February 27

Chopping Maul

One of my guilty pleasures is watching B movies and I’ve had a lot of enjoyment from them and I can’t help sometimes thinking if I could use the film as an inspiration for a game.

Recently I got hold of Chopping Mall a film about a mall that employs robots as night time security. This sparked my creative urge and I wondered what a mall patrolled by robots would look like in a zombie apocalypse scenario.

Adventure seeds.

Empty and patrolled.

In this scenario the mall is controlled by a small group of individuals who have overcome the malls defences before being able to reprogram the massive mainframe computer that governs everything.  The security doors are permanently locked and the robots patrol their designated areas but leave the survivors alone while they have their lanyards and identity cards on them.

This means the building is very much abandoned with only the robots moving at night.

The dead walk

The lower level still has the exterior doors locked against intrusion but there are a few dozen zombies wandering the lower level, the upper levels have the robots constantly on patrol; they are able to go down in the lifts when required and the dead leave them along since they aren’t a source of food.  There are still humans living here but they don’t go down to the ground level unless it is an emergency.

Everything is under control

In this scenario the outer doors are left unlocked during the day and the robots bring zombies up to the top floor which has been converted into a lab.  Here experiments are performed on the dead, including implanting them and turning them into cyberzombies and hooked directly into the mainframe.

These cyberzombies are free to patrol the mall and also venture outside as a robotic drone to gather whatever the controller needs from them.

 

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Category: All Flesh Must Be Eaten, horror, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
February 26

Kickstarter – Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion for Call of Cthulhu

One game I have enjoyed over the years is the Call of Cthulhu, partly because it is a game of investigation but mainly the era of the roaring 20s.  It even made number  in my top ten game list.

Over the years Chaosium have released numerous adventures and globe trotting campaigns including the spectacular Masks of Nyarlathotep. The adventure is very well written with all the important clues indexed and referenced for ease of play by the busy GM, the only downside is that there appears to be material missing; perhaps things man was not meant to know that didn’t make the cut.

A number of years ago, I saw that there was going to be a companion written for this game and released as one of the Monograph line that Chaosium were printing; for one reason or another it never appeared until the unfinished edition was released over at the Yog-Sothoth forums.  Now they plan on finally polishing the document and releasing it to the general public (no relation 🙂 ) .

Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion for Call of Cthulhu

An essential reference to a great RPG campaign-The Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion. Information, advice & adventures in 1 huge volume!

The project runs until 10th March so you still have time to get in on it.

Category: horror, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
January 10

Bundle of Holding – Torg

When I was writing my top 10 list of games I mentioned the excellent cross-genre game Torg.

Now for a limited time you can get a selection of Torg books including the players guide which greatly expands upon character creation and the revised edition of Torg from the good people at Bundle of holding

So if you have ever wondered what is so good about this game you can pick them up for a steal.

Category: Cyberpunk, fantasy, horror, pulp, sf, supers, western | LEAVE A COMMENT
December 27

RPG Blog Carnival December 2014 – With A Twist

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This month the Campaign Mastery blog plays host http://www.campaignmastery.com/blog/creeps-up-behind-you/ With A Twist .

Sometimes you need to do something with the characters to keep the players on their toes and throw them an unexpected surprise or two.  I may have perpetrated a bait and switch in my time and this is by far one of my favourite techniques to challenge both the players and myself as I have to be prepared for the results of my actions.  I don’t do this all the time otherwise it would lose its impact and the players would come to expect it so it would no longer be With A Twist but rather mundane and the norm.

Take the classic damsel in distress, what if the damsel is really an evil character who has charmed or cajoled a dragon into taking her hostage and what if she wants to inveigle herself into a position of power?  By having a group of misguided adventurers rescue her she can achieve these goals or some other nefarious plot?

How about an adventure in the fabulous Dream Park or some other similar reality where holographic recreation is an accepted pastime.  Having the characters enter a scenario before having it glitch and replaced with an entirely different adventure can cause some people to relish the challenge but you may have a player cry foul and yell for the exit so that they can play something they want to.

I have mentioned before about doing a similar thing with Twilight 2000 and All Flesh Must Be Eaten and this is still an idea I would like to explore with the right group of people.  Until then I shall keep working away at my current ideas until something comes of it.

 

 

Category: All Flesh Must Be Eaten, horror, RPG | 1 Comment on RPG Blog Carnival December 2014 – With A Twist
November 7

Top 10 rpg list: Number 1 – Over the Edge

Mandatory Disclaimer

The GM should read the following statement before and after every session of Over the Edge.

“All references to vices and to the supernatural contained in this game are for entertainment purposes only. Over the Edge™ does not promote satanism, belief in magic, drug use, violence, sexual deviation, body piercing, cynical attitudes toward the government, freedom of expression, or any other action or belief not condoned by the authorities.”

Over the Edge is probably one of the most unusual in my collection and unlike some of the other top ten entries I can’t place where I first heard about it, which is unusual for me.  I do know exactly where I bought it from; the Virgin games store in Central London, I’m not saying I have a photographic memory but I left the price tag on it.  Since it was a game I did try to play with some of the members of the Critical Miss gaming society when I bought it I can hazard a guess that it was about 1992 when I purchased it.

I was amazed by how free form character creation was, no fixed attributes rather you defined your own traits; this caused a little difficultly among the group as this was a radical idea and we didn’t know how to proceed.  Not so much a radical idea these days as other indie games have taken to going down the route of allowing you to define your own traits.

The System.

You need nothing more than a few d6 to accomplish your task, either against a fixed difficulty or in the case of an opposed roll the highest number wins.

The Background.

This was the main draw for me, the wonderfully detailed island setting of Al Amarja, a place of cults, cultists, conspiracies, fringe powers, magic, the post office and other things man was not meant to know or understand.  I’d love to write about the rich tapestry to play with but I don’t want to spoil it for any potential players that have yet to explore the vivid game world or experience the weird and unusual.  I know you can certainly search for other pages relating to the background but you’re not going to find anything here.

One idea I am still toying with is to get a game up and going but have the island adopt the swinging 60s setting of British culture; with all the classic tropes thrown in for good measure.  Maybe some sort of Avengers style vibe mixed with Prisoner, Danger Man and Smiley’s people?

In Play.

In the end I got one or two evenings play out of the book.  The party had gathered at the Al Amarja airport and was walking through the depature lounge when I was just describing the general goings on including an announcement over the tannoy for Mr. Jones to pick up the white courtesy phone; I was unprepared for what happened when one of the group picked up the white phone and introduced himself as Mr. Jones.  If at that time I had been more of an experienced GM I could have certainly run with it and perhaps sent the players off into the seedier side of the island but I panicked and the outcome was a little predictable and the party went back to leaving the airport.

Conclusion.

I’d certainly recommend going and finding a copy of this almost forgotten gem just for the weirdness of it, the aforementioned background and the vast open ended sandbox nature.

 

Over The Edge can be found here at the home page of Atlas Games

Category: horror, Modern, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 22

Twilight 2000 Must Be Eaten

Or All Flesh 2000 🙂

While looking for the pdfs of Dark Conspiracy I got from the Bundle of Holding I came across the pdfs of Twilight 2000 I purchased a little while ago.  I bought them with the intention of running it with the group as I thought it may make a change of pace from what we’d being doing beforehand.

Then I remembered what happened the last time we’d try to play it.  Jonny Nexus had bought two copies of the first edition Twilight 2000 reprint volume and cut one up as a players guide for us to use and one copy for himself.  We proceeded through character creation and my PC was abysmal to say the least, he failed to make any of the front line roles and had to settle for being a mechanic in a support function. We ran through the initial encounter and had started on finding out about Operation Reboot when the game took an unexpected turn for the worst.

I managed to identify the person we were looking for as Jonny had given us his photo from the adventure and left his real name on it and not the alias; which didn’t help; things went from bad to worse after that and we lost interest in this game and it was forgotten about; until Jonny moved.

Rather than shifting stuff he no longer wanted he asked us if there was stuff he had that we wanted and after pawing through his stuff I found the Twilight 2000 books, maps of Poland he’d bought, figures and dice.

With all this stuff in hand and the recently found pdfs I wondered about spinning the game slightly.  I was thinking of using the background material I had for Twilight 2000 and combining it with All Flesh Must Be Eaten, so Operation Reboot would have dealt with animating the fallen soldiers and having them fight on.

System vs system.

I propose to use Unisystem to drive things, perhaps with the Band of Zombies book to handle some of the crunchier side.  I’m also trying to decide whether or not to use a fixed amount of cash for the players to acquire their starting gear or a package system found in Spycraft or even to allow them to have an amount of equipment based upon their encumbrance thresholds which is how Twilight 2013 does it.

I may not be able to run this with one of the groups but it never hurts to have an idea or two on the back-burner.

Which gear system do you think I should use?

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Category: All Flesh Must Be Eaten, horror | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 12

Dark Conspiracy fanzines

One area that Dark Conspiracy shone was the free fan created resources for it.  There were two free downloadable ezines available to read.

Demonground.

DEMONGROUND: Reflections of a Darker Future is a fanzine dedicated to supporting the genre of Modern Horror in roleplaying games.

The first nine issues were dedicated to Dark Conspiracy and later issues would cover a broader range of horror games.  Demonground seems to have stopped publishing over a decade ago.

Protodimension

Protodimension Magazine is a fanzine devoted to the wonderfully creative world of conspiracy horror role playing. It’s about the worlds.

This is a spiritual successor to Demonground and carries on the work laid down by it.

There is also one final area of support, a fan based website :http://darkconspiracytherpg.info/

 

Category: Cyberpunk, horror, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 10

Top 10 rpg list Number 2 – honourable mention

After publishing the post about Top 10 rpg list: Number 2 – Call of Cthulhu I realised I had forgotten the honourable mention, so rather than edit the original post I present to you a bonus post:

Honourable mention:

Dark Conspiracy

I had previously mentioned this game twice before, most notably in the #RPGaDAY post http://www.generaltangent.com/blog/2014/08/28/rpgaday-day-28-scariest-game-youve-played/ .

I have often regarded this as a forgotten classic of the day, what I loved was the background.  This was a world teetering on the brink of collapse; ecologically ruined areas, society divided into a class structure of the have and have nots.  Cities had effectively vanished and controlled by the corporations.  In some ways it is a bit like Cyberpunk for the attitude but the rest of the game exudes a 1930s depression era setting.  Technology has stagnated and even a simple thing like a telephone is the purview of the idle rich.

The game has gone through three editions with the first edition being the one that I purchased, a gorgeous black and white softcover book with some fantastic colour cover art.  Stylistically this is where I think the game shines; if you have a world that has become black and white then using a monochrome book does set the tone.  After GDW closed their doors, the game was licensed for a second edition which tidied up a lot of the information scattered in the first edition books and divided it into two players guides and two games-master guides.  The Master edition of the players and GMs books were slightly longer and had extra material.

There is currently a third edition published by 3Hombres Games I have as yet to give it a good read.

Character creation.

The first and second editions of the game used the same system that was derived from Twilight 2000 Second edition and while clunky in places it did give you an idea of your characters background.  Shortly after first edition appeared so did a GM screen with a booklet called the PC Booster kit and this gave you expanded backgrounds and migrated the game to the D20 system which was being used by Twilight 2000 v2 .  The booster kit also gave more information on the social classes so you could play the ultra rich nomenklatura, the middle class Mike or the lower class prole or if you desired it the rogue android.

Careers.

There were a wide range of occupations your character could take including the Cyborg Escapee, Doctor, college student, plus a bunch of military types imported from Twilight 2000.

Background.

Apart from what I mentioned above, there is a little more to the background that needs mentioning.  Humanity wasn’t alone; there were alien races that were working to subjugate mankind, entities from parallel dimensions bent on global domination and dark beings from Earth’s past.

Lester Smith also had a wry sense of humour when he wrote the book, there are a few Easter eggs to look out for, including the sunglasses that are popular among monster hunters.

Combat.

This section was also taken from Twilight 2000 and in the first d10 version of the game had an interesting rule for shotguns, you rolled a number of six sided dice and you got a hit for each 6 that came up.

Adventures.

There were a few published and they weren’t bad but a couple of misunderstandings did arise, the curse of American English I suppose 🙂

If you get the chance to pick this game up its worth a look but the system may seem very dated.

Category: Cyberpunk, horror, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 5

Zombie infection spread table for Savage Worlds

Recently someone asked me if I had a “Zombie infection spread table for savage world” and I have to admit that I didn’t, although a smarter person than me has already created a mathematical formula for it:

This equation could spell your doom: (bN)(S/N)Z = bSZ. That is, if you ever found yourself in the midst of a zombie pandemic.

That’s because the calculation describes the rate of zombie transmission, from one walking dead individual to many, according to its creators, Robert J. Smith?, a mathematics professor at the University of Ottawa who spells his name with a “?” at the end, and his students. Smith’s work has inspired other researchers to create zombie mathematical models, which will be published with Smith’s work in the upcoming book, “Mathematical Modeling of Zombies” (University of Ottawa Press, 2014).

http://news.yahoo.com/surviving-zombie-apocalypse-just-math-115916068.html

The person never asked me why they wanted such a detailed model.

I wouldn’t worry about such a detail as with most survival games I’d pluck a rough figure out of the air and use that to calculate the number of human survivors in an area.  For an urban environment I’d say 5% to 10% of the population have survived and go as high as 33% for wilderness areas.

I’ve always felt that the point of a good zombie apocalypse fiction; be it game, book or movie is to have fun and see how long you can survive before you succumb to the inevitable.

If you have any further questions, please comment or contact me and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Have fun and try to stay away from the hordes 🙂

Category: All Flesh Must Be Eaten, horror | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 4

October 2014 Blog Carnival: Things that go bump in the night

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An explanation.

In the previous post I described something that is mostly true, cobbled together from my childhood and sprinkled with a little artistic licence.  If I had told it straight it would have been an insight into nothing more than my psyche, a little embellishment though added the extra spice to it.

In case you’re wondering I did have that poster and it did freak me out each and every night it hung on my wall and it did eventually get replaced.

If you want to scare your players though, you do need to take something very familiar to them and spin it slightly; Hollywood has made fortunes featuring  haunted; houses, bottles, dolls, paintings, boxes and nightmares from beyond.  Heck someone made money from nothing more than two people in a house recording themselves on video cameras.

So a haunted poster is a great idea to freak your players out with; brought to life by the wishes and dreams of a small child, perhaps even a small demonic child 🙂 .  You could even say that the poster is a portal between two worlds and that when the stars are right; correct ritual performed in front of it or even certain times of the year, those trapped within the poster are free to wreak havoc upon the living.

There is an excellent scenario for Call of Cthulhu in a haunted house which works because of the set-up; it may or may not be haunted, that’s up to the Keeper to decide.

 

 

Category: horror | 1 Comment on October 2014 Blog Carnival: Things that go bump in the night