Hello,

I've always been interested in RPG's but never been settled somewhere long enough to really find a group of like minded friend.

This has changed!

And so I decided to purchase this book to play with my friends, however, I have never ran a game before so I would like some tips from the community if possible?

Tiny bit of background, we are all servicemen based at the top of Scotland (so big distance between cities). It would be played from my kitchen, 8/9 miles from base.

Suprisingly, even with our I.D's (assuming they have them at my house), we could get on to base but in no way would we be guaranteed a weapon (I would also plan to mess this up for them if they headed straight there).

So tips please

Cheers!

First off, I think you picked a good game for friends first time playing , but perhaps a harder one for your first time GMing . I've found the the kind of high fantasy that rules tabletop RPGs can be a turn-off to the uninitiated. This game is easier for people who would otherwise not be into tabletop to get into. That said, the fact that EoTW doesn't have pre-packaged campaigns (e.g. DnD) can make it harder for you as a new GM.

They way I've done it is to make a general timeline of events, then make a list of encounters that I think would be fun or interesting. After that, I'll try to arrange the encounters on my timeline where I think they'll fit best and in accordance with what I think my players will do. You'll have to figure out how to balance it and whether you prefer short and brutal one-off games, or a continuing campaign.

...you know what. It's hard to explain and everyone is going to have their own approach. How about I just show you what I have prepped for a new campaign I'll be starting next week. I haven't finished prepping it by any means, but maybe it'll help.


-IT ENDS WITH A WHISPER-

Notes

· Phase 1 (first session or two): survive the starting chaos.

· Phase 2 (Next two or three sessions): travel to and establish a safehouse

· Phase 3 (Next two or three sessions): get a quest to kill the voodoo boss in the area

Prep

· Give each player different background facts. Have one or two of them hear the truth.

o North Korea is making nonsense threats about a new super weapon

o A new super-collider is going online in Nevada.

o The mayor has a pet project to drain a nearby lake “for archaeological purposes.” He just got approval this week.

o The city just started clean-up and excavation of a nearby superfund site.

o There have been odd threats from some kind of eco-terrorist group.

Starting Event

· I’m possessed. I suddenly space out, get in the car, and drive off, and crash my car on the freeway to snarl up traffic and keep people from escaping the city.

o If people try to stop me I will try to violently fight them off.

o If someone manages to get in the car with me, I turn and tell them to get out, in a voice that is not my own.

o If they follow me, they see me die in the car-crash to close down the highway.

o Shortly after the multi-car pile-up that I cause, a voodoo priest walks between the cars, rezzing zombies and finishing off survivors.

o If the person is still in the car with me, they will have to try to escape that ****.

First Day

· The chief of police tells everyone that they are declaring a state of emergency. Half an hour later, he tells everyone it was a false alarm and to go about their business as normal, he bumps the mic as he walks off stage.

· The roads are ******, no one is getting anywhere by car.

· By the evening, there will be 2-3 zombies on every city street. Thinner in the suburbs. Thinner still in the country.

· OPTIONS:

o If they go to the hospital:

§ They will try to separate the wounded from the friends. The wounded person will be admitted into a strangely empty ER by a tired looking doctor.

§ As they wait “for the doctor to see you,” they hear a muffled scream and a scuffle.

§ If they investigate, they see the doctor and an orderly kill a patient and wheel away the body (to be rezzed as a zombie).

o If they go to the police:

§ The intake officer will tell them that nothing is wrong, even as **** goes to hell around them.

§ If they get the attention of someone else, they will tell them that **** is crazy and unless there is something happening RIGHT NOW, they should go back home.

Second day

· Most business are closed, some are open and giving away free food samples.

o If they do find an open store, looting breaks out around them. The store owner pulls a shotgun and tells everyone to get out before the players have a chance to buy their gear. They must either fight or steal or convince the owner to let them pay.

o Or maybe he is only taking ammo as payment.

· The National Guard moves in. Gets in a gunfight with local police.

o Survivors come to a checkpoint. The police tell you go to a local shelter. The National Guard tells you to get in the truck and the will evacuate you out of the city.

§ The police and guard argue. Someone fires a shot. Both sides yell at you to come/go now, as bullets fly.

§ If you go with the National Guard:

· They will take any weapons you have.

· They will drive your truck and one other into a warehouse. Some guards will ask the driver what he’s doing. The driver shoots him. The other truck opens up and it’s full of zombies. The driver gives orders

· PCs can get weapons, radio, rations, body armor, etc.

§ Of you go with the police.

· The police will point you in a line with other survivors. No one seems to know exactly where they’re going, but they do wind up in a school gym a few blocks away. There are swat team members positioned at intersections, keeping the zombies away (although there don’t really seem to be many here).

· They will take your weapons on your way in.

· They will try to take your weapons even if you decide to leave.

· The gym will be fairly well secured. Guards on the doors. They will feed you and give you a cot.

· You meet some NPCs.

· That night, a guard is possessed and opens a door. Two dozen zombies come in. They seem to be on every exit. On the way out, they see a figure standing on a truck, ordering the zombies around.

5-10 days

· Whenever people get settled, a priest will mentally attack a PC to try to get them to open a door.

· Successfully warding off the attack will give the PC an impression of the Priest’s intentions and location. Killing the priest will stop the attacks on your stronghold and the directed attacks in the area.

· PC can lead an assault on the zombie headquarters. Fun mission time.

I have no idea if this will help or not, hope it at least gives you some ideas!

Wow that is really helpful thanks!

It seems like you have figured out an interesting and multifaceted scenerio, looks like i have some work to do.

Thank you for sharing.

There are a few castles in Scottland. How far away are you lot from the nearest one? As shown in the WWZ book, (not the movie) castles (once supplied with recources) make great refuges against the walking dead.

Also since your are service men, won't you get recalled to base during the zombie outbreak?

He might not be recalled if he was running Ends With a Whisper. A whole plot-point in that scenario is that the Voodoo Priests are destroying lines of communication and making sure that the authorities aren't able to effectively mobilize against them by possessing officers.

Alternatively, A quick-spreading scenario like Infection or Under The Skin might overrun the base by the time they report back to in. Hell, it might even start there (they were secretly doing biological weapons testing at the base). The starting conflict could be to have to ESCAPE the base after they are recalled to it.

I'd imagine every effort would be made to call us in, but the logistics of getting every airman/women on base contacted quickly would be crazy to say the least! If 1/2 seniors in the chain are unavailable (too busy munching on people) then potentially a whole squadron could be left unaware.

And then we would have to get into the armoury, find my own weapon, find ammunition.

Not too far from a castle of sorts, the roads around here are single carriageway so i'd imagine they would get blocked quickly making the highlands even more remote that it already is.

Sounds like you have a fun area to play with. Get the whole 28 Days Later Vibe going! But yeah just have plot points and a timeline (one is in the book) and plan around it. Think of all the areas/buildings they might try to go to and plan out what items and zombies/NPCs might be there. Plan out your own death as gruesome and graphic as possible to set the tone and so they have to deal with stress for the first time seeing their friend die horrendously. Setting the tone and getting them to take it seriously and acting realistically is going to be important. That is if that is what you are going for, if you going for a Evil Dead/Army of Darkness tone then do what you want haha.

He's better off than me! I'm in suburbia between a small city and a nearby gass refinery that will take out half the city in a worst case cenario. It's a good thing our GM will start the event at a local con (FACTS or Spellenspektakel.) or we could end up with the adventure starting with a possible TPK.

If the base is going to be appealing for your players to run to, then it has to be overrun by undead by the time they would get there!

What scenario are you thinking of running? I think the RAF specialisations of your players would influence the way to run the game as well. Knowing some of the sailors I served with, putting a gun in their hands would be a liability!

He's better off than me! I'm in suburbia between a small city and a nearby gass refinery that will take out half the city in a worst case cenario. It's a good thing our GM will start the event at a local con (FACTS or Spellenspektakel.) or we could end up with the adventure starting with a possible TPK.

I live 10 miles from a Uranium Enrichment Facility. Supposing we survive the zombies, we'll have some major crap to deal with if we don't leave this area after things fall apart.

Oh lord! That might be even more fun once the alien invasion and robot rebellion books come out.

I have to disagree, I don't think this game is harder to manage for a GM. It may not provide step-by-step details on the events of the encounter, but you also don't have to familiarize yourself with detailed stat blocks, memorize entire indepth story lines, or invest in convoluted plot development. You just pick a few creatures for encounters, and spend the rest of the game playing survival with a dash of combat. It's perfect for first timers.

Also, each scenario has a great deal of details for an encounter, from prologue to start to middle to end to epilogue, and provides ideas for events at every step. They even provide you with timelines and locations, so I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "no prepackaged campaign."

If the base is going to be appealing for your players to run to, then it has to be overrun by undead by the time they would get there!

What scenario are you thinking of running? I think the RAF specialisations of your players would influence the way to run the game as well. Knowing some of the sailors I served with, putting a gun in their hands would be a liability!

Was thinking of starting with the first scenerio then giving them all a try in order.

Me and my friends are aircraft engineers so between us mechanical and electrical problems could be solved, however, we are only trained in defensive combat with a rifle (L85 A2). So other firearms would not be instantly usuable however we would have a better idea than the average civilian. I suppose in the UK having any weapon experience is a boon compared to most people.

And yes i know what you mean about giving some people you serve with a high powered assault rifle, realistically i am not going to sit here and say i would be Mr Crack Shot pulling off 400m headshots!

I could shoot a stationary human from 400m in a vital area but as soon as you start adding in factors like; headshots only, (erratically) moving target, low light, urgent situation or i've been sprinting previously then even a trained persons accuracy starts to plummet.

And so I decided to purchase this book to play with my friends, however, I have never ran a game before so I would like some tips from the community if possible?

Some tips from my general experience as a GM:

Players don't give up on their ideas easily. It seems like you're trying to keep them away from the base, presumably to prevent them from getting too much powerful equipment early on. If the players are determined to get there, they probably won't give up just because some random NPC warns them that going ot the base is a bad idea. Shooting down every idea they come up with one by one can be frustrating to the players. A better approach (IMO) would be to make it very, very clear that the base is no longer an option. When they get to front gates, the gates are down and the base is overrun by zombies. Before they can advance to try clearing it out, the munitions depot explodes, leveling half the structure and sending burning zombie bits everywhere. Make it clear that there is no security to be found, no endless supply of ammo. Maybe let them swipe one rifle with half a clip left off the corpse of a guard near the gate, just so they aren't leaving entirely empty-handed.

Telling the story is a collaborative effort. People play RPGs in order to tell a story together, not to be run through the GM's rat maze of a plot. If you reward the player's efforts to come up with solutions, they will drawn into the game and find it more engaging. This doesn't mean "give them everything they dream up." If you're going to exert your GMly right to fudge the rules in order to block their plan outright, you should at least give them something for their efforts. See the one rifle idea, above. If you don't really care if their idea works or not, just let the dice decide.

Balancing combat scenarios can be tricky. Combat in most RPGs relies heavily on dice, and EotW is no exception there. That means that combat can be surprisingly swingy - a fight you thought would be easy may almost kill half the party. An epic battle intended to be won at a high cost might get steamrolled by lucky dice. The players usually make fewer rolls than the GM does in battle, and that means the Law of Averages will favour the GM more than it does the players.

If you want most fights to be hard to reinforce the idea that the players are in constant danger, then you should have some back up plans for what to do when players start dying. It will probably happen sooner than you think.

If you want to make sure they survive in the end, giving them a bit more power than you think is fair would be a good idea. If they clean the floor with the first fight, you can always throw an extra wave of zombies on top of them, or make sure the next fight is harder.

Players will always do unexpected things. This is the big one. No matter how much effort you spend planning, they will always come up with some off-the-wall idea you never thought of. Do as much planning as you need to make yourself feel comfortable, but don't do more than you think is necessary. Always be prepared to improvise. As Tagalong was suggesting, I find it wiser to make individual encounters that are disconnected from any linear series of events, so that they can be plugged into wherever the players decide to go.

If you want to spend time writing immersive fluff, avoid assumptions about the players themselves. The famous example was a D&D campaign we ran once. The DM wrote a long, eloquently detailed description of the room and its contents. Very immersive. However, he described the view of the room from the main door, and our thief ended up sneaking into the room by climbing the outside wall and entering through the window. It took the DM a few minutes to figure out why we kept snickering throughout his reading of the description.

If you're worried about writing lengthy and engaging fluff, make a point of using absolute references rather than subjective ones. (ie: "the bed is on the North wall" rather than "the bed is to your left.") It may seem like a small thing, but helps to avoid breaking suspension of disbelief.

The best tip I can give you is to have "the talk" before the first game.

By that I mean a little talk in which you tell your players what you intend to bring, what you intend to get out of it, what they hope to get out of the game, how you want to to deal with rules discussions, etc.

Tell them you are doing this for the first time and you might ask for their patience at times.

I have found that once all the players were on board with what I intended to do there was no more distrust, no more competitiveness and no prolonged arguments at the table.

I usualy start with; "I am here to have fun and make you have fun. When I make a call go with it and you will find that I am not going to do make it a bad experience for you. Now who do I have to blow to get a can of beer at this table?"

Of course even if your players get to the base and arm themselves to the teeth that does not mean the age has to turn into a cakewalk for them. Lots of zombies everywhere of course, and not every situation and problem can be solved with a bullet. Also lots of unarmed people are going to want those guns, I know I would. This could complicate things for your group, do they start shooting people who demand the guns?

One piece of solid advice I will give is to listen to your players while they chat at the table. I often get plot twists from things the players say. I don't have everything turn out like they suggest, but they often give me good ideas to play with. "Oh, man, the cafe is probably crawling with zombies, we should stay away!" Yes, the cafe is now crawling with zombies, but there is also a survivor calling out for help. Even if I originally had nothing special planned for the cafe.

My BIGGEST piece of advice... just have fun.

If you aren't having fun, the players won't. If you play it as YOU against THEM rather than as a group trying to experience the fun of roleplaying together, none of you will walk away happy.

Second biggest piece of advice... be flexible.

You can plan and plan and write 200 descriptions of a town or a castle or a bunker, then they decide they want to go to the wilderness and live off the land. They will ALWAYS go where you least expect... well, mostly always anyway.

And in case I forgot to mention it, be sure to have fun. Your fun will spill over on them and raise the experience up a notch or two, it is contagious (kind of like the zombie outbreak). Players can forgive a lot of things in the name of fun... can't come up with good NPC names? No big deal if they get to lop the head off a 7 foot walker with a pair of pruning shears... can't give a good description of the secret lair? Not worth mentioning if the players can build a catapult and lob thirteen barrels of flaming crude oil into the royal palace...(at zombies of course, god save the Queen).

Not to diminish the creep or horror factor, but no fun or humor and you'll have them finding any excuse not to come back and play.

Absolutely make sure it is fun for everyone at the table. I GM a lot and have run games where the players were not having fun and I have run games where I was not having fun. It isn't worth it. As long as everybody is having fun you are doing it right. Even if that means you are playing a light hearted zombie comedy instead of a grim and gritty zombie survival game. Just have fun with it.