So I've been listening to PFTD for a few months now and have worked my way through most of the back fatalities and I just want to say that I've thoroughly enjoyed the podcast.

I just listened to this episode last night while at work and wanted to comment about the problem you had about the focus on resource management as opposed to the inner politics and interactions between he survivors. I'm currently working on my own system for running zombie games and one of the tings I've incorporated is a mechanic where the gm writes out notes cards describing certain aspects of a character and at the beginning of the game each player draws a card.

For instance, one of the cards might be "Character is secretly taking extra portions of rations" or "Character has been bitten and is hiding the symptoms."

Each card would be similar to the aspects on the fate system, but its mandatory that you take the aspect on the card you drew and you don't tell the other players which card you got. Maybe a rule like that might help he problem and steer it away from the resourc management focus?

I'm really glad you're enjoying the show. I like this RPG idea - especially for a one-shot where the players may be more apt to accept a situation like "you've been bitten" and aren't as wedded to their characters. I could also see it in a serialized campaign, where the players may have one character after another, when they die, but all in the same storyline. Plus, with some time passing between sessions. That way, you can hand out the cards and explain, "It's been three days since the incident at the gasstation, things have been getting worse in the farm house ..." and the explanation for why someone was hoarding food or stealing rations or hiding a zombie bite may fit in more.

Now I'm wondering if there's some way to have a second set of cards related to the first set. For every secret in the first set there's a single character reveal in the second. "You saw her steal an extra ration," "you stumbled upon his stash of food," "she's getting sicker and you suspect she's hiding a bite." That way the party is primed for conflict, everyone trying to hide something and reveal what the others are hiding, all with the constant pressure of zombie survival.


That's just me thinking out loud ... I'm more interested in hearing about the system you're developing. Share some details, if you'd like ...

I'm pretty psyched that you seem so interested. My gaming group has become pretty sick of hearing about it. Also, I apologize preemptively for the huge post that follows.

The basic rundown:

I'm aiming for a low prep game focused on one-shot scenarios. Any given scenario is determined by rolling on tables to determine the type of zombies, stage of the outbreak, physical locations, etc.

I've been working on a basic map creation system so that you can create an entire area, whether it be a large city or the inside of a mall. The map is grid-based, and you determine what sort of locations are in each sector by rolling dice.

So let's say I decide I want to run a game with classic Romero zombies, after the initial outbreak, and that the players are going to be trying to escape a quarantined city. I decide to use a 20X20 grid and draw out the boundaries of the city limits.

So I would start with a systematic sweep through the grid, rolling for locations on each sector. When I'm done, I have more or less a finished map. Just a matter of throwing in some street gangs or military troops here or there in the city, marking down caches of supplies and locations, etc.

Then I determine how difficult I want the scenario I want it to be and assign it a die value. The die value represents the amount of dice I as the GM get to use to mess with the players, as well as a tool for pacing the game and giving the GM an indication of how much they are actively shaping the story. If, during the course of play, someone tries to pick a lock to a building, I might say that it's an easy job, so I would use one die and roll it to determine the number they have to beat. I now have 49 dice left to use for the rest of the game. In addition, I use up dice to force complications on the players, which is where the whole bit of having people draw the cards comes into play.

Once my die count goes down to 0, that's when the end stage of the scenario starts up. So if they've decided to hole themselves up somewhere, I might make one of their barricades break and a swarm of undead force their way in. At this point it's just a matter of them trying to fight or escape, and when the smoke clears, the scenario is over.

As a note, the GM never tells the players how many dice are in his dice pool.

Each player makes a character through a simple point-buy system. I'm aiming to make the character creation quick, because in my estimation the more time you spend making your character, the more upset you'll be if he ends up being dying.

Character creation is a matter of rolling on a table to determine a character background, then buying up skills and stats. Each stat starts at 1 and can be upgraded to 5. For each point in a given stat beyond 1, the player gets a bonus to rolls requiring that stat.

All skills start at 0, and are augmented depending on the character background, and can be upgraded up to a rank of five. The rank you have in a given skill determines which die you roll when making skill checks. At 0 rank, you are completely unskilled and don't receive a roll when trying to use that skill. Your chance of success is determined solely by the bonus you have for the stat that governs that given skill. At rank 1, you use a d4, at rank 2, you use a d6, increasing until rank 5, where you get a d12.

In addition to stats and skills, each character is required to take an aspect. It could be an old injury, a personality trait, or whatever the player and GM agree upon. Each time the GM uses the character's aspect to the player's disadvantage (such as someone who has a trait like Loyal refusing to leave a member of the group behind), he has to give a die from his pool to that player, who is allowed to used the die to augment future rolls.

That's basically the whole game, without getting into specifics for skills and whatnot. Any thoughts?

I like the sound of that, a lot. I do have a question about what the GM does when their pool get's to zero. The GM has no more dice to roll against the players, how is that final challenge handled (the zombies break in, whatever)? Is it only the players rolling, at that point, or does the dice pool get refreshed or is there some other end-of-game specific rule that goes into affect?

This actually sounds like a simple, fun, and challenging system for convention play.

I have an idea for a mechanic for that. I was thinking that every time that a player failed a skill roll, the GM would add a die to a pool specifically for the endgame. If the player rolled a 1, the GM would add 2 dice. And if a player attempted to do something without the proper skill and failed, then the GM would add 3 dice. So once the initial die pool is gone, then the endgame starts with whatever dice are accrued over the course of play.