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Post by Parduz on Sept 25, 2010 14:45:09 GMT -9
A young friend asked me for an RPG ruleset to play survival adventures against hordes of zombies. He knows D&D 3.5, and I thought that Modern d20 was a free product, which is not. So i'm asking to you all for advice: a fast, easy RPG to "emulate" that zombie movies. I think that also a miniature game could be good, provided that it is free and have a good amount of roleplaying in it.... but RPG rules will be the first choice.
Thanks!
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Post by BilliamBabble Inked Adventures on Sept 25, 2010 16:35:12 GMT -9
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Post by okumarts on Sept 25, 2010 16:54:32 GMT -9
Microlite 20 Zombiepocalypse works pretty well. It's a subset of spylite... both are free to download here.... www.microlite20.net/node/106The same guy does the awesome Where No Man Has Gone Before Microlite 20 Trek Rules.
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Post by kane on Sept 26, 2010 10:13:28 GMT -9
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Post by Parduz on Sept 28, 2010 22:24:06 GMT -9
Thanks to all. Seems that Microlite 20 Zombiepocalypse is the preferred choice (they're laaazy young teens )
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Post by mruseless on Sept 30, 2010 4:40:29 GMT -9
Savage Worlds works well with Zombies. The system is pretty easy to learn. My group has switched to it for almost all our campaigns now. check it out here: www.peginc.com/
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Post by onemonkeybeau on Sept 30, 2010 8:05:28 GMT -9
Yeah, Savage Worlds is an awesome system... check out their skirmish ruleset too!
onemonkeybeau
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Post by Parduz on Sept 30, 2010 9:48:40 GMT -9
Thanks again. Question (out of Zombie things): why Savage Worlds is so acclaimed? I'm a D&D 3.5e lover. Both as a master and as a player, i like the "Depht" of the character creation, and i think that the mechanics (at least the basic ones) works good. I know it does not scale well at high levels, and i can see some glitches but, played "loosely", it always give me lot of fun and epic moments. I also like so much low-mid levels adventures. Orcs, goblins and evil mages are my cup of tea - i don't need to travel in planes and fight half-gods Said this (so you have a rough idea of what kind of player or master i am), can you tell me where Savage Worlds is better? I've done a tiny search at BGG but there's too much things to read. Yeah, Savage Worlds is an awesome system... check out their skirmish ruleset too!onemonkeybeau What is it?
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Post by onemonkeybeau on Sept 30, 2010 10:20:58 GMT -9
Heh heh, I'm the same when it comes to RPG's... Savage Worlds is a generic set of RPG rules that, as their tag line says, is Fast, Fun, and Furious. I think the best thing you could do would be to download the free Test Drive set of rules. This will give you a good look at what the system can do. It's basically an RPG that was designed to be used with miniatures (which is what I like). Test Drive 6Then, you can download the skirmish set of rules (the full ruleset is free!) called Showdown... this is an excellent Fast, Fun, and Furious miniatures skirmish ruleset that has recently been updated and made a lot more streamlined and balanced. Showdown Skirmish RulesAlso go HERE for more free goodness! Hope that helps you onemonkeybeau
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Post by mruseless on Sept 30, 2010 11:13:47 GMT -9
I like 2 things about Savage Worlds, but I cannot compare it to D&D 3e since I have not played it.
1) It's easily learned, and once you learn the rules combat goes pretty quickly. It's not uncommon for our group to do an adventure with several mid-sized combats in an evening. For example, our final battle last weekend was 6 player characters against a Big badguy and his 15 minions. The battle took about an hour.
2) The probability curve is interesting. Whenever a character rolls a trait or skill check, they roll a die depending on their skill level: d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12. Any time a roll maxes (eg, a 6 on a d6), you get to roll it again and add the result. If you roll another 6, you keep rolling and adding. This is called "Acing". But Player Characters, and important bad guys, are called Wild Cards and they get to roll an additional d6 at the same time and take the better result. This d6 can Ace too.
So you end up with a really interesting probability curve.
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Post by Mike H "Chugosh" on Oct 5, 2010 19:46:36 GMT -9
Savage worlds is fun, and rather simpler than D&D, but not necessarily better. It may be much better in a Zombie horror type of game. I've used it for the last couple years on Science Fantasy, Fantasy, and pulp detective games. I've playedseveral con games of widely different setting and flavor, and all worked well, and I play in a regular Deadlands Reloaded game and that is a blast. My favorite bits are the poker cards for initiative, and the bennies. The poker cards are just about their own minigame, and there is nothing quite like drawing the high card when you really needed it. Or the low card. The bennies are tokens traded to re-roll failed trait rolls, or to remove a "shaken" condition in combat. Handing them out is a great way to reward good roleplay and whatnot. Another great game for a simple to run and have fun is Crucifiction Games' "Horror Rules". Very simple indeed, and designed to lose one or more characters per player every game session. www.crucifictiongames.com/ and on rpgnow.com, and in pdf it's even cheaper than Svage Worlds. There too you have several tokens that make characters a little more survivable and less. My favorite is the "stupid thing" token you get when your character does something dumb to risk his life; something that makes the audience holler at the screen in fear and derision.
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Post by sammo on Oct 6, 2010 8:01:27 GMT -9
I don't think that Savage Worlds can compete in the epic fantasy department, but it is a easy, fun and versatile system that does a good job of balancing rules light with depth and realism.
What I like the most about it is it fits with all of those offbeat campaign ideas that roll around in my head. Want to play prohibition gangsters rallying against ray gun toting alien invaders...or Nazi vampires vs. Shaolin defenders of light, have at it.
I'll tell you as a longtime GM, its much less bookkeeping and prep time to run Savage Worlds, though I do find more satisfying to run adventures in some other systems (especially for fantasy).
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Post by Mike H "Chugosh" on Oct 6, 2010 20:59:58 GMT -9
True. Epic Fantasy does do better in several other systems. However, if you want rules light, book-keeping light, fast and not very detailed fantasy, there's not much that does better.
I think where Savage Worlds falls down most, for me anyway, is in games where you do not want a lot of combat, but more social interaction stuff. It's just so easy to pull out the cards and start fighting!
But then, not a lot of social interaction with a zombie.
BTW, if you wanted to skip all the roleplay stuff, the game Zombies is awesome and fun.
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Post by Dominic on Oct 7, 2010 0:49:39 GMT -9
Out of curiosity, where would 4E fit into the range from 'quick'n'dirty' to 'epic'? It never even occured to me to switch systems for my campaign, seeing how we don't play often and are happy that we've got the current rules down after q while, but I'm interrested in what you think. Personally, I always tell myself that I will have more roleplaying and less combat in the upcoming campaign...
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Post by sammo on Oct 7, 2010 10:15:06 GMT -9
True. Epic Fantasy does do better in several other systems. However, if you want rules light, book-keeping light, fast and not very detailed fantasy, there's not much that does better. I didn't mean to suggest that Savage Worlds couldn't handle fantasy, it does so rather well, especially for the wandering adventurer campaigns, it just lacks the depth of a lot of other crunchier systems. As for 4E, its a huge debate amongst people that love and people that hate it. As for me I like the way they handle combat (which is the crux of the system) and the abilities/spells system is pretty cool. Still, at the risk of starting a huge debate with someone that loves 4E, I think they sacrificed some depth and flavor in favor of some flash and excitement. It is great for a combat heavy campaign and we had the most fun doing 4E dungeon crawls (because you get many of your abilities back in between encounters). My 2 cents, if you are trying to run an role playing heavy story driven game look elsewhere for a system.
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Post by Mike H "Chugosh" on Oct 7, 2010 14:15:57 GMT -9
On a scale of one to ten, One being super combat focus and not a lot of roleplay and ten being almost completely roleplay and not a lot of combat focus, Savage Worlds would be a two or three, and so would D&D 4, with D&D 4 being more crunchy. World of Darkness is more like a six or seven. I do not gravitate to the more RP centric games as they tend also to be more expensive (and longer).
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Post by mruseless on Oct 7, 2010 17:13:01 GMT -9
Doesn't the combat vs. role-play focus depend more on the GM and players than the system?
I've played some World of Darkness that was all combat, and some Savage Worlds that was heavy on role-playing.
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Post by okumarts on Oct 7, 2010 17:35:16 GMT -9
I'd still stick with Microlite20. I recently dusted off an old system for skirmish games that I created many (ok 20) years ago now and I really like it. My players seem to like it. It is simple however, not designed to be a RPG system, but not as abstract as some miniature wargames rules out there.
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Post by sammo on Oct 7, 2010 19:43:42 GMT -9
Doesn't the combat vs. role-play focus depend more on the GM and players than the system? Generally that is true. However if the meat of a system revolves around combat, it tends to be more fun to get into brawls, whereas a robust story or social game system encourages that kind of play. Like 4E with it variety of combat abilities and healing surges and all that combat centric mechanics doesn't force you to have combats, but if 2/3 of your character data is based on cracking skulls it makes you want to get into trouble.. Anyway, I suppose this is derailing the thread a bit. I would second the choice of Microlite D20, especially if you are familiar with D20 and like it already. I'd still endorse Savage Worlds as well. Both systems have plenty of potential.
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Post by Mike H "Chugosh" on Oct 9, 2010 3:17:59 GMT -9
Doesn't the combat vs. role-play focus depend more on the GM and players than the system? I've played some World of Darkness that was all combat, and some Savage Worlds that was heavy on role-playing. You know what? You are absolutely correct. It is just that most of the Savage Worlds games I have played have been about the fighting. As a GM I have a terrible time breaking away from the plots in the books which seem to be written for the fighting.
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Post by mruseless on Oct 10, 2010 5:29:51 GMT -9
Yeah, I see your point. My group does love to fight, as do most groups, I think. SW handles combat so well, I can see where most adventures would rely heavily on it.
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