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[All Flesh] All Flesh Must Be Eaten - Game and Campaign advice
Niceguy Myeye
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Well, I'm planning on running a zombie survival horror tabletop campaign based on the All Flesh Must Be Eaten system. Here's a wikipedia entry on the system for those unfamiliar with it.
Right now, I honestly haven't gotten too far and seem in kind of a rut. I also have a couple of concerns with the setting as it pertains to the group of players that will be in it.
First, I suppose I will describe the rut. My friends are fairly unpredictable and for the most part will go off the rails unless they just can't think of anything to do. So, to kind of balance this out, I wanted to come up with a time line. Basically, this is a progression of things that will happen unless the players interfere. I'd say that 99 percent of the events are just to keep the world to have a theme that it's crumbling around them.
First and foremost, I'd like help fleshing out this time line. The game will start before the zombie breakout. Zombies will be infectious only by bite. Incubation time after a bite is between 36 and 48 hours. I also have a problem wrapping my head around a realistic emergency response for a zombie apocalypse. Zombies will also die off if they haven't fed for a week.
I'm also having some issues dealing with the initial outbreak. I wanted to give an incubation time and life expectancy of 24-48 hours. After the person is dead, or if they were killed by a zombie, then they will return in 1 to 4 hours. However, I'm having problems working the timeline about that.
I suppose I'll try to do it all pseudo-scientific and just plagiarize a mathematical model for a non zombie related disease. I also never realized that part of pandemic computer modeling had a foot planted firmly in crazytown. Anyways, the rough model I'm stealing is the one below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_-9hFzmxkw
I'm not entirely sure about the actual days, but I want to keep the spread pattern pretty much the same. I'm kind of thinking to take that pattern and make it two times faster.
Day 0: First group of people is infected. It is assumed that the infection spread from a trial vaccine that was being tested on a group of 250 people.
Day 1: Test group Z starts to show initial signs of flu like symptoms including fever. Initial group is bed ridden or becomes hospitalized. Later in the day the first group dies. Reports of dangerous new flu outbreak hits the news.
Day 2: Zombie breakout in small town. Most of the coverage is from Youtube, Twitter, or Facebook. This is assumed to be a riot or hoax of some kind at first because people in the govt and military don't seriously consider zombies as real. Wounded are taken to the local Hospital for treatment.
Day 3: First survivors start fleeing city. Some bring bitten and infected friends and family with them when they leave. Local Police forces start to request help from national and state law enforcement.
One of the survivors meet ups with a militia group they were affiliated with about 50 miles outside of the city and they work on making the existing compound ready for zombie apocalypse.
Day 4: National Guard is called in to stop people from entering small town 0 and to provide emergency assistance. Special Fact finding team is also sent into town to find out what's going on. People are allowed to leave the city freely as no true quarantine has been set up.
Day 5: Fact Finding team reports to administration. Military is called in to quarantine city they prepare to mobilize the next day. Executive order creates Crisis Team Z to research and deal with the new threat to national security.
Day 6: Fort is set up and a quarantine area is set around the city. Refugee camp is set up in the fort. Outbreak is thought to be contained. Military prepares for sweeps of the remaining zombies in the city. New Media blackout is lifted. Media explains that zombies have to kill their victims for them to rise as zombies.
Day 7: Previous bite victims become reanimated in the refugee area of the fort. Other bite victims start outbreak in other cities.
Day 8: Fort and Refugee area is overrun. Minor outbreaks in surrounding and major cities start to happen.
Day 10: Major outbreaks in surrounding cities.
Day 15: Major outbreaks in Major cities. Zombies in town 0 start to die of starvation.
Day 16: Cell phone systems go off line.
Day 24: First Coal power plants go down. Rolling brownouts and blackouts occur. Engineers start to isolate portions of the power grid.
Day 26: Gas Power plants go down. Certain but not all isolated pockets powered by hydro and nuclear are still working.
Day 27: Zombies are everywhere!
Day 32: Zombies in heavy population centers start to die of starvation.
Day 50: Dust settles and Pandemic is over.
After that, I can just do some mad max shit.
Secondly, I would like some advice from people that have either used this system or played in a zombie apocalypse setting before.
Are they any pitfalls I should avoid using this system and what problems have you encountered with it?
What's the best way to deal with scarcity of resources? I don't want people finding M-16s with 300 rounds everywhere, but I don't want my players to get bored because everything becomes a scavenger hunt.
Any other advice at all for this? Situations, characters, other things?
Anyways, let's start building the end of the world!
Right now, I honestly haven't gotten too far and seem in kind of a rut. I also have a couple of concerns with the setting as it pertains to the group of players that will be in it.
First, I suppose I will describe the rut. My friends are fairly unpredictable and for the most part will go off the rails unless they just can't think of anything to do. So, to kind of balance this out, I wanted to come up with a time line. Basically, this is a progression of things that will happen unless the players interfere. I'd say that 99 percent of the events are just to keep the world to have a theme that it's crumbling around them.
First and foremost, I'd like help fleshing out this time line. The game will start before the zombie breakout. Zombies will be infectious only by bite. Incubation time after a bite is between 36 and 48 hours. I also have a problem wrapping my head around a realistic emergency response for a zombie apocalypse. Zombies will also die off if they haven't fed for a week.
I'm also having some issues dealing with the initial outbreak. I wanted to give an incubation time and life expectancy of 24-48 hours. After the person is dead, or if they were killed by a zombie, then they will return in 1 to 4 hours. However, I'm having problems working the timeline about that.
I suppose I'll try to do it all pseudo-scientific and just plagiarize a mathematical model for a non zombie related disease. I also never realized that part of pandemic computer modeling had a foot planted firmly in crazytown. Anyways, the rough model I'm stealing is the one below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_-9hFzmxkw
I'm not entirely sure about the actual days, but I want to keep the spread pattern pretty much the same. I'm kind of thinking to take that pattern and make it two times faster.
Day 0: First group of people is infected. It is assumed that the infection spread from a trial vaccine that was being tested on a group of 250 people.
Day 1: Test group Z starts to show initial signs of flu like symptoms including fever. Initial group is bed ridden or becomes hospitalized. Later in the day the first group dies. Reports of dangerous new flu outbreak hits the news.
Day 2: Zombie breakout in small town. Most of the coverage is from Youtube, Twitter, or Facebook. This is assumed to be a riot or hoax of some kind at first because people in the govt and military don't seriously consider zombies as real. Wounded are taken to the local Hospital for treatment.
Day 3: First survivors start fleeing city. Some bring bitten and infected friends and family with them when they leave. Local Police forces start to request help from national and state law enforcement.
One of the survivors meet ups with a militia group they were affiliated with about 50 miles outside of the city and they work on making the existing compound ready for zombie apocalypse.
Day 4: National Guard is called in to stop people from entering small town 0 and to provide emergency assistance. Special Fact finding team is also sent into town to find out what's going on. People are allowed to leave the city freely as no true quarantine has been set up.
Day 5: Fact Finding team reports to administration. Military is called in to quarantine city they prepare to mobilize the next day. Executive order creates Crisis Team Z to research and deal with the new threat to national security.
Day 6: Fort is set up and a quarantine area is set around the city. Refugee camp is set up in the fort. Outbreak is thought to be contained. Military prepares for sweeps of the remaining zombies in the city. New Media blackout is lifted. Media explains that zombies have to kill their victims for them to rise as zombies.
Day 7: Previous bite victims become reanimated in the refugee area of the fort. Other bite victims start outbreak in other cities.
Day 8: Fort and Refugee area is overrun. Minor outbreaks in surrounding and major cities start to happen.
Day 10: Major outbreaks in surrounding cities.
Day 15: Major outbreaks in Major cities. Zombies in town 0 start to die of starvation.
Day 16: Cell phone systems go off line.
Day 24: First Coal power plants go down. Rolling brownouts and blackouts occur. Engineers start to isolate portions of the power grid.
Day 26: Gas Power plants go down. Certain but not all isolated pockets powered by hydro and nuclear are still working.
Day 27: Zombies are everywhere!
Day 32: Zombies in heavy population centers start to die of starvation.
Day 50: Dust settles and Pandemic is over.
After that, I can just do some mad max shit.
Secondly, I would like some advice from people that have either used this system or played in a zombie apocalypse setting before.
Are they any pitfalls I should avoid using this system and what problems have you encountered with it?
What's the best way to deal with scarcity of resources? I don't want people finding M-16s with 300 rounds everywhere, but I don't want my players to get bored because everything becomes a scavenger hunt.
Any other advice at all for this? Situations, characters, other things?
Anyways, let's start building the end of the world!
Niceguy Myeye on
0
Posts
A report on the zombie outbreak of 2009: how mathematics can save us (no, really)
Robert Smith. Canadian Medical Association. Journal. Ottawa: Dec 8, 2009. Vol. 181, Iss. 12; pg. E297,
ABSTRACT
I don't think its kosher for me to copy the whole thing, but the conclusion is
The 2009 epidemic was successfully contained using this last option. When the next zombie outbreak occurs, rapid management of the spread of infection is imperative. Should we be unable to contain the outbreak, we face the extreme possibility of a world whose population is made up entirely of mathematicians and zombies. One of these groups spends all its time lurking in the darkness, with wild eyes, hair askew and brains that don't work like those of normal humans. And the other group is the zombies.
Also, you could have it were the virus mutates after a few days to become hardier and allow the zombies to live longer. The problem with AFMBE is that with a normal zombie setting (zombie apocalypse), it's mostly going to be "fight to check point A, talk a bit, fight to check point B, talk a bit, fight to check point C, ect." because we as DMs want the zombies to multiply quickly. A good way of doing this game is with odd settings like I did in The Good, The Bad, and the Undead, a western setting. Had the game not failed, I had the idea that the zombies were being caused by a preacher with a Voodoo book was creating these zombies to build a weapon known as "Justice" (Think a zombie Hulk/Frankenstein with a Gatling gun on his arm) for the South in the up coming Civil War. Having an end helps build up a game that's more than undead armies eating away at you.