Zombie survival game based off of the Shadowrun 4E Engine

[Lago PARANOIA]

Anyone know of any projects similar to this?

Heck, I think you could straight-up port Shadowrun 4E to the genre, as long as you put some kind of limitations on mages and made it clear up-front that deckers aren't going to be equally useful in every game. Granted, the resulting project would be more Left 4 Dead flavored than Night of the Living Dead would, but I think that it could work.

[Xaos]

Anyone know of any projects similar to this?

Heck, I think you could straight-up port Shadowrun 4E to the genre, as long as you put some kind of limitations on mages and made it clear up-front that deckers aren't going to be equally useful in every game. Granted, the resulting project would be more Left 4 Dead flavored than Night of the Living Dead would, but I think that it could work.

Well, there was Spoony's hypothetical Cthulhupunk campaign mentioned in one of his Counter Monkey videos.

Its not a zombie apocalypse necessarily, but it still kind of hints at some sort of social dissolution LIKE a zombie apocalypse.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Wow, Spoony is still a thing? I thought that after he Michael Richards himself and got himself kicked off of TGWTG he sort of melted away.

[wotmaniac]

Wow, Spoony is still a thing? I thought that after he Michael Richards himself and got himself kicked off of TGWTG he sort of melted away.

He and Lupa made up a few months later (again, on Twitter); and he finally got his meds readjusted ... he is purportedly in the process of rebuilding his rep.

Personally, I still thoroughly enjoy TSE.

[Aryxbez]

What is the full story on Spoony?, from what a friend told me, that Lupa chick on there instigated conflict with him constantly, until he snapped. Considering employees on that site apparently knew of his personal woes, defects and such, it was considered a major jerk move. Junk like that, had got my friend and I, to lose interest in "The Guy With The Glasses" website. Though, that's what I can recall being told on the lines of anyway.

The Shadowrun ruleset does have shotgun pistols, that can allow one to shoot up a large amount of zombies at once (assuming could muster the successes or like to kill em in each attack). Though personally, if just going to put magic in there, I'd wonder if you'd be better off using After Sundown. Though Shadowrun does have quite a few version of "Zombies" in the setting already (Loa Zombies, Ghouls, Corps Cadavres, Wendigo..oh and the shedim).

Anyone know of any projects similar to this?

Does this count? Otherwise, I've been kinda interested in creating a Zombie Survival game that would allow each PC to feel bit "different" (albeit it'd be on a very granular level, but yeah).

[Lago PARANOIA]

The Shadowrun ruleset does have shotgun pistols, that can allow one to shoot up a large amount of zombies at once (assuming could muster the successes or like to kill em in each attack). Though personally, if just going to put magic in there, I'd wonder if you'd be better off using After Sundown.

Shotgun pistols and such are fine. It's more than fine. The reason why I suggested Shadowrun was to make it like an action movie akin to the L4D/Resident Evil 3 movie. As in: mook zombies are by and large trash monsters, their only real threat being surprise, leading elite zombies to you, and wasting resources.

What I like about the SR4 engine in particular:

[*] As you noted, it comes with a pretty good variety of zombies already.
[*] The ruleset does appreciably scale up from 'schlubs with guns' to 'can show Blade and thing or two about a thing or two'.
[*] The dicepool system makes it pretty easy to have it such that your characters can not be significantly threatened by a few or even a couple dozen zombies but doesn't make them a complete non-factor either. Characters still have to seek cover, conserve ammo, do a fighting retreat, etc.
[*] The two biggest flaws of the Shadowrun rules engine, crappy vehicle and hacking rules, are not a huge deal for a zombie apocalypse game.
[*] Shadowrun is packaged with enough equipment and geegaw in both the rulebooks and actual gameplay to make the scavenging minigame sufficiently varied. And since scavenging is a huge part of any zombie story that's supposed to last for more than a couple of nights, this is a huge plus.

[wotmaniac]

What is the full story on Spoony?, from what a friend told me, that Lupa chick on there instigated conflict with him constantly, until he snapped. Considering employees on that site apparently knew of his personal woes, defects and such, it was considered a major jerk move. Junk like that, had got my friend and I, to lose interest in "The Guy With The Glasses" website. Though, that's what I can recall being told on the lines of anyway.

Spoony made a rape joke (given the context, had it not been in public - i.e., Twitter - it would have just been a funny, off-color joke between friends) .... people got all up in arms over it, so he apologized, and it just kinda went away (after a month-long suspension from TGWTG). A month or so later, this Lupa chick revived the controversy (again, on Twitter), inciting a big shit-storm ..... and then Spoony came completely unglued (to be honest, I understand his basic sentiment of "just let it die, already"), and went on a total scorched-earth "fuck you" spree.
And then TGWTG made some statement on the TGWTG-website that TGWTG and Spoony had decided to part ways, citing some b.s. about the two parties wanting to go in different creative directions.


Sorry, I'll stop derailing now.

[Aryxbez]

Shotgun pistols and such are fine. It's more than fine.

Actually I am too, I really ENJOY the idea that Shotguns would be a viable, and deadly weapon in such a game. Since zombies won't have armor so much, won't be adding that random +5 armor to their totals, grab a drum fed from Arsenal, and go to town.

If want Melee to be more action movie esque, I would suggest adopting some rule where they could basically "whirlwind cleave" enemies, via attacking multiple foes with one melee attack, taking -1-2 penalty per target past the 1st (2nd if ye make melee simple actions instead of complex.). Then some bit where any movement still have left in the round, can move up and maybe attack more zombies (if the penalties not stacked too high at that point).

Speaking of "Scavenging minigame" do you have any material for that? I know how Zombie Apocalypse games could benefit ever so much from Random Tables to roll on, for the various locations and type of stuff. It saddens me of the few Zombie RPG's, they don't have random tables, let alone a detailed list of them, and I'd find it one of the top priority things to design for such a game.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If want Melee to be more action movie esque, I would suggest adopting some rule where they could basically "whirlwind cleave" enemies, via attacking multiple foes with one melee attack, taking -1-2 penalty per target past the 1st (2nd if ye make melee simple actions instead of complex.). Then some bit where any movement still have left in the round, can move up and maybe attack more zombies (if the penalties not stacked too high at that point).

While I can think of a ton of zombie apocalypse/survival works which had the protagonists mowing down zombies by the dozens, I seriously can't think of any in which facing them down in melee was a thing people regularly did -- let alone in great amounts. Fighting more than one or two zombies with a chainsaw or bat or bladed weapons is by-and-large the 'you're fucking fucked' point, no matter how badass the protagonist is. The only one I can think of is World War Z, and that one has special circumstances.

I'm perfectly fine with melee range just being flat-out abstracted and the melee grid not really existing in a zombie survival game. If the difference between survival and death by zombie is micromanging your round-to-round discrete tactical positioning of 5' squares, you're probably already bologna fucked. Even for characters that are actually badass enough to take on dozens of zombies in melee and win (like street samurai or mystic adepts) they tend to be uncommon. Not enough so that you'll never see one, but I've never seen more than one or two per group.

[Previn]

I'm perfectly fine with melee range just being flat-out abstracted and the melee grid not really existing in a zombie survival game. If the difference between survival and death by zombie is micromanging your round-to-round discrete tactical positioning of 5' squares, you're probably already bologna fucked. Even for characters that are actually badass enough to take on dozens of zombies in melee and win (like street samurai or mystic adepts) they tend to be uncommon. Not enough so that you'll never see one, but I've never seen more than one or two per group.

Being able to tank out dozens of zombies might have more value in that situation than the ability to be a super hacker, so you might seem more of them in such a setting.

[unnamednpc]

The main problem with your plan is that SR4 combat is simultaneously super fiddly and sluggish as hell. Even when you're a badass one-shotting Zs with a Franchi autoloader, that's still three discrete dice rolls for every mook- roll to hit, dodge, soak. And, as Frank has pointed out on numerous occasions, one-shot kills have a tendency of not happening with SR4's wonky damage point system. So every cool little action setpiece runs danger of turning into a super exciting roll-a-thon. Adopting alt.War or AS might help, though I don't know if Frank actually cut down on the number of rolls (would be surprised if he didn't, though).
I guess what I'm saying is that you're probably better off coming up with a more abstract system to resolve at least the standard zombie shooting. Like, say, every hit drops a regular Z for x rounds, a critical success is a headshot and kills the thing for good. Something like that. You'll still end up rolling a lot of dice a lot of times, but that's the SR engine.

[mlangsdorf]

[
Speaking of "Scavenging minigame" do you have any material for that? I know how Zombie Apocalypse games could benefit ever so much from Random Tables to roll on, for the various locations and type of stuff. It saddens me of the few Zombie RPG's, they don't have random tables, let alone a detailed list of them, and I'd find it one of the top priority things to design for such a game.

The Zombie Run adventure for Savage Worlds has a scrounging table, but since it's for Savage Worlds it's focused more on "fast card-based gameplay" than any sort of sense. It's a start, but not necessarily a good one.

I think you'd want a random storefront location, though arguably that's just Google Maps these days, and some kind of system to determine how thoroughly any given store has been looted already. With those two items, it should be pretty straightforward to figure out a) did this store ever have what you were looking for? and b) has someone else already taken it?

[Aryxbez]

I think you'd want a random storefront location, though arguably that's just Google Maps these days, and some kind of system to determine how thoroughly any given store has been looted already. With those two items, it should be pretty straightforward to figure out a) did this store ever have what you were looking for? and b) has someone else already taken it?

Best I got, is something Frank worked on briefly for a Fallout game (CTRL+F "Places to be" or simply scroll up to the above post, the "Workable Locations" table).

I'd imagine would want to go farther than just answering if they found what they wanted specifically. Able to list other specific stuff of the location as well, that while might not be what they were looking for, could in turn be something of use nonetheless (go into a sports store failing to find a hunting section, but does have Football gear that'd make great improvised armor,or an automated baseball thrower).

I seriously can't think of any in which facing them down in melee was a thing people regularly did -- let alone in great amounts.

Walking Dead Comic series had a decent amount of melee combat, facing off against a few zombies at at time. Albeit True, it wasn't "dozens" via melee, and one of the main times I can recall it getting to that point, was least one major event in the comic (SPOILERS??). I'd also like to point out early on in that comic, Two Weapon Fighting was done quite often, and these Apocalypse-based games should support it more often. Shadowrun for example, has quite terrible two weapon fighting that wouldn't be able to mix gun & melee together all that well.