Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 TheFacelessLord Aug 05, 2008 23:46:00	I have been creating a Zombie Apocalypse campaign for a few days now but I have still not decided if I'm going to be running large amounts of it off the top of my head or actually writing it all down and working it all out ahead of time. What do you think would work better for this type of campaign? PS: I'm planning on having the PC's running around this massive city that is near the ocean.
#2 tema69 Aug 06, 2008 5:50:25	I think you need to give more details before we can help you. How are your PCs? Do they tend to follow a set adventure or go off the rails? How large amounts are you talking about? What is the plot? etc...
#3 azisien Aug 06, 2008 11:41:00	As a new explorer of the Zombie Apocalypse genre myself, *coughDead Earth threadcough* I recommend winging a lot of what you do. However! My advice is to come up with rules for how zombies find the players, first of all. Are they attracted to anything? Do the players like walking signal flares/cheeseburgers to the zombies? If so, you have the beginning. The harder question is, how do you incorporate this into rolls? Next, my other piece of advice: I call it the Do As Dead Rising Does Principle. Basically, write events. Don't write a plot, but write events that would occur within your world. The players NEED to go to certain locales if they care about long term survival. You can only raid houses for so long before things start to rot, people get hurt, etc. Grocery stores, military bases, airports, hospitals, etc. Write fun events that happen within the macrocosm of the apocalyptic world you've created, and unleash these events on the players when they stumble upon them. But otherwise, let them wander around and enjoy the limited food, clean water, and ammunition versus thousands/millions of zed's. You should conjure strings of events; like recurring villains or an "answer" to the "why" of the apocalypse. But I've always figured these kinds of campaigns were mostly just "survive until the next dawn."
#4 TheFacelessLord Aug 06, 2008 11:41:35	Well the PC's are going to find this radio (eventually) that is going to tell them where to go to find other survivors and the location's of other problems that need to be solved. There are mostly likely going to be 4 PC's maybe more. About half of them like to wander and get off the main quest's for a bit to accomplish personal goals. By the way what I mean by saying "large amounts" is that I have been DM/GM for entire campaign's without even writing anything down as far as main quests or even a map (the map was made as the PC's explored) and it went pretty well. It's just that my group has had alot of problems in the past with staying with one campaign, the last time we tried to play a Zombie Apocalypse I told the PC's to role play themselves and after about 30min's one of my players fired a shotgun at another player at point blank range (killing him). This ruined the campaign completely and since then we have not played very much D20 mod. But it's not like we don't have our fair share of problems playing 3.5 (4th edition sucks:pbbbtt because usly what happens is the one of the PC's tries to kill another one because hes tired of him, or I (DM) get really bored because not everyone wants to do the main quest, they would rather go off and do there own thing instead which is usly something silly (I once had a PC who wanted to fly, yes fly to the moon and try to give it a atmosphere for he can breed his genetically engineered were demons (which he never made) and to top it off he was a cleric). Anyway so I have decided to make this Zombie Apocalypse because most of the player's want to do it except the guy I was just talking about (the whole moon thing) he is also the one who died in the last one because of another PC. So ummm ya hopefully this will help you help me.:angelhide
#5 azisien Aug 06, 2008 11:47:25	Well you seem to be following my Principle to a tee, you even use the radio gig to guide players around. Carry on with your winging!