Got a great idea for our fat man's reason to get out of the basement:
While playing WoW, more and more players disappear (due to the zombies eating the unexpected addicts). Soon, he is the only player left in the network, and thinking that a better game than WoW has come out (that everyone else is now playing) he decides to go to the nearest game store to buy that game.

The mothers day idea sounded enjoyable, except I think I'd spruce it up by him going home only to find his mother a zombie.

There's the classic movie motif of an animalised person needing love to overcome their animalness, so there could be a tear jerking scene where the mom is going towardss him looking to eat his brains, the son is pleading with her to remember that he's her son, she gets closer, and he then has to pound her to death with a picture frame or something. Then he collapses to the floor, dropping the frame in slow-motion which contains a photo of him and his mom, his tears spill on it. Then a loading scene. Then it's kill all zombies.

Maybe he needs to feed his cat, so he needs to get out of the basement. Maybe he has a date he found online that he needs to get out of the basement for (in which case he beats her to death with a baguette at the bakery they were to meet at, crying as he does so and as the bloogy baguette falls away in slow motion).

I'm going to piggy back on some of the ideas shown so far. So, we have the fat man who's been playing WoW during the time this apocolypse or whatever has been going on. So, he notices that there are less and less people playing until eventually there's no one online (except for perhaps a few others that were also in playing sad amounts of the game whom the player meets up with later on or something for co-op or additional game play etc). So, there's hardly anyone playing, he thinks perhaps there's a new, far greater game out. He goes outside to find a military weapons carrier has crashed and there are weapons strewn about the place. A lone zombey walks towards him from down the road, to which he reacts as follows:

"OMG TEH AWESOME GRAPHICS"

(as any game addict would do :P), grabs a gun, loads in a clip and shoots the beast down, this just alerts a hive of them starts to chase him down. This is where the game would begin, he then proceeds to fight his way through the city, finding supplies, weapons, and meeting other survivors who attempt to persuade him that it isn't a game, but he doesn't believe him, the graphics are far too good ( :D ).

I like the idea that the first weapons you get are from a crashed military vehicle of some kind, but the problem there is they will be too powerful - I want the players to start off with weak weapons. For this reason, I'll reserve the crashed military transport thing for later - perhaps its a crashed HMMWV with M4's all around it.

OK, I like the idea that he was in the server room playing WoW (although Ill need to think of another name that is parodically similar (is that even a word... whatever) ).

Doubt you will be able to use 'WoW' either due to copyright issues.

Someone I always thought would be funny as hell in a zombie game are those kids that have the "Jesus is my homeboy" shirts. You know, the edgy "we take no crap (except from G-man)" Christians. I think its called New Edge or Straight Edge. Something like that.
I'm thinking this particular character would be in the 16-25 set. Maybe some tattoos and a real shitty attitude. This would suck as a main character in my opinion, but as a supporting that gets butchered, I think that might work. I like some of the other ideas about a MMO player coming out after several days in seclusion and yours about the repair guy stuck on a post while the world around him goes to the dead dogs is hilarious.
If you need some help with how ordinary people handle the events of Z-Day, you should check out the web comic Dead Winter. You might find some inspiration there. I'm sure the creator wouldn't mind a few questions about how he came up with characters might be appreciated as well.

One thing Mason made me think of is the possibility that you have no "main" character in this game and instead the story unfolds by letting you play different perspectives of Z-day or whatever. Then you get to tell different mini-stories of these different characters, then you can have all kinds of different people that don't normally appear in games. For example, perhaps a short interlude story could be an old granny that has to use her walker to beat down her zombified cat(s) or something. This way of telling the story could allow you to play with more game mechanics that would otherwise be harder to manage with one character.

I always thought this was a cool pic, maybe you could imagine how kids might survive Zday.

:

I think it would be interesting to see what kids would use to fight off kid zombies.

How about you start off as a convict stuck in solitary. The game starts off with a Zombie figuring out how to open the door to come and eat you.

As a prisoner finding weapons may be tough initially but as you work your way out of the prison you may be able to get some guns left behind by the guards.

John

Quote: Original post by GninjaGnome
I always thought this was a cool pic, maybe you could imagine how kids might survive Zday.

:

I think it would be interesting to see what kids would use to fight off kid zombies.

I'm not certain about the idea of making a game with kids getting eaten by zombies; Another issue is that im 24 and dont really want to play a 10 year old. So kids are out. Anyway, any surviving kids would lilkey misinterpret the whole situation and survive on instinct, it would be like Lord of the Flies.

I like the idea of the MMO addict, the guy who got stuck up the lamp post is another I like; I'm gonna have to pick one for the prototype, but I might do a multiple persective thing at a later date if I ever commit resources to this game. Right now its still a hobby project.

I'm gonna go with the MMO addict who was playing wow in the server room at the risk of losing his job and got locked in. He has no combat experience, and stumbles across his boss with a little .38 in his hand and thus starts with a weak but effective weapon. I've already planned the storyline, its node based and expands into 3 possible endings, with 12 nodes. Its gonna be very short but thats because its a prototype.