All Things Zombie: Characters getting too powerful!

[Cherno]

Hi all,

my gaming group started an ATZ:BDTZ campaign a couple of months ago. I planned it out beforehand by drawing maps of the locations that could be visited and for roughly every third location there would be a special scenario that would be different from the usual "go into buildings and see what's in them" gameplay.

We played about six games so far and there's one thing that bugs me to no end.

The characters have become too powerful!

The two Stars started at REP 4, but now one is at 5 and the other at 6! They only lost one or two grunts early due to pure carelessness and since then pretty much every survivor they met that wasn't hostile has joined their ranks, especially because the REP 6 guy just can't be beat in any way when rolling for.. pretty much anything. Bartering, Reactions, initiative... He always comes up on top.

Another gripe I have is that the zombies seem pretty harmless; I know that ATZ is basically humans vs. humans with added zombies, but they are so easy to avoid even in large groups.

When two survivors enter a building, the chance of meeting hostiles is not that big to begin with, and even then there will be only a pretty small number to them, and they'll be randomly played around the different rooms, so it's easy to kill them one by one.

All in all, I really don't know how to continue this campaign. I thought about designing a really hard scenario that has a very high chance of killing some characters or letting them be captured by hostile forces, but this would be kinda cheap. I imagined the game to be more up-and-down flowing, with new grunts joining and old ones gettink killed all the time, and the stars becoming wounded from time to time and even losing a point of REP, but so far they didn't need to use the "avoid death" mechanic even once.

Any thoughts about this? We play without PEFs and I know there's a new version of ATZ coming out this year that will make zombies deadlier.

[Lawful Evil]

My only experience with ATZ is reading Vampifan's excellent battle reports.
Homebrewing bigger, tougher zombies or infected creatures wouldn't help this? Create scenarios where the zombies can't be avoided? What about scenarios where the survivors found by your gang are in some way directly opposed to you, and no amount of REP will solve that? Give the opoonent survivors something to protect or fight for, and set your gang up to have to take it from them.

Mostly I would be looking at narrative based ways to spice things up. WIthout some sort of story some games end up feeling like chess, to me.

[Cherno]

Thanks for the suggestions. Some good ideas there. I thought about using either REP 5 zombies or Ragers in the next scenarios, like a evovled species of zombies. Possibly even some Resident Evil type creatures or special infected from Left 4 Dead. It's also possible that I will create a dangerous group of outlaws or FEMA type special forces that got wind of the character's exploits and come to rob or outright kill them for interfering with some kind of secret operation. Looks like I'll have to sit down and take a long planning session before the next game

[Eldorf.Dragonsbane]

I have to mirror that if you feel that the Zombies in ATZ are to easy either a) Homebrew a more powerful zombie (Say play these new zeds as Rep 5 and when in melee they use 2d6 instead of one), or B) instead of Zeds use Ragers from the I, Zombie supplement.

Another option you could do is play where your characters have limited ammo, each time you play a game each character looses 1 unit of ammo (unless they rolled out of ammo during the game then they lose 2 units). Only way they can replenish ammo is via bartering (though it might be at a higher cost then other resources) or by searching for more ammo. By doing this you are going to be relying more on Melee Weapons then ranged weapons, and even a Rep 6 can go down fairly quickly against a couple of Zeds when in Melee with them.

Now for the Stronger Zeds they could be caused by a mutation in the Z-Virus, or zeds that were created in the lab to be a more controllable zed (which failed).

If you have I, Zombie as I mentioned you can introduce Ragers to the mix, there are also the BA Worms, Smarties (Smart Zombies that can use weapons) and Psys (individuals with psychic powers).

Another thing you could do is introduce a stronger group of Gangers (such as Vampifans Killer Klown gang).

As you are playing you do need to remember the resources will diminish over time as the areas are searched, this will also make the game a bit tougher. I, Zombie (and the Giving Up the Goat scenario which came out before I, Zombie and previewed some of the new rules found in I, Zombie) introduces Sleep Deprivation to the game. Before any encounter you roll to see if they characters are suffering from Lack of Sleep.

[Ulu Elsomalien]

Did they take the KEEPING IT TOGETHER test after each encounter (grunts may quit the group) ? Did they use firearms or vehicles (noise = zeds) ? Set up an urban table with narrow streets and add vehicles EVERYWHERE (plus RANDOM EVENTS with vehicles). Voila !
 

[HerbyF]

I would have to agree with the others here. If the player characters are getting tougher, make the encounters tougher to keep it challenging. Funneling into an ambush point is a good way to do this.