olah?

[welsh]

Hey Folks-
Just stopped by in this time of global pandemic to see who was still alive from way back when.
best
welsh

[Mr. Handy]

Welcome back, Welsh! I'm still here. I rebooted Zombie Apoclaypse back in September 2018, which you can find here. In fact, I just wrapped up Chapter 1 two days ago. Chapter 2 should be starting sometime in June if you want to get in on it. I restarted from the beginning, and while some things happened in a similar fashion, others took a drastically different turn. Horst has actually survived so far, and he's wreaked a lot of fun mayhem, which he never got the chance to do the first time around.

I've also been running my Doctor Who/Call of Cthulhu campaign for almost ten years, and we're currently most of the way through the fifth adventure. The Horror in the Blackout is set in London in September 1940, at the beginning of the Blitz.

[welsh]

Hey Handy-

Yes, I saw that. How it the Blitz going? I took a look at the Zombie Apoc pre-role characters and got a kick out of that bunch, especially the little "define the character in a quote" bits. I always did enjoy the lead in story from the couple that meets at the diner when the game starts. Glad to see the game is still rolling on after so many years. Have you changed the story arc from the original?

[Mr. Handy]

The Blitz is going great. The story has actually progressed into the fourth day, whereas most of the adventures wrap up within a day or two of game time. It's bogged down in places, where, like now, the players must decide on a course of action given the knowledge they have but spend a lot of real time not doing anything. It's late in episode 3, which will end as soon as there's an opportunity for a suitable cliffhanger. There's room in there for you too if you like, as there are several abandoned characters, including a companion.

Zombie Apocalypse has mostly stuck to the original storyline, but things happened due to player actions and dice rolls that have caused some things to diverge wildly. Horst wasn't murdered at the beginning because David was a PC and wrapped things up with Hammond quickly, so Horst went into his office, plus Baldwin was a PC as well. While in Hammond's office, Horst critically succeeded at a Psychology roll and figured out that Hammond was stalling him on delivering his guns because he intended to keep them for himself. Horst has only the base 5% in Psychology, and he rolled a 01, which drove the story in an entirely new direction. Horst went to the Blazer and used his CB to call Buzz and the boys to come on over, and the siege played out earlier and differently, before zombies started showing up in large numbers. There's a really intense scene where Horst returns to Hammond's office with backup and makes him tell him where the guns are. Other locations, such as the PMS compound and Warren Air Force Base, were brought into play earlier than usual due to player actions. Jenny and Michael were the ones to go up to the meteorite and popped it, but Jenny managed to survive. The body count has been relatively low in Chapter 1, but that's likely to change in Chapter 2. A couple of threads in Chapter 1 ended on cliffhangers. I won't spoil anything else in case you want to read it.

I changed how zombies worked from the original game. I used the rulebook stats for zombies, with some modifications. The bite now does only 1D3 damage, so a lot more people have survived bites, but they will die eventually. They have four hours minus the number of damage they took from their most severe bite to live, which can be extended by one hour if a tourniquet is applied. One character took a critical hit from a bite and suffered four damage, so he had half an hour to live, which was doubled to one hour by a tourniquet. Almost half of that time is gone, and he'll be lucky to get back to the truck stop in time to go zombie. They can do a little more damage with a Grapple, though (1D6+db, and the damage bonus can sometimes be 1D6 or even 2D6 for particularly big and strong zombies). Another change I made was for headshots. Most zombies will go down after taking 5 damage to the head instead of 10, but they're harder to hit in the head. Ranged weapons rolls are halved when targeting the head instead of a -5 penalty. When at point blank range, this cancels out the doubling, giving you a normal chance to hit. Just don't miss, or get mobbed by too many zombies at once! Melee attacks are still only -5 for targeting the head, which makes hand to hand combat a more viable option, especially with the ability to parry. This has worked very well in practice in Chapter 1.

Unfortunately, the original Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 in NMA's archives are no longer accessible and haven't been for months. I'd been using them to copy and paste text and see what had happened the first time around. I was lucky I reread them in 2018 prior to the reboot. Do you have a copy backed up anywhere?

[welsh]

Hey Handy-

I am reluctant to ask questions but as I recall there were a lot of elements of the game that I wonder if you ever got to. The funny part of the game was that the players are dealing with the zombies, and then it's like "Holy Shit, it's not just zombies...but... " and it just kept growing and growing. Do you find the new combat rules are working well for you? I recall bringing in a bunch of new characters but never quite figuring if all the new characters really worked out- that each chapter involved new characters necessary to keep up with the attrition of the older characters.

Anyway. Glad to see it still has legs. It was quite a fun idea when it got going and I am very impressed you've been able to keep it so well managed for go long. It really is quite a complex game. So hat's off, well done.

[Mr. Handy]

Thank you. I did get to a lot of stuff in the original run. I'd even started on the situation we had discussed happening at Warren Air Force Base in Chapter 7, but unfortunately the game fell apart before it came to a head. You can still read the original game's Chapters 3-7 (there's a link in the first post of the OOC thread in the new game), though Chapter 7 was never completed due to all the players leaving. So many left at the end of Chapter 6, and it was never the same after that.

The modifications to zombie combat are working very well. Now there's a much better chance of zombies getting close, and people burn through more ammo trying to shoot them from a distance, so it's a lot more tense, and I haven't even brought in large hordes yet. Fewer characters have died this time, though that may be more down to luck. However, a bunch of characters have been bitten and are doomed. Of the fifty starting characters, seven have died in Chapter 1, but seven were added during the chapter, so that still leaves fifty. That's not even counting all the new characters I need to add, including 18 from Warren AFB who have arrived at the truck stop, 9 at an airfield where the chopper is landing to refuel, and a similar number at Warren AFB itself in the quarantine facility. It's going to be a mess in Chapter 2, but hopefully we'll see more casualties and I won't have to manage so many characters for too long. It's going to be a lot of work getting them set up for Chapter 2, though.

I've also already introduced some of the stuff beyond zombies in Chapter 1 in this run. In addition to the meteorite, a bunch of characters went underground and ran into you know what. Things turned out rather differently this time, though it was thanks to NPCs. There were still multiple deaths, but not anywhere near as many as the first time around. I had planned to end Chapter 1 with the earthquake, but I forgot at the time I ended it, so I'll have to wait until Chapter 2 starts.

[welsh]

Ah, one of the fun parts of zombie apoc was always the "So this what the game is about and then.... WTF? Here's a twist!" I think the body count really helps with management but I recall one character from the original run, a player from Brazil I think who I had taken a long time with in Lure of the Nile, who decides to leave the truck stop, goes on a drive into the wilds, comes across one of the meteorites and the rather nastiness that follows. She was pissed off she got killed off so fast that she never spoke to me again. Zombie Apoc is a high body count kind of game.

[Mr. Handy]

Yes, that was Zoe. She played Felice, who got killed early on last time. This time Felice is an NPC, and she managed to survive. We did both explain the high fatality rate from the outset, but I also had a player ragequit after his character got killed in Chapter 3 of the first run. He was upset that it seemed to him that his character died due to bad luck on a dice roll, but all character deaths stem from the consequences of decisions the players make. Had he made a different choice, he wouldn't have needed a roll to stay alive. The roll was actually to give him a chance to survive in spite of making a bad decision. I do like the high body count to keep the number of active characters down. Hopefully a lot of them will die in Chapter 2, because it's going to be a nightmare managing nearly ninety characters. I also enjoy all the other weirdness beyond the zombies in the game, which often throws players for a loop.

[Raiko]

Hi Welsh nice to see you back here.
Sorry I was AWOL again when you posted this, and I've only just spotted it now.

Hope you and your family are safe and well - the politics in the US these days must be killing you, nevermind Covid-19.

To avoid any spoilers I've only glanced at your chat above, not read any posts after your first one, as I'm hoping to join back in with the Zombie Apocalypse reboot - two of my characters (Lynne and Old Bud) seem to still be alive and unclaimed at least. I'd be surprised if Bud's ticker lasts long enough for the zombies to get him though.

[Silver Priest]

Glad you might be joining us once the game starts up again Raiko! I've been playing four characters in the game (Tisha, Tony Lantham, Sean, and Flip) and it's been some of the most fun I've had in a pbp game. Hopefully we're able to get more players, because I know Mr.Handy has to do a lot of bookkeeping right now to account for the huge amount of npc's, so It would be nice to take some of that work off him. Or we could just do dumb stuff and get more of the characters killed off, lol.

I'm in a coc discord, once the game starts again I plan to post a link to it and hopefully get anew newbies who are interested.

[Mr. Handy]

Thank you both! I haven't had time lately to set up Chapter 2. I might have been able to make progress this weekend if I hadn't been sick, but I should have enough time over the following three weekends, as I have extra time off after all three of them. Raiko, Lynne and Bud are still yours, and you can also add a character or two if you like.

Chapter 2 is a perfect entry point for new players, with well over 30 new playable characters being added.