Last week I ran a game of EotW at the Origins game convention. The setting was my home-brew take, similar to Under the Skin in the book, called Pest Control. If anyone is interested, the files are here . (I'd love any feedback)

I started the game doing a shortened character creation. Players filled out their stats, added 1 positive and negative feature each, and then added any equipment they had on them. (I had to see the thing to be put on their sheet) Then I had each of them roll a d6 - the result corresponded to a characteristic on their sheet and they were allowed to bump that value up by 1. After introductions, the game began.

The game started at the convention itself, with everyone playing in a game run by myself. Soon, they heard a scream in the hallway and, running out, found a woman being attacked by a maintenance worker. They battled him and ended throwing him off the edge of the overlook they were on. Soon they realized something was going on - outside they could only see a greenish fog that, when examined closer, appeared to be composed of insects. Screams could also be heard from all over.

Shortly after, two more maintenance men showed up from a back storage hallway and attacked them. After a short battle, they defeated the two and found that just bashing a zombie's head in wouldn't work - doing so released insects from inside them that attacked. Realizing they couldn't just stand around, they decided to go along the back maintenance hallway to find a way out. The area they were in was actually a long hall between the two main areas of the convention, so they decided to head toward the area near the parking garage in the hopes they could get into one of their cars.

The lights in the hallway were out, but the each had flashlights we had given them as swag for playing in our game. The hallway led to a maintenance room where they were able to load up on supplies (brooms, pesticides, etc.) The room had an entryway to a stairwell that they entered. Initially they checked the roof, but abandoned that idea when they realized the insects were up there as well.

After traveling down two flights of stairs, they found two people lying in the stairwell, covered in a white webby cocoon. After realizing the insects caused this, the people in the cocoons woke up and attacked. They defeated them and ran to the last floor, only to hear the door at the top open and shut, footsteps following. (They had been taping shut each door except the top, in case they had to retreat.)

The bottom door led to a boiler room under the convention center. They quickly shoved a heavy table in front of the door, which slowed down their pursuers a bit. However, the zombies were eventually able to get in and began to attack and attempt to infect them. They defeated one, then ran out of the room into a hallway that led into another hall in the convention center.

This hallway had four doors in it - 3 of which were open, 1 which was closed and loud techno music could be heard from beyond. The three open doors looked onto chaos, with tables, chairs, and dice thrown about the rooms. Dead bodies of players could also be seen. One player looked in the closed door and found a room in total darkness, with black curtains hung up to form a maze. Looking under the curtains, they saw 3 people slowly being closed upon by a number of zombies. Without waiting, one player charged in and smacked a zombie on the back, only to hear a cry of pain followed by someone shouting "What the hell are you doing?!?" They had stumbled upon a zombie LARP.

After arguing (and failing a social test), one of the LARPers ran out to get security. He was heard screaming and running back shortly after, following by 5 actual zombies. Fortunately for the players, the LARPer didn't turn down the hall toward them.

The PCs ended finding themselves in the food court of the convention center, with bodies in white-webbed cocoons strewn about the area. With no other option, they begun to sneak across it until one person completely failed a dexterity roll. They knock over a sign which makes a large BANG and causes a dozen zombies to awaken and come out of their cocoon. The chase is on!

The PCs make it a large set of stairs near the elevator to the parking garage, but unfortunately the elevator is taking their time. They run up the stairs, fight some zombies (wherein one made an epic kill with a knife taped to the end of a broom handle), to the second floor where they could either wait for the elevator, fighting the whole time, or dash out a cross-walk to the building across the street. The chose the cross walk.

The cross walk is entirely glass and cross a main road, allowing them to see how the insects are covering everything, and anyone on the street is either being attacked by the swarm, coccooned, or a zombie. They make it across and head down another way to an office building one of the players work in (she showed me her key card). Unfortunately, part way down is a door to the street in which a person stumbles, letting in swarms of insects. They dash across and the person with the key gets her card to work, and they land in the office building and relative safety.

Heading to the top office floor, they start scavenging supplies from the cubicle farm when the elevator dings. Three security guards, now zombies, head out and a battle begins. The players pervail and head to the room. (They had seen from the windows they were much higher than the swarm.) On the roof they see how the insect swarm covers the entire city, and there is no end in sight.

Two days later they hear a voice on a security guard radio they swiped looking for survivors. They are picked up by a helicopter and taken to a camp where they find this begun to spread over the country, with no end in sight.

Wow..that was long.

Overall, the game went really well. The players loved the setting, what happened, and more importantly, the system. One player even talked about it in a later game of mine he was in, and the other players were disappointed I wasn't running it again.

There were a few things I know I could improve upon:

• Fights weren't difficult enough. This was totally on me, as I wasn't throwing enough zombies at them until the end. Hordes need to be bigger.
  
• I need to diversify encounters more. The majority were physical, but I need to add more social and mental tests too.
  
• Dice rolls don't always need negative die. For the most part I was having the players add in negative dice when it made sense, but then it became difficult to justify how they were getting stress. Next time I'll have some rolls w/o negative die and make then get 2 or more successes.

I'm really liking the EotW system. Its easy to use and doesn't get in the way of the storytelling or just playing the game.

One question - the players felt that during combat they weren't able to defend themselves. For example, when the zombies were attacking, the zombies would get X number of positive dice, some negative depending on the situation, and no matter how high the player's dex or vitality were it wouldn't affect it. Did I miss a rule that adds this in, or does anyone use a house rule for it?

I know resistance factors into this, and we did see that, but it still feels like there is something missing. Maybe a negative die for the zombies if the PC's vitality is so high?

Wouldn't that make the fights even easier? The way my group runs it is: If you are in close combat with zombies, you're in trouble.

I'm not sure how it would make the fight easier? I should state that if I did that, the zombies would not gain stress from negative dice. This would just be a way to make the PCs feel like their stats mean something more than they apparently do.

However, this also could have been the way I was portraying it. I do feel I wasn't running combat dangerously enough, so that may have been it as well.

RE: "the players feelings of not being able to defend themselves", I had these thoughts myself when I was thinking up my houserules. I contemplated making attacks opposed checks, the attackers pool would be formed as normal around Agility, and the defenders would be based on Vitality and consist only of dice for an applicable posi Feature if present, a possible plus 1 for situation/environment (higher ground or the like), and possible bonus dice for assistance, no Neg die, no chance of inducing Stress on the Defender - basically a normal pool with no base posi die, and no chance of inducing Stress. If attacker gets more successes, they deal damage as normal (including subtracting Resistance), if defender gets more successes they avoid all damage. Ultimately I decided to try the system out vanilla before making such a big change.

As for their concerns though, they're right. There is no defense like you see in most RPGs. But this does a couple things, it reduces the time to resolve combat (which is good for a narrative system like this), and it (not so subtly) puts the emphasis on being proactive. Edge of the Empire does this, only incorporating the players ability to defend themselves through the relatively-difficult-to-attain "Defense". Otherwise it's just all offense minus soak, same as EotW. There's much less granularity to this system than EotEs, but I don't think it would be out of line to maybe give the attacker a negative die for if the defender has a higher Vitality than their Agility? Or perhaps requiring a second success for the attack to deal damage?

That makes sense, and especially once resisitance came in (what I assume you are referring to as EotW's equiv of Soak), we saw they became more difficult to injure.

I think it does make sense to give negative die to the NPC attacker (e.g. zombies) for some defensive features/actions they player is doing, and that would add a slight chance for defense. Glad I'm not the only one who thought about this.

My main thought was not to give extra Neg dice to the attacker (that's more likely to induce stress than cancel a positive, and the attack really isn't anymore dangerous because of someone's ability to defend themself, so you'd achieve the wrong thing), but to make it an opposed check. Very different.

My second thought above, was to attempt to replicate the "Defense" die mechanic of EotE, in which case I wouldn't give more than 1 extra neg die to the attackers pool, but truly I think the better mechanic would be to require a second success to hit/do damage.

Edit; in fact, after thinking about it, I would never ever add more neg die to an attackers pool for the defenders abilities, that's not how this mechanic is meant to work. You either have to make it an opposed check, or increase required successes.