New to GURPS: Zombie Apocalypse

[martin_rook]

On the zombie-stat front, I would recommend going with Injury Tolerence (Unliving) and (no blood, no vitals) and add a Vulnerability to headshots, or just negate the Injury Tolerence when hit in the head or skull. The primary effect is that it reduces the damage from bullets but not most melee weapons (and even though shotguns have the damage of individual pellets reduced by 1/5, hitting with lots of pellets still does a fair amount of damage compared to a handgun). This means you can put a zombie down with gunfire, but it takes more shots than a living person... unless you shoot them in the head. On the other hand, if it gets to melee attack range, your PCs having to use a fire axe or baseball bat won't be at such a disadvantage.

Personally, I'd go with a zombie type that is easy to destroy or evade when by itself (if you're careful) and make the horror come from the large scale of the problem. That also contrasts them with living adversaries who would be more dangerous one-on-one but easier to kill with firearms.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Kromey

* The martial arts enthusiast. Winner of numerous local competitions, her fists are the only weapons she needs. (Not really sure how this one will stack up against the others at this points level, so I may fudge it some and give her a few more points than the others.)

Other people have mentioned that this is a bad choice in a zombie apocalypse. While they are correct that hitting things with your fists and feet does tend to open you up to being bitten, it can still be a pretty fun character. I played one in a Zombie Apocalypse one-shot a while ago with 25-point characters; mine was the only one with half-decent combat skills (I think she had 20 points invested in Karate, for a Karate skill of 14), and she completely rocked with booting zombies in the head or knees. Just punching them in the torso is a terrible idea, but if she can get enough damage to do Zombie HP/2 damage reliably, she could probably dominate at disabling zombies. She was also a really fast runner, which was very useful at not getting hit. Making her useful did depend a lot on exploiting telegraphic attacks (since zombies were always using AoAs) and targeted attacks, though.

That said, improvised weapons are probably more generally useful, especially ones that can do sw damage.

[Grey_Fox]

I think the martial artist can work, but like others have said a couple of changes would need to take place, first they should have at least some small ability to use a weapon (most martial arts systems practice at least some kind of weapon at the higher levels) and second the martial arts bit should be a secondary characteristic of the character for example the character is a school physical education teacher who is also a martial arts instructor on the weekend, i think makes for a much more "normal" sounding person.

Something else that might help is throw some spotlight on things that GURPS does that are absent in D&D, the biggest one that comes to mind is Fatigue Points, once you get the books check out the rules for sleep deprivation and starvation, extra effect and the like, this will really help show why the fireman with his high HT stat has some strong advantages against the cop who can shoot guns a little.

I also second the idea of getting the players to create their own general concepts, I would go about it by asking my players to come up with ideas for characters that represent normal members of society, if you like you can even throw on restriction "come up with an idea for an average member of society would not be trained in firearms as part of their job", you can then pregen on their suggestions.

Some other ideas of survivors might be, a star athlete, a homeless person, a biker, a street thug, a construction worker, a VIP who’s body guard just got munched, any typical "helpless" archetype that has been protected by others but actually has useful traits (children work very well for this type of character i.e. can fit into small spaces and can at least cinematically be considered stealthy), an office worker with anger management issues (all those hours of extreme road rage are about to pay off lol), a bouncer, a security guard, a sewer maintenance worker, a gun store owner, a k-mart employee. that’s all i can think of at the moment but you get the idea.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by Kromey

Hello all. I've been spending a lot of time in recent weeks eagerly reading everything I can about GURPS, including the Lite rules. I have ordered my own copy of the Basic Set books, which are currently on their way to me. I am for all other purposes a complete GURPS virgin.

I am currently GMing a D&D 4e campaign (using a home brew setting based loosely on the old 3.5e setting and the events of a previous epic-level campaign I played in, with several updates drawn from the 4e setting), however I'm finding myself growing more and more... well, bored with 4e. I just feel limited, pigeon-holed into WotC's ideas of what characters somehow are supposed to be. It's very restricting. And I want to break free.

I've considered Savage Worlds (conveniently I already have that rules book), but it just feels too simple. Now I'm wanting to move to GURPS.

However, as I'm sure most of you have seen, there are a lot of RPGers -- seemingly especially those who've "grown up" on D&D -- who are extremely prejudiced against the perceived over-complexity of GURPS. If I were to simply approach my group and say "Hey guys, let's convert to GURPS, whaddya say?" they'd simply lynch me!

That's a long way to go to say that I'm planning a simple one-shot adventure set in the early days of a zombie apocalypse. I'm also planning on hiding all the mechanics (although my players insist on rolling the dice themselves -- fine) from them, so all they'll see is dice rolls and results. I'm not going to tell them what system we're using -- just "something I found on the internet and wanted to try out". They'll tell me what they want to do, I'll map that to appropriate actions, they'll roll the dice, and I'll tell them what happens as a result of that.

So, this will require pre-gen characters, obviously, since having them create their own will, of course, violate the "hide the mechanics from them" goal. But I'm having trouble coming up with good characters. I'm shooting for 50 points (upper "average"/lower "exceptional", yes?), and trying to avoid things like the police office or trained soldier (everyone else would be left bored while he mops up the zombies), or the asthmatic accountant (who'd be left bored while everyone else mops up the zombies).

Here are the characters I've got so far:
* The high-power business exec who's father was a world-class shotgunner. Low on combat skills, he has his father's 12ga pump-action shotgun and is not without some skill in its use, even though he never took to it like his father really wanted. (Balance note: Just enough skill with this extremely lethal weapon to not accidentally blow his own kneecap off.)
* The taxi driver. Not the safest of professions, she carries a Springfield Armory XD-40 and spends enough time on the range to be competent, but not exceptional.
* The outdoor enthusiast. She spends more time in the wilderness than the city, and was only caught here by the worst of luck. She carries her trusty machete and knows how to use it.
* The fireman. Strong and tough, at some point in this crisis he grabbed a fire axe, and is certainly no slouch with it.
* The martial arts enthusiast. Winner of numerous local competitions, her fists are the only weapons she needs. (Not really sure how this one will stack up against the others at this points level, so I may fudge it some and give her a few more points than the others.)

The two gun-wielding characters will be low-ish on ammo -- each has a full magazine loaded to begin with, but only enough spare ammo for a single reload and a tad more (the taxi driver does have a fully-loaded spare magazine, plus a small handful of loose ammo; the shotgun is equipped with a shell holder on the stock, plus he's got a few more in his pocket) -- to balance their relatively high lethality and ranged-ness against the rest of the characters. Plus I intend to avoid encounters in areas where the two ranged characters can bring down the zombies before they get close enough to threaten everyone.

So, the questions I have for you, oh might GURPS veterans, is:
1) Is this party balanced? By "balance" I'm looking for a group where one character doesn't rule the day while the others sit back and watch, nothing to do. If they're mowing through zombies too easily, I can always through in things to complicate their lives!
2) What other characters could I consider? My goal is around 10 characters, so that when (not if) one gets killed, I can have the party find another survivor around the next corner (a la Left 4 Dead, although the new survivor isn't just the same dude somehow ahead of them and stuck in a closet) and thus keep all the players in the game.

I'd also like to run these stats for a basic zombie by you guys, see if this seems reasonable for this kind of low-power game. I found it on some forum somewhere, maybe even here, but no longer remember where.


Beyond this little guy (in large numbers), I do intend to also have a few "special" zombies, like an oversized, over-muscled dude that plows through other zombies and survivors alike, and unusually stealthy, quick ones with an unnerving knack for scaling walls and leaping out of dark corners you thought empty.

Stick to the lite rules as much as possible and avoid the complexity issues.

Zombies with Supernatural Durability [150 cp] are likely too powerful for newbie players. Ones with Unkillable 1 [50 CP] are annoying - needing to take them to neg ten x HP can be mean. I'd add DR 3 and ten HP for your initial big bads and give them some sentience that lets them argue for their 'right' to continue their existence.

Nasty surprize some zombies can teleport in dark hexes to dark hexes. Lanterns are thus highly useful and what intelligent undead will try and supress.