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mindflenzing — RPG Totally Not Zombies
Published: 2009-10-03 12:42:54 +0000 UTC; Views: 2556; Favourites: 18; Downloads: 24
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Description
R.P.G. (Ransack People's Gold) is the tale of four D&D/Star Wars/RPG players and their DM, who wishes he were a player. These intrepid players are, from left to right:Kenneth, the over-achieving, yet under appreciated DM.
Adam, the guy who has a theater background but needs a girlfriend.
Barry, the munchkin power-gamer with a bad case of arrested development.
Josh, the straight-laced guy who just wants to play the game.
Kassi, Josh's homicidally-minded younger cousin, whom he regrets inviting.
*EDIT* I know there is a new book out called Death Troopers but it did not exist when the campaign in question and the resulting strip were made years ago. So you can all put your hands down I already know that cannon has changed.
Can't sleep! Aaarrrgghh! How much you want to bet I've misspelled something here? This is based on my own experience. I did spend two weeks making zombie rules for Saga Ed and I think its posted up on both the WotC boards and the d20 Radio forums (in case you were wondering). My players knew my love for undead so well that they guessed it despite my setting the scenario up as droids having gone berserk and killed everybody (they must have assumed the HK droid was a male version of the Red Queen from the RE movie). How the heck did they guess it!
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Comments: 108
yeah. death troopers is suppose to be star wars first horror installment and is suppose to be really good. its kinda funny though. i always figured that star wars book galaxy of fear was the first lol
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So the EU was following me in bringing horror to Star Wars. But then I bring horror to every genre I run as a GM.
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Why do my players always assume that a creepy box text and rotting corpses equal undead ambush?
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You should read "Star Wars: Death Troopers". Totally are zombies in Star Wars
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I didn't know that. My resident Star Wars comic book junkie was pissed and my EU knowledge stems primarily from Wookiepedia. I've never really had money for comic books so I get all my information second hand. The guys on the WotC boards and the Order 66 podcast boards liked the idea but thought that zombies were not genre appropriate for SW despite my using Resident Evil styled virus zombies.
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Well, Death Troopers is a (relatively) recent novel, having come out in the past few months. Basically, the zombies in it are the result of a virus (predictable) that was originally designed by the Empire to create super soldiers through mutation. The virus mutated out of control, and got airbourne, and soon infected a whole Star Destoyer (then a prison ship, then a part of Dathomir on Star Wars Galaxies in what we the players like to call 'Zombieland')
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Oh, OK, we played this scenario in the fall of 08. I went with Arkanian mad scientists working under the direction of a jedi turned sith who wanted to destroy the empire (in the worst possible way) that the heroes were hunting.
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No matter the game, someone will house rule zombies in...
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Especially when your GM's personal collection includes over 30 mainstream movies that feature the undead. Plus nearly enough undead figures to field a Warhammer army.
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force zombies or just the regular type?
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Sith bankrolled, Arkanian made, Virus Zombies. I had thought about force zombies but I wanted the story to play out less like fantasy and more like sci-fi so I had the droids contain the mess by locking down the station and allowing nobody to leave it and there were a series of video diaries they found and repaired to get the backstory.
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Oh, heck yeah. They were one of my favorite monster designs. The write-up was big but they worked perfectly. Only headshots killed them, everything else was a waste. They shambled about and were only really dangerous if they either pop out of somewhere and bite you or a group of them grab you.
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Zombies in Star Wars... Somehow Star Wars doesn't seem the proper setting for zombies.
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Perhaps not but it totally worked for my campaign. The douche bag they had been chasing around the galaxy looking for a sith holocron actually used it to make the zombies and took the info with him when he skipped the station just before things got out of hand there.
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Hmm...
Well Palpatine did say that a Sith once discovered the secret of life and death, and learned how to raise people from the dead. Still, it just doesn't seem the appropriate genre for zombies.
On another note, I just watched this review on the SW prequels, and I always had a few problems with them but I never realized what complete crap they were.
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Well, these were virus zombies and those are appropriate for the sci-fi genre. It was more an homage to Resident Evil than a fantasy zombie mission.
So your opinion of movies you saw were changed by somebody else's opinion of them?
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Well let me put it this way. I thought Episode 1 was retarded but I liked the special effects. I had a problem with the following:
1. Bad acting
2. Jar Jar
3. The Pod race sequence being a complete waste of time, and boring, and having a 9 year old kid drive a thing like that.
4. The fight sequence where 9 year old Anakin flew a spaceship and managed to accidentally blow up a starship.
5. I never understood why they didn't free his mom.
6. Anakin was supposed to be a pilot whenever Obi-Won first found him.
I thought the first movie was marketed way too much towards children.
In the other two movies I had some different problems:
1. The Jedis were arrogant and stupid.
2. Anakin was a prick. I mean, he was always a prick. He was way more calm, civilized, and rational as Darth Vader in the old movies then as Anakin in the new movies. In the old SW Obi Won tells Luke that his father was a good man and a close friend before he became Darth Vader, but I didn't see that he was ever a good man, or a friend, just a whiny prick.
3. The guy they had playing Anakin was a horrible actor, I disliked him both as a character, and an actor.
It's been years since I watched 1 or 2, I just watched 3 again a few weeks ago, but... now I don't know if I can stomach watching it again. I always thought 1 was stupid, and I was bothered by those elements I mentioned about 2 and 3, but I never knew how many gaping irrational plot holes there were in the new Star Wars series. Next time you're drawing or just sitting around with nothing to do [link]
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1. Lucas as a director will only use shots where the actors are devoid of appropriate emotions.
2. At least he had the decency to decide not to make backstreet boys into jedi for his grandkids (though I wouldn't have minded seeing them being killed in Order 66).
3. Agreed.
4. I wonder how cynical the writers were who decided to codify forever that any bad guy vehicle can be destroyed by a lucky shot. In RCR we had a Jedi destroy a space station by flying a small ship into the hanger and shooting a torpedo into the mag lift and that was before episode 1.
5. Jedi morality is pretty cold and hearless.
6. This is probably part of the Lucas influence Joseph Campbell's theory that a Christ figure is just an inevitable part of any mythology. And so 6 and a pilot is like 12 speaking in the synagogue.
7. Blame Lucas for having grandchildren.
1. They are like Buddist Paladins with superpowers. That makes them useless pricks who could help you but wouldn't want to risk giving a sh*t.
2. I mostly blame Lucas for directing because while still a prick, Anakin is a much more likable character in both of the clone wars series. There you get the idea that Qui Gon was a pain in the council's ass who was more suited to disobedient padawan than master, Obi Wan was like his master but somewhat less confident and more conventional, and then Anakin is more like Qui Gon but with serious anger issues and a master who would rather be a brother in arms.
3. Nobody's acting was any good in any of the prequel movies. Even Christopher Lee's acting sucked and Lee is the single most prodigious actor in the history of the world. Back in the day, Alec Guinness and Mark Hamill had more pull than anybody has these days with Lucas. Other stuff I've seen him in wasn't particularly bad.
The first series was also chock full of plot holes (large enough to slip more than one x-wing through to Dagobah). Can anyone say Jetpack? If you ask me I think the problems were:
1. Lucas has too much power to have any of his bad ideas stopped by anybody he works with.
2. Lucas has too much money for special effects which causes him to lose focus on the important elements of the story for all the minutia that he has created for his storys in all the decades since he created Star Wars.
3. Lucas is in a stage of life where his evil empire angst has been replaced with silly indulgent grandpa humor and that means that his newer movies will not appeal the same kind of audiences that his older ones did.
I still liked the newer ones but I still maintain that Empire was the best film in the series by far.
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So those were your problems with it? The guy who did that critique came up with more than both of us put together. He mentioned something which should have been obvious to both of us: Anakin goes crazy and kills a whole village of sand people in Episode 2, he tells Padme about how he killed them all because he was angry, including the women and children, and she just shrugs it off. Then he kills all the Jedi children in 3 and she has a freak fest and acts surprised, when it's really just the same thing he did in the last movie. He hasn't changed, he's just being himself.
Yea you're probably right on the money with the root of the problems. And it definitely seems like he was marketing more towards kids with the prequel movies, although SW always had a touch of the juvenile in it. Look at the Ewoks for instance. Man I hate the Ewoks.
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You can kill them if they aren't human I suppose.
Ewoks ruin Return if the Jedi for me.
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I guess, which still makes no sense considering that none of them are human anyways.
Yea they were definitely the downfall of an otherwise awesome film. Juvenile and pointless. He probably intended for them to be comic relief.
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Actually the line was a Hellsing reference but the idea is that maybe a bunch of unintelligible sounding rag headed savages don't count as people in her mind.
They just suck.
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I guess, but that makes her almost as bad as he is. They never showed us what those guys look like beneath the masks, they could be a race of elves for all we know.
Yes they do. Maybe he put them in for his daughters when they were kids.
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Well, she wasn't exactly egalitarian towards the Gungans to start with either. And from every indication in the EU they are probably hideous nonhuman creatures.
Probably.
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Expanded Universe. It is the movies plus most of the books, most of the darkhorse comics, some of the games, etc that have Lucas' blessing. They are what is generally accepted as Star Wars Cannon.
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Ah, I never pay attention to that stuff. I meant some more movies. I bet Lucas skims all that stuff.
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Well obviously, he does own the intellectual property.
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To own Star Wars? Yeah, I'm sure it is.
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Or anything that successful.
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Missing a period after "abandoned" at the end of the first sentence.
It's okay if you don't have a spell checking process yourself, because that's what I'm here for.
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Figures.
Thanks.
BTW, my new ranger got from 1st to second level today. Hunter's Teamwork is the perfect at will for her (unless there are minions on the board). Her spider's climb speed of 6 allows her to easily move to combat advantage in dungeons and do so without provoking attacks of opportunity or blocking movement. This means that my Ranger was getting +8 to hit (now +10) nearly every round and full dex modifier bonus damage. The concept worked out better than I had hoped and the hungry playful female spider with her cold vindictive bossy mercenary beastmaster is a ton of fun to play (especially when the spider was on the hunt for a kidnapped baby... that it wanted to eat also).
My Cleric also did quite well. Even without his paragon path features he already serves as a meatwall, leader, and striker very well. He was in a controller heavy party and he one-shotted the big summoned monster after he took the initiative to totally dick up the summoner (which made the summon a bit on the squishy side). People were choking on my encounter power to deal 7d6+7 on an at will power (that I can reroll with cards). It's not quite up to his 4d6+19 critical but when you can go around with +13(3d6+9 radiant damage) on all your at will powers people tend to choke.
And I get to play another module tomorrow *glee*.
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D-ang, one of these days I will figure out how the heck you manage to twink to that level. It doesn't seem possible to a newb. (Newb. Not n00b. I am not a n00b dammit.)
Holy--geez, what level is your cleric again?!
Oh, and next Monday--not tomorrow but the week after--is my birthday so tomorrow I'm telling everyone that I'm bailing that week, and if you want lasagna you're bailing too, so hopefully everyone will be cool with just skipping a week.
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Fine, newb. I told you, I have strong game designer tendencies and as a analytical type I am good at making strong character concepts that capitalize on strengths or offset weaknesses very well. There is good reason why my team generally has the easiest time defeating LFR modules.
6th. And at that level his Healing Words become Surge+2d6+2, which really helps a lot, though if he were a passivist cleric laser-beam it would be Surge+3d6+8. But then he would be primary leader/secondary leader, instead of secondary leader/secondary striker/secondary defender.
I'd skip out on them any day for Lasagna.
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Whatever. I prefer the kick ass and chew bubblegum type myself.
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I personally just prefer the kick bloodied ass without stunning yourself type.
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I prefer the one shot one kill variety of Cleric. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!
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Or how about a cleric that doesn't get blamed for everything.
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Depends. If the players blame you its bad, if the DM blames you it may not be. But in that game the entire rest of your party thought they were melee strikers so your defender defended nobody, your controller never did any battlefield control, and your ranged striker just got herself gang r@ped before she could bloody anybody.
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If the DM blames you, it's for awesomeness/pwnage. Which is essentially a compliment.
Yeah, I know. The whole group was messed up. Still, even without such huge tactical errors, we seem to be incapable of working together. Which may or may not be related to how little we like each other at any given moment.
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David's build irritates me but then I suggested it to him. This is a big step up from his wizard, who I rendered unconscious every fight.
Every character was built to be a hot dog and that is a recipe for TPK.
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Wait, his build irritates you. It was essentially your idea.
Cleric seems like a team player to me.
Rogue and sword mage, yes, definitely hotdogging. Wizard and ranger, I don't think so. We're just designed for range so we hang back, and I do try to be tactical and help everybody out when I shoot. I'm not really sure how I can be more team-helpful, since a dead ranger is kind of useless, it's not my job to flank people, and when people want me to go after a specific enemy I do.
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It was my idea. Its irritating to drop Bob and have him raised back to full hit points with a single minor action. It really jacks up the feeling of threat because I only make you guys fight half the average fights before taking an extended rests so you guys never run out of healing or surges.
As a leader that is their job.
The Rogue really needs a fighter for his flanking buddy to be most successful. The swordmage is flaky but they are supposed to be since they are the squishy defenders. The best you can do is help the wizard to minion sweep and focus your attacks on whoever the party designates.
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Well, even if we don't run out of healing surges, we still run out of healing powers eventually. And you drop Bob so often anyway...
If we're talking about the rogue needing a fighter flanking buddy I think we should first talk about the rogue's aversion to flanking.
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