Gibberish is My Native Language

After surviving an infested yoga center, science building, and hospital, the group of folks playing my Year of the Zombie campaign have made it to a sporting goods store. Already populated by a handful of survivors, the sporting goods store seems like the perfect place to hole up. Ammunition, camping food/equipment, few points of entry, and a retail store-type metal gate that's locked and secured, keeping the zombies from getting inside.

For now, the group has decided (with the original occupants of the store) to not let any other people in. For one, it's dangerous. There are a lot of infected people outside the sporting goods store now, and opening the door for even thirty seconds would put the occupants at risk of a breakthrough. Secondly, there's a finite amount of resources in the building, and the more people that enter the compound the more the group has to divide up the resources.

The group is barricaded in and stocked up pretty well. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the television in the break room is reporting that the US has nuked Iran in retaliation for the dirty bombs detonated in several US cities. That, in turn, has pissed off North Korea and China as well as some of the other members of the UN. Local safety stations, like the hospital, have been overrun by people turned mad by the as-yet undetermined chemical agent. Fort Bragg, the closest military facility to the group, has been declared off limits to the citizenry, and all approaching it will be shot on sight.

And then there's the whole concept of being cooped up in a store with nowhere to go with a bunch of strangers. I think this is going to test the role-playing skills of the group, but will definitely represent an important stage of things to come. Eventually, the group will make it past the immediate danger of the zombie infestation. They will have to deal not only with a world populated by the undead, but with the human survivors as well.

Lady Jaye, Cleopatra, Bond and I played our second session of Year of the Zombie this Saturday. We got a late start but still had a great time, especially considering I'd taken the red eye from San Fran and was operating on about three hours of sleep plus a nap.

At any rate, there were (again) no player character casualties, and everyone did a great job of keeping the pace of the game going. Not a whole lot of heel-dragging during the decision making, which helped feed the "omg wtf is going on keep moving!" atmosphere. Good stuff.

My favorite highlights include: Lady Jaye telling an NPC mother and her eight year old that if they were too slow or got bitten that she would kill them herself; Bond conning a National Guardsman watching a weapons/equipment cache to help his squad mates (resulting in his doom); and Cleopatra hanging out of the sunroof of the group's H3 and smashing off of their moving car. The mental picture of a yoga instructor shrilling and bashing an undead paramedic off the side of a car still makes me grin. Who said yoga was for pansies?

At the end of the session, the group and some new friends were trapped on the rooftop of an infested hospital. They blasted away at a horde of oncoming zombies while an NPC in their group was frantically trying to unlock the door leading off the roof. There was a large janitor's key ring of possibilities. Ironically, I rolled for a success the turn after the group put down the last zombie. Oh well, no one got bitten. This time :)

Final headcount:

• Three National Guardsmen.


• Roughly thirty zombies, including the one Cleopatra knocked off the side of the car and underneath the H3.


• 0 player characters.

Pretty fun stuff, and I'm definitely happy with how things are turning out. The only thing I'd like better is to have another player or two. There's been talk of guest player appearances by my friend Stilts and the Captain, but nothing firm yet. We're set to play again in less than two weeks.

Tonight was the first round of my zombie campaign with Lady Jaye, Bond, and Cleopatra. The game is based off of the Year of the Zombie setting for D20 Modern, as I discussed earlier last month.

I have to say that things went more smoothly than I expected. It has been 12 years since I've run a game. Lady Jaye and I drew up half of her character before Bond and Cleopatra arrived. I'd already drawn a full NPC and have been playing 3.5 AD&D over at the Captain's house, but even then I didn't fully understand the differences between D20 Modern and 3.5 AD&D. Things like Talents bogged the character generation down a bit, but we all made it through the process okay.

So, the group started out in three different situations -- Lady Jaye's character is an epidemiologist, while Bond's character is an Army reservist activated by the "bioterrorist attack" on nearby Fort Bragg. Cleopatra's yoga instructor by day, pole dancer by night had just said goodbye to her class (literally, it turned out) when a man shambled in and bit one of her students.

I'll spare you the other details of the encounter, but we ended the evening with the characters together, in Bond's fully fueled Hummer H3 with a trunk full of gas station munchies, two propane tanks, and a few small arms.

Total body count:
Player Characters: 0
Named NPCs: 3
Unnamed NPCs, including "security guard," "gas station attendant," and "police officer": 4
Zombies: Over a dozen, including "Avery," an NPC put into Lady Jaye's car by a do-gooder NPC who wound up being shot for being bitten by a zombie (I counted Avery twice, as he Rose, but only counted Brad the NPC once).
Wrecked cars: 2, 3 if you count Lady Jaye's blood-spattered SUV left at the gas station.

High points of the game included Cleopatra sitting in her yoga studio office with the door locked while one zombie killed her entire class of 10; Lady Jaye making the first civilian kill of the game (gas station attendant) and tricking bitten-Brad into giving up his shotgun so she could shoot him; and Bond scoring a natural 20 critical hit on Jason, a member of the Red Cross and friend of Lady Jaye's, after Jason was bitten by Avery in the SUV.

I had fun, and hopefully the group did as well.

This is going to be a bit of a link and run, but while Dysoning the house today I was thinking about my recent Maryland RPG gaming trip. I was lamenting the lack of paper RPG gaming, especially since the only game store in the area doesn't have a very active (or friendly) LFG board.

I thought to myself, "Self, why not start your own RPG game?"

Damn, that is a fine idea.

"So, who could I recruit to play?"

I thought immediately of Lady Jaye, Bond, and his girlfriend, Cleopatra. They were all immediately local -- although I really like the Captain's role playing group, driving up to DC and back in one day is kind of a pain. The potential pitfall with that plan is that none of them (to my knowledge) have ever role-played, and who knows if they would even be interested. To help bridge the gap between real lifers and us role playing dorks, I thought about what milieu would be interesting to my theoretical group, and what rules system would best fit our personalities.

If you know me at all, the answer is obvious.

No, not sex in a cage. The other obvious answer.

Zombies.

So I thought about what rule set to use. The old skills-based system from West End games (which was leveraged by the original Star Wars RPG) was awesome in my book, as the skill rank system was a logical parallel to actual learning. Getting a basic working knowledge of something was easy; becoming a guru was nearly impossible, and would only occur at the expense of other learning. But I didn't feel like converting the old WEG rules to a modern setting, and I don't even know where I could get the out of print materials.

I thought of the D20/OGL rule set used most notably by Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. I really dislike the skill system, as I feel that the level-based nature of the rule set is unrealistic. There is, however, a ton of D20 material, and I knew in the back of my head that most likely someone, somewhere, had done a D20 zombie conversion.

Enter Year of the Zombie, a D20 rule set written by Tim Willard from the UK. 179 pages of zombie scenarios, rules, history, and equipment details. It was a $12 PDF download, so I went for it. Even if the game mechanics suck, $12 is a good amount of money spent for entertainment and ideas for whatever campaign I design.

So, Lady Jaye's on board, and Bond is willing to give a shot, so that leaves Cleopatra, who will most likely join us as well. Good enough to start a game :) The questions now are: what's the best way to introduce my group to role playing, how should I schedule character drafting and story line introduction, etc.?

At this point, I am thinking that I'll have everyone over for a character draft and explain general role playing concepts and mechanics to them. I'll answer any questions they have; so far Bond has asked, "will it make me kill my parents and run away to the railroad tracks?" and Lady Jaye has asked, "so, how does the game end?" Both logical questions for new players :)

More importantly, do I have the chops to run a game? I haven't acted as GM since high school. Plus, will the zombie setting get too boring after awhile? I guess we can burn that bridge when we come to it.

Stay tuned, I have a lot of bathroom reading to do to see if Mr. Willard's system is worth the money I paid for it!