I've been considering applying shadowrun rules and setting to a zombie apocalypse style game. Personally, I would use a break-out of self-replicating advanced nanites, Gemini in particular to create overwhelming rage. Also, the nanites would act as RFID's for the others, so that they wouldn't attack each other. Throw in some high pain tolerance and some other qualities and you've got zombies. I've had plenty of other ideas, but I might pop those in once the thread is up and running.

So my question is, how would you run a zombie apocalypse survival horror game? What would be your reasoning behind the proliferation of zombie hordes? What house-rules would you have to implement? Ever done it?

Shedim. Shedim are always fun.

Ghouls. Up the infection rate, drop the intelligence, and you've got your zombies.

I like the nano-based techno-zombies idea better for SR than the traditional ones. Especially if a necro/technomancer learns to command these 'undead' beasties.

Or maybe he released them in the first place, for some obscure reason.. who knows what a deranged mind thinks of, not only do you get the worlds first "toxic" technomancer, but you also might imagine what happens or have happened if the pure proccessor power of the hivemind overwhelmed the poor sod, releasing an uncontrolled spread, with only a small colony left in our toxic friends care.. the question is, would he strife to control them all (que pokémon theme) or become a missunderstood protagonist searching to undone the evil he let loose.. oh the possibilities

Edit: before someone else says it "We are borgs! resistance is futile, prepare to be assimilated. Your abilities will be added to our own as a part of the collective. Resistance is futile!"

"We Are The Web, Resistance is Volt divided by Ampere!"
Zombies are Real even today . .
usually found in Windows Based Networks.

An idea entertained by my; could a biotech genius/corp (with magic help) could have tempered with the krieger Strain virus or another strain?

Like super ghouls, brainless and more corpses-like, and a more infectious virus?

House Of The Dead 2, people. That's the way to do SR with zombies.

I feel like to do true zombie survival stuff you would probably need an enhanced hit location system since zombies are all about headshots and crippling dismemberment.

read the SR-Novel with something like Terminus in the title.
more or less exactly what you described, but with vampires

My suggestion: Experimental combat infusion mutates into a transmissable form and gets transmitted into a populated area. For when you want to play with 28 days later "zombies".

I am doing "Resident Evil" as the basis for the first few runs of my current game. I basically modified the ghoul to fit my interpretation of the RE zombies. Plus they are viral based, not spirit based. So not living in any way in terms of having a soul or spirit. Granted, the virus is living, but virus' do not have soul or spirit. At least not in my opinion. So non living with regards to mana spells.

Hopefully that's some kind of Awakened virus or at least a genetic infusion gone awry - real science doesn't quite cut it in SR where you do have the needed angles to make weird shit happen.

The movie series seems to be based on pure science, even going so far in the last movie to introduce Psionics/Mind Powers. Plus just because magic has returned to the world of SR doesn't mean pure science can't do some incredibly scary things. I think even the world of SR would be complex enough to have such dichotomies. Even more so then our mundane real world, since magic is so crazy.

So in a world like SR I think "anything is possible" has more meaning then any other reality.

Got it, buy stock in caned food, shotguns, and mages who use fire based spells and spirits hehee

I you want really nasty, you could always steal from the Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton (I only steal from the very best, you see). Have some occult-loving nutter open himself for possession by a nasty spirit of some sort that in turn maintains a gate back to bowels of whatever nasty metaplane you want to have them come from. Then have the newly possessed driven almost insane by the pathetic keening of their kin so they run around and torture people until they also open themselves up for possession to make the pain stop. Give them a magic rating equal to their Will, give them a "screw electronics in the ass with natural EMP" power that is always on, the ability to regenerate, and the ability to toss stun and lethal lightning bolts around as a natural power with minimal drain.

Man, that would be a rockin' game if run correctly...

nah, it'd be:"you're all dead, instantly, every time" kind of game

How the hell are you supposed to beat those guys? Schampoo? (worked in evolution .. although the most blatantly obvious product placements in a movie ever!)

"Explosives and magic" immediately comes to mind...

It would obviously be a small-scale bit and the PCs would be more along the lines of tracking and taking the leadership down rather than brawling with the grunts.

And I did say, "If it was run right"...

Not necessarily. A starting group of SRers would end up dead quick, but one thats been around for a while? With body armor giving rating 6 resistance to electricity and shielding on their electrical systems? Doable.

And add that you could disperse simple electronic interference detection equipment for identification of the baddies and it's not so rough.

You could have nanite activated zombies [a la TORG Tharkold]
You could have viral contamination [a la Resident Evil, World War Z, and others]
You could have hive mind infection [a la TORG]
You could have the necro-virus from GURPS Technomancer [I think it is]

Or better yet, a mix of all of them

SR has done HMVV outbreaks, Bug City, and drones for zombie survival stuff.


If you want to go with actual undead you could have a horror slip through that starts cranking out the cadavermen.

so far as i can tell from the fluff, cadavermen are pretty much spirit-animated corpses.

Depending on the kind of zombies you want, I don't know if there's appropriate rules for them. If you want mindless undead hordes for your players to blast their way through, you might want to use something similar to ghouls, but under-power them a bit. As is, the standard ghouls are probably a bit higher power than the standard shambling zombie. And if you want a standard zombie game, you've got to decide what weakness you want (like a headshot takes them down or something).

They're probably something like that. I forget the SR rules for those off the top of my head. But Cadavermen are pretty stardard gruntish zombies (who move at a regular pace though, so careful there) some editions also give them a fairly unique "go crazy if they get hurt" ability.

Personally I don't have a problem with runners being up against slightly tougher zombies though. In fact I think things like Renraku shutdown and bug city worked to give them harder opponents. The reason being that runners could carve through so so many regular zombies. It'd be brutal on the tabletop.

all this zombie talk is making me excited for the new Left 4 Dead game coming out soon. First person zombie survival. oh yeah.

Premise: A small splinter corp of UniOmni has been developing next-gen transgenic combat infusions. They have been working on a way to get an engineered influenza retrovirus to deliver a mutagenic compund directly into animal cell nuclei, rewriting the gene replication codes. The intended combat enhancement is pretty standard stuff, enhanced strength, enhanced reflexes, superior conditioning, you know normal Captain America type stuff. In addition the retrovirus causes a massive surge in testosterone production as well as partial cell mutation. The infusion causes cells to be able to respirate aerobically AND anarobically, and alter the cells to make them less specialized. Thus what you have is strong, fast, loyal, aggressive and stupid troopers. To cap it off they can withstand massive amounts of damage and can enter a state in which they do not require O2. Now this infusion has performed reliably under strict laboratory conditions. Unfortunately one of the primary researchers is tired of "unnecessary" saftey delays and has decided to field test the infusion. To that end he made arrangements with a barrens high school to add the cocktail to some viral immunizations that were donated by none other than UniOmni. Unfortunately when the influenza retrovirus is mixed with an influenza immunization, because nobody paid enough attention, the retrovirus mutates. It becomes communicable, destroys the hosts higher brain functions, and still manages to produce the intended effects. Within less than 17 hours the school, grounds and parts of the neighborhood have been infected and overrun. Being in the barrens the residents are trying to keep it quiet while trying to contain it and establish a perimeter. After all if the city gov/corp police force found out they would enact a scorched earth policy and noboby with a legal voice would mind. On the plus side the impromptu cordon is keeping more from being infected, and since this virus was designed as a carrier, it has a short half-life. Unfortunately that doesn't help the aflicted.

This is where the runners come in.
-they could be hired by the barrens denizens to sanitize the area
-they could be hired by UniOmni to clean up the mess
-they could be hired by the researcher procure firsthand effectiveness data
-they could be hired by a rival corp to gain evidence of the UniOmi screwup and sanitize the situation
-they could be hired by a person who wants to get a friend/loved one/family member out safely
-they could be inside the area holed up in a safehouse and get a rather nasty shock when finally going outside
-they could be railroaded inside to survive at the mercy of the GM

One of my main problems with a zombie game is that the survival aspects are just not there in enough detail or scope to facilitate the most intriguing aspect of an apocalyptic game.

Zombie apocalypse scenarios aren't really about the zombies at all, they're about complete societal breakdown. Lines of supply are destroyed for things like food, water, ammunition, fuel and other supplies. To survive such a scenario, you need to be able to secure all these things while still keeping yourself safe from the danger.

So it would change the mood that the shadowrun rules are based on. Rather than getting into pitched tactical battles nad infiltrating secure locations with intelligent, adaptive and well-supported opposition, you're against a limitless and unstoppable force. You're always on the defensive, in a fighting retreat. You haven't eaten in days and your predator only has five rounds left in it, your bike is out of petrol, your americar has no gridlink to power it, and you have to find your way through a collapsed post-urban environment to get that next can of food.

I've looked over the rules in the core book and Arsenal, and none of them really apply. Survival just involves making a roll and if you don't do too well then you take damage, so it would need to be tweaked to rely on rewarding characters for succeeding in survival activities such as breaking into a convenience store and grabbing food before the zombies become too numerous or making a solar still on the rooftop.

There would still be room for shadowruns, of course. Even post-apocalyptic urban wastelands have warlords who need things done, and using your skills and abilities as a bargaining chip when trying to get supplies is completely valid when money doesn't mean anything anymore.

Don't forget that knowledge skills would play a bigger part in survival than some of your physical skills. Yeah, there would be a lot of adequate skills to surviving (infiltration, armorer for making impromtu weapons, clubs, blades, technician skills to repair vehicles, leadership to get others to do what you need and work together, survival, first aid, navigation), but how you know what to do in character would be more important than what you can physically do. Yeah, you might be a good shot, but if you don't know where you could find more ammo or another gun, your screwed. If you don't know how to act in this pretend situation, there's an even better chance your character experiencing it doesn't know what to do. As a GM in that game, I'd make the team call on relevant knowledge skills often.

Actually here's something that adds a twist and could be fun.

Have it be a bacteria/nanobot that spreads a "rage" combat drug. First it amps up those afflicted, and produces some obvious physical symptoms like skin color change, but then the afflicted turn on anyone their brain registers as an "enemy" [preferably in melee combat for a bite. That is anyone not already exibiting symptoms( and occasionally someone who is). They'd largely retain abilities they had, but drop logic to essentially 0 and maybe drop all skills by half.

Anyway the point is that it gives a fun way to take the kid gloves off. If a player gets overrun apply the modifiers and you can keep them in the game by passing notes as they try to turn other players or other people in the region.

At the end someone comes up with a cure so turned players will return to normal.

Blood Of Kali works. Characters who fail an Edge (1) test are permanently berserked.

Actually, this reminds me of an idea I had for a zombie survival shadowrun I had. No shadowrunners allowed. You start with normal people as characters. 200-300 BP allocation, no restricted ware without licenses, NO Forbidden ware, low availability. An emphasis on building a real person in shadowrun who might work well in a survival horror situation. A skilled handyman, a streetsmart cop, an athletic and driven doctor, a ganger, any sixth world citizen you want to try and keep alive.

You've spent a year in a secluded mountain hide-out since the outbreak, and you've been safe, but a lack of vital supplies, possibly a disease outbreak or maybe even an attack or communal violence sent you out, and your only choice was the nearest city, several hours drive away. You have one Colt Asp with 4 bullets in the cylinder and a hatchet, one medkit and you're running on an empty tank. Good luck.

I had cut a rough setting for a Shedim apocalypse setting in the Koblenz setting I created. During heavy Rhine floods, the town of Vallendar had been completely drowned and the surrounding hills washed out until everything and everyone who hadn't been evacuated had been buried under tons of mud in a landslide. Due to the surrounding turmoil with many towns along the riverbanks trying to save themselves from the water, no real efforts were made to recover the bodies.
So I had a setting with several hundred corpses sealed and conserved by mud and water roughly 15 years before YotC. Give the Shedim some time to find those bodies, possess them and dig themselves out and you got a nice zombie army in a ghosttown just across the stream.
Sadly I never got to employ this because our group crumbled apart due to time constraints

Everything large in SR is explained by magic, so it doesn't have to make any sense. So that seems to be the sensible approach here. Some comet passes the earth, and due to insert magobabble, 90% of the population become Zombies.

Oh, and if you're really interested about playing a zombie survival game, it'd be worthwhile to look into All Flesh Must Be Eaten. The entire system is designed to be a zombie apocalypse game, but if you still want to use the shadowrun rules there's plenty of interesting ideas in the All Flesh rules too.

I've actually used the SR3 system to run two different World War Z campaigns. In each case, the players had 90 points to build their characters with--no 'ware or magic, of course, and I put a limit on resources. They were caught up in the Great Panic, and had to find a way to survive. Zombies had B6, Q2, S6, I1/4, C1 W6 with a x2 running speed and 9/9 armor which could be avoided with a headshot (called shot). The campaign focused less on fighting zombies, however, and more on surviving the total societal breakdown, as was mentioned before. One group headed up into the mountains, and another went for an island along the coast of BC. Both groups were forced to make very interesting choices about how willing they were to help others. Great fun.

Give us more details, please!

Well let's see. Both groups started off in the northern part of the Greater Seattle Area (Mill Creek for those who know where it is), living in a condo with a score or so of other people, all of whom I made sure had skills which could come in useful at a later date (to encourage them to keep as many as possible of them alive).

The PCs in the first group were a Park Ranger, a Poacher, a Tough for a local drug 'kingpin,' and a Beat Cop. I found it hilarious that we had Wilderness Law, Wilderness Crime, City Law, and City Crime all represented as PCs. Because of their preponderance of wilderness knowledge, they decided to head out into the hills when the first Zombies started wandering through town. They actually caravaned out of town with everyone else in the complex, including the young children, which I thought was a very noble choice until they started making sure that "disposable" NPCs were driving with other "disposable" NPCs, and that all the "important" ones were riding with PCs. In fact, before they were even over the crest of the Cascades, they made some pretty serious Etiquette/Negotiation/Con checks, and sent the "disposable" characters off "scouting out a good location to stay" and then drove off without ever looking back, taking the "important" NPCs with them. That caused a minor uproar amongst the NPCs, let me tell you. The calmed down a little when they realized that the nice military convoy that passed them was the rearguard for the mass exodus out of Seattle. Well, they calmed down about leaving people behind, at least. The (now smaller) group set up shop up by the Poacher's still deep in the Cascades, after looting several deserted towns along the way. Unfortunately, half the group was at that point getting ready to move out of the continent iRL, so I had to just set them up with a Chain-Swarm, and we got to do a great seriously Apocalyptic scene with ever-larger waves of Zombies, ever-dwindling ammunition, and a last-gasp break for it in an RV. It was great.

The second group is still on-going, and they went a very different route. The PCs there are a Scandanavian Bouncer/Biathlete, a Fireman who likes going hiking and photo hunting, a Fisherman/Drug Smuggler, and a Paparazzi whose goal is to avoid combat the entire game. They headed for the Smuggler's boat immediately when stuff went bad, although only a few people from the complex made it to the meeting point, they did try to warn everyone. The small group (8-10, as I recall) spend several days in Puget Sound then, hiding out from looters and watching the city dissolve into chaos and ruin. They themselves looted a few boats, including a giant cargo ship that had come over from China (the cowards didn't go belowdecks where a thousand or so refugees had become Zeds... dang it...), then headed north to the islands just inside Vancouver island and set up shop on an island with two resorts on it. One of the resorts turned out not to be deserted, and after some tense negotiations, they decided to share supplies in exchange for being allowed to stay at the resort. The combined group went out raiding on some of the deserted farms and towns nearby, learned to fear feral dogs (one character ended up with a Serious wound from a pack of them), and general prepared themselves for winter. They've weathered an attack from opportunists living on a nearby island, reduced said opportunists to basically tributary status, made contact with the Canadian Forces (very nice folks, they were...), made an incursion into Esquimalt Naval Base where they almost (but not quite, curse them...) went down into a tunnel system that was warm enough for the Zombies to stay active, and have been trying to deal with the jerks on a neighboring settlement that won't even talk to them. Now, the winter is slowing drawing to an end, and the Zombie menace is about to return, we'll see how they handle that...

Especially with carerand nanites...

I could see a liberal use of the survival skill to judge how well you use and ration food and water instead of saying "you survive this long."

The survival skill is a great skill to use in determining how long that nice cache of canned foods they got will last, and how long they can stretch it with what they can find growing wild (if there is a wild in your game... you could be in the midst of a giant city, or playing actual Shadowrun...).

I'd hope that you used more than that or Attributes would have been a 50/50 mix of 1's and 2's. IMO, that's not zombie-horror, that's horror at being subhuman at almost everything to start with.

SR3's point build was a very different critter. If I recall correctly, 125-150 BP would generate a starting shadowrunner.

Compare to SR4 where you'd be looking at around 300 BP for a relatively normal person.

-paws

Thanks for the first details, Roadspike.
Did your groups encounter any Random Encounters or the like? I'm asking 'cause I'm planning to run a One-Shot at a convention and am looking for ideas.

Just tossing around an idea: could a mage survive in his home protected by powerful anchored spells? Any ideas?

I'd say that it would depend on what the source of the Zed outbreak was. Contagion or nanotech virus? Probably for a while, but Shedim would eat this guy for breakfast once enough of them showed up, methinks.

That being said, in both cases I figure the mage would likely starve to death before any zed posed a real risk to them. If you can solve the food problem, might have a nice hidey hole for a while.

Just a quick note to say I agree with those saying that the SR4 (and previous eddition's, to a lesser extent) really aren't cut out for a typical zombie appolyspe game. Not that you couldn't do it, but I think you would be better served with another system, like All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

Still lots of good inspiration in SR for a zombie game. And fast troll zombies? ::shudder:: what barricade would be safe from them?

I like the idea of controlled nanites. Evil corper scientist makes his own slaves;
"I need more funding."
"Yes master" but then the subjects start to degrade.

Isn't there a sustenance spell? Wouldn't that be great to just feed and live off of the mana while holed up?

I've always liked the idea of a mysterious virus that causes an astral wasting syndrome- weakness, fatigue, body aches, anorexia, fevers, chills, sweats. Your average doctor is at a loss to find anything physically wrong with an infected individual. The only way to diagnose it is by assensing the victim repeatedly over time and seeing their aura fade. Infected individuals linger on for a few days, die a abrupt, painful death and then turn into shambling corpses.

As far as mechanics go you could work out some rules using the guidelines in Augmentation if you wanted. The virus could cause incremental essence loss and zombification when you hit Ess 0.