[Interest] All Flesh Must Be Eaten
Professor Phobos
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I am thinking of running an online AFMBE game every so often, probably just via a Steam group chat. I'm wondering who would be interested. This wouldn't be a regular, every-week, same-time sort of thing and it would definitely not be a play-by-post.
Basically just an intermittent pick-up game of zombie survival horror. If it goes really well and people are committed, it could be a more regular thing.
For those who don't know, All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a survival horror RPG published by Eden Studios. It uses a very simple game system (which I have simplified further) and is suitable for both one-shots and ongoing "long-term survival/reclaiming society" games.
It's designed to be open-ended, with extensive zombie customization so it can handle basically any kind of zombie or undead.
The campaign concept I'm thinking of is the characters are basically the handful of truly competent people (veterans, police, etc) in a small town in Kansas or Colorado (probably called Jericho, to rip-off the show) who have taken a leadership role in the immediate aftermath of a zombie outbreak beginning and must defend and guide the town through the apocalypse.
PM me if you're interested in such a thing. If you don't have/use Steam, it'd be just as easy to do it via IRC. Don't worry if you don't know the system, it is super simple and easy to explain. I'm thinking of posting the chat transcripts into this very thread so people can follow along if they're interested.
Basically just an intermittent pick-up game of zombie survival horror. If it goes really well and people are committed, it could be a more regular thing.
For those who don't know, All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a survival horror RPG published by Eden Studios. It uses a very simple game system (which I have simplified further) and is suitable for both one-shots and ongoing "long-term survival/reclaiming society" games.
It's designed to be open-ended, with extensive zombie customization so it can handle basically any kind of zombie or undead.
The campaign concept I'm thinking of is the characters are basically the handful of truly competent people (veterans, police, etc) in a small town in Kansas or Colorado (probably called Jericho, to rip-off the show) who have taken a leadership role in the immediate aftermath of a zombie outbreak beginning and must defend and guide the town through the apocalypse.
PM me if you're interested in such a thing. If you don't have/use Steam, it'd be just as easy to do it via IRC. Don't worry if you don't know the system, it is super simple and easy to explain. I'm thinking of posting the chat transcripts into this very thread so people can follow along if they're interested.
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Depends. You'd have to find those things out in game.
You PM me to sign up, we're playing online at a time everyone can meet and the rules are something I'll fill you in on. (It's add attribute+skill+d10+/-bonuses or penalties, anything over a 9 is a success)
EDIT: I should make timing more clear. It would probably take place on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday night sometime in the evening Eastern Standard Time; these are the times I am free. The exact date/time can vary; I'm thinking a more casual pick up game than a regularly scheduled event. I could also probably manage the occasional Saturday.
Last I remember we ended up in the house of a Scientist you killed with a infected teenager locked in the bedroom.
edit: I forget, who was insanely angry at me that I didn't immediately de-infect him? Mainly I think because I wanted to get us out of zombie harm first.
It's a hard knock life being a foulmouthed, chain-smoking Russian spy in the middle of a zombapocalypse.
I may be up if you need more.
Also with IRC games about half of people who say they're gonna come never actually show up, so over-recruitment is fine.
Probably via IRC. Also plenty of time for people to make characters ( a big post on that is coming). If you can't make it that night, post the times you are free- as a pickup game, it'd be fairly easy to do things on different nights. I'm thinking a kind of ensemble cast with the same setting (Jericho, Kansas) so with a varied group it just means there's a different focus on characters handling separate crises. And people can always die off-screen to explain their absence; AFMBE is a deadly, deadly game.
You can always leave a little early; I usually run out of steam by the 2 1/2 hour mark anyway.
I'm absolutely into making some kind of fatalist, cracked daredevil guy that thinks that we're all going to die, and that that is awesome.
Count me in then. It should be fine. It will be between bowling and work.
Anyone ever watch the TV show Jericho? It's about a small town trying to survive in the aftermath of a massive nuclear attack on the United States- while several characters investigate the origins of that attack.
I've always liked the premise, I'm just swapping out nukes for zombies. I'm going so far as to borrow the Hawkins plot from Jericho and there will indeed be one or more characters with Mysterious Pasts Mysteriously Linked to the Mystery of the Apocalypse. The game will take place in and around a small Kansas town called Jericho- though it's more like "Generic American Small Town" than anything particularly Kansas related.
Characters should basically be "important individuals" of that town- most people are just regular folks, but you guys, for whatever reason, are highly skilled and competent and have assumed leadership/problem solving roles. The goal is not only your personal survival, but the survival of Jericho as a community. That's the game-wide goal; individual character goals can vary to taste and circumstance. And of course if you fail and have to leave the town as it is overrun, it will be a more conventional "small band of survivors" sort of game. You don't have to be a permanent resident of the town; it's easy to say you were passing through and decided to stick around because hey, an apocalypse is going on. I would prefer a majority of characters to have some ties to the town, however, just so it's easier to explain why the townsfolk have effectively put them in charge/depend on them to save the day.
TOWN CREATION:
The town is a fairly small, generic "Middle America" sort of place, so anything that makes sense to be in that area or in a neighboring town is there- doctor's offices, gun store, high school, etc. However, by default the town is only going to have the absolute basics, meaning you'll have to scavenge/explore neighboring towns for certain crucial items like specialty medicines or equipment. I want to let you guys customize things a bit, so...
Every player gets to choose one Asset and one Liability for the town. An Asset could be something like a hospital serving the region (and thereby vastly increasing available medical resources), a stable source of fresh water, abundant farmland, an isolated location, a radio station, an easily defended location, etc. It could also be individuals- an allied biker gang or apocalyptic death cult, for example. I'm going to run Assets as fairly robust- if you pick something like "A lot of farms" then I'll assume that so long as those farms are intact the town is self-sufficient on food and so you won't have to worry as much about feeding hungry townsfolk. Additional assets can be acquired in game; your characters might not necessarily survive, but you can kind of "level up" the town in this respect. So if you don't start out with a stable source of water but later acquire/discover one, you can stop worrying about water. And so on.
If you pick an Asset you must also pick a Liability. A liability is a downside- right next to the highway, bad farmland (so food is a greater issue), a divided townsfolk, a hostile rival town (like New Bern in the show) a hostile biker gang, a serial killer, a nearby apocalyptic death cult, a haunted house, an evil corporation's research lab, an ancient indian curse, a zombie-outbreak hotspot, tainted water supply, etc. Liabilities can be incurred during the game.
These are all things that either existed before the apocalypse or start up immediately after the outbreak begins. Use your imagination and come up with something interesting rather than just something that makes the town perfect. It'll be a lot more fun if you have to desperately struggle against long odds than sit around an invincible fortress-city, after all.
CHARACTER CREATION:
There are three basic ways we can do this. You can make a fully customized character using the AFMBE rules (that will be the next post), you can take a pre-made character Archetype and then tweak it (so the stats are already done for you) or you can describe a character to me and I will attempt to make one that matches your vision on your behalf. There are a lot of archetypes available for the game since its high-lethality practically demands speedy replacement characters. Archetypes are also customizable to taste, so when you get the details of the one you've chosen we can tailor it to fit more closely to what you want.
In AFMBE there are three basic character types (some supplements introduced new ones but we won't be using them). The "Norm", the "Survivor" and "The Inspired." Norms are regular people who get a fairly limited amount of points; these are for agonizingly desperate games. Survivors are regular people who have a degree of badassitude. Inspired are people with supernatural abilities; in the corebook it's basically True Faith-style miracle working.
Norms get much fewer points, but Survivors and Inspired are basically equal. Since you guys are exceptional individuals responsible for the well-being of a whole community of Norms, you can be Survivors. Since the supernatural will play a huge role in the game, you can also be Inspired if you want. Inspired/Survivors are built on the same number of points; Survivors get more skills, attributes and special qualities, but Inspired get Metaphysics points they can spend on Miracles. (Kind of like spells, really)
APPROPRIATE SURVIVOR ARCHETYPES:
Athlete
Biker
Cheerleader
Police Officer
Soldier
Grizzled Vet
High School Janitor
Bounty Hunter
Courier
Drill Sergeant
Ex-Spy (in Kansas?)
Fire Fighter
Great White Hunter
Survivalist College Student (perhaps home for the weekend)
Administrative Assistant (for an evil corporation)
Asylum Escapee
Mafia Hood
High-Class Thief (in...Kansas?)
Mercenary
Street Fighter
APPROPRIATE INSPIRED ARCHETYPES:
Goth Chick
Priest
Crusading Preacher
Camp Counselor
Miraculous Survivor
Reborn Druid Sage
Reluctant Faith Healer
Feel free to play around with them- the Street Fighter's skill set works for anyone who gets into a lot of hand-to-hand fights, for example. Soldiers or Mercenaries (i.e., private security contractors) can be on leave, stranded in Jericho, fresh out of the service, etc.
There are a lot of pre-made Norm archetypes (doctor, detective, local politician, etc) that could be kicked up to Survivor status if people want to play a Badass Librarian or somesuch. If you go to www.edenstudios.net, find the AFMBE section and click on "Characters" you can find the rulebook archetypes (listed above) if you want to take a look at the details or the picture.
Leather Duster, Steel toe boots, and a sledge hammer to "bless" the afflicted.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
I would like to build him myself so I'll wait until the next post.
You know, now that i think about it, the campaign premise is more suited to an ongoing sort of game with character development and the like. Would you guys prefer a more one-shot oriented "horror movie" sort of style? That might work better for a pick-up game.
(Which would just be random survivors thrown together)
My preference would be towards the long-running game. People could go on hiatus after a one-shot by needing to take a break at the town. Maybe have remote locations that would become assets suddenly appear much worse than we thought for the horror movie feel? Basically, I think both elements can be done in one game.
As for characters... I wanted an highly acrobatic and athletic character with a secondary focus on charisma. Athlete or Cheerleader seem to work (though the character is going to be male no matter what). Probably athlete, though the sports listed don't work for him. Is it within the rules to swap out the sports for more extreme sports (whitewater rafting, hang gliding, skateboarding) and maybe shift focus a bit more towards the acrobatic skills (climb, swim, acrobatics)?
Actually just read ill's posts, I suppose I'll have to wait to build my character myself.
Or maybe just reallly good at driving a van.
I should be ok for the 13th at the times given, should I be playing. I'll look through the character creation things tomorrow when I have time.
My other idea was an EMT. He could have an ambulance and a medkit. Probably use whatever he found weapon wise. Could be a hunter or something in his free time. The Liability would be that the hospital is 20 miles away or maybe his fiance is in a zombie hotspot or something.
Can I be the Boba Fett of the zombie world?
That could work. You cool with the premise?
We'll play it by ear. I'll start the first game off as a kind of one-shot but compatible with ongoing hybrid, and if people don't hate my ZMing and want to continue, we'll do a more ongoing thing.
Anyway, sometime today when I find the energy I'll post the character creation stuff. If you already own AFMBE, feel free to go to town- anything from the corebook or One of the Living is fine.
On a more related note, I'm looking at the police officer archetype. (LEOOOOON)