Character Creation

I just got a standard/manual transmission vehicle in my real life and I've been refreshing myself on how to drive, and I couldn't think of another positive mental trait so that just solved that problem for me haha.
Thanks for the welcomes! I'm excited to play.

I really miss driving manual transmission. Once the boys are out of college I'm going to find something fun to tool around in again.

Upgrade time:
So character upgrading is pretty simple and open in this game. Look back over the adventure so far and come up with a new positive and negative trait for your character. Try and justify it based on your in-game actions so far. If you've become more proficient with guns where you were once untrained, then maybe small arms trained. If you had to do some crazy driving, maybe base it off that. If you've talked down someone maybe find something based on that. The positive and negative can be in any categories you want. They also don't have to be in the same category.

So everyone list up a new positive and negative trait for your character. I'll figure out something for John and maybe Annette.

Let me know if there are questions. Or if you want to destress your character before we start the next chapter. The Suburbs.

It's taking me a while to review everything and decide on new traits, but could you elaborate on the recovery of stress again?

I'll do you one better. Here is the PHB sections on acquiring trauma through healing stress, and an example chart.

PHB Section

:)

Also, as far as severity and how it relates to things. To recover from a severity one trauma takes about a day, level 2 takes about a week, level three is about a month. So just keep that idea in mind as you add traumas.

Also, just approved a new player to fill the missing spot. I'll bring him in at the start of Chapter 2. I should have a write up for that soon.

It's been a few days and I haven't heard back from the new player. We may have to just roll things forward and then continue on hoping either they roll up a character or I bring someone else in.

Let's go, horror survival makes it very easy to add people as we go

OK, so for my upgrades:

[+]Getting used to guns - I've been shooting more and more
[-]Growing cold - Starting to care a bit less about people (after seeing animalistic behavior, etc)


Traded the one stress in mental for a small trauma:

Growing Distrust of People - Even though the major threat are the zombies, Kel is beginning to fear people more, as they are unpredictable.

I would like to eventually work off this trauma, so I added that I'm treating the wound as instructed when we have time:

Wound - The zombie dog gave him a nasty bite. He has been treating it as instructed by the med tech.

Those look good. I've also been talking with the new player about his character and he is working on it. He can either PM me any more questions on the character creation process, or ask them here and I'm sure we can all help out. I agree it should be easy to tie in with where we are going.

For my upgrades, I've been thinking about Andrew and his disappearance. I'd like to have the negative trait be something like "Thinks Andrew is nearby/invisible," but, as much as I like the comic potential of that, it's dependent on a player not returning to the game. So I'm going to go with these for my upgrades, and use my sense of Andrew for a mental trauma instead (as that will last only a day of character time):

PHYS: (+) Practiced firing guns
MENT: (-) Fear of animals

So far we've seen dogs, rats, and raccoons, which have all actually been more dangerous than the people. Howard is terrified of these.

Traumas:
I'm recovering all 3 of my physical stress for a level 1 trauma: shortness of breath. When heavily exerting himself for the next day, Howard is prone to hyperventilate.

I'm recovering my 2 mental stress for a level 1 trauma: paranoia that Andrew is lurking nearby.

I'm recovering my 2 social stress for a level 1 trauma: fear that people will vanish if I take my eyes off of them.

How does all that sound?

For our traumas, we should be noting when we got them, too, so that we can track when we recover from them. Is that correct?

I'll have my upgrades ready to go tonight at November 17, 2015 11:22 am.

I'm going to leave my Stress as is (Three in both Physical and Social, and one in Mental).

MENTAL: (+) [Horror Resistant] - After what he's seen tonight Jacob is a little more resistant to initial shock of odd occurrences.
SOCIAL: (-) [Out for Himself] - (And his friends of course) He's not very likely to help outsiders.

Looks good. I was slacking getting the new chapter up. Probably tonight.