All Flesh Must Be Eaten

[Fenixcrest]

Does anybody remember that game? No? Oh, well XD

I was watching the Dawn of the Dead remake the other day, and I found myself thinking, "Some of these guys are doing alright. I bet if they had Martial Dodge, the zombies wouldn't be able to touch them."

 

So, Herodom assembled, what do you think about zombie plagues as a roleplaying genre?

[keithcurtis]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

That, and Call of Cthulhu I just don't get. They fall slightly below Western in the list of genres I wouldn't care to play.

 

Though so many people like CoC, that I might be tempted to at least try under a good GM.

 

Keith "spraying himself with Zombie-GoWay®" Curtis

[SatinKitty]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

I think the Ophideon Plague in the adventure "Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" produced something similar to a Zombie attack. In this adventure, Plague victims became rabid berzerkers determined to infect as many others as possible and to destroy. You might check that out.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

Actually, Herodom assembled has this pretty well covered.

 

For starters, I recommend the excellent Twilight of the Dead website. Everything for your HERO walking corpse needs.

 

We've also had at least a couple of people post game logs here from their own zombie survival horror sessions:

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20809

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27152

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27153

 

BTW from the word I've picked up from other gamers, All Flesh Must Be Eaten is still considered the definitive treatment of the genre for RPGs. Personally I could never see the appeal of this type of game, but I do recognize a quality product when I see it.

[Sketchpad]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

Love All Flesh ... love the zombie genre Think it works well in RPGs ... now excuse me, I have some brains to devour

[Teflon Billy]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

The thing that I wonder about this genre, is how do you get around the general feeling of hopelessness that the Characters would be stuck in?

 

If you've ever seen the movies, the world in general is fscked, no two words about it. Unless you go outside of genre and allow for supernatural intervention/assistance on the side of the Living, there are no mundane means of defeating the Zombie hordes in the long run.

 

Particularly if you go for the far more grim Return of the Living Dead zombies. You couldn't kill those zombies with massive brain injury, they devoured the brains of anything that was living (humans were not their sole target, cats and dogs were fair game as well), and you couldn't burn them as it only ended up creating more of them (through the smoke from burning the bodies coming back to earth as rain and animating any nearby graveyard).

 

I just have hard time getting over these aspects. I had similar problems with the movie The Grudge, the characters had no hope, they had absolutely no ability to defend themselves against a supernatural horror.

 

TB

[Sketchpad]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

For that Billy, I would highly recommend The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman. Excellent treatment of the genre IMHO

[nexus]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

The thing that I wonder about this genre, is how do you get around the general feeling of hopelessness that the Characters would be stuck in?

 

If you've ever seen the movies, the world in general is fscked, not two words about it. Unless you go outside of genre and allow for supernatural intervention/assistance on the side of the Living, there are no mundane means of defeating the Zombie hordes in the long run.

 

Particularly if you go for the far more grim Return of the Living Dead zombies. You couldn't kill those zombies with massive brain injury, they devoured the brains of anything that was living (humans were not their sole target, cats and dogs were fair game as well), and you couldn't burn them as it only ended up creating more of them (through the smoke from burning the bodies coming back to earth as rain and animating any nearby graveyard).

 

I just have hard time getting over these aspects. I had similar problems with the movie The Grudge, the characters had no hope, they had absolutely no ability to defend themselves against a supernatural horror.

 

TB

 

Spoiler warning

 

 

 

You can take the 28 Days Later approach. Make the outbreak isolated so the PCs can escape it.

 

Give a time limit on zombie animation. Eventually they rot or just stop moving particularly if they can't feed.

 

Limited zombies. After a point they can't create more, or creating more takes some effort and can be prevented.

 

In the original Night of the Living Dead, the zombies were defeated (the sequels changed that). They were slow, stupid and nearly blind, but it was flaws in the characters (and humanity in general, apparently) that let them get out of hand. Humanity panicked and started fighting among each other and allowed the creatures to slowly take over. PCs generally work together better.

 

Or even just give the PCs a safe place to try to run too. An island, a fortified city or something like that.

 

I agree with you that no win scenarios aren't much fun in an rpg, but you can use the zombie horror genre effectively without total hopelesslness, but a sense of desperation is needed.

[Labrat]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

As a zombie-genre fan as well as a GM of a (now defunct) zombie holocaust PBeM, I have one word of caution. Zombie-entertainment can be tolerated in doses (they don't have to be small doses). As an RPG format the genre gets old fast... ex. Resident Evil quickly turned from a 'zombie-game' to a 'supernatural-onslaught' game. They tend to escalate to demons and other heavier bad guys or else they get tiresome... only the locations change.

 

You've been warned. Now go ahead and give it a shot! While it's fun, it is most definately fun.

[Heroman]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

The thing that I wonder about this genre, is how do you get around the general feeling of hopelessness that the Characters would be stuck in?

 

If you've ever seen the movies, the world in general is fscked, no two words about it. Unless you go outside of genre and allow for supernatural intervention/assistance on the side of the Living, there are no mundane means of defeating the Zombie hordes in the long run.

 

Particularly if you go for the far more grim Return of the Living Dead zombies. You couldn't kill those zombies with massive brain injury, they devoured the brains of anything that was living (humans were not their sole target, cats and dogs were fair game as well), and you couldn't burn them as it only ended up creating more of them (through the smoke from burning the bodies coming back to earth as rain and animating any nearby graveyard).

 

I just have hard time getting over these aspects. I had similar problems with the movie The Grudge, the characters had no hope, they had absolutely no ability to defend themselves against a supernatural horror.

 

TB

 

Really, when you encounter an Against All Odds type scenario, the intended overall feeling is supposed to be hopelessness. All the pathetic people you encounter have succumb to the acceptance that they will die or are so strung out that they will try to go in a blaze of glory. That is the difference between them and our Heroes. The heroes do not want to give up, despite the odds. Perhaps it is that, admist all the running around, (hopefully) exciting and near death enounters in the fast action run, they finally find a path out of the horror that they must blaze thru. If there is no way out, then the Hero is the one who realizes they need to work on defenses and make a safe haven. The Hero is the one who never gives up (or if you are playing a fallen type hero, maybe they succumb to depression but during the course of the game find something to believe in). A Hero could also be the type who, despite all current evidence, believe there must be a way to defeat the enemy, just one not conceived of or discovered. That would lead the entrenched/running group to need to visit science labs, hospitals, etc, taking them out of whatever relative safety they have developed into the exciting world of danger with the hope of success. Feeding that hope is the sign of a healthy game. Even a heroic PC cannot live on just failure alone. They need little glimmers of light (even if offset by loss).

The Grudge is a good example of more the Discovery Hero, something in common with good Call Of Cthulhu games. In this case, the enemy may be limited but is neigh invunerable. There is where Gun Heroes get munched up. You simply cannot get rid of them thru brute force. You need to evade or slow down the enemy while you try to gain enough information to finally get rid of the enemy. This type can be kinda hard for D&D type converts who usually are not challenged in this manner.

In either case, if the scenario is a doomed one where, in the end, there is no escape, then the fun of the game must be built on survival (though the final doom may be outside the scope of the game). In example, for Call Of Cthulhu, you cannot really win; there will always be occultists, dangerous things will always come into our world, and there is the ever present threat that someone, somewhere will wake an Old One and make humans into skittles. The fun comes from confronting these and pushing off the doomed day while trying to keep your fingers around sanity.

[austenandrews]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

I think zombie plagues are great for social satire, a la Dawn of the Dead & Shaun of the Dead.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

As a huge fan of the Zombie Survival genre, I've always wanted to do a game of Zombie HERO. As I mentioned in another thread, I think thet The Zombie Survival Guide is a GREAT resource for setting something like this up.

One of the things they discuss that is pertinent to the thread is the threat level Classes of zombie outbreaks. Even if you don't use the "zombies are caused by a virus" approach that is the baseline for the book (and quite a few movies and games) the classifications are still QUITE useful to determine just how hopeless the scenario is going to be.

 

A Class 1 outbreak is small and localized, in a location with either a small population or large distances between people (rural environments, some third world countries and the like)... like the original Night of the Living Dead, or the first Resident Evil game/movie. It has the potential to be contained if reacted to with enough speed and/or violence, as the lack of potential "new recruits" prevents the rapid spread.

 

Class 2 outbreaks are smiliar to Class 1 outbreaks, but in a more densely populated region. This allows for much greater potential casaulties, and a much greater chance of the outbreak spreading past easily containable methods. It also means that there is greater potential for a secondary outbreak to occur, as the chance of missing one or more zombies is greater (assuming that your zombies are infectious in some fashion).

 

Class 3 Outbreaks are uncontrolled large scale actions. Think Dawn of the Dead, Resident Evil 2, or 28 days later. Containment becomes almost impossible,except by distance (no more poulation left to zombiefy, so now they have to travel on foot looking for victims) or geography (Islands are good for this... zombies traditionaly can't swim, tho they might be able to wade real good), and cleanup will require large scale millitary action. The plot for a game like this will be to escape. Possibly before a nuclear solution is employed to halt the spread of the outbreak.

 

Class 4 Outbreaks are the no win scenarios. This is solely a survival game. Land of the Dead style. The zombies have won. This is a post apocalyptic game. The goals will include locating usable food, water, shelter, and equipment, trying to avoid both zombies and predatory survivors, hopefully finding fellow like minded survivors, avoiding various forms of infighting caused by widely different personalities being forced to live together under extreme stress, and ultimately seeking a safe haven where sustainable life can be set up.

 

The book makes several other good points concerning the way zombies *would* probably work in RL. For instance... While they exhibit great strength because they don't feel pain and thus use their muscles past the limits that humans can, they also don't heal, and thus will gradually break down from repeatedly tearing their muscle tissue.

 

If you like the genre, go get the book. Its well worth it.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

I _love_ the Zombie genre.

 

Don't know why, but I love it. And I can never repay England enough for Sean of the Dead, even if I could have Madonna deported.

 

That being said, I've learned two things about Zombies as games:

 

In RPG games, they are best left to short-arc campaigns-- say one to five sessions, where there is some defineable and acheivable goal-- escape, survive, stop the plague, whatever, or it gets very tedious very quickly-- for you and your players.

 

It makes a serious kick-butt minatures war game if you're pulling an all-nighter and have plenty of zombie tokens!

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

I _love_ the Zombie genre.

 

Don't know why, but I love it. And I can never repay England enough for Sean of the Dead, even if I could have Madonna deported.

 

That being said, I've learned two things about Zombies as games:

 

In RPG games, they are best left to short-arc campaigns-- say one to five sessions, where there is some defineable and acheivable goal-- escape, survive, stop the plague, whatever, or it gets very tedious very quickly-- for you and your players.

 

It makes a serious kick-butt minatures war game if you're pulling an all-nighter and have plenty of zombie tokens!

And Zombies! is a pretty kick butt beer & pretzels game.

Especially if you have a bag of extra glow in the dark zombies, a big blacklight, a lot of cute female gamer friends and a good sized bottle of vodka and some various mixers

[i3ullseye]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

Time to put some unlife back into this thread.

 

I have run many horror games, with many differrent rules. Even my supers games tend to take a horror slant from time to time since I am such a fan(atic) of the Genre. Chill was one of the best horror games ever, and Beyond the Supernatural had a some great ideas like the Nega-Psychic. But a few things to make a pure Zombie game work.

 

1) Yes, if the undead are swarming, and they are your only adversary, things get old fast. So you have to redirect the focus. Often the best way is to put the characters at odds with other humans... in a post zombie plague backdrop.

 

The new Land Of The Dead movie is a great view of this. The real strife of the film (as in most of Romeros films) is the conflict between people. It is when that cauldron bubbles over that the zombies become the real threat. Unified we can fight them off, but when internal bickering breaks our group down, all the **** hits the fan.

 

2) If the zombies don't change much, their situations should. While we know what to expect from a zombie in combat, what happens when they start falling into your water supply?

 

You can always give them a shot in the arm by making animals subject to the plague. And making people who were close to the players return is always fun. But some undead might just evolve and be a bit more of a threat. Also don't overlook the infected who haven't yet turned.

 

3) We know how to fight a stock zombie... but what happens when the ammo runs out? Finding alternate ways to combat them is often a great diversion from the normally mundane zombie schtick.

 

.... there are many neat ways to make a vanilla zombie encounter not seem so vanilla. General horror games have more of a real scare potential as there is so much unknown. With pure zombies remember, hopelessness is what you are going for, or general despair... not scary spooky horror.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

I thnk I'm gonna like having you arond on the boards...

We have a lot of tastes in common.

 

Excelent ideas all

 

add one more to the mix... disasters.

 

As in.. what exactly is going to happen when maintainence breaks down on some of the heavier parts of industry, like the local power plant...

 

Or some enterprising group of Zombie killers cut loose with their molotovs in the industrial section of town, and the fire spreads to a chemical storeage facility...

 

In general there are potentially a lot of nasty things that can happen as a result of eveything breaking down without getting shut off first.

[Toadmaster]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

Never had a chance to play All flesh must be eaten but I thought it was a well done game, one of the best for the genre and fun to read through. I'm also a fan of CoC and the Horror genre in general. Whether you are a fan of gaming with zombies or just a fan of zombie movies I second (actually I might be third or fourthing) the Zombie Survival guide, I picked up my copy at Borders under $15, it takes a realistic (and funny) look at the zombie genre.

 

As far as it being a hopeless genre, I think many gamers new to the genre fall into the movie horror trap where it is a largely a body count, but there is alot more to it in a well run game, investigation, discovery, finding the monsters weakness, finding out that doesn't work as planned, running, running some more. Running (or more a lack of it) is typically the failure of most new horror players.

 

Even CoC with it legendary death rate isn't so bad, but players need to learn to focus on the way they die, not the death, a character who puts off the end of civilization for another 100 years is a winner even if he will spend the rest of his years in a padded cell, not really any different from a fantasy character going out under a horde of nastys so the rest of the party can escape.

[i3ullseye]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

I have a tackle box with all my Zombies!!! stuff i it. Thats 200 zombies (plus 6 glow in the dark ones) and neat map tiles to build scenarios with. I have been musing combining the two. Play with the Zombies minis, and the map tiles... but let the characters use actual HERO rules on thsoe combats as they move form spot to spot in the city. I might even work up some conversions for the deck of cards in Zombies!!! to give HERO rules bonuses and penalties.

 

Hmmm..... soo much to do, so little time.

[Capt JT Kohonez]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

The one thing the Zombie genre doesn't ever take into account, which is why I think the campaigns are kept short run, is the human ability to adapt. I have Land of the Dead and the one of the annoying things that struck me was how they built a fence but never built a simple wall which would have offered better protection. I think in a Zombie-verse no one has an IQ higher than 8 and 99% have the Psych. Disad - Shortsighted on a roll of 15-.

[i3ullseye]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

*Spoilers*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually, Land in the Dead they had 3 rivers bordering them. And they had wooden walls up. And they used an underwater access tunnel to get in and out. And then on top of all that, the privelaged were in their ivory tower with locked doors. They were pretty much set.

 

The fences were only out past the tunnel, at the vehicle depot where people actually went in and out. If youa fre going to make it so you can get out, there is also a slim chance that someone can get in.

 

Remember, it was 2 factors that allowed things to precipitate to the point they did. First, we had a sort of Zombie evolution. If all of them were the same as ever, they wouldn't have used tools to break down walls, they never woudl have walked under water.

 

And we also had a breakdown on the humans, who allowed their own issues to damage security even farther. If anyone cared to stop them, the zombies never had a chance to make it to the green.

[Vanguard]

Re: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 

The thing that I wonder about this genre, is how do you get around the general feeling of hopelessness that the Characters would be stuck in?

 

If you've ever seen the movies, the world in general is fscked, no two words about it. Unless you go outside of genre and allow for supernatural intervention/assistance on the side of the Living, there are no mundane means of defeating the Zombie hordes in the long run.

 

Particularly if you go for the far more grim Return of the Living Dead zombies. You couldn't kill those zombies with massive brain injury, they devoured the brains of anything that was living (humans were not their sole target, cats and dogs were fair game as well), and you couldn't burn them as it only ended up creating more of them (through the smoke from burning the bodies coming back to earth as rain and animating any nearby graveyard).

 

I just have hard time getting over these aspects. I had similar problems with the movie The Grudge, the characters had no hope, they had absolutely no ability to defend themselves against a supernatural horror.

 

TB

 

Actually, we got around this by making the Zombie infestation happen on another world.

 

All we had to do was get to the CDC center of the world for some of their advanced bioengineering technology (the full story will eventually be told on the GateCrasher's thread, this is just a brief synopsis) and then back to the Gate.

 

Since we're playing Cinematic-Heros for the most part, we had the skills, the abilities and the sheer "FRAK EM!" attitude to get it done.

 

Also, it allows us, when we just want to have an adventure or two or mindless violence, to just go there and blow of some steam.

 

PS: Your thoughts are EXACTLY why I didn't like The Ring. I couldn't put it into words but you did right there. The "no hope" thing is what did it.