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Evening all,

I was wondering if there were any good recommendations for either a zombie apocalypse/fallout-esque RPG? The parties would be decently sized (~5 players) and I know that several of them enjoy the combat aspect of RPG's over the role-playing aspect.

I'm very new to the role-playing world so please keep everything in noob terms

Only War can make for a good survival game.
it's heavily combat oriented and if you use the rules for tyranids from the other 40k rpgs, you can make a good survival game.

Well, if you're familiar with D&D 3.5 at all (or its stepchild Pathfinder) there was a game based on that system with all the fantasy elements stripped out called "d20 modern." They released a "d20 apocalypse" book that I have had pretty good success with. Also have "d20 future" for injecting some future tech into your apocalypse.

I have used that system (along with a few "enhancements" of my own. The system is just begging to be modded with a vitality/wounds system and an armor as damage reduction system). It seems to work fairly alright. The only difficulty is that it breaks down once you start leveling up or else can lead to awkward situations in general. It's kind of designed like an action movie where everybody is naturally harder to hit but guns do a lot of damage.

This can make firefights feel kind of swingy as people sit around emptying the magazine into each other waiting to get a hit...of course once you have enough hit points you can tank a M16 burst to the chest with no worries all pretense of realism just runs away. There is a "massive damage" rule that tries to avert this somewhat by having any character that takes enough damage from one attack need to make a toughness test or instantly fall unconscious, but as written it is also kind of irrelevant because once you have enough hit points for it to matter the difficulty on the toughness test is so low you will pretty much never fail that either.

For zombies:

http://www.allflesh.com/flesh.html

For post-apoc:

http://www.outlandarts.com/mutantepoch.htm

 Manchu wrote:
For zombies:

http://www.allflesh.com/flesh.html

For post-apoc:

http://www.outlandarts.com/mutantepoch.htm

I’m not a huge fan of all flesh must be eaten. The mechanics are a little overwrought and unnecessarily complicated. More roll/counter roll and calculations then I like in a system

Savage Worlds does a pretty good job of zombie horror.

IME, counter rolls are perfect for the zombie horror genre. It lends combat a desperate, shaky feel.

But if you want to steam roll zombies like a Belmont on his way to murder Dracula, high fantasy adventure rules like d20 or Savage Worlds are better for that.

 Manchu wrote:
IME, counter rolls are perfect for the zombie horror genre. It lends combat a desperate, shaky feel.

But if you want to steam roll zombies like a Belmont on his way to murder Dracula, high fantasy adventure rules like d20 or Savage Worlds are better for that.

That’s fair.

But not all zombies have to be mook level. I played in a serial zombie survival campaign. We started out using AFMBE, but switched to SW after a few sessions. If you set the stats of the zombies just right, they most defiantly won’t be cashed in rolls.

Zombies are intensely revolting creatures that should strike a chord of primordial terror ... but they are also a worn down genre staple so it can be hard to use them to drive a sense of horror.

If I were to challenge myself in this regard as a GM, I'd run a session where the players were up against a single zombie. Now, I wouldn't necessarily tell the players there was only one -- although I wouldn't make it impossible for them to discover as much, either.

And I wouldn't "cheat" by making the zombie a runner, toxic fatty, super brute, or any other kind of "zombie plus" style monster. It would have to be a traditional Romero shambler: slow moving, basically mindless, but also totally relentless. Think of the xenomorph Alien (1978) except without the deadly grace and animal cunning.

So really, it boils down to this thing being someone whose humanity has been ravaged away by an infectious disease. The trick here, I think, is to never use the word zombie. I would instead refer to it by the name the body bore in life: "Gordon is violently banging on the door." The minute you say zombie, players are just like "fine headshot."

No one is scared of something called a zombie. People are scared of what such a thing would "realistically" be like, especially in an unexpected context. I guess you have to be into RP to care about what is scary, however.

But if OP's group just wants to work out tactics to kill a bunch of monsters, there are some great RPG-flavored ccoperative board games out there like Zombiecide, Descent, Myth.

Horror roleplaying can be rough to pull off, which is why you see more action oriented games. My group has only tried it a few times. One-shots work better then campaigns IMHO, and our failures in the genre outnumber the successes. It’s not something we do often.

d20 modern actually can do horror quite well. Just imagine what D&D would be like if there was no magical healing. How many hit points do your D&D characters usually come out of a tough encounter with?

The only way to get hit points back in d20 Modern is to rest (or let someone with the medicine skill treat your injuries to give you 1d4 hp once a day). When you have to hole up for a couple days and just rest to get from empty to full hit points (any by the way you also need to keep track of your food supplies) you think a lot more carefully about doing typical D&D "run in and kill the monsters" type stuff.

The slow hp regen is one of my biggest complaints about the system actually, then again I basically used the "Doom style" demon possession zombie apocalypse with a few nasty hellspawn running around and true to my source material pretty much did the thing like a pen and paper FPS game. When you're trying to do more straight horror the bug might actually be a feature.

EDIT: also the OP did mention it's a more combat oriented group. Braindead is a zombie apocalypse movie too

Wow I wasn't such great responses so quickly, thank you all very much

Horror is going to be difficult to try to implement, but I'm actually aiming more at a sense of desperation.

I actually started working on coming up with my own because I couldn't get my mind off this last night. I'm not sure where I can post it to get feedback though. So far I only really play 40k and they have their own dedicated section to proposed rules haha.

I have looked at afmbe before actually, and it actually seems a little too combat oriented to me. Only some of our members are more combat oriented, while most prefer a pretty good balance. If the system is too geared towards combat that could make creative GM-ing for a noob GM (me) pretty difficult to balance.

Sorry, I really don't have anything useful to add, but I am interested in what you decide and how it works out. I have been flirting with the idea of running a "Walking Dead" type game for a while. My group pretty much uses Savage Worlds for all of our settings, granted we have only tried Rippers and the Accursed. I think it would work pretty well for a zombie apocalypse game. I think their setting book is "War of the Dead". I would probably still make a few modifications to it, but that is just me.

IMHO Savage Worlds does a great job making any encounter desperate. With gang-up or wild attack, even the least powerful enemies have a chance to hit and "exploding" dice rolls can turn an easy win into a deadly experience. Although the zombies are probably the most obvious threat, the real threat would probably be other humans that have decided it is more important for them to survive with your supplies than for you to survive with them.

I'm interested in the zombie apocalypse setting for the role-playing more than the combat, but I think both come from that source of desperation you are talking about. I like the moral choices characters are going to have to make and what it could ultimately mean for them. These choices are all dependent on the experiences they've encountered and the goals they are trying to reach. I've learned that a group discussion before hand about the characters and goals can help a game go smoother. I was planning on our group making characters based on the player with some small embellishments. That in itself may make for a more desperate environment. Also, being able to describe the situations like Manchu suggested would be awesome. It's all in the presentation. Maybe let them believe that there is a cure or some "zombies" are different. They don't have to be crazy different, but maybe "smart" zombies that can figure out how to open a door or mimic a sound like a scream or crying. In the right situations those become horror moments.

Anyway, I've babbled long enough. I'm looking forward to hearing what you do.

P.S. You can just start another thread here with your ideas on a RPG system or throw it into this thread.

AFMBE is not overly focused on combat. The simple truth is most RPGs devote a lot of ink to combat rules. And AFMBE isn't as guilty in that regard as d20 or Savage Worlds. But if you want to use d20, keep in mind AFMBE includes a d20 Modern conversion in its core book.

IME, the easiest way to generate a feeling of desperation is narrating situations where players have strong incentive to spend resources that are very difficult to replace. That's the heart of "survival horror" anyway.

You might also look into Call of Cthulhu (or even Trail of Cthulhu). The classic sanity point system can be a very potent tool for getting players into the scene, which is critical in horror gaming.

 boogeyman wrote:
I'm interested in the zombie apocalypse setting for the role-playing more than the combat

AFMBE and its supplements go into exhaustive detail about various zombie apocalypse scenarios. I only have the core book and the scifi sourcebook ("All Tomorrow's Zombies") but both are great for any GM who wants to run a zombie-centric session or campaign, even without using the AFMBE rules.

 rabid1903 wrote:
I'm not sure where I can post it to get feedback though.

 boogeyman wrote:
P.S. You can just start another thread here with your ideas on a RPG system or throw it into this thread.

Yes, feel free to post ITT or by all means open a new thread in this same sub-forum. As you can see, it is well-trafficked by the RPG-loving Dakkanauts.