Okay I am planning a new campaign for my real life group. The group itself consists of three regular players at the moment, and myself as the Game Master. We had a fourth regular, but his wife literally just had their baby last week-so he's MIA for a while. We also have a fifth, who is an intermittent player at best. (He is often committed to other projects, groups and things, and tends to double book a lot. So we generally just don't count on him.)

The general synopsis is as follows: The players are a team of Shadowrunners who are hired to kidnap a research biologist and his project. Unknown to them is that his project is a viral weapon, a weaponized variant of the Krieger Strain of HMMVV. During the extraction they accidentally set the weapon loose, and it spreads rapidly. Much too rapidly for them to stop it.

The game is going to be a post apocalyptic survival horror knock off I think. But I am looking for some input. I'll be posting my ideas here, as well as setting notes and major NPC's.

I take you've seen the Resident Evil movies?

I have, and although there are certainly some elements from them I'd be willing to steal for my game, it was actually not inspired by these movies. (Until you mentioned them again I'd quite forgotten them. I may have to revisit them along with some other flicks.)

We've never really done a Zombie game. We've sort of avoided it. Always in search of something new for them to do I am going to run a Zombie game.

The big road block at the moment is do I have them actually play people who are capable of reacting and surviving in a coordinated manner, or do we increase the challenge level and have them play "people" caught up by circumstance.

We've been doing some really low powered stuff as of late. The Sleeper Cell game is 90 point characters, with glacial progression speed. So on the one hand I'm pretty pumped about a "bigger" game, in which the lethality level is appropriately high.

As Professionals they'd create their own characters, designed as a team who has worked together on several occasions, and has a fair amount of experience under their belts. (165 point characters at most, maybe 155.) But that also means that we sort of lose some of the fun of trying to role play regular people reacting to an extraordinary situation. So I'm divided.

In the end it will be their decision to make, since they're playing it.

Obviously one of the most important NPC's will be our Scientist. I lack a name right now, but his basic concept is pretty cliche:

Brilliant from day one our boy genius has never worried about the implications of what he creates, instead he is completely focused on what it is he is doing at the moment. He tends to dehumanize people, deconstructing them mentally and eroding away at their credibility with his intellect.

He has recently suffered a series of failures, projects that he had high hopes for-only to see them fail utterly. Not always as observant of the world around him, our boy makes an intuitive leap why analyzing his failures and realizes he has been sabotaged, but isn't quite able to narrow the list of suspects down far enough to strike out any one specific person.

As such he's become a bit reclusive, deciding that people aren't worth dealing with. His work, already the talk of some conservative circles has become increasingly erratic, and difficult to for his sponsors to follow.

In recent years his studies have also become a bit morbid, requiring more and more live specimens (That end up dead), and more "exotic" test subjects.

When the players, if they choose to be criminals in this game, get into his lab area they will find a ghoulish freak show where science and magic has been mixed in a most grotesque way.

More later.

How are they going to set the weapon loose?

That's a damn good question, and one that requires me to answer a few more questions:

• What is the weapon?
• How is vectored?
• Just how contagious is it?
• Once infected what symptoms does the victim display? And when?
• Is there a cure? is there something that just plain kills the weapon while it's being vectored?

I think there are a few others I need to answer, and I am always open to suggestions here, but for the moment I am going to let my steak tips digest, and hang with the fairer sex.

I'll be back.

It kind of sounds like you're considering this already, but perhaps the weapon could be an air- or water-borne virus with a built in "countdown" mechanism.  That is to say, after infection, the subject becomes a carrier for, say as example, six hours.  During that time, there is still opportunity to take a supressant that kills the virus and immunizes the host.

This solves a handful of problems.  First of all, if they have the scientist in tow, he could supply the team with the supressant, keeping the PC's human but having most of the surrounding civilization deeply affected.  Also, the supressant will likely be very rare, as it has to be synthesized and the virus can auto-replicate, making suppresant a major goal and plot point for the campaign.

I'd also highly suggest reading The Zombie Survival Guide, if you haven't already

Well this idea gets the scrap heap. Posed it to the players and received a resounding no. They want to play Private Detectives. We did a one shot the other day in which they played members of a private detective organization. Apparently they liked it almost as much as the National Geographic campaign we ran.

I feel your pain--had the same thing happen to me with a Bug City campaign.

Damn it, so my Omega Man take on all of this, is not really needed

Regards,
David R