So it finally happened, I finally managed to organise and GM my first EOTW session! Just thought I'd write up the experience and share it with you guys. As always thoughts and feeback very much welcome.
I decided to run the No Room In Hell scenario with some members of my local gaming group who are also new to rpgs. Thanks to the help I received from other members of the forum I was able to come to the table fully prepared with a quick reference guide of the games key mechanics (dice pool, stress traumas etc) and some pre planned scenarios. This made explaining the game much easier and everyone quickly got the hang of the system which was great.
Character creation and voting: This was interesting for a number of reasons, firstly the voting was a little awkward as the people playing were not close friends simply members of the same club. When it came to putting stats to the vote there was no voting a stat up or down.
I'd like to attibute that to the fact that everybody at the table was being open and honest about their stat values and gave a good explanation to why they chose them.
I'd imagine that in a group of close friends there would be more stat adjustment but I'm happy that everyone was honest and nobody exaggerated, also the explanation of why they chose those levels worked as a nice introduction to the other players. For example I now know that one of the players has a degree in engineering.
Gameplay: Our session commenced in a local pub, the owner is an avid tabletop gamer and so he has dedicated a large room upstairs to hobbying and tabletop play. I'd written ten encounters for the group to face which of course as you can probably guess went right out the window after the first fifteen minutes of play.
I used the timeline in the book to indicate that there had been increasing reports of random attacks happening in our home city and mentioned that I myself had been attacked earlier in the day, my intention being that I would be the first zombie they encountered. Of course evryone decided initially (In game) to go get a pint and go downstairs so I had to improvise and have them assaulted downstairs in the pub.
I decided to have a host of zombies storm the pub, instead of fighting the group decided to retreat back upstairs. However in their haste one member is shut out and left alone and unarmed facing three zombies, this resulted in that person receiving quite a bit of initial stress but the group as a whole thought it was hillarious and the player used his quick wits and grabbed a bar stool to help keep the attackers at bay. Realising they'd locked somebody out the group returned and rescued the guy stuck outside.
Once everyone was upstairs one of the pcs spotted a large collection of power tools and tabletop boards so decided to fortify and barricade the door ( putting those engineering skills to use) another person had managed to save an injured woman from downstairs and drag her up with us to safety. I wasn't prepared to narrate for this other survivor so I quickly had her succumb to blood loss and turn whilst the groups first aid member was seeing to her wounds. I also chose this opportune moment to write myself out and have me turn as well. The combat was quick and effective with the survivors using the nearby tools to arm themselves and take on myself and the woman.
Hillarity ensued though as one member attempted to finish zombie me off by swinging a chair at my head only to fail hillariously and receive enough stress in return to kill him, he then just barley made his cling to life roll, I narrated it so that he tripped as he swung the chair landing on a power tool whch caused him a serious severity level three trauma.
I ended it with the barricade downstairs being breached and the remaining pcs holding the door to the room they were in shut as the other member of the group lies severly injured nearby.
Summary: The thing I was shocked by the most was that in the 3 and a half hours of real time playing only 20 mins had gone by in the actual game. I loved how quickly everybody got to grips with the game and there was plenty of discussion on the positives and negatives when it came to assembling the dice pools. One of the areas I wasn't 100% solid on was the turn sequence, I tried to keep it in a turn order but there were occasions where it made more sense for certain people to take a double turn as they were the ones being attacked, was wondering how you guys handle out of sequence or hectic turn orders?
I was enjoying everyone using their skills and knowledge to barricade the door so felt bad having to destroy it for the sake of moving the narritive forward. I think next time we play I'll need to be a bit more forceful with the zombies to really put the pressure on the group and not have them all just hold up in the starting location. I got some great feedback from everybody and they loved the cliffhanger ending, I'm hoping this means I'll be able to organise another session soon and have it resume from the same place. All in all a very enjoyable first play through.
Edited by Thunderchild