zombie RPG d&d style mechanics

[undead lord]

are you gonna let your players be " themselves"?

As a long time rpg-er I've always found this really difficult to do.
And if your new to running/ games mastering I would probably avoid this approach. But then again if you like a challenge......

Have played AFMBE and really enjoyed it. Good GM, very atmospheric use of multimedia/laptop, and some really scary creatures.

[jimbal]

I have been talking with the players a little bit about some of the basic ideas for the game, pretty sure only one of them thinks an avatar game is a good idea, so i will likely not have to worry about that.

[jimbal]

Just an update: after much contemplation and reading over all of the different games suggested and others I stumbled on looking around, I believe me and my DM buddy are going to write our own rule book stealing the cool stuff from each game. I really like the fear table from All Flesh Must Be Eaten for example and will be converting it into a d20 version 4th save separate from the normal will save for fear effects. This should be fun and bring more depth to the saves since there will not be nearly as many other will saves without all the mind control effects and the like from traditional d&d fantasy games.

Another thing I think is cool will be circumstance bonuses/penalties(mostly penalties). This will be detrimental as it will mostly come into play if someone is trying to do first aid and be based on what supplies they have on their person or near enough to get to. For example the parties healer may get injured and the next one in line with the best heal check will try to save them but end up taking a penalty of say -2 to look through the healers stuff to get the supplies needed or a -4 penalty if the player doesnt have many first aid supplies on them. So people wont be able to just stack up every level with a rank in heal and be able to just roll any heal check even on a low roll unless they are all staying prepared. Also I will give players circumstance bonuses if they plan out say a raid on a walmart that is not overun but still occupied by zombies, say give them a plus to hit of +1 or 2 for the encounter. These kinds of bonuses will take the place of stuff like bards songs and other similar buffs. And of course negatives if they are surprised by a small group of the dead.

I am also toying with the idea of bonuses and penalties for alcohol and drug use. For example, if a character gets a little sauced up during some down time and is surprised they will get a bonus to the fear roll but take penalties to hit. The harder the drug the worse the penalties will be. So if one of my players decides to play a heroin addict and starts shooting up morphine all the time they will be a liability to the rest of the group.

Another idea I had since will saves will be mostly non existent was to make the players choose a normal fear like claustrophobia or fear of heights. If they find themselves in a situation that exposes them to that fear they will have to make a will save instead of a normal fear save because it will be more of a mental stress problem instead of an outright scared of the dead problem.

As far as classes go I am thinking of stealing the regular melee classes from pathfinder and basically building a couple healer classes from scratch. So we would still have fighters, rangers, rogues, gunslingers, and even paladins and barbarians(of course all will be modified some much more heavily than others). I am probably going to steal the smart hero setup from d20 modern classes and the advanced abilities and feats from that system for the medic/doctor type characters. The classes will likely be the hardest thing to convert and make playable in a world without magic. Also a lot of the feats from pathfinder will have to be modified and of course a lot that are straight dropped. If any one is familiar with combat maneuvers I am not even going to get into those unless I feel like I have a really good handle on the standard classes and feats.

Another thing I am stealing from All Flesh Must Be Eaten is the endurance system. I really want a way to make them stressed and not just let them decide that "we can just keep running all day" to make the players find more creative ways to escape overwhelming situations. There is also the essence system that I am toying around with.

As far as items and vehicles go, its pretty easy to steal all the stuff I want in game from systems like d20 modern. So hijack the weapons and armor and vehicles and first aid and food and water and on and on.

Lastly for now, I have been creating a customized character sheet just to get a feel for how things will look and feel to the player. So far its been good but the end result will likely be a new character sheet made from scratch where right now I have just been adjusting a D20 modern sheet to get a feel.

I know these posts have been long winded but I figure this is about the best place to get feedback for a game like this, if I was more ambitious I would actually stop stealing other stuff and make my own game completely from scratch and even try to publish it somewhere. I am lazy though, but if I do come up with an actual core rule book of some type I will be sure to share it here in case anyone is interested in checking it out and maybe even playing it.

[Rembrandt]

This sounds awesome. My d&d group has fizzled out but maybe something like this will spark their interest

[jimbal]

As soon as I have finished the ZM(zombie masters) Guide and the Players handbook I will post them here or somewhere where they can be downloaded. The two files will be the same except the zm guide will throw in all the non player info like the zombies and other monsters I may be building...It will be a while before this is ready though.

[jimbal]

It has been quite a while since I mentioned anything about the progress on this. Currently, life has been kickin me around pretty hard and I haven't had the time or the motivation to work on this. I have however compiled quite a bit of the source material and started creating a simple html file to make it easier to navigate than using pdf. I hate the pdf format for just about anything it is used for and refuse to put something together using that crappy format. The html file will function somewhat like http://www.d20pfsrd.com including a frame on the left to list everything with easy click to access so you are not constantly scrolling to go back to another section. So, with all the horrible things going on in the world, this is something I am still doing, just not nearly as quickly as I originally intended.