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View Full Version : [Unisystem] All Flesh Must Be Eaten - My First Campaign



Tyrmatt
2010-09-22, 04:04 PM
I'm due to start into a AFMBE campaign tomorrow. The DM seems really enthusiastic and has apparently been waiting 3 years for me to walk into a room with a copy of the book and encourage everyone to join in. Go figure.

Anyway, our party consists of 2 Inspired and 2 (maybe 3) Survivors. One Inspired has a bit of a healing focus, the other is more combat focused. The first survivor is a Redneck Texan-type. Guns, pickups and beer with a love for dynamite. He's got the most "normal" combat ability next to the Native American shaman Inspired. So between the miracles and his gunslinging, I kinda hope my focus on being our resident skillmonkey is important.

I have all the skills necessary to make rudimentary weapons and explosives including dynamite for the Texan to throw and Molotovs for everyone. While molotovs are a matter of minutes to make cheaply or a week for the "Napalm" type which actually sticks to the target rather than just burning rapidly, any other nifty ideas for stuff to make with a focus on scientific skills and near genius level intellect would be appreciated.

I'd also love to hear stories of games past and experiences of playing it.

Tyrmatt
2010-09-24, 06:45 PM
Well...that was interesting. K, our ZM, turned up briefly to say that his work had just contracted him for Thursday evenings from next week onwards and thus he couldn't ZM. Grabbing me by the shoulder and gazing off to some far distant land he said "How would you like to run a game?"

Instant panic. I had nothing prepared or any particular idea of what to do, having only played Witchcraft once. However, I agreed and spent 20 frantic minutes devising a basic zombie, a town map and recruiting someone to fill my vacant player spot.

I figure I'll keep a campaign journal of what they do here out of interest and to help remind me of what went on last time.

Having no better to place to start than the vague ideas the ZM left us with last week, I ploughed in there, having the main characters meeting at the church in the centre of the town they were living in. One of the players was actually a priest so I made him the pastor of the church. As he begun his deeply cheesy Southern sermon, the poor old Grandma in the front row pitched forward onto the floor. One of the players (known as "Rambo") had First Aid skills so he leapt forward to help and the very first d10 diceroll of the campaign was made. I think this has set the entire tone for the rest of the game.
"Ok, I got a 10!"
"You are absolutely 100% sure she is dead."

After some shocked muttering and the town coroner, a wheezing old man confirming the expert diagnosis, people began to filter out of the church. Then, panic begins to spread. People scream outside and begin fleeing in random directions. The players race to the door and see what appears to be a man, clearly dead, walking towards the little girl standing clutching her teddy bear. The players decide to act decisively.

The shaman steps forward, mutters something and the zombie is engulfed in golden flames. It starts thrashing about on fire, not quite dead yet.
The Redneck reacts in true character style. He runs to his truck to get his shotgun. Rambo follows him and is rewarded with a .45 pistol for his trouble. They return and a peppering of buckshot later and the zombie's charred corpse goes down. The priest and Joe the Construction Worker watch amazed, though Joe has the presence of mind to wrench a piece of pew loose to use as a good club. A perception check later and its apparent that more zombies are approaching as the people fleeing thin out. The shaman unlatches his briefcase and quickly screws his rifle together.

I wasn't totally prepared for this, but I decided just to roll with it. He's a hunter/trapper who happens to be an Indian mystic. Not impossible. Meanwhile, the Redneck and Rambo advance on one of the three apparent zombies. Another round of shots and it's staggering but now greatly pissed off. It begins to lope towards them and they fire another blast, leaving it largely in pieces.

The shaman has put his rifle together and meditates briefly before firing a shot straight into the torso. It rips a hole big enough to see through but it keeps coming. The shaman preps for a second shot at closer range and easily dispatches it as it comes towards him. He lights a cigarette and takes a relaxed puff. Just another day at the beach for a character with Inspired powers and Occult Knowledge.


Meanwhile the construction worker and priest are faced with one more zombie coming towards the girl. Worker does what comes naturally and breaks into a full run, his hefty piece of mahogany pew held aloft. The others take a moment to aim at the zombie before stopping. They don't want to risk shooting him and the sight is just too amazing. He blows past the girl and plants a solid blow right on the zombie's head. It reels and swipes back.

The roll for the zombie came out as a critical fumble, which in AFMBE is a negative result. I decide to say the zombie swung so wide, its spun itself around and is now facing away from him. He delivers the coup de gracé. A solid whack which splinters the skull and leaves it slumped on the grass. He shoulders his makeshift club and takes the little girl by the hand.
"You've got red on you." she observes from her eight year old perspective.

Meanwhile, the Redneck can hear shuffling and moaning coming from the car park. He isn't letting his truck get scratched up. Rambo follows and they manage to get into the truck, after a hilarious failed bonnet slide by Rambo and vaporise the head of the zombie nearby with a shotgun. The start the truck up and begin to bring it round.

What's the Priest doing in all this? He declares he's going to run into the church, ring the bells and scream "SANCTUARY!" at the top of his lungs. I decide if they want to hole up with more NPCs that's fine. Meanwhile, I've been rolling dice every turn since the old woman dropped. They finally got a 1. >:)

Just as he reaches the pulpit, Grandma stands up and lunges for him, desperate for his tender flesh. What ensues was a hilarious, near slap fight as he tried to get the zombie away from him. He got in a few good blows but then the zombie managed to sink her teeth into his arm. The player looked horrified for a moment and I decided it was too early to begin killing and infecting them. So as he suffers the two damage from the bite, I note "The teeth fall from her mouth and clatter to the floor. This old woman had false teeth. Be glad she didn't have any Fixodent this morning.

After a round of laughter, the shaman draws a bed and puts her down with a good shot.

That ends the first combat session, but I'll post the rest in the morning in a separate post.

Starbuck_II
2010-09-24, 06:50 PM
That sounded really good. Never played, but it sounds interesting.

Raum
2010-09-24, 06:56 PM
Sounds like fun! :)

Tyrmatt
2010-10-02, 04:45 PM
The players decided that after that, they wanted to load up on supplies. A highly pragmatic solution. All bundling into the pickup, they cruised to the nearest general store on my rough-hewn map and stepped over the body that was preventing the automatic doors closing. After a moment's deliberation and a First Aid roll to check the guy was dead, they hacked his head off and shifted the body out of the door. Better safe than sorry.

Loading up on tinned goods, good tobacco and beer came in at the top of their lists but this being my stereotypical view of America, there were a few small calibre guns for sale in the store which they grabbed, along with a second shotgun and a pack of cartridges from the "security station", which was essentially a corner of the back room. Now at they had 2 shotguns, a high powered rifle and a pistol with ammo, leaving only the priest without a gun however the Worker seems more attached to his chunk of oak pew than his new shotgun. A few zombies stumble into the parking lot but the shaman peppers them with rounds and they go down easily enough. With the truck filled and a lollipop acquired for the little girl, they decide its time for a true American tradition: A Gunsmiths.

Since the Redneck supposedly had good local knowledge, they got their pretty quickly, though they did spot something following them on the rooftops. It was shadowy and quick and they only saw it when they turned into the block with the gunsmiths on it. Getting into the shop proved to be more of a problem. It was a Sunday morning and it was locked up tight. The front of the shop was rather fortress like but they cleverly remembered to go into the back alley, after shutting the girl in the truck. After nearly shooting a hobo who was sleeping the alley, who they promptly shut inside a dumpster for his own safety, they began the laborious task of getting the two locks open. The padlock popped open easily enough but the security lock was a bigger challenge and the Worker managed to do nothing more than jam a screwdriver in it pretty permanently.

They were getting edgy now as they'd been exposed in the alley for nearly 10 minutes when the Redneck asked if he kept a jack in his truck. I rolled and decided he would have one. Opting for the buddy system, Redneck and Rambo decided to go back to the truck for the jack while the shaman kept watch on the far end of the alley for any signs of the living dead. I asked the two at the truck to make a perception check and the Redneck hits a natural 10, couped with Situational Awareness. He hears scuffing and shuffling coming from the roof nearby but they can't see anything. After nervously watching for a minute or so, the Redneck gets the jack and Rambo elects to stay at the truck to guard it against anything trying to eat the girl inside.

With a hideous screech and in a beautiful sailing arc, my "Hunter" zombie hits the Redneck square in the chest and pins him down. I ask for a Fear check from both of them and amazingly, they both pass. Rambo draws his .45 and fires a sweet shot which knocks the beast off. The Redneck realises two things. 1. He is in melee reach. 2. There is a very very heavy car jack within his grasp.

*CRUNCH!*

Down it goes. Critical hit. It was too beautiful to stop.

Stopping only to crush the hunters' head completely, they hustle to the back door and begin inserting the jack into the doorframe, levering it open with sheer brute strength. Archimedes would've been proud of them.

Once inside they hastily barricade the back door and begin ransacking. The priest decides to bust out his religious visions power for the first time and I decided to show him the zombies coming towards them and the end shot of them legging it to the pickup. There's a good few guns in here but they focus on the ammo now, loading up with numerous clips and boxes of rounds. They also find a munitions tin with a padlock on it which after a few minutes though, hacksaw apart with the tools in the shop. Dynamite baby :D

Yep, the gunshop owner was making illicit dynamite bundles for fishing with. 6 crude sticks of dynamite for the Redneck to throw. By now the zombies are upon the shop but they manage to get up onto the roof and carefully dispatch them one by one. Taking advantage of the temprorary lull, they bolt back to the truck just as zombies start to appear from nearby alleys, drawn by the gunshots.


More after I get a cuppa.

Tyger
2010-10-02, 04:58 PM
Do keep these coming. I just got AFMBE and am waiting for a chance to run one. Love seeing how things are going for your group.

Tyrmatt
2010-10-03, 02:40 PM
The latest session sees the final roundup of the starting town and the beginning of a road-trip.
The priest's player ("Father Ted") didn't show up this turn, so I decided to rule that he's not entirely acclimatised to his Inspired powers and he collapsed in the truck from the strain of trying to see the future. For most of this adventure he was either in the back or the cab of the pickup, drooling slightly.

The players ask which is the next best place for them to head and decide on the hospital for the town. It's reasonably sized, at least 3 storeys and they have to drive past the church to get back to it anyway. As they cruise past, I note it looks like some other living folks tried to barricade themselves in. I say tried as the doors are now hanging limply from the hinges and there's a lot more bodies lying in the square out front. It's impossible to tell if they were alive and ripped apart or zombies and shredded by gunfire. None of them want to stop to find out and floor it for the hospital.

Pulling up out front, it's dark inside the hospital and two ambulances sit idling in the emergency bay. They point the truck away from the hospital to facilitate a quick exit. As the enter, they see someone sitting in a waiting area and a cursory examination reveals her to be dead too. Another swift decapitation. They aren't taking any chances. I get the feeling eventually I'm gonna have to have someone get bit while they do this. Or maybe some kind of parasite bursts from the neck to scare them. They step behind the desk to check the monitors, which are all dark. They fiddle with the controls. They try plugging a desk lamp into a nearby socket. After nearly 2 whole minutes of in table checks, they finally FINALLY believe me that the power is off in the hospital or at least the breaker have tripped. I offer that the breakers are probably in the basement. The worker moans softly and says "Ain't no way I'm goin' in no basement!" I take a moment to consider the A-Team esq implications of this rag-tag band. Nah.

Anyway, they decide to ransack the pharmacy and begin moving towards it. I point out that the door at the opposite end of the corridor they are going to is open and seems to be basement access...

They all groan and decide to just keep moving as fast as they can. The pharmacy is locked tight but fortunately, they shotgun a zombie from inside one of the offices and his nametag identifies him as the pharmacist on duty. The worker makes a point of taking the name badge in case "we get caught by the miltary, I can claim to be a doctor!".
Swiping his keys, they open up and begin looting, scoring a few first aid kits, bandages, random antibiotics and one sad lonely box of aspirin in the painkillers section. While they search, the Worker decides he's gonna go and block up the basement door. None of the want to even set foot near the place but he bravely tries to shift a filing cabinet down the corridor to block it with. He fails spectacularly on his strength check and it crashes to the floor.

I made a few random rolls while they all held their breath. Nothing. Huge collective sigh. They decide to haul one of the stretchers out of the ambulances and use it to transport their fairly decent haul of goods. They ransack the back of the ambulances and find a defibrillator with about half charge and two more first aid kits. Then they ask if they can hotwire the ambulance, giving them an extra vehicle not to mention more storage space and two "beds". I ask what skills they have that might let them do it. None of them have electronics, any thieving skills aside from Lockpick and that's about it. Nonetheless they decide to see if they can just use a screwdriver to spin the ignition into a working state and worry about a long term solution later. A hilarious critical failure later and the sirens on the ambulance blare, while the second screwdriver becomes jammed in the ignition. They're down to one big one and a small Philips head now.

Bailing on the hospital before the zombies plus what was supposedly in the basement (I had no plan for a creature, at worst it would've been morgue drawers.) could come and get them, they head for their last destination, the gas station.

Pulling up on the relatively zombie free street, they head inside and begin fiddling with the pump controls til it all turns on. Grabbing some jerry cans from a sales rack, they begin filling the truck and the cans. The worker spots some zombies coming up the street and decides a "firewall" is the best solution. He takes a hose from a nearby pump and begins coating the sidewalk in gasoline...

This exchange takes place.
"Seriously?"
"Hell yeah!"
"On your own heads be it then."

Lighting the stream (after carefully putting the hose back near the pump), reveals three things: 1. Gasoline burns REALLY REALLY well and 2. Now they can't see the zombies coming towards them. 3. Zombies move towards noise and bright lights.

Three more zombies approach from the non-flaming side. The shaman leaves the Drifter to shift the jerry cans (he elected to make sure all 3 were totally filled) and moves out to great the zombies. He peppers two of them with automatic fire and they begin to sprint towards him.

The Redneck isn't risking his truck. He stops filling, starts the engine and throws the truck into reverse, bringing him level with the shaman. The Drifter piles jerry cans into the back, on top of the still out of it priest and hauls himself in. The shaman takes out one of the nearby zombies and then uses his Spiritual Fire ability on the last one which collapses in a golden flaming heap. Fortunately spiritual flames aren't "real" fire and don't add to their growing combustion problem. This however has the effect of tapping out the last of the "mana" the shaman has. Shaking, weak and not feeling able to reliably take the last zombie before it reaches him, he stumbles to the truck.

This is actually quite a big deal as he is literally their big gun. He has a powerful rifle and magic fire. But exhausting his mana leaves him very weakened and worse at shooting. He gets about 4 uses a day before he absolutely needs to meditate for at least 4 hours to recover it all. Also, meditation doesn't count as sleep (or at least, he's going to have to sleep too) so keeping his batteries drained might be a way to lower their overall power levels.

Anyway, while all this has been going on, the Worker has engaged in a pitched fight with one zombie who made it through the flames and another who is on fire...A frantic pushing and kicking battle ensues and he actually takes a bite. Everyone around the table looks sideways at each other. I remind them that while they know these aren't occult zombies (the shaman made a check earlier and was a little concerned to find out they weren't animated by fel magics.) they have no idea how the "infection" spreads and thus can't be sure if he's infected or not.

With that, they finally all made it into the truck and the Redneck threw his cigar out the window as they sped off down the street.

Tyrmatt
2010-10-13, 12:53 PM
Learned Brains Taste Best - The University

The players decided that if this was a plague based zombie apocalypse, they needed more than just the smattering of mystical power that they had. They decided to trust in SCIENCE! So they headed off to the nearest university they could find. The first one was technically in Memphis, TN but as they cruised up the oddly deserted interstate, they saw a huge plume of smoke. Memphis was in flames. They decided that they weren't going to risk going into a city that was obviously lost and pressed on to the nearest university which I decided was in Birmingham.

I chose this place largely because, not that I know if it has a uni in the real world, but the fact that it was one of the few places they could reach before their supply of gasoline became an issue. Regardless, they cruised up to the campus and spotted the odd widely spread zombie but nothing too serious. Pulling up at the door, they allowed themselves a careful check of the area for any following zombies before they entered.

I should point out that the priest was still technically passed out in the back of the truck at this time. They moved him to the cab, locked Amanda in with him on orders to keep an eye on him and moved off into the university.

Moving carefully through the deserted corridors they happened across the first department in the chain of buildings which was Biology. Someone had barricaded themselves inside and a bit of banging and shouting got the good Doctor to stick his head out. Delighted to see some living faces, Doc Holiday (yeah, on the fly naming is a bad bad idea) helps them inside and they work together to make a better barricade that can be better dismantled from the inside for easy access but still keep the dead out.

They move in and meet the other, slightly more junior but more helpful Doctor Martin. See, Doc Holiday is a herpetologist. An amphibian biologist for those not in the know. But Doc Martin knows his infectious diseases. He thinks he can at least find out what's causing the plague. He won't be able to cure it but if he can figure out what causes it, maybe someone with more resources can. The military perhaps. But he needs samples of infected tissue. The players decide to saddle up and go get him some zombie chunks while they're out at the pickup.

After a relatively easy grab, they procure some blood, an arm (lopped off with an axe) and the heart just in case it's relevant.

This actually spanned over two sessions from when they did their gas station escape up to arriving at the university and meeting the doctors. The second session begins now with a player from another cancelled game stepping in to provide a player for the priest. The second session was almost entirely combat as they arrived back from their expedition to see something slipping through the vents system towards the docs office.

To cut a very long combat short, zombies busted in, including four of the "Hunter" types, like the one that ambushed them outside the gun store. One of them roughed up Doc Holiday a little but not too badly. The Worker nearly died from a serious bite to the jugular but the priest managed to seal him back up with his Healing Touch. The Redneck finally tossed a dynamite stick which pulped 3 zombies and knocked another 3 on their asses. A bit of cleanup later and the day was saved. It was a pretty good combat actually and the players started keeping running tallies of how many zombies they popped each. It was nice friendly competition.

More hopefully on Friday after the next session.