Quote from: oggsmash on May 13, 2023, 06:09:53 AM

Quote from: jhkim on May 13, 2023, 02:21:22 AM
Zombie stories aren't usually about hopeless incompetents. They're not superheroes -- but they have some skills among them. In Dawn of the Dead (2004), they trick out two buses with welded-on armor, a cow-catcher, and spiked tops. In the Walking Dead, they grow food and build shelter and barricades and other efforts at points. In The Last of Us, the protagonist was a contractor. There's similar for many others.

  I think he is assuming the same thing I am, the sample group of people in question is from the average population of the USA.  We end up with fat people who have never worked in construction (probably can not change a tire) or physical labor and likely have never, ever been in an actual physical fight and certainly not one where their life was at stake.   So extremely low tolerance for stress of the physical or mental sort combined with no working knowledge to use on the fly.

Sure, most people have never been in a fatal fight. Even among police officers, 75% have never fired their service weapon on the job. Zombie movies don't tend to be about veterans combatants. Still, the lead characters have some competence. In a GURPS game, say, I'd probably have PCs as 50-point characters like the one your mentioned. 50 points is easily enough to build a useful asset for survival like a competent contractor, registered nurse, mechanic, farmer, or police officer. Others like children, elderly, or those with no useful skills would be NPCs they are helping.

However, I've played a few games with less competent characters - like a handful of games where the PCs were pre-teen kids. Even though they couldn't build a zombie chute, though, I think it's even more important for characters like that to *not* just run through or fight the zombies, but instead come up with plans.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on May 13, 2023, 04:08:58 AM

Quote from: jhkim on May 13, 2023, 02:21:22 AM
It feels to me like you're saying that characters shouldn't try to be clever or tactical at all. To me, that's a big part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic stories and RPGs. It's thinking of how to survive in a difficult world.

No. I'm saying the more elaborate the plan, the more failure points it has. I can put a hole in a house as well. Can I cut a hole and construct a chute to catch zombies, with minimal expertise and prep time, maybe I have tools and materials, maybe not, all the while doing it while being assaulted by undead monsters who are lurking about looking to bite somebody?

Part of being clever is coming up with clever plans. And clever isnt' necessarily complicated.

I wonder if we're still talking past each other. Again, the zombie chute is an example of a plan for the specific situation of the protagonists have successfully barricaded themselves into a building. This happens regularly in zombie movies/shows. They are safe from the zombies but have finite supplies of food and water. So they have days or weeks to plan, depending on the supplies in the building. Dawn of the Dead they spend several months in the mall, for example. You refer to them being assaulted by zombies while they are doing construction, though. So we're talking about different cases. If they are actively being attacked, they need to work on the barricades. Only after the barricades hold can they plan.

The principle at work here is that zombies are mindlessly relentless. They will keep coming forward even if the front rank all dies. That sounds scary emotionally. Tactically, though, it means they'll keep falling for the same trick over and over. It's a potentially exploitable weakness.

For example, in The Walking Dead, when they were at the prison for months, the protagonists would take turns going up to the chain link fence. The zombies pressed up against it, and they stabbed them in the head through the fence. They would keep doing this regularly, and the zombies kept walking into it. i.e. The tactic works over and over. So they would use this approach if it happened coincidentally, but they didn't improve on the design or build things to use the tactic elsewhere.

I'm open to what strikes you as clever anti-zombie tactics for the sort of situations seen in films/shows/RPGs.

Quote from: jhkim on May 13, 2023, 07:04:52 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on May 13, 2023, 06:09:53 AM

Quote from: jhkim on May 13, 2023, 02:21:22 AM
Zombie stories aren't usually about hopeless incompetents. They're not superheroes -- but they have some skills among them. In Dawn of the Dead (2004), they trick out two buses with welded-on armor, a cow-catcher, and spiked tops. In the Walking Dead, they grow food and build shelter and barricades and other efforts at points. In The Last of Us, the protagonist was a contractor. There's similar for many others.

  I think he is assuming the same thing I am, the sample group of people in question is from the average population of the USA.  We end up with fat people who have never worked in construction (probably can not change a tire) or physical labor and likely have never, ever been in an actual physical fight and certainly not one where their life was at stake.   So extremely low tolerance for stress of the physical or mental sort combined with no working knowledge to use on the fly.

Sure, most people have never been in a fatal fight. Even among police officers, 75% have never fired their service weapon on the job. Zombie movies don't tend to be about veterans combatants. Still, the lead characters have some competence. In a GURPS game, say, I'd probably have PCs as 50-point characters like the one your mentioned. 50 points is easily enough to build a useful asset for survival like a competent contractor, registered nurse, mechanic, farmer, or police officer. Others like children, elderly, or those with no useful skills would be NPCs they are helping.

However, I've played a few games with less competent characters - like a handful of games where the PCs were pre-teen kids. Even though they couldn't build a zombie chute, though, I think it's even more important for characters like that to *not* just run through or fight the zombies, but instead come up with plans.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on May 13, 2023, 04:08:58 AM

Quote from: jhkim on May 13, 2023, 02:21:22 AM
It feels to me like you're saying that characters shouldn't try to be clever or tactical at all. To me, that's a big part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic stories and RPGs. It's thinking of how to survive in a difficult world.

No. I'm saying the more elaborate the plan, the more failure points it has. I can put a hole in a house as well. Can I cut a hole and construct a chute to catch zombies, with minimal expertise and prep time, maybe I have tools and materials, maybe not, all the while doing it while being assaulted by undead monsters who are lurking about looking to bite somebody?

Part of being clever is coming up with clever plans. And clever isnt' necessarily complicated.

I wonder if we're still talking past each other. Again, the zombie chute is an example of a plan for the specific situation of the protagonists have successfully barricaded themselves into a building. This happens regularly in zombie movies/shows. They are safe from the zombies but have finite supplies of food and water. So they have days or weeks to plan, depending on the supplies in the building. Dawn of the Dead they spend several months in the mall, for example. You refer to them being assaulted by zombies while they are doing construction, though. So we're talking about different cases. If they are actively being attacked, they need to work on the barricades. Only after the barricades hold can they plan.

The principle at work here is that zombies are mindlessly relentless. They will keep coming forward even if the front rank all dies. That sounds scary emotionally. Tactically, though, it means they'll keep falling for the same trick over and over. It's a potentially exploitable weakness.

It is. In World War Z (Probably my favorite zombie fiction) there are specific instances where they use that weakness against them. But at first the attempts are inconsitent in effectiveness until they hammer out the best way to exploit those weaknesses, while protecting themselves from the zombies advantages.

QuoteFor example, in The Walking Dead, when they were at the prison for months, the protagonists would take turns going up to the chain link fence. The zombies pressed up against it, and they stabbed them in the head through the fence. They would keep doing this regularly, and the zombies kept walking into it. i.e. The tactic works over and over. So they would use this approach if it happened coincidentally, but they didn't improve on the design or build things to use the tactic elsewhere.

I watched the series up until about the prison. That seems magnitudes more feasible and "realistic" to me. Finding an already constructed, durable and defensible position and taking best advantage of it. Dunno why they didn't improve on the design or build similar structures later.

QuoteI'm open to what strikes you as clever anti-zombie tactics for the sort of situations seen in films/shows/RPGs.

Well, considering how a big trope of the genre is the survivors finding a defensible position, and that defensible position eventually fails at a critical time/spot, to ramp the tension back up, I'm not sure there is any that will stand the test of long term scrutiny. And most zombie fiction is fatalistic in that the survivors eventually escape to relative safety, and then the zinger is that the zombies turn up at their safe spot and attack them. And then the credits roll.

Heck, maybe your zombie chute plan could work. Part of the fun is coming up with scenarios and picking them apart to find their weaknesses. I'm just leery of overly complicated and/or involved plans, especially at the onset of a zombie apocalypse. IMO the survivor's best bet is to retreat and find a defensible position that works well against specifically zombie behavior, and then work from there to secure basic supplies and fortify. The point isn't to kill zombies, the point is to not get eaten. Stabbing zombies through a chain link fence might be a grimfun release of tension and frustration, but what does it get them in the long run?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on May 13, 2023, 11:11:53 PM

Quote from: jhkim on May 13, 2023, 07:04:52 PM
I'm open to what strikes you as clever anti-zombie tactics for the sort of situations seen in films/shows/RPGs.

Well, considering how a big trope of the genre is the survivors finding a defensible position, and that defensible position eventually fails at a critical time/spot, to ramp the tension back up, I'm not sure there is any that will stand the test of long term scrutiny. And most zombie fiction is fatalistic in that the survivors eventually escape to relative safety, and then the zinger is that the zombies turn up at their safe spot and attack them. And then the credits roll.

Heck, maybe your zombie chute plan could work. Part of the fun is coming up with scenarios and picking them apart to find their weaknesses. I'm just leery of overly complicated and/or involved plans, especially at the onset of a zombie apocalypse. IMO the survivor's best bet is to retreat and find a defensible position that works well against specifically zombie behavior, and then work from there to secure basic supplies and fortify. The point isn't to kill zombies, the point is to not get eaten. Stabbing zombies through a chain link fence might be a grimfun release of tension and frustration, but what does it get them in the long run?

Thanks for agreeing to consider about the zombie chute.

Your description about the zombie genre tension and zingers is on-point, I think. I feel like in many of the movies/episodes, things work or not based on what is dramatically appropriate. But that sort of dramatic logic especially becomes a problem in an RPG. If I'm playing a zombie survival game, I want my PC's plan to work based on its tactical merits -- not based on whether its dramatically timed for it to work or not. RPG plans should work or not based on the internal logic of the game-world.

A zombie chute is an advanced design. I don't think that characters would come up with it on the fly their first night of dealing with zombies. But if they keep having to fight - especially after weeks or months, they'll realize it's best for the zombies to be funneled to come in one at a time, for that one be hampered by the terrain/space, and then for that one zombie to face several people attacking it together while it is hampered. If they keeps pushing this tactic further, it becomes like a chute.

If you're interested in discussing -- there's further question of tactics I'd term the chameleon or the turtle. i.e. How does one safely travel?

Make them like in the movie my avatar is from, "Return of the Living Dead", where even their body parts are animated even when separated from the body and headshots don't kill.

SPOILER!!!!












Even burning them just spreads the contagion further.