We always play at someone's house, not a store. So, we'd be limited to whatever they had at their place (+CC), for sure. In all but one of five's that pretty much means a long arm of some sort for everyone. Admitedly, someone would get stuck with a .22 but that beats a tennis racket all to hell.

We'd probably have to nix the gamenight idea anyway and just start us off all together at a restaurant or, leaving a (zombie!) movie, etc...

We always play at someone's house, not a store. So, we'd be limited to whatever they had at their place (+CC), for sure. In all but one of five's that pretty much means a long arm of some sort for everyone. Admitedly, someone would get stuck with a .22 but that beats a tennis racket all to hell.

We'd probably have to nix the gamenight idea anyway and just start us off all together at a restaurant or, leaving a (zombie!) movie, etc...

Or at the start of the game a bus full of zombies crashes through the wall and you have to use up almost all your ammo, or abandon the house because the bus is leaking fuel that's about to catch fire, or something!

While I think the restaurant setting would be fun to play, because it challenges your creativity in a crisis, starting with decent weapons isn't an auto-win.

As in all RPGs, it's up to the GM to create an appropriate challenge for the players.

That might be a that's a zombie herd. Or quiet zombies. Or perhaps you have to destroy the actual brain stem, not just a shot anywhere in the brain.

Some fantastic ideas coming out of this thread already, always good to see!

Speaking for myself, I'm in the same boat as mazz0, wouldn't have a clue where to go find a gun, decent or otherwise. But speaking as a GM (which I'm assuming I would be if I got to play this), there's pretty much nothing that is insurmountable. Like other folks have been suggesting here, if you start the game with your own private arsenal, you're going to attract some unwanted attention, not just from the zombies.

You could start the game with your guns and ammo out, thinking you're in for a fine old time of shooting zombies, when five or six geriatrics from the neighbourhood arrive on your doorstep. "We've heard you've got guns - you must help us!" Then you find that suddenly you aren't just making decisions for yourselves, as crack-shot gun folks, but instead need to take into account the elderly people you've been given responsibility for.

Or you start the game, and the first adventure doesn't actually involve zombies in a direct assault, but instead some of your neighbours try to sneak in to steal your arsenal. You might have to fend them off, try to talk them out of it, form an alliance, or deal with the moral repercussions of having shot the guy whose lawnmower you haven't given back yet, or the girl who babysat for your daughter at the weekend.

I particularly liked the idea of having whatever passes for law enforcement or military personnel moving through the area confiscating materiel, and you suddenly don't have your shiny weapons. Or you're forced to leave your home to avoid the sweep, and you might have to leave right now , forgetting some of the more mundane survival stuff. Or you might be absorbed into the law enforcement/military, but find yourself separated from your friends as you're sent off on different missions, and you're paired up with that guy who gave you the parking ticket that you're in the middle of contesting.

I like to think the best GMs are those who tend more towards "okay, that's fine - but what do you do if this happens", rather than taking the "you can't do that" route.

The problem with going to public location x (let's say the local police department) is that other people will have the same idea, and theres a lot of people, angry, scared, desperate people. Can you say, "moshpit?" We are a species that will beat and trample each other to death over stuff like Cabbage patch kids, tv's and xbox consoles. Now imagine that black friday mentality over the real important stuff with lives at stake. All of this will attrackt zombies. And my bet is you won't even notice the zombies have joined the melee till somebody bites your arm.