Hi there,
yesterday I hosted my first session of Zombie Apocalypse!
I planned a rather short style scenario. Therefore, I decided to run a mixture of the "The Night of the Meteor" and "No Room in Hell" scenarios, because I really liked the Ghouls uprising from the graves but did not want the whole "animal rising stuff". There is a HUGE graveyard to the opposite of the house where the session started. This is why the players where one of the first people who encountered some zombies.
The game started when I took the dog for a walk. Usually, I take a path along the grassland in front of the graveyard. I didn't come back so that they decided to search for me just to go back into the house after encountering a couple of zombies and calling for the police.
The following two days they basically barricaded in the house. The problem was that since they were so close to the graveyard they got really quickly surrounded by the walking dead from both sides of the house. The zombies tried to get into the house like the whole time. At one point, they had to fight one zombie which got into the house because of a window the group didn't was aware of.
Once the group realized that they have left supplies for four more days they decided that they need to get away (quite late in my opinion). The first plan was to call for like all known people to find someone who would come for them with a car. Finally, they got contact to a couple of people who barricaded in a smaller town near to the home city where the things obviously went much better. However, the head of the group did not want to come into the big city since it was too dangerous. Instead, he offered to come for them if they get out of the city by themselves.
After that, they managed to get over the roofs to another house where no zombies were wandering around. Inside the house they found a car key and managed to find the corresponding car so that they got away.
On the way to the smaller town they noticed a heavy armored police car on the roadside. Two group members inspected the car and encountered two deserted soldiers who robbed them. These soldiers searched the place for the armoured car keys when some shots occured from some building near to the place. The players went over to these building and noticed a group of survivors and some special forces (police) rescuing them. This group was attacked by a huge group of zombies. The two players left in the car decided to drive into the horde of zombies. Doing so one of the zombies crashed through the front window of the car. The car got out of control and crashed into the wall of the next building. The session ended after the second player in the car managed to get the driver out of the car who was dizzy at this point.
The players got quite fast into the whole system. One problem I noticed was that they did not really know what to do after they barricaded in the house. After a while and some time lapses they came up with some cool ideas, though, like observing the area around the house, listening to the media, packing the bags for emergency cases, trying to figure out how the zombies work and calling for known people.
Once the players got into the system they liked the whole experience and really want to continue the whole story.
Another problem I noticed was that the group sometimes discussed like for ages. This felt really odd in fast and hectic situation and often took more real time than in game time. Another drawback of this playstyle was that the group very often acted "as one" instead of a collection of individuals who would otherwise act really differently in hectic situations. Furthermore, some of the players did not really enjoyed these long discussions. As a result of this, the other players effectively decided for them. I think about adding some time limits in structured time situations by using a stop watch.
The other situations where the long discussions seemed to be really odd were in social encounters since these discussion were out of game. For example, facing the two deserted soldiers they discussed about how to overwhelm them to get the weapons and even though about the guys in the car coming from behind. Normally, one can not use telepathy to communicate with the others in such a situation. Therefore, I think about adding a general rule that all communication between the players is always in game, so that the NPCs would hear all of it with all the consequences for the game.
I hope that the report is useful for someone.
Best regards,
BigChiller
), just butt in and say, "Alright fellas, time to act! Bob, what do you do?", and then go round the table (by Agility score or Logic score or completely arbitrarily if you want). If you get push back, then just explain as I have (and as you've already noted) that they couldn't have this conversation in this situation. But you won't get push back, players just need to be prodded sometimes. To be reminded that this game is about their actions and taking risks, and embracing the unknown consequences, and being a pro-active participant in that dynamic is what's gonna make it fun. Of course, this relies on you as the ZM to make their actions result in dramatic and fun/tense situations and to not always just be ruthlessly realistic and pragmatic (and I'm not saying you did that, just don't punish them all the time for taking risks), but that's a whole 'nother thing.