Heroes Unlimited™ versus Dead Reign™

[Glistam]

I'm considering designing a convention one-shot adventure of super heroes versus zombies, using Heroes Unlimited™ and Dead Reign™. Before I delve too far into this, I wanted to collect some input/advice from others. Right now I'm towing with the following ideas:

1. This will be set at the onset of the zombie outbreak, not months after.
2. The heroes are powerful and have little to fear from individual zombies.
3. The goal is to protect civilians and lead them somewhere "safe."
3. Since it's a world of super heroes and villains, there will be super-powered zombies.

Questions as I ponder this:

How powerful should the heroes be? I'm thinking heroes who have little to fear from zombies (Robot, Invulnerability, APS, Regeneration, Auto-dodging, etc), so the tension is really about how they protect the civilians. I would anticipate different threats to the heroes such as too many zombies overwhelming a hero and slowing them down, or like how the robot hero is basically invisible to zombies so he can't draw them away, etc.

Any particular powers or hero categories which may be especially fun?

From the standpoint of a zombie outbreak, where would be an appropriate safe place to lead civilians? Some sort of evacuation site? The docks for ships? A military base or stronghold? All of the above as viable options?

Would zombified supers be too over the top, or just the right about of over the top?

Has anyone done any scenarios like this, and if so, any advice?

[Daniel Stoker]

If you do do zombified supers I'd pull a page from the EX-Heroes series by Peter Clines and make it so that they're not like Marvel Zombies and retain their full intelligence etc but have them be shamblers who more instinctively use their powers. The guy with Sonic Speed is now at half speed/bonuses which still means he's going to eat through a LOT of your civilians before heroes can stop him. I'd also try and avoid access to some powers like APS: Electricity or Plasma where they can just stand in the middle of a crowd for 8 hours and just have the zombies destroy themselves on them then fly away and back to your base.


Daniel Stoker

[Hunterrose]

I'm not sure how DR is normally played but it seems to me that especially for a One-Shot you'd want to invest in your environment a lot. Rather than a specific site being "Safe" maybe different sites have different safety levels depending on the in-game time.

Maybe there are different tasks that can/should be completed with in certain time limits? For example, hiding out in a residence might be great early on, but by about mid day of the outbreak places like police departments (now empty) might be more useful.

Transportation areas like ships, trains, etc can be cool but depending on WHEN the characters get there they might just end up out in the middle of the ocean sharing a boat full of zombies.

My guess is you'd want to keep heroes more or less low powered (I'm thinking Spiderman types, more so than Superman types), and have the threat escalate.
I like your thought of having a robot. Mutants would be particularly interesting. But just about any type should work so long as all characters are somewhat balanced. Being a convention environ, I guess you would have a set of pre-gen characters and allow players to choose?

Super-Zombies might be best left as final Big Boss type characters. That way you can gauge how your players are doing, and release the Zombified Supers at the end once you and the players are comfortable with the way the game is going.

This is exciting, I look forward to hearing more about it.

[Razorwing]

I would save the Super-Zombie reveal for the climactic finale of your one-shot.

Up to that point, I would have the players believe that Supers in general seem not to have been infected/affected by whatever caused the zombie outbreak. This will be especially poignant if the heroes have been tearing through zombies to save civilians and get them to an evacuation point where they are now being over run by zombies... and they see reinforcements flying in... assume they are friendlies (because zombies can't fly... right?)... only to discover that not even heroes are immune to the zombie plague.

Zombified Supers should run the gambit from being weaker than normal supers, to being as strong as normal supers and even being more powerful than normal. Remember, one of the Mega Hero powers is becoming Undead... so there is precedent for a very powerful Zombie Super. In fact, in this reality it would be ironic if the zombie plague was an attempt to use such a Mega Zombie's nature as some weapon (perhaps that is where the Cult that is apparently behind things in DR got the idea in this version).

For the actual adventure, I think a simple escort mission... getting civilians to an evacuation zone... would be the best option to go with. It is rather straight forward, but still leaves all sorts of side missions possible (like little Annie leaving her favorite doll behind and then going back to get her... leaving a distraught mother begging for one of the heroes to retrieve her). It is even possible that you will have the players searching for civilian survivors before getting them to a pre-arranged extraction point at a specific time... and they will have to figure out how to get the most people there before their ride leaves. Of course, if this is close to sunset, the increasing number of shadows may make telling who is a civilian and who is a zombie a little difficult.

And then there are the other Supers that once made the city their home... where are they? This of course will be discovered near the end when the Zombified Supers make their appearance (maybe a few weaker Z-Sups could appear on the way... their powers drastically weakened... with some more powerful ones as the group nears the "safe" zone... and finally a Mega Z-Super to challenge the players as they buy time for the civilians to escape... possibly even sacrificing their own escape to do the "Heroic" thing.

[Hunterrose]

I'm not sure how Convention One-Shots are normally played, but what if you took a cue from games like Shadow Hunters and/or Dead Winter - wherein each of the Heroes have some sort of win condition?
Like little Annie and her Teddy could be one such condition. But others could secretly be less altruistic.

[Glistam]

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions!

[Glistam]

I'm thinking another good way to run this as a one-shot is if the heroes have some way in which they can reverse the effect, and reaching that MacGuffin is the goal of the scenario rather than escape.

[Hunterrose]

That would also give them motivation to pursue non lethal solutions.

Like it's fun and all to take a baseball bat to the the heads of ahundred undead things, but if these are "people" that can potentially be rescued then...

[Axelmania]

I figure Negate Super Powers would work normally on them. If a person having that is too much, the PU2 super-invention rules could be used, have a Hardware invent it.

[Shadowknight]

To me it sounds and feels like it should be a campaign or at least a 2 yr multi adventure series. Let me state why

1. HU is a low powered game by comic book standards therefore you're going to have civilian casualties. Which makes it an excellent chance to roleplay the loss specially if it was lover, family member, friend, teacher, coworker, ect

2. Civilians are going to do stupid things, get lost, steal, run away from the group, scream and generally makes the heroes task harder which naturally lead back to number 1. Which will also lead to rebellion & conflict with the heroes specially if among the civilians their are leaders of industry, policemen, politician or armed forces members which civilians are predesposed to obey and respect even if they have no solution outside of they should lead because they're so-so.

3. Desperate times will lead to desperate choices and actions not only will the heroes or survivors have to deal with Zombies, but ALSO weather, lack of resources, doomsday nut-jobs, roving bandits & people who become criminals because they see no other way of surviving.

4. There's also the fact some towns or small cities won't allow them to travel their roads or come into their town due to fear some of the heroes or civilians might be contaminated. Even if they can prove they aren't contaminated, it's perfectly reasonable for the town might not share their resources with them simply because they don't have much to share with strangers

5. Finally what to say when they arrive in the suppose safe place it's hasn't been overrun by zombies and even if it hasn't the town, center or military encampment might be full to the brim with survivors and refuse to take more. Are the heroes ready to start a war and possibly kill civilians or other superheroes to force their group into town, or the military base? Knowing a large firefight will attract the zombies for miles around, probably destroy some of the barricades and walls that protect the place from zombie attacks and force the desperate & scared people of place to waste bullets and other resources to repel your attacks.

6. What happens when a big name Mega-hero group wants your group of heroes to join them right now to destroy the root cause or a major outbreak a 100 miles away? But if you tell them you want to deliver the civilians to a safe zone first. They tell you the opportunity will be lost forever if they don't attack now, therefore the Mega-heroes can't wait that long they tell you truthfully this is an opportunity of a lifetime and this can make or break the outbreak forever.

A. If you go with the group they have an over 90% chance of winning and stopping the zombie outbreak in it's tracks with most if not all of the Mega-heroes surviving. But if you do the civilians with you have an over 70% chance of dying from roving bandits, starving & rabid animals or stray zombies not caught in the final conflict.
B. On the other hand if you don't go with the famous Mega-Hero group their chance of success is reduced tremendously to less than 40%, and 90% of them will dies even if the GM is generous and say they succeed. There's also a good chance this will be the last and greatest chance of stopping the zombie outbreak before it take over the nation if not the world. Can the hero live with themselves knowing if they refuse possibly the greatest SH team in the nation will die and/or become zombies to plague the nation when they could have stopped it? Either choice will cause extensive roleplaying and discussion of the needs of the few over the needs of the many.

[Hunterrose]

Those suggestions are all great.

[Shadowknight]

Thank You. But as a GM you should plan ahead, even if the players don't know how the plague started you should and you also should have an idea on how to stop it. The cure could be biological, chemical, magic, psionic, some sort of radiation or combination of the above.

But you should have 1 also you should hint to your heroes that there's a cure out there, maybe in Antarctica, Amazon Jungle, Area 51, Pyramid of Gaza, Blood of an Ancient Vampire removed from the Vampire Heart while alive during the full moon, Ancient Sacred Buddhist chants located in NY Museum of Natural History(you'd need someone that can read ancient Tibetan; good luck finding such a person).

Whatever the cure is it would require research, Anthropology, Archeology, wilderness survival skills, climbing, tracking, speaking several languages, streetwise: weird, knowledge of history, land navigation, lore: magic arcane, folklore, monster lore, undead lore, holistic medicine. These skills are almost never chosen by PC who tend to concentrate on physical, technical and science skill. This will force the PC to be more rounded skill-wise and not create only combat monsters.

An interesting twist could be that there's a legend out there along with curing the zombie plague, whosoever performs the ritual within a 100 ft radius will have their youth & health renewed if they are older than 40 yrs old back to their early 20's and their natural lifespan tripled. The world is full of multi-billionaire who're in failing health or in their 60's and above who would destroy their own families to the last man to regain their youth & health. Given their are over 1800 billionaire in the world such a billionaire or several such billionaires could easily have several competing groups of mercenaries and create a situation similar to the movie (National Treasure) by hiring mercenaries SV or SH to get the cure for them.

Another interesting twist could be that there's a legend along with curing the zombie plague, that in whatever country the ritual is done that country will become or stay an economic and cultural superpower for the next 75 yrs but on the opposite side of the world to that country, a country gets economically and culturally conquered or destroyed. That could explain the rise and fall of the Egyptian, Babylonian, British, Spain, Israel, Rome, China, France, Aztec, Mayan countries & empires. In this scenario the competition would come from other nations super-teams, with several neighboring nations helping one another, get the materials and translationd until it time to create the cure and to stop a country from the opposite side of the world from getting the cure. An interesting twist would be US & Canada super-teams fighting against France & Congo super-team, China ,Taiwan, Russia super-team vs most of South America super-teams not because they hate each other but they would be fighting for the survival of their countries.

[Ice Dragon]

have done this kind of szenario before.

Started with a media campaine (small infos over time) - like influenca is rising, LifeMedTech (LMT) is providing a new vaccine, State Goverment is buying vaccine for population, first people are vaccineated ... while the player doing their normal hero thing. Suddenly the police is shooting more and more people (first zombies) - videos from bystanders, news camera teams , etx. are aired. After a short while people are beginning to protest and riots taking place (=> second wave of zombies, because people are killed during the riots). Zombie invasions started in River City, LMT's HQ and main production site. Heros are called to save people and held the National Guard to close of River City (had a lot bridges to the main land). Heros are ordered to inter River City to rescue VIPs, etc.

In the end, LTM a Deevil sponsered enterprise did release the "zombie virus" to stop some Demons they where fighting in River City.