Welcome to A Better Place to Live

[mayfield_mods]

Premise

A Better Place to Live is the sequel game/musebox to mayfield_rpg, following the characters' liberation from that town.

Mayfield, which appeared to be a pleasant 1950s town ruled by a sinister little girl named Lucy, was in fact a simulation created following the nuclear apocalypse that made life outside the simulation uninhabitable. The truth is, outside the simulation exists only a wasteland, but inside, life was pleasant and uneventful.

Or that was the idea, but the creator of the simulation, Dr. Zemekis, lost his mind in attempt to control his own simulation. After a rebellion in which most of the original survivors from the wasteland were killed or brainwashed, Zemekis began to populate his town with the town with artificial lifeforms, copies made from other worlds.

With Dr. Zemekis constantly straining the simulation to bring in new personalities and disposing of old ones in an attempt to create his perfect town, the simulation he built eventually became strained and was near collapse. The few survivors of the wasteland left living, including former US President William MacCready and his son, rebelled against Zemekis and were killed. Zemekis, losing control entirely, made the decision to destroy his creation.

However, another wasteland survivor, Annie, worked with the imprisoned townspeople to escape. Even when the mysterious Mrs. Johnson took over and repaired the damaged simulation, Annie was able to help the townspeople find a way out into a new area of the simulation. Annie used her knowledge of the program to set the controls to a low power setting, allowing the new simulated town to run safely and automatically while giving the townspeople enough control to transform their town into whatever they want it to be.

Annie's last act, before remaining behind in the abandoned Mayfield, was to allow the townspeople a chance to return dropped and dead characters to their town. Now all current and former citizens of Mayfield have a fresh start.

Any character who was once played in Mayfield is welcome here! Simply join the community and start posting. Your formerly dropped characters will awaken inside a machine room with no memory of anything since their droning, but others will be able to get them up to speed.

Duplicate characters are allowed, as long as they are played by two or more players who also played them at Mayfield. Players will be able to rp the character with memories from their time at Mayfield, with someone else playing the character with a different set of memories.

Former characters should only be rped by the person who played them while they were in the game.

Characters who were never in the game are only accepted if, while Mayfield was open, they applied and had their applications accepted.

Rules

1. Golden Rule, bro. Treat others how you would like to treated, don't be a jerk, don't start wank, etc.!

2. This is an unmoderated musebox. That means you are in charge of running your own events and plots, and that the mods won't be helping run things. That does not mean you have to tolerate harassing/bullying/inappropriate behavior. If someone is doing something that really bothers you, please first ask them to stop, and if they do not or if the harassment is so bad you don't feel comfortable asking, inform the mods by private messaging the mayfield_mods account. If we agree that behavior is inappropriate, we will ban the player. There is zero tolerance for harassment, hate speech, and threats.

3. Any player who was banned from Mayfield is also banned from this musebox.

4. Explicit content (anything that would be above an R-rating) should be behind a cut, with a warning for content. Please use good judgment as to what is appropriate and what requires a warning, but if other players ask you to cut something or warn for something, please respect their request.

5. Even though this is an informal setting, you should still stay IC, keep in mind that OOC =/= IC and IC actions have IC consequences, and that godmoding is not cool. RP etiquette still matters!

6. You may not app from the movie The Human Centipede or any of its sequels.

Life in A Better Place to Live

[mayfield_mods]

THE TOWN

When you first arrive, this unnamed town is bare and half-finished. In terms of layout, it is similar but not identical to Mayfield, with long suburban streets of houses, two areas with blocks of commercial buildings, and buildings that are recognizably a school, a church, a city hall building. In the center of it all is a park.

Unlike Mayfield, however, none of this looks like a functioning town where people live. The buildings are all in very states of being unfinished; the roads are dirt and often blocked off with rubble. There is no electricity or running water or any kind of utility; there is no food conveniently stocked in pantries and grocery stores.

Homes

There are fifteen cul-de-sac streets, each with eight housing plots on them. The houses are in various states of disrepair. Some houses are essentially a model home version of houses you lived in in Mayfield, completely empty inside except for the occasional sparse piece of furniture. Some are simply edifices, with the inside rooms still partially or completely in a state of construction. Some are missing walls or roofs. Inside, most of the houses have an electric, gas, and plumbing system installed, but none of it is connected to anything.

The houses seem to have been here a while; metal parts are rusting, some wood is decaying, and many houses have an infestation of mold or insects. The houses' lawns are completely overrun by tall weeds.

City Hall

On the outside, this is a big beautiful building, the match of the city hall building in Mayfield. Inside, it is entirely unfinished, with just wooden structures marking out the rooms, and beautiful marble floors.

The Police Station

This is also the twin of the police station in Mayfield. Inside, it has been completed, and there is even furniture installed and a small jail which has somewhat rusted. There have also been various machine parts dumped all over the ground. It's hard to tell what the parts were for, but they may be useful.

Park

The park is laid out differently from the park in Mayfield, but it is still a large green space in the center of town. There are a few trees in the park, none of which bear fruit, but all of which look like they could bear fruit if they flowered. Like the lawns, the park has been completely overtaken by weeds. In the center of the park is a large pond, but it isn't very clean, and is covered in algae. There are some fish in the pond.

School

There is only one school building, and it is much smaller than the school in Mayfield. The building is finished, with about ten classrooms inside, and a small yard outside covered in weeds. In some classrooms there are a few desks and in all the classrooms are chalkboards, but beyond that, it is empty.

Hospital

The hospital building is a three story building on the edge of town. It is only partially finished, missing two walls with the rooms inside in various states of construction. In the basement, there are a few sealed boxes that contain basic medical supplies -- first aid supplies, tools for surgery, anesthetic and penicillin. These supplies seem very old, use your own judgment whether they are still any good.

Rec Center

The rec center building is just a long concrete slab on the ground. There is an electric generator outside it that looks like it once could have powered a few buildings, but it is rusted and no longer working. There is a large pool dug out next to the rec center, but it is empty.

Downtown Commercial Area

There are five small structures in this area that look as though they are intended to be shops, but there is nothing inside any of them. Three have glass storefronts; two look more like dining or drinking establishments from the layout of the empty building.

In the center of this area is the very large General Store, which is full of shelves. The shelves are empty, but in the basement there are a few boxes and a large walk in refrigerator. One box contains down winter coats; the rest contain non-perishable canned food. The walk in refrigerator is somehow still freezing cold inside; it seems to have its own internal generator, but if you leave the door open too long, the temperature will dissipate. Inside the refrigerator are a few boxes full of frozen microwaveable dinners.

In the edge of this area is an abandoned one-screen movie theater and an abandoned three lane bowling alley. These buildings are completed, but there are no items aside from a few balls and an assortment of pins in the alley, and none of the electronics work.

In the center of the area is an enormous, two story building -- a library. Inside, the library building is completed, with plenty of comfortable places to sit. The shelves are full of books. On the first floor, you will find a wealth of useful reference materials, information, and an extensive collection of novels and children's books. On the second floor, the shelves are also full, but every book is blank. Your characters' can use their world-building to fill in books from their own world.

Uptown Commercial Area

This area has four bare, half completed structures of large buildings. One looks as though it could have been a four story office building, another has a large, finished (but not working) kitchen, and may have been a restaurant. Two are big, but too unfinished to have an idea what they could have been. There is also an empty post office building, and you'll find if you walk into the back of the post office, spawning new items from home becomes slightly less energy consuming, and an old stone church, which is bare inside besides ten pews, but has stained glass windows and the stonework does a good job keeping out the weather.

Undeveloped

Outside of the developed area of town, the area is deserted and gives way to wildlife. On one side of town, near city hall, is the highway. The area around the dirt roads back to the highway is flat and grassy, but run over by weeds. Walking out along the dirt roads back to the highway will loop you around to another dirt road, leading up the cliff that overlooks the other side of town and resembles Mayfield's makeout point.

Otherwise, leaving town will lead you out into a forested area. If you try to walk away from town in this direction, you can go as far as you want. However, the farther you walk, the more you'll notice patches of wildlife that repeat, as though copy and pasted in from areas you walked through earlier. The farther out you get, the air also becomes thinner and the atmosphere becomes less "real" -- animals and plants out here will be less sustaining, plants will decay quickly if brought back to the town.

THE WORLD

In a large bunker at the far end of town is the machine room, which houses the machine that controls the town's settings. Before sending you here, Annie locked the settings on the machine to create low power livable conditions in the town. The town is artificial, but its settings remain the same.

The climate in the town is temperate and mild. Temperatures generally hover between 40 degrees and 80 degrees year-round. There will be a few winter days when it gets cold enough for a light snowfall; there will be a few summer days when the heat approaches 90. It rains frequently in the town, particularly in the spring and fall, with light rains happening almost every night. It seldom storms. Some of you may discover that the climate is suitable for growing a broad variety of crops.

The world has native plants and animals. In the town, most of the plants are weeds, which have taken over the yards, but some of those weeds might include herbs that are safe to eat or that will be useful in medicines. Animals are small; there are a lot of rodents around, but also rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks, non-poisonous snakes and lizards, and a variety of birds. The town is sort of overrun with small wildlife and insects. There are also a few non fruit-bearing trees around the park. The pond in the park has fish in it.

On the outskirts of town, the town gives way to forest, and you'll find wildlife more suited to a forest there. Tall trees, some of which are fruit-bearing, bushes and hedges, some of which have berries growing on them, wildflowers and herbs, and, if you're unlucky, poison ivy. There are a lot more animals out here, too, and in addition to small wildlife, you'll find larger animals like deer and fox, and birds like hawks, owls, and wild turkeys. There are surprisingly few predators, but there is a bear or two lurking around. There is also a small creek with fish in it.

Unlike Mayfield, if you destroy buildings or clear resources here, they won't automatically regenerate. You can use your world-building powers to bring back things that have been destroyed, or you can tend the resources yourselves, or you can clear them and build something new.

Characters in the town will age normally, and will be medically normal for their species. The one exception: while you will be able to breed animals, characters won't be able to get pregnant. The system is unable to support creating a new sentient person from scratch.

If characters die, they will be respawned in the machine room. However, their memories will be reset to the last point they were in Mayfield, or back to their canon point if applicable. Injuries sustained will heal at a normal rate.

All characters will keep the physical regains they brought with them when they left Mayfield, and all of their intangible regains, such as those related to powers and appearance. Formerly droned characters will only have the latter, the kind of things that would be directly on their person or that are physically part of them.

YOUR POWERS

Characters who made it to the end of Mayfield will find that Annie left them with something like the world-building powers Mayfield's leaders had. They can respawn damaged parts of the town, and also restore injured characters. They can change the look and layout of the town. They can bring in items from home, or create new items to furnish buildings and help the townspeople.

These powers are limited: each character can only use it five times per day. The larger the change or the more complicated the items they are spawning in, the more draining it will be, and this will mean their other five uses will have to be smaller changes. Characters will find it easier to bring in raw materials or to alter things existing in the town than to create new things from scratch. For the most part, it would not be possible to do more than repair a single room of a building or create one complicated item and a few small ones per day.

Characters who were droned or killed before the end of Mayfield and respawned in the new town will have even more limited control over their surroundings. They will not be able to create new items or change parts of the town. What they will be able to do is influence things already existing in town to take shapes similar to what they remember from home. A tree could start to bear fruit that was native to their home country; a blank book could become a book they once read. These characters can make two small changes or one large one.

FORMER CHARACTERS

All characters who were once a part of Mayfield may now come back. They will respawn in the machine room at the edge of town, and will not remember anything before their droning. Their appearance in town in not immediate; former characters will respawn over time, so it is fine to decide how long after the other characters in town arrived it took for yours to get here.

Characters who were perma-killed may be respawned, but all of their memory of Mayfield will be gone. They will be pulled directly from their canon point.

Please make sure to obey the rules when playing former characters, and only bring back those you yourself played.

THE FUTURE

This world is yours to build! If you choose, in the comments below you may mention changes your characters have made.

Log 1

[mayfield_mods]

Who: Everyone (General Log)
What: Make yourself at home.
Where: A new town
When: The first day