For those of you who've run or played survival horror type games, particularly zombie games, how did you play through the initial bit when the dead start to rise and eat folk?

More specifically, the players presumably know they're sitting down to zombie horror, but for a bit they should be acting normally even though the (for example) PC nurse knows that the rabies victim acting up in surgery is a zombie and so will not want to go anywhere near the OR.

It's the same issue with new CoC campaigns I guess, how did you play through that transition from PCs who think they're in the normal world to PCs who are shooting for the head and killing those who have been infected?

Quote from: Balbinus;222434For those of you who've run or played survival horror type games, particularly zombie games, how did you play through the initial bit when the dead start to rise and eat folk?

More specifically, the players presumably know they're sitting down to zombie horror, but for a bit they should be acting normally even though the (for example) PC nurse knows that the rabies victim acting up in surgery is a zombie and so will not want to go anywhere near the OR.

It's the same issue with new CoC campaigns I guess, how did you play through that transition from PCs who think they're in the normal world to PCs who are shooting for the head and killing those who have been infected?

Most of the Zombie games I've played in started out well after the plague has took hold and things have gone downhill.

Starting right at the begining of the outbreak would be easy but would also require the players giving you some slack. A good starting point is always a hospital because you are likely to have a lot of different types of people there. Cops,MDs,Nurses,EMTs,Firefighters, Flight nurse (with pilots and Heli), Security staff, and any number of people who who be their with family. The possibilities are endless at a hospital.

One player could be a nurse treating an infected person, another a cop or security gaurd who runs into action to break up a "fight" in the lobby, EMS who are dropping off the "sick", or maybe a soldier who just happens to be there visiting his sick mother.

The hard part would be getting them all tied together at some point but since they are all likely to be the heroes among the regular folk it might not be hard to find a way.

I've thought about this a lot, and I think that I would just start out with the players thinking it was some other sort of game- modern day adventure, frex. I'd roll things out just long enough to get them into the plot of Story A, and then Story B would come along and eat Story A's brain. Theoretically, some players would really get upset by the switch over, but that wouldn't be a problem at my table.

really only two ways to do it...the "sheepish flim-flam" or the get-right-to-it-bullet-to-the-head mode.

the former is what Aos describes...the "hey guys, we're going to be playing..uhh..d20 modern tonight, so plan for a modern-day game with nothing out of the ordinary going on, seriously i'm not kidding" misdirection.

the latter is they know up-front they're getting into a zombie/survival-horror game and wish they could plan accordingly, but damned if you're going to let them.  

Quotethem: "We want to be soldiers!"    

you: "yeah, ok, you're National Guard recruits coming back from your first field exercise...the only weapons you have are an entrenching tool and a tire iron in the truck. enjoy your time in the service."

The biggest thing for me is to give them some reasonable explanation to come together as a group. I've done the Ntnl. Guard group, the Rock Band, the Church Group, the Basketball team, the road trippers, and even the "people who meet at the first major accident on the freeway as the shit goes down".  

I like to drag the "rise" out, cause it's a great vehicle for moving them from one place to another.  Suddenly, the restaurant is overrun...gotta move!  the field house you've been locked in gets broken into by desperate survivors who don't think to bar the door...RUN FOR IT!  the mall has been breached by bikers, etc etc.  this probably goes for any point in the outbreak, but KEEP THEM MOVING, OR AFRAID THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE TO MOVE AT A MOMENTS NOTICE.

Moving is very important.  They can't "hole up" anywhere, because the game will bog down into a checklist.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=373272

A fairly nice read about a zombie game that does, I think, justice to the genre

Quote from: joewolz;222459Moving is very important.  They can't "hole up" anywhere, because the game will bog down into a checklist.

exactly...as much as I love it, i'll throw out a "see issues #13-49 of The Walking Dead" here.

in retrospect, another great option for establishing the characters as a group, but keeping them safe from the initial outbreak:

Off-Shore Oil workers!

You get a few Roughnecks, the Mudman, Drillers, etc.

The shit goes down, and they can safely watch events unfold 45 miles from the shore, but by Day 20 of what should have been a 14-day cycle, they're dangerously low on provisions, which should have been delivered with the next crew...and hey, where is the relief crew, anyway?  The radios have been silent all week...we've got a rescue boat, but do we really want to leave?  Wait, do i smell smoke?!  :stirthepot:

We've done a few of these now, all as different groups of characters surviving the same outbreak from different locations, and the players always knew that they were making characters for a zombie game. We sat down together before each session and made d20 Modern characters who would all be "just people" in some location [a liquor store, TGI Friday's, etc] when the outbreak came.

We also had a sort of zombie outbreak in the middle of a Shadowrun game in which we were undercover cops in Tampa, which none of the players knew was coming.

Both methods seemed to work fine; you just have to plan accordingly for each.

In the former case, it's probably important - your group may vary - to make sure all the players and the GM are on the same wavelength. You don't want to have a game planned where you're all ordinary people and one guy "just happens" to be a survivalist with an M-60 in his trunk, another guy has chainsaws for hands, and three other people are playing single mothers with children. That kind of ruins it for everyone.

In the latter case, you have to know your group well enough to know they're going to appreciate the transition. If they're completely into telling this other story and you broadside them with a genre clash, they may not take well to it.

I depend upon the role-playing abilities of my players. If they're into the genre, they are typically happy with staying within character.

It helps if you want to keep those PCs however to inflict the starting horrors upon NPCs around them.

From the start of our recent campaign...

1) The fireman answered an alarm at the local hotel and went about saving people as normal... until a zombie attacked a co-worker. First attempts was by the npc captain to pull it off, and when he was hurled away (and the blood started flying from the attacked man)- he shouted for me to 'put the guy down'. Pure luck as hit the zombie in the head with the flat of the fire axe and 'killed' it.

2) The waiter rushed out to break up a 'fight' between customers, but backed away in complete fear when one of the customers had his throat ripped out by the teeth of the attacker. He then fled into the kitchen and locked the door screaming for the manager.

3) The Sherriff answered the fire alarm with his deputy. As he was pulling someone out of one side of the flaming building, his deputy was attempting to control the 'gathering crowd' who swarmed him. The deputy went down fighting and managed to pull his weapon and fire it a couple of times.

The Sherriff rushed to his aid but saw it was going really bad- pulling the shotgun from his vehicle. After seeing most ignore his first shots he got lucky and managed to hit the head on one dropping it.

4) The paranoid survival nut was in the hotel and was dragged out of the smoke and flames by firemen. She encountered the zombies near her truck as she was fleeing the seen. Being something of a nutcase she started firing about with her snub-nosed revolver to no effect.


5) The tabloid reporter was pulled from the flaming hotel, and spent the first part of the event filming everything.


This rag tag group was herded roughly to the center of the intersection and then beat a hasty retreat together sitting up future adventures. Lessons learned during that first encounter combined with radio reports allowed things to continue in a reasonable way.

I have run them both ways mentioned. Generally, the "you don't know about it" approach I do at cons. The "We know what the game is but will play along depends on the group". Some folks can do it, others have real issues with it.

The most memorable one was a game that took place during the renaissance in Italy. It was a water borne plague started by an alchemist bent on destroying the world. It started with his wife dying and him trying to bring her back. Then the rest of his family and then the whole village. The party was sent to investigate an outbreak of "plague" and by the time they got there the alchemist was actively spreading it.

I think it helps to keep in mind that the party needs a goal. More than just "kill the undead" you should have a salvation, whether it is a cure or a safe location, that seems to be a popular meme of the genre. I have found it works well.

Bill

Start the player characters as infected. Don't tell the players, ever. Let them figure it out. Let them figure it out by how NPC's react to them, let the NPC's find out first.

Do it right and it might go a long way to engendering that WTF feeling that your going for. Especially if they find out the hard way that the full fledged zombies still want to tear them apart.

If you want, make sure there is a cure, one that only works in the early stages the PC's suffer from. That way you could slip the game into the other zombie tropes later.

Let them play through that rush to find the cure before it's to late.

1. Your players knowing it's a survival horror game is a good thing. Use it to your advantage. Let them play out there normal lives for as long as you can bear it. The players know the zombies are coming...but they don't know when. Build on that fear.

2. Give them hope. A small hope or chance. Just like Bill mentioned above. if you're running a survival game, than surviving just one more night is a great goal. So many things to run out of...food, ammo, friends....

My friend and I got bored one night (we had two players cancel on us), so we came up with a loose system for zombie survival. It was fun enough that the whole group played for 5 sessions in what should have been a one-shot.

We played through the discovery of the walking dead eating the living for a session and a half and honestly, all of the work is on the players at that point.

If the players can't interpret human behavior based on their character concept and use 'player knowledge' about what zombies are, how to kill them and how to create a useful character that will probably do well surviving, that should be ok too!

If the players want to focus on fighting zombies and despair, saving loved ones, etc and really get into character, that gives you a chance to create horror. If you're afraid of the characters just knowing not to go into that room because they, as players, know its a zombie, assume the PC has the right instinct to survive.

Horror plays on the unexpected, so throw them a curveball. Kill a PC right off the bat or have one be bitten (nothing might come out of the PC being bitten, but the players will probably assume it will turn eventually/soon). Just make sure character creation rules don't take forever or let them take over a survivor NPC.

It's also ok to remind the players that since it is survival horror, they should have their PCs do stupid things once in a while... Like go and investigate that strange noise they heard. Maybe come up with a house rule for fear vs. intelligence, conviction vs. instinct for such situations as you describe above.

Quote from: Balbinus;222434For those of you who've run or played survival horror type games, particularly zombie games, how did you play through the initial bit when the dead start to rise and eat folk?

I have not read any other responses, so sorry if I recover any ground:

In our D20 Modern Zombie Horror Survival game we started in a local restaurant, TGI Friday's actually, and the PC's were all there for lunch. Two were on their way to a Ted Nugent concert. One was actually a bank robber scoping out the National City across the street, another was a gang banger taking his girl out for a night on the town.

For them it started with no warning, just all of the suddenly people were running by the windows, and suddenly an Ambulance crashes into the building their in, and Zombies start attacking people outside their window. No explanations, no back ground-just suddenness.

I think it worked well. We played three separate games, each starting at Zero Hour and I thought they all went well.

To borrow a G2 Aspect or a BRB personality score, you would have what I generically call an "Enlightenment score".   I have used this in a horror game and in a UFO game.

Unless a character has flaws (or gifts) and an appropriate conception and back history, their enlightenment score is usually 1-3. Those characters that are not quite "normative", like our rabid ufo fan who got eaten early on, started with an enlightenment score of 10.  

In fact having a higher than normal score, usually generates a negative reaction modifier by everyone (until their score goes up beyond 5).

If you are acting in a "player knowledge" mode or "avoiding the common" because you know you are in a horror game, you need to make an enlightenment check.  Fail it, and well.. you go down into the dark basement of the spooky haunted house to get that lightbulb.

Failures to follow your "disadavantage" very from system, ranging from GM displeasure to lack of xp to lack of drama points to lack of something.  

Every clue or minimal exposure, gives you a chance to bump your score... so you can believe and act appropriately.  Big exposures give you an auto boost (1d6 usually).

However, you need to make a check to "deal with it". You may not know what is happening exactly, but you can deal with it.  
"WTF was that?  I don't know, a bear?  Something is just going on".

If you don't "deal with it", there is a host of mental issues/ sanity rules/ and so on.  The big failure means "denial". Which means your enlightenment score drops to 1 and you can't understand why things are not "normal".  Great for earning experience points and drama points, but sucking for character survivial.

Once you reach a 10- you can start making checks to understand. You may not have any real knowledge, but you will be ready to start calling it zombies, alien monsters, or what ever.   Knowledge score checks and so on to really know what is going on at this point.

Now you can have a low score and still be acting appropriately (Make the check and know something is odd is going on, but you don't know quite what). I have seen a guy keep a score under 5 after seeing a freaking mother ship.  Could not score more than one point of auto advance at any time or make an advancement check. However, he kept rolling low and made all the appropriate/ neccisary action checks.