Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Post-Apocalyptic Tales => Topic started by: sundayhero on April 06, 2020, 08:11:12 PM
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Hi,
Since the covid19 lockdown, we (a group of french gamers) started to think about online rpg gaming (we already played warhammer 4th edition, using let'sroll and google hangout).
Now I would like to start a zombie (and maybe a bit of mutants) rpg session/campaign, but I'm struggling to find an easy to play/learn ruleset.
Maybe you LAFers can help us ?
thank you a lot
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The best of the light RPGs, is Savage Worlds, IMO. There are a ton of adventures, campaigns, and settings for the system across a multitude of publishers. A great, zombie scenario to get your feet wet with the system is Zombie Run.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/18043/Savage-Tales-6-Zombie-Run
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Have you looked at the Powered by the Apocalypse sort of game? Dungeon World is the most prominent example (and there's a free, simplified 'hack' called World of Dungeons (http://www.onesevendesign.com/dw/world_of_dungeons_1979_bw.pdf)), but there are loads of others. There's quite a bit of jargon associated with them, but they boil down to a very simple system of bonuses (+1, +2, etc.) and success rolls on 2d6: 1-6 is a failure, 7-9 is a partial success (with some negative consequence) and 10-12 is a complete success. Dungeon World and World of Dungeons have traditional hit points too.
You can get the first edition of the original, Apocalypse World, free here (http://apocalypse-world.com). And because it's a post-apocalypse game, it might work very well for zombies.
You might have to cut through the jargon a bit to get to the gist of the rules. There's a lot of talk of "moves", which are basically just labels for certain kinds of actions. So, if you try to beat someone up or kill a zombie in Apocalypse World, it would be the Go Aggro move, which has simple rules governing its consequences. But at heart, it's a really simple game that's designed to foster creativity in story-telling. In that sense, it's very much in the tradition of Tunnels and Trolls, where what looked like a grindingly boring dice-pool combat system was actually designed to make players come up with unconventional and exciting ruses.
So in that sense, the jargon slightly obscures a very robust and actually very old-school approach to roleplaying.
In my recent experience, the PbtA rules (or Tunnels and Trolls!) work really well for long-distance games because players end up focusing on describing their actions and coming up with interesting stunts rather than digging into the game mechanics. So you get a lot more vivid description and a lot less turgid dice-rolling. And the GM prep can be as limited or detailed as you like.
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both of the above suggestions are good.
Savage worlds is close to a miniature wargame and good if you plan on a lot of shooting, tracking location and range etc, zombies/mutants with fast roleplaying in between, PbtA is great for story heavier games played in the minds eye, much much looser location and ranges etc.
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End of the World Zombie Apocalypse is a rules light rpg. It uses a simple d6 based mechanic. It's thing is that the group kind of creates/plays themselves with whatever scenario you are playing starting at the time you sit down to play a role playing game. It includes several different zombie type of scenarios. They range from traditional dead rising up to parasites. I have read it, but I honestly have not played it yet. There are a total of four different books. Each covering a specific end of the world trope. There is zombies, aliens, gods, and robots. Choose your poison wisely.
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Most of my gaming group just played a Zombie shooter using Savage Worlds via a discord server last weekend. I had a bit more to keep track of in my head regarding players and Z's positions than you would using miniatures but overall it was fairly quick.
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thank you all the answers, I'll take a look ;)
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Here is my list:
Dead Reign (there are some additions on drivethru): https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/156490/Dead-ReignR-RPG
ModernAGE: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/243966/Modern-AGE-Basic-Rulebook
Basic Roleplay: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/24384/Basic-Roleplaying?src=hottest_filtered&filters=0_0_44290_0_0Outbreak 2nd: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/3439/Hunters-Entertainment/subcategory/23956/Outbreak-Undead-2e
Hope the links work, because I had some performance problems with Drivethru...
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oh, and if you want something a bit more novel, there is red markets, which focusus on the comunities that survive the apocalypse and the people that travel between them in order to keep a viable market going.
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For something very, very light:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/the-end-of-the-world/products/zombie-apocalypse/
There are some good suggestions above but they all seem pretty heavy to me.
EDIT: ah, spect-spidey already mentioned this one
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The most notable zombie apocalypse is All Flesh Must Be Eaten (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/627/All-Flesh-Must-be-Eaten-Revised) which has medium-light rules, customisable zombies with a variety of examples, and sourcebooks for crossing over with various genres and for running campaigns as well as the more traditional one-shots that usually end with everybody dead. It has a free introductory quickstart (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/97810/The-Waking-Dead) as well.
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Good call Craig, not sure where my "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" has got to, probably having a fight in a box somewhere with its Buffy siblings.
There is also No more Room In Hell by Iron Ivan Games.