My Year of the Zombie game ran last Tuesday. The group decided to break out from the Magic Kingdom’s underground utilidors and try to find more survivors at nearby Epcot. They then proceeded to go above ground and play tag with the undead in a park full of tens of thousands of zombies.

I always enjoy watching what the players decide to do, especially when a plan collapses. Last session was no exception. I would like to think we’re just playing a game, but a part of me believes that the campaign amplifies normal human responses. Perhaps YOTZ may be used as a model in a real disaster situation, the presence of animated corpses notwithstanding.
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I use Google Calendar to keep of all types of shit, including my Year of the Zombie campaign. I use GC to invite the other players to each session — this allows me to see who’s able to play and who isn’t. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the way of contact list integration with Gmail. While I an email group entitle “YOTZ” with the five other players, I wasn’t able to type in “YOTZ” as a contact in Google Calendar. Today I had just finished typing in each player’s email address when I noticed a “choose from contacts” link near the invitee entry textarea. I clicked the link, and lo and behold was a popup panel with a fully-integrated Gmail contact list — including groups! Yay, it’s about fucking time, Google Calendar. :)

It’s been a little over seven months since I re-started my Year of the Zombie campaign. Year of the Zombie is a D20 Modern ruleset put out by UKG Publishing. With the help of Fantasy Grounds and Skype six of us have been playing on and off since the early part of November 2006. I thought I’d post a little recap on where the campaign is right now, but mostly about what it has been like to run a online zombie game, and where I think things are headed for the rest of the year. Gibberish gets a lot of search results for various zombie things, so this information might help others start games of their own.
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Our virtual Year of the Zombie game takes off again tonight after nearly a month’s hiatus due to the holiday. Unfortunately we lost one of our regulars when we shifted play from Tuesdays to Wednesdays — don’t worry Markie, I’ll take good care of you. So far the group has fought down to the lowest deck of the ship, all the way back to the very top, and are now poised to retake control of the bridge with the stoic Italian captain and the rest of his Nepalese ex-special forces security detail.

If you’re interested in some of the game mechanics and gameplay discussion, check out our group’s Year of the Zombie forum. And if you’re interested in playing, the group needs one more …. ;)

I started a forum for our zombie RPG game. You have to be registered with the forum to view the forum, and you must be approved before you can post. This will allow the participants (who will all be playing remotely) a chance to hash out details and discuss the campaign. I don’t expect it to be terribly active, but if anyone is on the fence about joining or just wants to peek through a hole in the fence, you are welcome to drop by.

Okay, I got some good feedback in the zombie rpg v2.0 thread, and I am willing to try a remote game via the Internet. Thanks to some research and playtesting, we’ve decided on using the Fantasy Grounds virtual table top gaming software platform. It allows for all sorts of neat stuff, and comes with the AD&D 3.5 D20 ruleset. Registered users can download the D20 Modern rules for free. I’m leaning towards using D20M for the zombie campaign, mostly because my Year of the Zombie source material is also D20M.

Fantasy Grounds allows a lot of flexibility. Not fond of the D20 rules? You can import other rulesets, or write your own. You can also import any image in JPG or PNG format as a map, create custom “tokens” that represent characters, monsters, or items. It is possible (and expected) to write backstory and item descriptions that can be shared with the players.

And speaking of sharing source material: any ruleset material that is part of the module (say the D20M sourcebook) is shared with the entire gaming party. No more having to tote around fifty pounds of RPG books, or having to buy them in the first place. The GM makes sure the appropriate source material is in the module before starting, and the content is downloaded to the players before the gaming session starts.

Fantasy Grounds runs $35 for the GM license, and $19.95 for a player license. However, you can get a discount for multiple copies. The GM client and four player clients is $79, or a savings of $36 on single-unit pricing. If we get five folks together, we can split it to $16 each, which is pretty damn cheap considering that some people drive from Maryland to play now. There is a free demo you can download, but the demo is limited to two clients in a networked game, the AD&D ruleset, and an non-editable starter adventure.

We plan on using Skype to do voice chatting, leaving the built-in Fantasy Grounds text chat interface for player-to-GM conversations.

The reason I bring this all up is that we already have two people who want to play, with two more possibles. I’d like to buy a stack of licenses so I can start building the campaign with the GM tools. I’d like the limit the game to six people maximum, including me. I would like to play at least once every two weeks to start. I’m not sure how long the gaming sessions would last, but I reckon four hours or less. We can work out more details once we have an idea of who wants to play.

Interested? Send me an email or drop a comment in below.

Some of you have been following my zombie rpg game as “innocent bystanders,” and as such I wanted to give you an update on our little group, who is tucked away in a a sporting goods store while the rest of the world is afire.

We didn’t play, but I did send out an email to my player group with character sketches of the other occupants in the sporting goods store. If you’re interested, read on, otherwise I’ll cut this post short for you:

Todd Carlyle, 47 year old white male
Todd was the sporting goods store’s manager. He is calm in both voice and demeanor. On the very rare occasion that he becomes frustrated, Todd’s voice lowers and he speaks more slowly. He is the shortest person in the store and has sports a (previously) nicely groomed brown shoulder-length mullet.

Tom Smith, 50 year old white male
Tom was a semi-pro golfer and ambulance chaser. When you first meet him he has a small bit of neck fat and a round, hard belly. He is best described as “puffy,” his college wrestling body long gone soft from sitting at his desk all day. Tom was a three pack a day smoker before he came into the store, and now flicks his stainless steel zippo open and closed as a nervous habit.

Karly Kotter, 17 year old white female
Karly was working the cash register when the first Risen pushed open the front door. The bloody trucker bit Karly’s high school classmate Michelle in the shoulder before Todd killed the man with an Easton aluminum bat. Karly is a senior on the high school lacrosse team and takes a few seconds to reply to any questioning.

Tonya St. James, 36 year old white female
Soccer mom of three, divorcee, and retired executive, Tonya St. James was picking up cleats for her youngest daughter Amanda when her cell phone rang. It was Amanda, screaming that a “bad man” had followed her home from school and tried to touch her in naughty places. Amanda kicked him and he bit her, and now the bad man and his friend were pounding on the door. Before Tonya could get to her car, the parking lot was full of Bad Men, and she hasn’t been able to reach her daughters ever since.

Ed Stuart, 32 year old black male
Plumber, father, flag football coach, in no particular order. Ed and his son Charlie were shopping at the sporting goods store in preparation for deer season when the Risen attacked cashier Michelle early during the first day of the outbreak. Ed helped Todd Carlyle fend off the first of many attackers. A former college running back, Ed is as comfortable throwing a punch as he is turning his pipe wrench.

Charlie Stuart, 8 year old black male
Eager to go out with his father Ed on their first deer hunt, Charlie didn’t expect to be the one being hunted. Charlie hid under the camouflage clothing 4-way displays while his father battled with the Risen. Charlie doesn’t understand why he and his father can’t go home, or why he can’t talk with his mommy. He fidgets a bit, and mentions that he gets that way if he doesn’t take his “vitamins.”

Peter Fuller, 52 year old white male
A former beat cop of Chicago, Peter Fuller has a thousand yard stare and smells vaguely of gin. He was carrying his old service revolver when the Risen came through, and he bought the rest of the store occupants enough time to arm themselves from the hunting department. Peter is becoming irritable as time goes on, and keeps trying to talk Todd into letting him go out “for supplies.” He has his revolver stuffed in the front of his light blue pleated pants, and keeps massaging the grip absently.

Also, if anyone of you are interested in being guest players, you are more than welcome to come down and play. Just let me know so we can work you in ahead of time :) There’s crash space for you too, as long as you don’t mind two dogs running around all over the place!

After surviving an infested yoga center, science building, and hospital, the group of folks playing my Year of the Zombie campaign have made it to a sporting goods store. Already populated by a handful of survivors, the sporting goods store seems like the perfect place to hole up. Ammunition, camping food/equipment, few points of entry, and a retail store-type metal gate that’s locked and secured, keeping the zombies from getting inside.

For now, the group has decided (with the original occupants of the store) to not let any other people in. For one, it’s dangerous. There are a lot of infected people outside the sporting goods store now, and opening the door for even thirty seconds would put the occupants at risk of a breakthrough. Secondly, there’s a finite amount of resources in the building, and the more people that enter the compound the more the group has to divide up the resources.

The group is barricaded in and stocked up pretty well. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the television in the break room is reporting that the US has nuked Iran in retaliation for the dirty bombs detonated in several US cities. That, in turn, has pissed off North Korea and China as well as some of the other members of the UN. Local safety stations, like the hospital, have been overrun by people turned mad by the as-yet undetermined chemical agent. Fort Bragg, the closest military facility to the group, has been declared off limits to the citizenry, and all approaching it will be shot on sight.

And then there’s the whole concept of being cooped up in a store with nowhere to go with a bunch of strangers. I think this is going to test the role-playing skills of the group, but will definitely represent an important stage of things to come. Eventually, the group will make it past the immediate danger of the zombie infestation. They will have to deal not only with a world populated by the undead, but with the human survivors as well.

Lady Jaye, Cleopatra, Bond and I played our second session of Year of the Zombie this Saturday. We got a late start but still had a great time, especially considering I’d taken the red eye from San Fran and was operating on about three hours of sleep plus a nap.

At any rate, there were (again) no player character casualties, and everyone did a great job of keeping the pace of the game going. Not a whole lot of heel-dragging during the decision making, which helped feed the “omg wtf is going on keep moving!” atmosphere. Good stuff.

My favorite highlights include: Lady Jaye telling an NPC mother and her eight year old that if they were too slow or got bitten that she would kill them herself; Bond conning a National Guardsman watching a weapons/equipment cache to help his squad mates (resulting in his doom); and Cleopatra hanging out of the sunroof of the group’s H3 and smashing off of their moving car. The mental picture of a yoga instructor shrilling and bashing an undead paramedic off the side of a car still makes me grin. Who said yoga was for pansies?

At the end of the session, the group and some new friends were trapped on the rooftop of an infested hospital. They blasted away at a horde of oncoming zombies while an NPC in their group was frantically trying to unlock the door leading off the roof. There was a large janitor’s key ring of possibilities. Ironically, I rolled for a success the turn after the group put down the last zombie. Oh well, no one got bitten. This time :)

Final headcount:

• Three National Guardsmen.
• Roughly thirty zombies, including the one Cleopatra knocked off the side of the car and underneath the H3.
• 0 player characters.

Pretty fun stuff, and I’m definitely happy with how things are turning out. The only thing I’d like better is to have another player or two. There’s been talk of guest player appearances by my friend Stilts and the Captain, but nothing firm yet. We’re set to play again in less than two weeks.

Tonight was the first round of my zombie campaign with Lady Jaye, Bond, and Cleopatra. The game is based off of the Year of the Zombie setting for D20 Modern, as I discussed earlier last month.

I have to say that things went more smoothly than I expected. It has been 12 years since I’ve run a game. Lady Jaye and I drew up half of her character before Bond and Cleopatra arrived. I’d already drawn a full NPC and have been playing 3.5 AD&D over at the Captain’s house, but even then I didn’t fully understand the differences between D20 Modern and 3.5 AD&D. Things like Talents bogged the character generation down a bit, but we all made it through the process okay.

So, the group started out in three different situations — Lady Jaye’s character is an epidemiologist, while Bond’s character is an Army reservist activated by the “bioterrorist attack” on nearby Fort Bragg. Cleopatra’s yoga instructor by day, pole dancer by night had just said goodbye to her class (literally, it turned out) when a man shambled in and bit one of her students.

I’ll spare you the other details of the encounter, but we ended the evening with the characters together, in Bond’s fully fueled Hummer H3 with a trunk full of gas station munchies, two propane tanks, and a few small arms.

Total body count:
Player Characters: 0
Named NPCs: 3
Unnamed NPCs, including “security guard,” “gas station attendant,” and “police officer”: 4
Zombies: Over a dozen, including “Avery,” an NPC put into Lady Jaye’s car by a do-gooder NPC who wound up being shot for being bitten by a zombie (I counted Avery twice, as he Rose, but only counted Brad the NPC once).
Wrecked cars: 2, 3 if you count Lady Jaye’s blood-spattered SUV left at the gas station.

High points of the game included Cleopatra sitting in her yoga studio office with the door locked while one zombie killed her entire class of 10; Lady Jaye making the first civilian kill of the game (gas station attendant) and tricking bitten-Brad into giving up his shotgun so she could shoot him; and Bond scoring a natural 20 critical hit on Jason, a member of the Red Cross and friend of Lady Jaye’s, after Jason was bitten by Avery in the SUV.

I had fun, and hopefully the group did as well.