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You never can tell with zombies


Student of Trinity

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I've been busy for a while; too busy to play Spiderweb games, and hence, ultimately, too busy to really keep up with the Zeitgeist here. But sometimes busy-ness defeats itself. Like when you're procrastinating on an overdue grant proposal.

 

A while ago here I described my experiments in running radically stripped-down pen-and-paper role-playing games for nieces and nephews. (Take-home message: pets must not die.) This was apparently one of the pebbles that eventually led to the mighty avalanche of AIMHack. Here's an update that might add a useful twist. This summer's game was:

 

Zombie Apocalypse: Hundred Acre Wood

 

Let me admit right away that there wasn't really anything more to it than the premise. On the other hand, that was its beauty. The game almost played itself. It could have been much more elaborate. But there was a zombie heffalump, and my 73-year-old Mom came through for the win.

 

The rules consisted solely of the character cards. Each character had two attributes: Health and Brain. These were really just flavor text. Oh well. Each character had one special power, and these were the game.

 

Winnie-The-Pooh

Health: Stout

Brain: Very little

Special power: "Many a bear ..."

Once during the game, you may declare, "Many a bear would not have thought to bring along a X", for pretty much any value of X. Add it to your inventory.

 

Piglet

Health: Very small animal

Brain: Acutely aware of danger

Special power: Trespassers Will

Once during the game, you may recite pretty much any procedure for accomplishing pretty much anything, and declare that it is what your Grandfather Trespassers William used to do. It will prove to be effective for its purpose.

 

Owl

Health: Fussy

Brain: Can spell Tuesday

Special power: Necessary dorsal muscles

Once during the game, you can fly while carrying pretty much anything, at least for a short distance.

 

Rabbit

Health: Runs fast

Brain: Clever

Special power: Captainish day

Once during the game, you may explain a plan. As long as it involves every single player character, and you explain it in detail, it will work.

 

Kanga

Health: Motherly

Brain: Can count pieces of soap

Special power: "Roo, dear!"

Once during the game, if Roo is in danger, you can do pretty much anything.

 

Roo

Health: Very small animal

Brain: Squeaky

Special power: "Look at meee!"

When you shriek, "Look at meee!" the attention of everything in the vicinity will be drawn to you, at least briefly. You may use this special power as often as you like.

 

Eeyore

Health: Sturdy

Brain: Under the circumstances, your persistent pessimism must be reassessed as an acute grasp of reality

Special power: "How like them."

Once during the game, you may observe, "How like them." Whatever just happened, your acute pessimism accurately anticipated it. Time rolls back to before the last bad event. The group may plan an alternative course of action, taking your anticipation into account.

 

Tigger

Health: Bouncy

Brain: Easily distracted

Special power: What Tiggers do best

Once during the game, you may declare of pretty much any activity that it is What Tiggers Do Best. You will be good at it.

 

And the ringer PC, played by my mom, who was grandma to most of the players. She had a vision for the character.

 

Very Small Beetle ('Small' for short)

Health: So small, most people don't notice him

Brain: No-one ever speaks to him, except occasionally to say, "Really, Small!"

Special power: More Than He Seems

 

The scenario map was the Ernest Shepard illustration of the Hundred Acre Wood, downloaded from the internet. The quest was just a multi-part fetch, to get the ingredients for a de-zombification potion that would de-zombifie Christopher Robin. (Extract of Malt, Haycorns, Honey, Condensed Milk, and Thistles. The book with the recipe was at Owl's house.)

 

The main weakness in the game was that only a couple of the players actually knew much Winnie-the-Pooh lore — even the Disney version, for crying out loud. Kids these days. It turned out to be decisive that my brother played Rabbit. Much of the actual session was devoted to refining his Captainish plan. But my youngest daughter quite enjoyed being Roo. She appreciated the fact that she could use her power at will, instead of only once, like all the others. The surprise twist was how Small turned out to be More Than He Seemed. At a climactic moment he suddenly grew into a monstrous demonic scorpion and stung the zombie heffalump back into the howling void from which it had spawned. Yay Mom!

 

I can recommend the Hundred Acre Wood scenario itself, but the concept is bigger. You can whip up a sort of fan-fiction RPG scenario quickly by picking characters that everyone knows, and just plunking them into any scenario you want. As long as enough people have some ideas about the setting and characters, this background knowledge will substitute adequately for rules. We don't need no stinking rules.

 

The surprise ending with Small was entirely my Mom's idea. It was why she wanted to play. I'm reassessing my childhood. Man.

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I wonder what this would be like in a Spiderweb scenario. They're too serious for something as simple as your scenario, SoT, but maybe they could be reduced more. Famous characters instead of adventurers...

 

The great mages of Avernum (Erika, Solberg, Mahdavi, Linda, X, Rone, Aimee?) versus a sudden outbreak of zombies (or demons, more topically) in the Tower. Probably Linda's fault.

 

A bunch of Shapers circa G3 in Greenwood Academy (Greta, Master Hoge, Alwan, maybe some other luminaries) dealing with a bumbling apprentice accidentally making a bunch of zombies in the vats.

 

Who knows. Are there other, simpler fables/fairytales in the Spiderweb universes that would be a more realistic analogue? I'd be willing to do a campaign with such simple rules; I think that would be fun and accessible (as long as it wasn't on AIM).

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