I, ZOMBIE

[DAWGIE]

 


I, ZOMBIE  arrived in the mail WEDNESDAY ( yesterday, my date/time) of this week, and  i fought off the urge to look through it till i was ready to go to bed that night.  THAT  was a serious mistake for a 4 eyed aulde fart like me (who needs all of the beaauty sleep he can get!), one that i am regetting today as i sit here yawning and typing and wondering WHY coffee does not work like it used to . . . 



I, ZOMBIE is the final book in the THW ALL THINGS ZOMBIE  trilogy of rules.  what began as a simple zombie shooting game has evolved into a nicely detailed "immersive game" to quote the author, MR ED.  what that means too aulde farts like ME is that ED has taken the concept of paper and pencil RPGs to the level of what i have been calling "Tactical RPGing" since the  mid 70s. by that i mean he has combined the best elements of paper pencil RPG playing with all of the visual impact and appeal of a table top wargame with miniatures,  vehicles, and terrain,  in ANY (reasonable) SCALE that y'all the gamer would use for skirmish games  (most folks i know and have watched play use 15-mm, 25-mm/28-mm  miniatures, individually mounted,  made of lead, or pewter, or plastic for  skirmish games, but, i have also seen folks have a grand time with paper miniatures, vehicles, and terrain).


YES,  the best of both RPGs and table top gaming !   you will now have answers to most of those burning questions  that most folks have about their MINIMEs and other NPC! LOL, possibly more than most folks ever wanted to know, or use, but,  the system is there if YOU want to use it in your games (and i for want to use it!). if y'all do not want to use it, just follow through with wotever y'all have been happy with in YE OLDEN DAZE OF THW playing,  but, deffo use the new campaign system.


I, ZOMBIE is now a post apocalyptic camppaign setting, in a future when  the ZEDs have "won", survived, and even mutated (with a lot of help from the frantic scientists and governments of the  mostly long gone world we know).  and the ZEDS are not the only things have  survived and mutated following the ZOMBIE PLAGUE. I, ZOMBIE, is a different and even more dangerous place than the previous ATZ worlds.


 I, ZOMBIE is set three (3) years  into the future of the world we know: modern wolrd wide high tech, info age world we know is mostly dead and gone, with some isolated enclaves of humans able to maintain  modern post ZOMBIE PLAGUE living standards (usually modified  by their location, resources, politics, etc), but for the majority of the surviving humans, living is hard scrabble  and always dangerous.  sometimes organized "government" is a by product of  a very successful gang or rogue military or police forces that seized control of a base of operations  that "they" now rule with an iron grip with or without any "glove" (or maybe with the steel ball bearing loaded leather  sap gloves, or the nasty  modern leather zap gloves - like modern contact stun guns but worn like and looking like leather gloves).


the  most common fuctioning system of "government" usually operates with "hey, y'all don't like wot we having going here, hit the road, JACK!" or ELSE " legal system", if  any pretense at a  loca legal system  exists at all.  pretty muck like the old manorial laws of feudal times -what the overlord wants, he does, and y'all either go along or life gets harder (and sometimes shorter, too!) .


tiny isolated bands of "civilized" survivors are scattered all over the planet, along with nutzoid gangers, cults, roaming psychos, and more or less "normal" solo wanderers.  all are threatened by the daily living conditions of the post ZOMBIE PLAGUE world, all are in need of water, food, resources,  shelter, and security.


then there are the old fashion ZEDs, as well as the  mutated zombies to deal with: RAGERS and SMARTIES .   RAGERS are basically enemies of everyone (y'all are not like to find any old fashion ZEDs in a area that has RAGERS; RAGERS will kill them off too!), SMARTIES are ZEDS that  have mutated, remember, and want to SURVIVE to inherit the EARTH from anyone  else (SMARTIES use weaponry too!).   both are extremely dangerous!


there are the zombie and human mutants  that are ESPERS: these  have EXTRA SENSORY abilities  able to read minds,  move items with their minds,  ignite   some substances with their minds,  etc, etc. ESPERS do not look any different from your typical SMARTIE or HUMAN., so beware OUT THERE!


and  there are reports (confirmed and unconfirmed)  relating to humongous,  carnivorious
, BA WORMS that live underground and come up only to forage for food!  nobody knows for sure where these things came from, but, they appeared  during the years following the ZOMBIE PLAGUE.  some folks claim they are alien life forms escaped from AREA 51. . .



only GOD knows if there are other mutated "things" OUT THERE in the  wilds, the abandoned cities and towns  of this  ATZ post apocalyptic world . . . 


I, ZOMBIE also introduces y'all to a  post apocalyptic campaign setting that is very real, located in  and around our own world 's LAKE HAVASU CITY, AR. this is not the place of our time, but it is still there, more or less thriving, inspite of the I, ZOMBIE world  all around it.   


there are new and "moe beddah" rules up the wazooo, if y'all want to use them; the game  seems to plays quite well without them, too. your game, your options! 


OLE DAWGIE highly recommends I, ZOMBIE, and is now eagerly awaiting AFTER THE HORSEMEN to be published by THW!


DAWGIE

[warrenss2]

This all sounds awesome....

But I bet it spells Bad@$$ news to the survivors of that zombie apocalyptic campaign. 

[DAWGIE]

LOL - i am sure it does do that! 


has been my experieince ever since i discovered CR1.0/G&G, that surviving the brutal "realities" of any THW firefight, melee,  or  any hostile or potentially hostile encounter is not particularly high (unless y'all really think about what y'all are trying to do, or what is it that y'all would like for your joes/jolenes to do on the table top.


a lot of folks OUT THERE have not figured out that the ATZ series  is NOT ABOUT KILLING ZOMBIES, BUT THE  SURVIVAL, FAME AND FORTUNE OF  THEIR MINIME and his/her buds  during the outbreak of the ZOMBIE PLAGUE and afterwards. . .


from reading through these rules, I, ZOMBIE,  ought to be a real pee bringer, and not just with the various types or ZEDS or mutant critters, but those often under rated NPCs that one' s MINIME  comes into contact with during a game . . . 


in this game, the NPCS, like elephants and some people in real world life, can have long memories (ie a BOOK OF GRUDGES, so to speak) about what your MINIME  did to them or did not do for them in the passed. . . 


make a topless dancer in some LAKE HAVASU CITY dive mad by trying to cheat her out of her hard eartned tips, and chances are y'all will meet her protector, lover, brothers, or other buds when/where you least expect to,  and MINIME  finds himself/herself on the nasty end of a "payback is a bitch" incident . . .


hang with the wrong crowd, er, ah, posse, and MINIME  will find that his/her poop stinks to low LUNAR orbit . . . 


have a run in with the local "law", well better think before MINIME throws down and wastes those enforcers!  life is a bitch out in the wastelands all alone, low on supplies, water, sleep,  ammo, maybe medical treatment,  and knowing that you can never - ever- go back to the scene of the "crime" for a bit of I&I or a shopping spree  without having to  do the DANNY DEEVER . . . 


DAWGIE

[Eldorf.Dragonsbane]

I have so second Dawgie on how awesome I, Zombie is. I am already using it to create my own campaign town using Mackinac (Mackinaw) Island here in Michigan as the location for a survivor town called Sanctuary, the Island seems to make a great location in both terms of location, you have Mackinaw City at the southern point of the Mackinaw Straits and St. Ignace at the northern point of the straits, then you have a little further south on the eastern side of the state (Lake Huron side) you have Cheboygan, then on the western side (Lake Michigan side) you have Grand Traverse that would be great areas to send out salvage teams looking for supplies to, and the island is also great in terms of defensibility, with the Fort there and the islands cliffs. There's Round Island directly to the south that is all wilderness, perfect for the hunters to hunt game for food, and south of that is Bois Blanc Island (though in my campaign it will be infested with BA Worms and a mysterious crashed transport plane bearing the evil pharmaceutical company, Castle Pharmaceuticals, in my campaigns logo).

Using I, Zombie I can actually flesh out the town in the campaign a lot more then before, especially with the quirks and the Fame and Fortune Points system. I also already have it planned out for a possible nemesis for my characters and the characters my friends might play in the campaign (if everythign works out and they try to stop him/her).

For another campaign city I am already planning on setting up a Survivor/Smartie community, in which the Smarties are tolerated, and treated like second class citizens and given all the demeaning jobs such as sewer workers and trash dump workers. of course the group I play with might just be the match that lights the fuse to the powder keg on the already delicate situation between the Humans and Smarties. Hehehe

With I, Zombie the possibilities of a post Zompocalyptic would are anything you could want.

[Eldorf.Dragonsbane]

Heres something for those of you who have I, Zombie to think about.

Like almost anything where you are given a basic description every person will have a different mental image of what the actual think looks like, so here's my question to you. What do you imagine the BA Worms from I, Zombie looking like?


I personally picture them as having an elongated body like that of a worm or a snake, maybe about 15-20 feet long and maybe 5 or 6 feet wide, covered in hard segmented armor plates on its back, with a softer segmented plating (maybe cartilage)on the belly, and they move along through the ground using both "spikes" along the body and the armored segments to dig through the ground. As for the head I kind of picture having feelers (whiskers) like that of a cat fish, that are about a two feet long and a mouth like a Sea Lampreys (though the BA Worm has a jawed mouth unlike the Lamprey)with row upon row of teeth with the outer most being the 12-inch ones, and the rest gradually getting shorter, though as for the heads shape I am not quite sure how I picture it. I also imaging the teeth are like that of a shark, when one falls out a tooth in the next row moves up to replace the lost one. As for reproduction, I see the worms more as egg layers, right now I still don't know if they are hermaphroditic or if they are sexed, either way I see them laying a nest of 4-5 eggs and leaving them, with the eggs being able to last for months without fertilization. Once fertilized I see the eggs having an incubation period of about a year and a half to two years depending on environmental factors, and if needed they can remain dormant for up to maybe a decade or so. I also see them as being a territorial creature, and by territorial I mean they will stay in a certain area which might be anywhere from a few to a couple hundred square miles in size, with each area possibly containing multiple worms, though the worms do tend to avoid other ones, except possibly when mating (ie one lays its eggs and another nearby fertilizes the eggs)and possible cannibalization of other worms if the area has a lack of food, in which case the worms may leave thier area to find newer more fertile feeding grounds.

[kidterminal]

WOW this sounds like going back to the days of Aftermath and other 80's survival RPGs.

Rob

[Eldorf.Dragonsbane]

Since both Dawgie and my initial posts in this thread I have played a couple games using the Ragers and the BA Worms.

Ragers- I hate them, I hate them, I hate them, they are NASTY and I love that they are a foe you can hate with a passion. You knock them down and boom they are right back up moving at you before you can blink (when a Knock Down is scored on a Rager it will get up on its next activation and then it is able to continue moving towards its target at a reduced rate). Of the two games I played through with Ragers they took out all my characters both times in melee. As I said Ragers are NASTY.

The BA Worms are another NASTY baddie, luckily only one will appear in an encounter. These things are the equal opportunity killer of ATZ, they will attack anything that moves from Humans, to Ragers, to Zombies to vehicles, they dont care, if it moves then its a target. These things cant be killed either, just driven off. In game one with a BA Worm it wiped out my party and a group of gangers that my party was fighting. Game two my party was lucky enough to make it to a rock outcropping and snipe at the BA Worm until finally one of the characters scored the critical hit that sent the BA Worm running off.

When I get together with my friends to play ATZ I will definitely be surprising them with  both Ragers and BA Worms. I have a feeling that the Ragers and BA Worms are going to quickly be come a hated advesary in ATZ games, though I also think that my friends will love having them in the games too.

I still have to test out Smarties and Psy's (Espers, Psykers, Mind Freaks, etc... what you want to call them is up to you, I personally prefer using Psy's or Psykers) though For my Mackinac Island Campaign I am including one Psyker and one Smartie on the Island that are part of the community. The Smartie has been allowed to be part of the community and given a simple job. The Psyker is a character that I am going to write up as not fully realizing that she has psychic abilities yet, all she knows is sometimes things happen around her that she cant explain
.

[Knightofspades]

I dont know what rules you are talking about but it sounds really interesting. Can you give me a link or something?

[Argonor]

I dont know what rules you are talking about but it sounds really interesting. Can you give me a link or something?

I, Zombie...?

http://www.angelfire.com/az3/twohourwargames/atz.htm

[Knightofspades]

Thanks a lot!