to discovering hope by the end of the story.

I had asked my team the question: “What gives each of these characters hope?” and as we answered each one, we created a strong foundation for each of the Player characters. For example, one such answer was “ideals” while another’s was “family”. We deliberately picked answers that put the characters in conflict with one another to create the potential for interesting interactions.