In the game I'm running, I've got a bit of a conundrum. The player's hopes are to run into small groups of zombies slowly. This is also what I think would be the most likely thing to happen. As I understand it, a neutral roll is what the referee thinks is most likely to happen. If what I think is most likely is exactly what the player wants, does that mean that every roll between 3 and 17 is small groups of zombies, and only bad rolls indicate anything different? How do you decide that?
(Doing Therapy)
Sounds like you're trying to use a chainsaw to do the work of a scalpel;
Use the GE roll, and bear in mind that he may find things that are better than what he's looking for. For a neutral result, you can always say nothing was found, and as you go up higher, you have worse and worse results until the thirty.
I gotcha, so 9, as good as expected, would be small groups of zombies, lower better things (A Damsel in Distress?) and higher than neutral, too many zombies to handle, or some other threat. So a 15, not unfavorable result, would be a lone zombie. Thanks Kyler. I had to think about it for a few, but I think I got it.
(Doing Therapy)
Looks good to me, happy to help.
Yeah, thanks Kyler.
(Doing Therapy)
Just to add, a 17 might well be a very small group of zombies and a 9 might be a lone zombie, or it might be a small group of zombies who happen to have a cache of grenades they don't realize they have, and a 6 might be a large batch of zombies who are all sitting around a fuel storage tank while you're two hundred yards away with a rocket launcher (lots of potential fun there, yes?) and a 3 might be no zombies at all, but when you followed the trail you found the remains of zombies finished by someone else inside a stocked but abandoned military supply bunker.
You can make the good rolls better by putting good stuff with them.
--M. J. Young
And do vice versa...
You see one zombie next to a car, but unbeknownst to you, there are two more zombies in the car.
The fuel tank is empty.
Yeah, I was thinking about what the zombies might be carrying. A really good roll, they run into a bunch of zombies who used to be Marines and are carrying fully loaded battle packs.
(Dong Therapy)
Mike just rolled a 30 GE roll. Any suggestions for what should happen? I've never seen a 30 rolled.
(Doing Therapy)
Tire blows, car rolls over a couple of times, the noise draws out the zombies. A lot of them. The bended metal made the doors be stuck, the ammo is in the back, you are upside down, hanging in your seat belts and you feel something leaking/dripping on your face/in your eyes.
Is that bad enough? Otherwise the sun can be setting?
Kyler would have a dragon with dubious relational tendencies appear I'd guess.
r o f l . That's just my worst fear. It would have to be beyond that if it were a thirty.
Am I allowed to suggest bad things too?
Suggest away Mike.
(Doing Therapy)
Being pinned between an overwhelming army of zombies and a large group of humans holed up in a safe region.
Moral dilemna of whether to face almost certain doom through the zombies, or attack fellow humans to get into safety. Coupled with the fact the human force is large enough to potentially kill us anyway.
A zombie living through being run over and climbing up the undercarriage of the garbage truck and clawing at Ted (I think Ted is driving) and knocking him out or killing him.
Those are the two real big bads I could see.
No, Bill is driving, Ted is on the roof of the truck with you. I see why referees hate giving characters names.
That wouldn't be a moral dilemma. I see no reason why the group of humans wouldn't let you in. That's a bad roll but not 30. The zombie surviving the roll over and attacking Bill is nice though. I'll have to give that some thought.
(Doing Therapy)
You didn't even think about the building full of zombies falling forward onto the truck, rendering it likely immobile for quite some time and surrounding you with zombies in the same stroke.
Or flying monkey zombies that fling poo at you from the skies.
Or Campbell having a break with reality caused by all the stress in his life and hallucinating that you are a zombie.
A group of humans probably wouldn't open the gates if they thought it would potentially risk their own lives. Like the possibility the zombies would get through the gates with us.
To make a suggestion on this question we would have to know 1) what was happening; 2) what he hopes; and 3) what he fears. It's furthest from what he hopes and worse than what he fears, in regard to whatever is happening.
--M. J. Young
It's been settled. Mike is almost certainly dead.
Yeah, 30 GE rolls usually have that outcome, unless something worse is possible.
--M. J. Young
Um, he could turn into a zombie himself? Is that worse? But it has been settled already.
Yeah, that's at least a possibility.
It struck me early in the development process that a verser could not become "undead" because he would have to die and be brought back, and he can't die and leave a body behind. (It's the same reason why a dragon won't become scriff-infected by eating a verser: once the verser's dead, there's nothing left of him.)
But since then, there has been a proliferation of psuedo-undead--the virus zombies and such. This might fall into that category, as it doesn't actually kill you but is more like an infection you can catch that alters you into another form. So yes, that would be worse.
--M. J. Young
Oh--caveat. Under most circumstances, it would not be that he "was turned into a zombie" but that the situation became so overwhelming that it became extremely likely that he would be. Probably in that circumstance, faced with the possibility that becoming infected would alter him permanently, he would fight to the death to avoid it, and thus would die without having been changed and not take the disease with him.
--M. J. Young
This zombie sickness was spread by contact with a certain tree. The zombies they were fighting couldn't have given it to them. Unfortunate that we never got to explore that aspect of it.
(Doing Therapy)
That's one reason some worlds get run again with other players, and with some world the same character returns to a different place or time.
--M. J. Young