anybody ever run a zombie scenario successfully? I'm not talking about those non-ghoul ghouls that shadowrun has that talk, aren't dead but stink and don't really crave human flesh enough to do anything about it. Non-intelligent infectious zombie hordes it what i'm talking about, maybe from a corporate bio-warfare experiment gone wrong (or perhaps much better than anticipated in the case of Aztechnology).

Possible problems are that to really get the zombie feeling it's got to be post-apocolyptic, that the entire world is infected. That can really fuck up a setting and future adventures so maybe there's an out in the case of it seems post-apocolyptic (like in 28 days later). Perhaps it has to be a research island somewhere (plenty of those around in Seattle-based campaigns).

Well, street sammies with cyber-arm mounted chainsaws and high ranks in shotguns always helps...

I guess these kinds of crazy survival scenarios were already covered in Bug City and Arcology Shutdown.

OTOH, there must be a reason the corpse cadavre are included in critters. Hmmm?

Don

I've done it once before, but it was on a metaplane. I like to use them from time to time when we need a breather in our regular games -- you can pretty much have sideline "adventures" that have no bearing on the real world and can explore some really kooky scenarios that way. I've also done a Wizard of Oz metaplane run based on the style of American McGee's Alice and it was a blast, too.

One could easily make up scenarios with a zombie-esque feel without trashing the entire world, the key would be to keep the area in question isolated.

In addition to the metaplanes...

• On a deserted island in the South Pacific.
• In the deepest darkest part of the Congo.
• On an antarctic shelf or deep in the Siberian hinterlands.
• In an undersea arcology.
• On a space station.
• Deep in the Sahara or Gobi.

Some of these need a little more work to fit into SR (most notably the space station), but that could lead down some interesting paths IMO.

Plus I've never really liked the trashing the world with zombies. It ruins the horror IMO, as the biggest threat (the world as we know it collapsing) has already happened. What's there to dread any more?

Perhaps I'm too pragmatic, but when the world collapses, it's time to grab a shotgun.

As it has been said, "When the only tool you've got is a shotgun, all problems start looking a lot like zombies."

For inspiration.

I once had the priviledge of overhearing the plotting of players running under a GM friend of mine. One player was running a Voodon, and the other, a demolitions expert. The plan: create zombies, strap explosives to their backs, solve problems. I'm just glad they weren't in my game world....

"When the world collapses, it's time to grab a shotgun."

I think that has the makings of a quote.

I don't think zombies ruin the genre, per se - we might be accustomed to hearing about mugging, murder and rape on the evening news. But when it happens to us, it's no less terrifying.

Ghouls are still scary - knowing something is going to kill you and eat you is just a little unsettling, even if you understand intellectually what's happening.

What makes a zombie frightening?

1. The human-like appearance
2. The human appearance mixed with obviously dead features (rotting skin, exposed bone, etc.)
3. The imperviousness to casual injury
4. Motivation - "Brains..."

-Siege

Why not just use Loup Garou, and have them look like dead guys. That would give a scenario very much like 28 Days After... (Near instant infection, no cure, enhanced physical attributes with animal intellligence, eating the victims...)

You just need a small town far away from anything, a graveyard and a group of shedims. The first shedims take dead bodies from the graveyard and their friends take the dead citizens the first shedims leave behind.

One of the coolest things I ever saw in gaming was a campaign based on SR rules of users playing themselves in Middle of Nowhere, USA (to explain how they were all gathere together as it was online) trying to survive a zombie attack a la Night of the Living Dead.

The best part was the attrition level of the campaign. Just spectacular.

I ran a little one-shot halloween special shadowrun game wherein the PC's had to hole up in a Shia-center (walmart) to avoid some zombie hordes in a small town they were passing through.

Main problem is that if your party has a rigger or a mage with levitate, zombies just arent scary.

I have a friend who likes guns a lot. Whenever any of us question him on why he thinks someone should have a firearm, he responds "...zombie attack" Unsettling stuff.

In one of my games I had a magician NPC raising the dead out in the parts of Sinsearach territory that border the ash dunes in Puyallup, but those weren't really infectious, and the players found an amusing way of avoiding ever running into them. But the area where they were frolicking is kind of post-apocalyptic in its own little way, especially the way we play (i.e., screwing up and causing accidental explosions).

Question: is it cheaper to build humanoid drones, or take dead cadavers and replace everything with computer stuff so that they behave like drones?

Drones. By quite a bit. Youd have to replace the brain and the entire nervous system... so thats MBW 1 right there.

Weren't shedim written up specifically to allow survival horror zombie scenarios within canon?

Mutant toxic shedim - cross regular shedim with MADS or just any other infectious disease and there you have it.

Good lord, people! Resident Evil!! It's pure Shadowrun, though STARS would be a special Lone Star division or something.

honestly, zombie plots are all about atmosphere, it doesnt mean squat if they're magically created or not, if there's corpses shambling around and it spreads rapidly, then the players should be soiling their shorts if the GM runs it right.

In fact, the players in a one off or short term zombie scenario should never even know what causes it. Information distribution goes against horror. The more someone knows about something the less frightening it is. What causes them is academic.

I did this once actually. Had a Master Shedaim in charge of a horde of other Shedaim taking over a small tourist island. Our team got got in the middle and then we were making a dash back to the boat when one of the funniest exchanges I've ever seen while DMing took place...

Me: Zombies are closing in all around you.
Rigger Player: I fire up the truck and plow right through them.
Street Sam Player: You what?! Go around them!! Around!!
Rigger Player: And risk crash tests? No way!
Me: You blow through the bodies and to your horror the disembodied torsos start crawling up the hood of the truck, still trying to get at you.
Rigger Player: ..........
Street Sam Player: SEE!! I told you so! Don't run over zombies!
Sun Shamaness Player: Damn it! Stop giving the GM ideas!
Me: I don't need his help for ideas....I'm quite evil enough to come up with them on my own.

Man...that was a fun session. For me at least....

Picture this...

A primitive island off the coast of 'X'. PCs are sent there to retrieve an item (say a focus, or a thesis, or a unique spell formula) from the estate of a recently deceased magician.

Imagine their surprise when the locals say the mage has returned to life, and can show a grave opened from the inside.

A Master Shedim has inhabited the magician, and a bunch of his buddy shedim are helping out with his plan to take over the island. The mage has created a few corpse cadavres, inhabited by shedim with aura masking... (since they are already dead, I see no reason why a shedim shouldn't be able to inhabit it)

When the PCs get there, the run goes from 'steal item' to 'find mage and steal item' (he's hiding on the island) and as they search, he keeps killing locals and ressurecting their corpses into either corpse cadavers, shedim-inhabited corpses, or both, and the run goes to 'survive hordes of zombies and find a way off the island while trying to find mage and steal item' (the magician naturally sabotages all transport off the island).

Great... just found my sixth run for my new group. Good thing I'm picking up SOTA for them to read.

Imagine a repressive island nation that hated mages being attacked by a magical army...

And then imagine all the people these magicians and spirits just killed coming back to life, and killing the magicians...

and imagine being a runner team stuck in the middle, with no way out because the mages tossed up a "veil" around the island no one can get through...

Well, almost no one...