I mean, think about it. If you're the Sole Survivor, you just watched your world end in nuclear fire, and then--a few seconds later, from your point of view--saw your spouse murdered and your child abducted while you could only watch helplessly from inside your stasis pod.

Then you emerged into an abandoned, decrepit facility that, again from your perspective, was brand new a minute or two ago, surrounded by the frozen corpses of your spouse and neighbors (and you come from a setting where neighbors knew each other), and had to pick your way through (and occasionally loot) the still-clothed skeletons of the long-dead staff (whom you just saw alive and shepherding you to what seemed like safety) and fight roaches the size of toy poodles with your bare hands to get outside again.

There, you found nothing but a ruined place that looked vaguely like the world you just left no more than twenty subjective minutes ago, now scorched and barren, and made your way down the hill to find your neighborhood deserted and collapsed into ruin. The computer on your wrist says it's the year 2287. You have no idea how long ago your spouse was killed and Shaun taken. For all you know in that moment, that happened 200 years ago, everyone involved is long dead by now, you're the last human being left alive, and you have nothing to live for.

You should be irretrievably catatonic with shock at that point, not wisecracking to your robot butler. The only action you should be capable of taking is collapsing into a corner of what's left of your bedroom and rocking silently in place until you starve to death.

To give it all a little sense of realism, I always spend the first two or three in-game days in workshop mode, going around the cul-de-sac scrapping everything scrappable and making the place presentable, to simulate being in some kind of manic fugue state, reimposing order. Only then do I decree that my character has snapped out of it and decided there's nothing for it but to get on with things, possibly after a recitation of Hunter S. Thompson's soliloquy on reaching one's limits.

The possibility of physical and mental collapse is very real now...

... But collapse is out of the question; as a solution or even a cheap alternative, it is unacceptable. Indeed. This is the moment of truth, that fine and fateful line between control and disaster.

—Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
(1971)

I can't help it. I roleplay in games that DON'T claim to be roleplaying games, I certainly can't avoid doing so in games that do. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.