General Discussion

This forum will be for out of character talk, rules discussions, or just general off-topic talk.

This looks pretty cool. I do not have the rules but your description seems pretty straightforward. Looking forward to it.

I have the Core Book and the rules really are not more complex than I've stated in the how to thread. The concept of tests, and the stress system are the only real difficult things to try and get. If you understand those it gets much easier. Hoping everyone has a fun time with this. Don't ever hesitate to ask anything, sometimes my explanations aren't the clearest of things. :)

Hah, great start with Kel. I kind of chuckled to myself as I made Tim ask your characters what their characters would be. New level to meta gaming.

I may regret having you ad lib characters for your characters to have, because now I want to see more of those. I want to hang with a not thiefy rogue and a dwarven ranger that sounds like Cheech.

I changed my posts to come from my EOTW character "Kel" instead of me. I LOL'd that it's me in both images though.

Hah. If you add an avatar to your character sheet you can change it, but you can also keep it as you if you prefer.

Well, it could easily make sense for my character to try to continue playing the game while the world ends. He doesn't deal all that well with problems, and escape from reality can be comforting:

Howard climbs the ladder, as the waters rise. "...huff...huff...Plagmor jumps back...huff...from the door...huff... 'What's up, Holmes?...huff...You almost...huff...took my head off, man!'...huff..." Howard helps Tim up onto the roof. Tim says "Where do we go from here?" Obviously there's nowhere to go, and the water is still rising. Howard continues: "Plagmor realizes he's talking to a hobgoblin, and he shoots it with his bow." and then bends down, rolling the d20 in the gravel of the rooftop...

Lol, if you get a high enough mental trauma you could become delusional.

This whole "RPG in a RPG" thing is messing with my head. I'm now genuinely interested on how Juliska, Gilly, and Plagmor are going to fare in Tim's adventure.

The trick is to figure out how we can nest a third game in the first two...

Your character's character's are going to play a game of Knights and Wizards, a local game in the D&D world, or at least the one that exists in this world.

Also I will point out you will probably have all the supplies to continue the game later. :)

Also I'm just waiting for everyone to have posted once before I move on.

Hmmm, maybe the Siren has a friend named Tina who plays a game called 'Bunkers and Badasses'. :-)
Oh wait, that been done...

Just like a real life game session, ppl are always late :)

Well technically the game is set to 1 post a day, Generally it seems like people post more than that, but that's the minimum. If any of you are new to GamersPlane you can choose to "Subscribe to forum" at the top of a forum section to get email updates if something changes in a game. So if you click on the forums for our game, at the top is a link to click on. If that helps anyone.

That helps me, I've never done this before. I'll subscribe and make a post.

I hadn't realized we were started already because I was expecting some sort of email or notification, so sorry I'm late.

I figued as much. I did the same thing when I started with the site. I wish it has auto subscribed me to the ones I joined into. :)

Wow. Tim has really gone all out for this campaign, eh?

He really loves practical effects in his campaign when he can manage it. :)

I'm going to the zoo w/ family today, so posting will be less frequent

I have something today too so will probably post this morning the another big one later tonight. Sorry everyone. :)

I was a bit busy myself today, between some traveling, hiking, and finally getting my family to try some new board games with me, then traveling back home! Sorry about the late post.

Also, I added the 1 physical stress to my character sheet by putting an x in the box in the "1" row, is that right?

No problem. I think we are all a bit busy this weekend. Also yes, that's perfect.

Just to clarify, I think I described it poorly. There is power still in the office building. But at kels house and the neighborhood around it power is out.

Uh-oh.

I've been wondering which book(s) we were playing with...looks like we're at least using the Zombies one...

Ah, yes, I figured the name of the campaign gave it away. Dead End Job. It was a play on words. :)

Is this a world where zombie fiction exists (Noting they do not exist in the Walking Dead world, for example)

Oh yes, this world is almost a mirror image of our own, but at the same time in the minds of your characters, it seems almost as fictional as it does in this world. It's a sort of pop culture logo of an idea, but your first thoughts of seeing a weirdly behaving animal would probably still be rabies, because that exists in a very proven manner.

Oh, I agree, just checking for when we see clear zombie folks.

You know, the hospital that's clear acroww town...

You'll know when Jacob see's them because he's going to stab you in the leg so he can outrun you!!! :-)

Just Kidding!

*maybe*

You guys are coming up with great ideas! As a player, I'm desperately trying to come up with some reason for Howard to start improvising weapons before we leave the office, but the threat of crazed animals? Well, maybe I can justify it with Howard's overactive imagination...

lol. Not meta gaming in this is hard. Lol.

What a day to forget my +1 Boots of Rat Stomping at home!

Also, to clarify. If you want to try and bust through the door as a group you put up one person as a representative, then I have him roll a pool that consists of 1 positive dice (default), and another positive for each member of your group that is assisting. (so you could total up to 4 positive dice. Then you will get a single negative because in forcing open a door there is the possibility that you hurt yourself a bit trying to push. So the one representative would roll 4 positive dice, and 1 negative. They would need at least one success to open the door. Make sense?

Yeah, my weapons suggestion was not me trying to meta game, it's just that as my character is based on myself, and I often carry various types of weaponry with me to the bathroom (because I'm paranoid and mildly scared of the dark even as an adult in the real world haha) in such a crazy scenario as this I'd be freaking out and looking for anything to make me feel a little less stressed. Getting attacked by a horde of rats would definitely trigger that.

Just to be clear: I didn't mean to imply that you were meta-gaming - I think all of you are doing a great job at coming up with in-character reasons for trying to keep yourselves safe, and ways to do it that make sense (security office! Brilliant!). Me, though, I keep thinking of all the great weapons I could craft from normal office objects, if only Howard had any idea what was actually happening. All those cleaning supplies in the Maintenance closet? What possible reason would Howard have had for stockpiling those? None whatsoever, but me as a player was screaming "Oh, come on!"

I'll help you push the door.

Hah. Yeah exactly. Like we know this setting and we know things that will start to happen, but staying in character is tough with this scenario. Trying to think about what just the average joe would do.

"BRAAAIINNSSSSSSSSS"

"Yeah, I am pretty smart, wished this company would recognize what an asset I am"

hahahha

I wish there was a way to "Like" posts in the campaign. Lol. Good product placement Jacob. Now we can get paid for this.

I think the "like" thing is on Keleth's never-ending list of 'Things to Do'.

I could see how excited someone was over the new Apple stuff yesterday via my Twitter feed - used that as inspiration. :-)

Well, I sure am lucky that zombies hate the smell of Sharpies, huh?

Laughing at the image of Howard, thinking furiously "Where can I find a lever?" with bars, rods and rails just sitting in the rubble at his feet!

I should have mentioned that Kel's rail piece that he has is not an incredibly sturdy or indestructible material. If you were to apply leverage to it it would probably bend and buckle before whatever you are trying to pry. It is certainly not as suitable as a crowbar for such tasks.

So if I were to attack Air Bud, here, I'd probably be looking at [+] 1 dice (just because), [+] 1 die 'weapon', but [-] 1 die (just because) and [-] 1 die for attacking man's best friend for the first time ( I am reminded of the time I saw a half-dead bunny in our backyard who must have been mauled by a dog - I tried to be a man and go out and kill it swiftly with a shovel and the experience was ABSOLUTELY NOT like the movies.

Exactly. To directly attack it will add an extra negative. Also because you've probably not fought mans best friend. The first negative dice was for situational stress. Fear pressing down on you.

So in this case I remove one + and one - die because they match, and since I am over my DEX I miss? - and thus gain a stress? and remind me, we have the 3 tiered stress track for each category of ability score, So physical, Mental and Social stress? Or just one track of stress?

Yes. Also sorry if you read my initial post I made it sound like you hit it, you didn't. Jacob did though.

The stress tracks are 1 for each category, so you have a 3 tiered track for physical, another for mental, and another for social. You take one point for any uncanceled negative dice during a test.

Also, szemely, how did you group your rolls like that, the format was super readable.

Just separated the rolls with commas. So "1d6, 1d6" for the positive roll and the same for the negative roll.

Do Jacob need a willpower roll as well?

Yes, anyone who gets close enough to something like this for the first time will need to roll. I doubt any of you have ever seen a living dog corpse before.

How wide is this corridor to the lobby, and how wide is the aisle between cubicles? How many 4' wide cubicle partitions would it take to stretch a barrier across each? They usually just clip together and are easily shifted by two people, but how do we get Kel back?

The hallway down to the lobby is a fairly standard hallway, maybe only 6-8 feet wide. The aisle that runs down between these cubicles is maybe more like 15-20 feet.

And you are on essentially the corner where this hallway opens into this kind of cubicle aisle thing.

So success doesn't cancel/negate a negative die (only matching die do that). Is this right? So in every attack you gain a stress unless you also roll a matching + die?

Yes, that is pretty much what a 1 to 1 test is. You may succeed at your task of not freaking the eff out, but it's trying to see if the stress of the situation sticks.

Generally any physical attack against something will incur a negative dice, unless situationally it wouldn't. Like if you were shooting something from a distance, and you've done this a million times before. Most melee scuffles will be at least one negative dice. Like killing your first dog is hard. Killing the 10th will get easier, so you won't have the "first time" dice anymore.

Also remember, as you fill a level on your stress track for any feature, anytime you do a test in that feature, if there are negative dice remaining after the roll you can choose to ignore one of those for every track level you have filled.

You can also convert stress into trauma to heal yourself if you get like 5 minutes to rest and cope with it.

Edit: Sorry, I mixed the word feature, which is like your features in a category, with category, which is like physical, mental, and social.

Edit: Edit: Also, I don't know if I mentioned it by enemy health generally works the same as far as the number of stress hits. So it seems like it will take a lot of hits, but weapons don't just add positive dice, they often will add positive stress to a successful hit. So your blunt weapons add a positive dice when you roll, AND if you hit they add +1 stress to however many successes you have.

I should also probably describe the general rolls you will get for the weapons you are carrying. The metal improvised rails you are swinging at this dog give 1 positive dice, and add +1 to any stress dealt (which are however many successes you have on any given attack roll).

The pistol adds 1 positive dice, and +3 damage

A larger improvised melee weapon would actually add a negative dice instead of a positive because it isn't the most wieldy. But it actually adds +4 damage.

The cutter arm as a large-bladed weapon would add 2 positive dice and +3 damage.

Dang - There's prolly a paper cutter on each floor, y'all.

NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY! We're going to be eaten by Dug

My justification for attacking the dog:

1. We needed to break our combat 'cherry', thought it best to be something non-human
2. The dog would've smashed through the window after us, making noise.
3. Could've then faced multiple dogs outside in the open. Cubicles may limit flanking, etc.

I just realized that I've been hit and if this is normal zombie memes I'm dead.

Can I have your gear?

Yes. But rescue my family and 2 pugs.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-UIgw8F7TbEg/VemH--AOkpI/AAAAAAAAFVU/VYWfyh5cuZw/w1520-h855-no/20150820_211609.jpg

Deal!

szemely, you can have Jacob skip this turn if you would like, it is up to you. Kel did take a good bite, but the dog is almost dead after John fired upon it. (You guys should look into finding guns) Lol.

I think he will. It just seems to match up with a failing of a check like that. He'll scream for this turn and catch his wits at the start of the next one.

Between the guff Howard's giving everyone and the fact that he has more traumas than any other character, I expect that Howard's going to be grabbed by zombies through the window any turn now...

Before I post about it in the story thread i just want to make sure it wasn't destroyed or anything, but if Andrew's car is there he's gonna drive his own car.

No, yeah, like I said the cars are there.

OK - I've been reading a lot of reviews of EotW and one common 'problem' with playing 'yourself' is that everyone just wants to escape and get their family/loved ones. I say we roll with it. Let's find an RV dealer and steal one, run around and grab all of our kin and head to the mountains.

So the soon to be zombie wants to round up some food and take it to the mountains? Sounds suspicious to me! :-)

Dex, it isn't so much a problem as a great thing I can leverage during the game. How else would I get you into situations that involved a boring suburban neighborhood? I think the people that review it poorly for that are people that doesn't know how to leverage a very strongly built in tie. You created your own character hooks. In a D&D story that would be loved by a GM because it makes for a more interesting and immersive story, it does the same here, really.

Since I am very likely to be in combat soon - or other contested rolls - I have a question about how to proceed to keep the game flowing.

Would it be OK if I role-play some to incorporate my character's positive features and then add them as separate positive rolls when I roll for an action in the same post? You could then decide which (if any) to allow, and/or tell me to roll more negative dice as needed.

OR should I just role play, and then ask what to roll from you first?

I'm thinking to keep this game going on the forum, since this is a more table talk portion of the system, do that. I'll try and give a base dice amount for most things, but feel free to add more dice if you do things, and put in OOC arguments if you think negative dice should be removed (but roll them anyway) I'll review and let you know when I post the results.

By the way, I've been meaning to comment on how much entertainment I get out of the place names, like the street called "LARPenter." I wonder if the gaming puns will keep coming; maybe we'll visit the Dicentennial Park next?

...if we survive that long...

NPC Bank.... THAC0rp....

The best part was I unintentionally came up with larpenter. It's a real road name near me, then I saw it and laughed a bit. I also love the idea of the Quicky-Med. It quickly became canon in our world. Lol.

THAC0rp!! I'm gasping here...

"The Advantage Group," "JC Copper Pieces"

I think you can edit your post just to change from your profile to your character and it will not put up the edited post data. Try it next time you forget

That is correct.

Thank God John is with all us nerds

Also, everyone, try and keep track of your stress. Mark it on your character sheet if you remember. Would t be easier to put it in posts?

Since we can drop out of structured time I'll let Howard take on the other zombie. Normally you would have to wait your turn again.

Not necessary if others don't want to do that; if we stay in structured time, I'll just declare what I want to do and wait to see how it turns out after others have gone.

So we're looking good with just a half zombocop dragging himself around, yes?

Can we run him over on our way out?

Yeah, I mean if we are not in structured time Howard could just kill it but it isn't close enough to you right now. It's also pretty avoidable.

OK guys, are we :
1. Saving the world
2. Saving our families/friends
3. Saving our asses?

"Realistically", I'd say friends/family. But I'll follow the lead on whatever for the sake of the game lol

All of my friends are with me and my family is out of state. If someone has family close Jacob will help out.

Sorry for delay in posts. I was out sick. I should have something up tonight or tomorrow.

I removed Howard's post because it became pretty out of place after Andrew blew the zombie's head off. I will leave Kel's and try and squeeze the zombiecoons turns ahead of that in my post. If we are in combat let's try and keep it more structured if we can. At least in the blocks of your team, enemy team.

OK, sorry about that. Would it be acceptable if I post an "If the zombie is still up, I'll shoot it, otherwise I'll help Annette" sort of post? My period of activity on the site doesn't always line up with everyone else's, and I hate the idea of holding everyone up to wait for me.

As long as you don't mind that your cases may get more or less advantageous depending on rounds between. Like if you shoot at the zombie or go to Annette. But what if 10 raccoons suddenly swarm you all. Would that change it? Idk. I can try and work around it, we just may have to wait anyway for others. It's not a huge deal. Just trying not to let the game get too disjointed. This is the challenge of play by post. :)

Yeah, good point. I'll just wait for Tim and the raccoons then.

Howard doesn't have time to register this, but I find the implications of the roadkill raccoon profoundly disturbing. If he does notice that one before it's stopped, he's going to have to change his stance on "Viking burials."

Did you guys watch Fear the Walking Dead? It really helped put me in the mindset for EOTW

My wife has started watching 'Walking Dead'. All I hear from the other room half the time is growling 'walkers'. :-)

I haven't watched Fear The Walking Dead yet, but I do enjoy Walking Dead.

It was a short season, only a few episodes, but it captures the early part of the infection and is not based on any pre-existing comic books - although still written by Kirkman. A nice diversion while people waited for the next season of TWD to start.

I think Starhelm has sort of gone into hibernation on the site, his games have stopped progress so for now I'm going to say he stays out in the car with Jacob and Howard. John and Kel can try to get the supplies.

YES! I was concerned we'd get into a fight either in the back alley or rescuing ppl in the front

Perhaps we can open up the game for 1 more player in Starhelm's absence?

Yes, we are going to have to. I dropped him out of my last game. We will also be upgrading our characters as we set off to the next objective. I'll post more about that later tonight probably.

Yeah, I'm looking to open up my Jorune game again for the same reason.

I have an inactive player in my D&D5 game that I'm thinking I'll have to replace soon, even though he's only been off for a week. But he's kind of important, as the only healer. I prefer not to run key characters as NPCs.

Yeah this is why I wrote Andrew off, but not dead, just in case.

Would be cool if someone would take John. I don't want our only combat guy to fall to NPC reduction.

So right now Jacob has three stress on both the Physical and Social tracks. If he can take five minutes (a piece?) he can exchange those for minor traumas OR keep them and have stressed reduced by 1 each time he suffers stress in either of those two areas.

Leaning towards keeping them for now and seeing how it plays out.

Dextolen drops the mic.

Did everyone notice the change? Updating characters before the next chapter starts. Also new player joined the game. Hoping he can get a character up soon.

Whoa. I just realized that there is never a "new post" icon on the main forum when something in the How To's folder is updated.

Oh yeah sorry, with GP you have to subscribe to sub forums to get notifications for them too.

Alright, I may start up the next forum thread tomorrow evening. We can tie in the new player as we go.

Hopefully everyone has had a chance to choose their upgrades for their characters and work off any traumas if they would like to.

So, aside from all the cars we came in and the cars that have pulled in behind us, there's two cars near the tree, to the WEST of us? One that apparently smashed into the tree on the south side of the road, crashed into the tree trunk and full of blood, and another car that has pulled up onto the curb on the north side of the road, idling, with the passenger window half open?

Is that right?

Exactly right.

Sorry for lack of post last night. Uber busy. Should have an update this afternoon.

Just an fyi I will be traveling for the US Thanksgiving holiday, I'll have internet access but posting may be less frequent.

CouchLord0510: the basic mechanic of the game is to:
1) Roll
2) Remove matches
3) Determine success or failure
4) Determine stress

First, you roll a number of d6s. You will roll 1 or more positive dice, and 1 or more negative dice (sometimes the GM will refer to these as black and white, instead). When you roll here on GP, you'd do two sets of rolls: positive, and negative. You will always roll at least one positive and one negative.

Second, after a roll, remove any matched pairs between positive and negative dice. For example, if you rolled 2d6 positive and 1d6 negative and got

Positive: 1, 5
Negative: 5

You'd remove the 5s and be left with a positive 1, no negative.

Third, you compare the remaining positive result(s) - if any - to the appropriate stat. Your character has a set of 6 stats, divided into 3 categories: the Physical Stats (Dexterity, Vitality), the Mental Stats (Logic, Will), and the Social stats (Charisma, Empathy). If, after removing any matches, there is a positive result that is equal to or less than the associated stat, then you succeed. If the positive result(s) are higher than the stat - or if you end up with no positive results - then you fail.

Fourth, if you end up with any negative results, you get a point of stress in that category for each negative result remaining, regardless of whether you succeeded or failed in the task.
For example, rolling a Dexterity test against a DEX of 3:
Positive: 1, 5, 6
Negative: 1, 3, 4

The 1s would be removed. The positive results that remain (5 & 6) are both above the DEX score of 3, so the character failed the task. In addition, the character has two negative results remaining (the values don't matter), which means that the character takes 2 points of physical stress.

All that said, the GM has directed you to roll 1 positive (add a roll) and 1 negative die (add a second roll) for a Willpower test. That would look like this for my character, Howard, with a WILL of 2.

Edit: With this roll, Howard would fail, but without any stress, because both 1s are removed, leaving no positive (no chance of success) and no negative (no stress) results.

Thanks a ton!

Sorry I didn't get to the answer sooner. Weekends been crazy with holiday. I should have another post up Monday. Enjoy the weekend!

I can identify; I'm behind in all of my games. I look forward to our next moves in this one.

No problem. Life is crazy this time of year.

When you get to it, Howard is still wondering about that parking brake...

Yeah, crap sorry guys. I think the games may be in hiatus until after December 25th. This month is just hectic. I can barely keep up with games I'm in. All my hosted ones have halted for a week or two.

Cool. No problem.

Okay, just updating all my games. Sorry for the lack of communication. The holidays got me super busy, but I'm still on to start after the 25th again. I haven't died! :)

Alright, hope everyone had a good break and December. Glad to get back to the game now that the craziness has past.

Alright, hope everyone had a good break and December. Glad to get back to the game now that the craziness has past.

fyi I keep checking the site like every 30 min now that my family is involved! :)

No Zombie pugs!

Lol. I'll have an update a little later. Busy family day. :)

...can Howard hear Annette's cry from all the way inside and downstairs?

I would say you think you heard someone call your name between Kel and Johns gunshots. Jacob still has to go then zombie turn.

Are we waiting on zombies or can we act again?

Nope sorry, zombie turn. Got a tad sidetracked last night. I'll have it up this afternoon.

Dextolen, I don't know if we ever discussed it, but what is your family's names, and ages? Also you have two pugs, right?

Awesome, this totally won't come up at heart wrenching moments. Not at all. :)

Wait - there were TWO undead bears? John had already killed the first one, hadn't he?

No, John didn't kill the first one I think. I think he just injured it... I'll check on it in a minute here. Maybe he did.

I thought there was only one abd we killed it

It got better.

I'll have a new post tomorrow. Weekends are always a bit nuts.

I'm still chuckling every time I think of this.

"She turned me into a bear! Then she called down a swarm of zombie virus-infested meteorites which killed me and my entire family. I reanimated as a zombie and wandered into a suburban house looking for brains. Then some do-gooder came in and blew my brains out!"

"A BEAR??!"

"...I got better."

Re-read the posts and you are totally right. You can have your stress back from that attack. It was totally dead, and there was only one.

LOL - we have this gnome in our backyard - this is what Howard threw!

Lol, he threw it and t actually impaled a zombie through the chest and got lodged there. So now there is a zombie walking around with a gnome sticking out of it.

Full of win, that is

Of course THAT would never come up in the game again. No, not at all.

I won't let this happen

Actually, it is an old police post that was sold and has become a feed store. One place :)

I think if we went to an actual police station it would be loaded with undead or people that would take our gear

Ah, cool. I thought it was two different options. Perfect.

Alright, sorry for the super delay guys. Started the third chapter forum thread. Welcome to Elmore.

I added [+]Smart Scavenger, [-]Always called a repairman.

The thought being that I've been getting better at searching for useful stuff but now am faced with the reality that I don't know shit about car engines, electrical systems, plumbing.

Those both sound great. Hopefully you run into a repairman soon. :)

Ah! Totally missed the updates to this thread. Will have Jacob ready to go this weekend, sorry for the delay.

No worries, I lagged on posting first. I may also get someone in to replace couchlord. I think he went AWOL.

I was going to recover some physical stress but since I'm currently sitting at 7s it appears that I would have to acquire a level 3 trauma. Jacob is going to press his luck a bit then....

Adding: [+], [-]

So this is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Will be back to fill in the blanks.

Alright, to cut back on my games a bit I think I am going to retire this game. It seems like everyone had some fun so I hope you enjoyed the system. I know it's a really interesting one. I enjoy it.

Good times, thanks for running it.