I've made some drastic changes to my campaign. Anyone else?

[Lord Death]

He's killed 2 survivors they've ran into and even delivered one of their heads on their "door step"...pretty disturbing and the group was really freaked out.

Love this alot

[MaxxSterling]

My experience is that you have to change tons about this game, to make it fun, enjoyable and ensure that characters live past the first encounter. I feel this is about the worst thing Palladium has put out. But it could have been soooo good. For shame. -I start my games on the day or two before D-Day. That way, if you have good players and not 99% of the fools and trolls around these days, they can appreciate the anticipation when a neighbor or two vanishes and the weird new stories come in and they almost hit the drifter (zombie) on the way home from work... Good times, bad game.

[Ravenwing]

I've added magic to my game, sort of like a chaos earth thing really. I dropped the AR down to 10, because I'm more of a Zombie movie fan where the protagonist are blowing zombies heads off left and right. No special head shot rules, we just use the standard Called Shot rules from all PB games.

The players themselves are Ordinary people. We started two weeks before the outbreak. No one knows the how or why yet. But we're really playing up the Death Cults and such. Death Priests come in three flavors. The most common is the run of the mill Death preist from the Dead Reign book, thats what most cultists are. The second is like a Dark Priest from PF, the last is a hardcore necromancer.

Ley Lines are everywhere, and my group, whose playing a group of gamers( Cuz' as everyone knows, only gamers will survive the Zombie A' We've been playing games about surviving it for years.) they started in a little town, but quickly left. They quickly realized that motorcycles are a death sentence, and have went for some National Guard Hummers. We're playing it low level magic, but only the antagonists have it so far. We've also came up with about a dozen variations on Zombies for it as well.

[Ravenwing]

I have one player, whose character is loosely based on himself. He's a pretty avid occult student in his spare time, so we introduced a few extra lore skills, like a general occult, and then specialized ones like Wicca lore, or Voodoo, or what not. Regardless, he's trying to learn the Magic lore skill, which we're using in a kind of CoC way. At a certain percentage( Base is 0%) you have a chance to learn spells. So far he's gotten his characters lore skill up to thirty five, and he almost( As in missed his roll by one) learned a spell by watching a necromancer cast one on the group. He learned something, but we haven't decided what yet, but regardless it won't be as expected. The magic lore skill doesn't increase with experience level, only by experiencing magic cast, study, or in the alternative studying under a mage can you raise it. Kinda like the mythos skill in CoC.

We aren't using the Half-living from the book, the Death cults are however actively working to create a half living, through a serious of experiments. Some are arcane, others scientific, and all utterly horrible. For example the group discovered a warehouse where women were being force bred with zombies. They haven't pieced out how this was happening, they were only able to save three of the ninety women in the place, and the three are catatonic right now.

The Death cult is a lot more populous in the world, we have one in ten people being a part of it. As a funny side note, and utter geekdom, we have KS as the head of the Death Cult in North America, he runs the cult out of his office at Palladium. We just thought it was funny, like our own version of Rifter 9 1/2.

But as to the cults themselves, the average cultist has so far( As they've encountered at anyrate.) been a fiendish kind of person. Necrophilia, megalomaniac, egomaniac, you name it, that's what they've found so far. I'm waiting to show them the number of people that joined the cult, desperate for survival, not out of some twisted sense. I'm an old WW and CoC player, so the evil cult thing is pretty easy for me to run. We're not using the Retro-Savages at all, and the Reapers are actually pretty bad people. Basically think Hell's Angels movies, or maybe the Reavers from Serenity, that's what the Reapers are in my games.

The Zombies are all pretty life like in it so far. They're trying to get through St. Louis right now, only to discover that theres several ley lines and nexus points that are active at night. The Zombies gather on these after sunset and feast, thus regenerating and returning to full points. During the day the lines disappear and such, and the Zombies go hunting.

As to new zombies, we've introduced two so far that the group hates. Others are planned and in the works, but they don't know about them yet.

The first is called a Banshee, always female. They have sonic scream that can bend steel, so long as they have adequate PPE in their systems. They can store it, up to three times their PE attribute at a time. So long as they have it, like all zombies they don't rot. Any amount over this restores or heals them. Their as intelligent as they were in life( No ability or skill lost, plus they gain skills as they go on.) It was kind of inspired by some folk lore. So the Banshee's are all deeply depressed. They act in one of two ways, either they feel bad about the things they've done, and try to help people( These are Scrupulous aligned.) Or they hate and blame the living for their condition( Diabolic.)

The second one the groups encountered is similiar, we call these Vampyres. Intelligent, and such, but all are your typical evil zombie aligned. They can't just absorb PPE from people( Although Ley lines and Nexus are fine.) They have to drink blood to absorb it. Unlike other zombies, they take PPE as they drain you, so you don't have to die for them to absorb the PPE. If you die, you come back as one of these, under the control of the one that killed you.

Thats about all I can think of right now, if you wanna hear more just let me know.

[Silveressa]

Let's see, here's the *short* list:

Biggest change:
Converted the game to Cortex Rules.

How it worked out:
In a word: Flawless. The game went from slow monotonous combat and continual house ruling to fast cinematic action. (unfortunately I can't post such rules publicly due to palladiums TOS)

Before this however I used the following changes to palladiums rules to make the setting playable, and more enjoyable to my players:

-Zombies see life energy
I cut this out entirely as it let them pretty much have homing radar even when characters tried to set up distractions or hide in the sewers etc. Instead I gave them some other abilities (see below)

-Zombie keen senses

To make zombies still be a threat and find their targets I jacked up their sense of hearing to a few levels above a dogs. This lets them hear the moans of other zombies, gunshots, vehicles, screams etc.. over a wide distance. If it’s quiet enough and very little surrounding cover they may also be able to hear a persons breathing or heart beat within a short (10') range.

I let them keep a limited (blurry) form of vision keying mostly off of movement rather then individual pattern recognition so they could still see people moving about in their los (line of sight) and at night a limited version of thermal vision.

For smell I figured they had little if any given their rotting and stink anyway so didn’t bother with it.

How it worked out:
Once my players figured out the zombies keyed off sound they quickly got creative with audible distractions (like a stereo cranked up and left on a rooftop) to make a good temporary distraction, (they also used a sling shot and bag of marbles.) So far this change has worked out really well and has made zombies a tenacious threat without making them unshakeable blood hounds.


-Super Strength And Physical Endurance

By the rules as written it’s supposed to be around x2 of their strength as a human, so a human with a average p.s of 10 would be 20 and a football liner backer with a P.Sof 17-18 would be 34-36! In play I found this basically this meant the typical zombie could easily thump an average person and a "strong zombie" able to punch a reinforced door off it's hinges/rip a car door off in seconds, with a half dozen able to flip a car like nothing.

Obviously this isn’t balanced or fun in a game where zombies are the most common foe, so I ditched this part, and gave zombies a +5 to whatever their P.S was before the zombified. This made the undead a little stronger then normal, and still nasty, but not the undead terminators palladium seemed to think they should be.

Physical Endurance was nearly the same way, with the "Joe/Jane Average" zombie having an insane amount compared to how little palladium firearms did. I used the same fix for strength and gave them a +5 to P.E.

How it worked out:
Pretty near perfect, the zombies had enough muscle to be a threat, especially in groups, but not so much they were ridiculously strong. In melee combat most characters could handle a pair of zombies without much difficulty, and it kept the cinematic feeling I was going for quite well.


-Zombie natural A.R of 14-15:

By default, unless you roll 14-15+ on a d20 the zombies takes no damage from the attack. This I thought was beyond unrealistic. If you shoot a zombie with a shotgun it’s going to get torn up, even if you roll an 11 to hit them. So I pretty much nixed the natural armor rating entirely. Instead I gave them a different kind of armor (see below)

-Zombie trauma armor

What I did was give zombies a the ability to ignore 1/2 the damage from certain types of weapons, specifically letting them absorb 1/2 the damage of blunt or normal firearms (pistols, rifles, etc..) unless it’s to the head.

This way one can wail on a zombie with a crow bar, or unload a pistol into them and still do damage, just not nearly as much as they might expect. The 1/2 damage that was ignored I treated as superficial physical damage to the body. (bloody bullet holes, ugly bruises, etc..) the other half 1/2 being actual damage I considered broken bones, dislocated limbs, significant muscle damage etc.. stuff that would physically impede the zombies ability to function.

Chopping and cutting weapons, (swords, axes, scythes etc..) buckshot, and flechette rounds I ruled were able to damage the body severe enough to just do full damage and bypass the zombies "trauma armor" completely.

Regardless of the damage inflicted to the zombies body however, until they cut off the head or otherwise destroyed the brain it would still attempt to keep attacking, even if it had to drag its limbless body across the floor by its chin.

How it worked out:

At first it seemed the zombies were a bit over powered in melee combat, until the players adjusted their tactics and began to try for more difficult head shots, or target the legs to limit the zombies mobility. After a little adjustment they quickly got used to the new way of zombie combat and things flowed faster and more exciting, the game felt more like a resident evil movie then helpless people vs. the wall of invincible undead they used to be.

Firearms

The damage is pathetic for the firearms, as written, and the lengthy page of rules for close up shots etc were dragging down the game so I made some changes here too.

The roll to strike on the d20 was added into the damage roll in addition to xdx rolled for damage. Suddenly a gun was deadly once more, and getting a solid hit (ex, a 17) hurt more then getting a 8 to hit the enemy.

How it worked out:
Much better, players respected firearms rather then laughing at .9mm handguns they treated them as the potentially lethal weapons they were supposed to be. Gun vs. zombie now was effective rather then laughable. (Before this one player consistently did more damage hitting the zombies with the but of their shotgun then they did by shooting them with it.)

[Ravenwing]

The Zombies increased strength never bothered my much, or their senses ( See life force etc.)

Just their super insane AR. Although I can understand why it was so high, mostly just knock it down some and such.


OH! one gripe about thw weapons section though (Besides the arrow thing.) is the swords. Longswords aren't always stabbing weapons. In fact as far as I know, they were designed to hack at a guy, not stab him.

[Cybermancer]

I've made a few changes for a game I just started last week.

1. No AR for zombies.

2. No 'natural 17' to hit the head. It's a called shot done at a -3. If you miss, you have a 50% chance of missing altogether, otherwise it's a hit to the main body.

3. SDC for all areas except the head is doubled.

4. No reduced damage for any type of attack or weapon.

5. There are only two types of zombies. Crawlers, which are basically the same as written in the book (as adjusted by my other rules) and fast zombies. Both types eat their victims. They don't necessarily try to kill them first.

6. No PPE mechanic at all. The zombies have vision, hearing and smell. Eliminate those senses and it's possible to hide from them.

7. The zombies aren't the dead. They're infected humans who feel only rage and hunger. All higher brain functions gone. They need protien to fuel their rage. They burn out and die (forever) if they don't have protien to eat. This means that eventually, the 'infected' will die out. At which point it becomes a pure survival game.

8. If bitten and not eaten, a human is infected. They have a week before symptoms show. Then another week of flu like symptoms. Then it's all, "I'm angry, nom-nom!"

9. 1 in a 1000 humans are immune (after the week of flu symptoms, they just get better). Otherwise, no cure is possible. A vaccination is however, possible (but doesn't currently exist).

10. No retro savages or death cults.

11. Other humans are the biggest threat and the biggest resource.

12. No Reavers.

The game starts out with the infected being the main concern but survival and conflict with other survivors is what the game is ultimately about, especially as the infected begin to die out.

Inspiration is coming from sources such as 'The Colony'.

[Ravenwing]

sounds like 28days/weeks Later. Not that thats bad, but thats what it reminds me of.

[Cybermancer]

sounds like 28days/weeks Later. Not that thats bad, but thats what it reminds me of.

28 Days Later is one of the few "Zombie" movies I liked. Mostly because it wasn't about the zombies. 28 Weeks Later pretty much ruined it by making it about the Zombies and less about the survivors.

So naturally it contributed to some of my ideas. Unlike 28 Days however, this outbreak isn't confined to one area but is a pandemic that infects pretty much the entire planet. I know 28 Weeks Later expanded the infection by the end of the movie but I'd long stopped caring about the franchise by the time the credits ran on that one.

Zombieland probably had it's fair share of contribution. As well as Army of Darkness. At least until the Zombies are finally gone and we can get down to the nitty gritty of the game.

[Ravenwing]

sounds like 28days/weeks Later. Not that thats bad, but thats what it reminds me of.

28 Days Later is one of the few "Zombie" movies I liked. Mostly because it wasn't about the zombies. 28 Weeks Later pretty much ruined it by making it about the Zombies and less about the survivors.

So naturally it contributed to some of my ideas. Unlike 28 Days however, this outbreak isn't confined to one area but is a pandemic that infects pretty much the entire planet. I know 28 Weeks Later expanded the infection by the end of the movie but I'd long stopped caring about the franchise by the time the credits ran on that one.

Zombieland probably had it's fair share of contribution. As well as Army of Darkness. At least until the Zombies are finally gone and we can get down to the nitty gritty of the game.

Lol. Ironically I slept through most of 28 days later. But I love 28 weeks, different strokes for different folks I supposes.