Quote from: Dominus NoxFG, isn't the horror of zombies that they are legion, and that people you loved might be among the horde, forcing you to destroy their bodies to save your life?

Hey, it's just a thought....

Now you're cookin' with gas!  Even freakin' heat vision wouldn't help with that.

Quote from: fonkaygarryNow you're cookin' with gas!  Even freakin' heat vision wouldn't help with that.

Yeah, thanks. Just imagine having your own mother, wife or daughter coming at you intending to eat you alive. Remember the basement scene in the original noght of the living dead? Both the parents let their daughter kill them after she became a zombie, perhaps the most powerful and heartrending scene in the movie.

I don't know if that level of emotional mindfuck is your thing, but it's a powerful concept to play around with.

Quote from: fonkaygarryHell, there are probably half a dozen small-press zombie games on this board.

If one of them doesn't chime in, I'll suggest one at random.

Well, I'd try to pimp Year of the Zombie, but I honestly think it does most of the work of pimping itself.  Not to mention you can easily enough read about 2 dozen blogs on it by Tim Willard & Myself on this site alone without even going to the Official Site.

Yep. YOTZ is pretty hardcore, and would effectively emulate all that we're talking about here.

Quote from: mattormegWith this in mind, I'd work in a bunch of corrupt, violent humans who are willing to do ANYTHING to survive and prosper in a world gone dead.

I see you've gamed with my friends.

Quote from: James McMurrayThe next time my group needs a short break (one or two evenings max) I want to have them stat themselves up and then start the session with a zombie ripping through the window and dragging me off (my GM chair is right next to a glass patio door).

What system should I use? Cheap is better, and if it's a big name system I'll probably already have it. However, if there's an indie or small press thing out there that works great I'll go for it, especially if it's got apdf (i.e. cheap) option.

Go for Year of the Zombie.

Just hit up my sig.

Seconded.

Thanks!

Speaking of zombie related stuff, Chaosium once did a set of 'movie adventures' in which they had a zombie movie, and in it was one of the most chilling, horrible and unforgettable scenes involving zombies.

The players had to go to a medical facility and get some notes, and the inside of the building was, of course, windowless and lightless, and the lab they had to get to had all sorts of bottles on shelves. As the scene went, the players lights cast weird chadows, especially as they shined thru the fluid and specimen filled bottles. They were to notice that something was moving in their lights, casting huge moving shadows on the wall.

It turned out to be a fetus, preserved in alcohol, but it was still a zombie fetus and it was, upon examination, disturbed by the players lights and trying to get thru the bottle to them.

Oh man, I have never forgotten that scene, and think it would work in a zombie game especially if people haven't heard of it before. Just the thought of an unborn fetus as a zombie is both horrifying and heartbreaking....

Quote from: kregmosierzounds...sounds like Marvel Zombies!

That's what I was thinking.  Give some of the zombies superpowers (and remember that scene in Marvel Zombies where Magneto is holed up with what is apparently the last surviving humans ("The irony is not lost on me.")).  You'd the the baselines looking up to the supers like they were some sort of deities and relying on them to do everything.  And you can't be everywhere at once

Quote from: Dominus NoxSpeaking of zombie related stuff, Chaosium once did a set of 'movie adventures' in which they had a zombie movie, and in it was one of the most chilling, horrible and unforgettable scenes involving zombies.

The players had to go to a medical facility and get some notes, and the inside of the building was, of course, windowless and lightless, and the lab they had to get to had all sorts of bottles on shelves. As the scene went, the players lights cast weird chadows, especially as they shined thru the fluid and specimen filled bottles. They were to notice that something was moving in their lights, casting huge moving shadows on the wall.

It turned out to be a fetus, preserved in alcohol, but it was still a zombie fetus and it was, upon examination, disturbed by the players lights and trying to get thru the bottle to them.

Oh man, I have never forgotten that scene, and think it would work in a zombie game especially if people haven't heard of it before. Just the thought of an unborn fetus as a zombie is both horrifying and heartbreaking....

You could turn this into a hypothetical pro-choice pro-um...undead(?) discussion..

I had an AFMBE game set up like this once.  The PCs were military, trying to hold back the zombie hordes, so I needed something with a little more punch than your average shambler.

The zombies in this case were aliens - small insect things that would crawl into a body and attach to the spinal cord to animate the body.  This is the basic shambler.  Even this gave them pause when they go for a headshot and the zombie just kept going.  Eventually they figured out where to shoot it.

Now that was your basic shambler, but if the crawler infected a living person, they'd die and be a zombie but they'd retain more of their motor function.  These zombies wore body armor, drove vehicles, and could fire guns.  Not as well as a living person, but it gave them a lot more threat.

Rarer than this were the Breeder zombies.  They were huge and bloated zombies that generated the crawlers - they'd literally have the things crawling in and out of their mouths and whatever holes happened to be on their body.  Even getting close to one was dangerous and they were extremely hard to kill.  At the top of this food chain of death was the Brain crawlers.  Not even in a body, this larger, slow moving insect could communicate with all the zombies in a couple mile radius, seeing what they all see and having them work as a team.

They never saw a brain crawler and were only beginning to suspect something like that was happening.  My final plan involved them getting down to the Yucatan and taking out the Queen in a lost temple in the jungle, but the game fell apart.

I've had a few people recommend All Flesh Must Be Eaten and offer to loan it to me for my "real world zombies" game. Would that be a good fit as well or should I spring for the YotZ pdfs? Why and why not?

Quote from: James McMurraymy "real world zombies" game.

You work in marketing?

Well, AFMBE seems to be a nice game. It's generally directed towards zombie games, so you get some good creature templates and game mastering advice. Other than that it's a generic game system, so just for the rules it might not be worth it if you're familiar with something else. And character creating takes too much time if your zombie game has a high lethality.

I don't want a game my players are used to.