It’s been awhile since we’ve had one of these: a Just Say Hi’s zombie survival quiz. The quiz has a good balance of preparedness, ethics, and combat questions. It reinforces my belief that as Science Fiction is to social issues, zombie fiction is to disaster preparedness — an easily accessible way to talk about surviving a total breakdown in society.
I rated a 70%, and I’m not sure why. I answered “scream and jump” to the scary movie question, and had a few compassionate answers. Like most of these quizzes, I wish that this one explained the author’s weighting behind the choices. I chose to stay away from the police station and hospital, and I wonder if that hurt my percentage. I was surprised at the absence of a farmhouse or similar zombie staple.
How did you do?
Posted in: link and run , zombiesMy Year of the Zombie game ran last Tuesday. The group decided to break out from the Magic Kingdom’s underground utilidors and try to find more survivors at nearby Epcot. They then proceeded to go above ground and play tag with the undead in a park full of tens of thousands of zombies.
I always enjoy watching what the players decide to do, especially when a plan collapses. Last session was no exception. I would like to think we’re just playing a game, but a part of me believes that the campaign amplifies normal human responses. Perhaps YOTZ may be used as a model in a real disaster situation, the presence of animated corpses notwithstanding.
(more…)
It’s been a little over seven months since I re-started my Year of the Zombie campaign. Year of the Zombie is a D20 Modern ruleset put out by UKG Publishing. With the help of Fantasy Grounds and Skype six of us have been playing on and off since the early part of November 2006. I thought I’d post a little recap on where the campaign is right now, but mostly about what it has been like to run a online zombie game, and where I think things are headed for the rest of the year. Gibberish gets a lot of search results for various zombie things, so this information might help others start games of their own.
(more…)
Until last year, I played massively multiplayer online role playing games for the better part of six years, starting with EverQuest during its launch in 1999. I spent the bulk of my time in Dark Age of Camelot and World of Warcraft. I also played quite a few other MMOs, including Shadowbane, City of Heroes, Lineage II, EVE Online, and the beta for Star Wars: Galaxies.
Besides being online, these games had a few things in common: they kept me busy, and they kept me from feeling socially isolated. Whether I was living in a small mountain town in Oregon or working from home in Virginia with a very small meatspace social circle, MMOs were a way for me to jump online and adventure with friends. While MMOs are a significant commitment and aren’t always fun, I will not deny their entertainment and social value. Not only have MMOs allowed me to keep in touch with friends across the country, but they have helped me make some very real friends in “meatspace.” For some, like Alexa and Fathir, their real-life relationship started in-game.
I felt like online games were keeping me from doing other things, like writing for Gibberish. So I hung up my avatars for good last July. I haven’t regretted this decision, although Lady Jaye and I joke about rejoining WoW. After almost a year off, I’ve noticed that something strange has happened to me and my video gaming: console games are not nearly as compelling as their online role playing counterparts.
(more…)
Our virtual Year of the Zombie game takes off again tonight after nearly a month’s hiatus due to the holiday. Unfortunately we lost one of our regulars when we shifted play from Tuesdays to Wednesdays — don’t worry Markie, I’ll take good care of you. So far the group has fought down to the lowest deck of the ship, all the way back to the very top, and are now poised to retake control of the bridge with the stoic Italian captain and the rest of his Nepalese ex-special forces security detail.
If you’re interested in some of the game mechanics and gameplay discussion, check out our group’s Year of the Zombie forum. And if you’re interested in playing, the group needs one more …. ;)
Posted in: games , yotz , zombiesThis is making the rounds at Ars Technica right now, and I thought I’d pass it along to my Gibberish readers who don’t make it over there.
From the mind and talents of Sean Cooper comes this totally righteous Flash game about killing zombies. There are only two ways for the zombies to come in, and it’s a matter of time before they seal your fate. But like Churchill said, TAKE ONE WITH YOU. Or, if you have an explosive barrel, grenades, or a landmine, take a dozen or so with you at a time! :)
As the game progresses you get weapons upgrades and a score multiplier. My personal best so far is 1.5 million, and that’s before reading about strategies in the Ars thread.
Thanks to Hagbeard for posting this.
Posted in: games , zombiesI can’t do it. As much as I want to finish reading (or start, really) Max Brooks’ World War Z, An Oral History of the Zombie War, I can’t crack fifty pages. WWZ is a far cry from Brooks’ other zombie work, the Zombie Survival Manual, published almost three years before. What worked so brilliantly for the Survival Guide is why World War Z failed to grab my attention.
WWZ is a loose collection of stories chronicled by a reporter after the end of a zombie uprising. Most passages are uninterrupted narratives, with others being interspersed with questions from the author. This literary device is the book’s biggest downfall. With “interviews” lasting fewer than a dozen pages, it’s very hard to get attached to any of the characters. I guess it’s the roleplayer in me, but I just expected more of a story, and less of a summary. If I am to read a book about the experiences of many characters, I want more than a snapshot.
I was afraid of this. I glossed over much of the Zombie Survival Manual’s latter parts, a collection of “historic” outbreaks, because I found Brooks’ style emotionless. This was an advantage in the first half. As with all socially conscious science fiction, the ZSM used an absurd foil to discuss real social issues. The tongue-in-cheek tone was a great approach for discussing man’s inability to plan in advance for disaster or properly survive after being separated from his air-conditioned, fully foodstocked home. Brooks’ caution about turning a high rise fortress into a very tall prison worked because he read very dry. It’s hard to tell an impassioned narrative with that voice, however. Furthermore, Brooks’ super-short story style worked well with the how-to format of the survival manual. Unfortunately, it made for choppy pacing and slim character development with WWZ.
Similar to the ZSG, World War Z has lots of inventive takes on the zombie genre. I liked some the backstories quite a bit, particularly the black market body parts dealer who puts an infected heart into a wealthy patient. I doubt that’s ever been done before, and certainly gave me an idea for my online zombie campaign. The way each story led into each other was also interesting, but not enough to hold my attention.
Brooks’ ideas would have been better fleshed out with a longer treatment of fewer stories. I’m not saying he has to write a full novel about a Israeli-hating Palestinian who finds refuge among his enemies; maybe sixty pages instead of eight. I can start to see the mostly-disconnected threads of the book coming together to demonstrate how a huge, worldwide outbreak could have occurred; I just don’t know if I can make it long enough to see everything tie together. I hate to ding someone for going outside of the novel-format norm, but the interview format coupled with Brooks’ fact-finding reporter style makes World War Z dead on arrival.
Or is it? It would be appropriate for a book on zombies to rise from the bookshelf for a second chance. Unless someone else will give it a nod, however, I’m moving on to another book.
Posted in: review , zombiesI started a forum for our zombie RPG game. You have to be registered with the forum to view the forum, and you must be approved before you can post. This will allow the participants (who will all be playing remotely) a chance to hash out details and discuss the campaign. I don’t expect it to be terribly active, but if anyone is on the fence about joining or just wants to peek through a hole in the fence, you are welcome to drop by.
Posted in: games , rpg , site news , yotz , zombiesOkay, I got some good feedback in the zombie rpg v2.0 thread, and I am willing to try a remote game via the Internet. Thanks to some research and playtesting, we’ve decided on using the Fantasy Grounds virtual table top gaming software platform. It allows for all sorts of neat stuff, and comes with the AD&D 3.5 D20 ruleset. Registered users can download the D20 Modern rules for free. I’m leaning towards using D20M for the zombie campaign, mostly because my Year of the Zombie source material is also D20M.
Fantasy Grounds allows a lot of flexibility. Not fond of the D20 rules? You can import other rulesets, or write your own. You can also import any image in JPG or PNG format as a map, create custom “tokens” that represent characters, monsters, or items. It is possible (and expected) to write backstory and item descriptions that can be shared with the players.
And speaking of sharing source material: any ruleset material that is part of the module (say the D20M sourcebook) is shared with the entire gaming party. No more having to tote around fifty pounds of RPG books, or having to buy them in the first place. The GM makes sure the appropriate source material is in the module before starting, and the content is downloaded to the players before the gaming session starts.
Fantasy Grounds runs $35 for the GM license, and $19.95 for a player license. However, you can get a discount for multiple copies. The GM client and four player clients is $79, or a savings of $36 on single-unit pricing. If we get five folks together, we can split it to $16 each, which is pretty damn cheap considering that some people drive from Maryland to play now. There is a free demo you can download, but the demo is limited to two clients in a networked game, the AD&D ruleset, and an non-editable starter adventure.
We plan on using Skype to do voice chatting, leaving the built-in Fantasy Grounds text chat interface for player-to-GM conversations.
The reason I bring this all up is that we already have two people who want to play, with two more possibles. I’d like to buy a stack of licenses so I can start building the campaign with the GM tools. I’d like the limit the game to six people maximum, including me. I would like to play at least once every two weeks to start. I’m not sure how long the gaming sessions would last, but I reckon four hours or less. We can work out more details once we have an idea of who wants to play.
Interested? Send me an email or drop a comment in below.
Posted in: games , rpg , zombies