Well, you have initiative because the zombies are slow.

Here is the map, not quite to scale but useful for general reference.

--------------------------------------------------------------



                          UNICAT    Z3
                          UNICAT        NEPHI
                       E          J     NEPHI       Z1
      Z2      EDDIE         MH             N
  L           EDDIE     Z4



--------------------------------------------------------------

Z3 and Z4 are the new zombies, Z2 is the (in)human shield that protected the leader from the first bullet.

Did I forget a zombie somewhere?

ETA: edited the Straight and Narrow Path post... Now it actually makes sense.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:06, Sun 10 Apr 2011.

The Drama Points options (in the XP thread) were expanded to include the following: when performing a Heroic Feat that requires an expenditure from a Secondary Attribute (Life Points, Essence, Endurance, etc.), the action can take as many points as the character needs, ignoring the normal limits and scores. This means, for instance, that an Inspired could successfully wink themselves out of existence by spending so much Essence that their current score goes below -30, and then failing the associated Survival Roll.

If the upcoming combat turns out to be particularly lopsided, I will open further options.

Having lost his sword due to the side effects of the zombie leader's infection, Nephi can no longer attack until the end of next Turn.

Monica, Hector, Eddie and Jane can still act this Turn. I will post NPC actions (Eddie, Jane, ZL, Zx) sometime tomorrow, assuming everything goes according to plan.

Meanwhile, half an hour in the future, Xynthia, Geoff and Allan are about to be swarmed by zombies... They have maybe a minute (12 posts total) to come up with a viable action plan.

I say we nuke them from space, it's the only way to be sure. Sorry for my absence. Real life got complicated and busy for a bit. I'll try to catch up on the threads tonight and make some posts tomorrow.

She suddenly looked ill and weak. She didn't pass out, but leaned against the unicat for support. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I appreciate Hector trying to rescue her, though  :-)
This message was last edited by the player at 16:26, Sat 16 Apr 2011.

Oh, hey, we have players, how cool is that? :)

I second the nuclear option, if you can build a nuke out of sticks and stones...

Going to be away for at least a couple of days.  My brother's dog chewed my internet cable, and I'm only borrowing his long enough to warn everyone.

Good news everyone: we may have a new player soon(-ish).

Since we are working on a military type (one guess where you are going to meet him), I was going through the character sheets to check what I had done with the Rank of our cops (it's a Quality that grants a limited amount of benefits compared to, say, Social Status), and I found that only Eddie actually has a Rank.

So the good news for Hector and Geoff is, I am officially house-ruling that Rank Hath Privilege, and specifically that a 0-point Rank (level 2) grants 2 free Specializations... Obviously, job-related.

The Quality cost also determines its value as a Social Modifier, much like Social Status.

I will add that Increasing Rank after character creation does not grant additional Specializations, much like Social Status.

Also, since I am liable to forget: happy Easter everyone.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:12, Sat 23 Apr 2011.

Hey hey hey, I'll be your friendly eyes in the sky on this hellacious trip, so buckle up and strap down and mind the abandon ship lights.  Don't know how much you all want to know about my character but as it stands he's an extremely experienced longtime career soldier who's specialty MOSes (Military Occupational Specialty) have been relating to Army helicopters, namely Chinooks which he currently is the primary pilot of after a career of maintenance and gunning.  Fort Monroe is famed for it's artillery installations and artillery training done there, and the CH47D Chinook just so happens to be the helo of choice for airlifting entire Artillery crews, and their Howitzer, and it's ammo.  So that's what I'm here at this location doing, instructing and flying.  Off the job, I have a houseboat in the marina that I spend my weekends on and sometimes put out to the ocean or bay for some serious fishing.

If anyone has any further questions, hollar at me, I look forward to seeing how the next game or two ingame goes.

Glad to have you with us, game's gotten pretty hectic as of late, another able gun, let alone a pilot is always welcome.

More importantly, I may be able to provide cohesive leadership and planning options so we can bunker up.  It's gonna be a lot of work and it'll have to happen first though, but we're in a region where we've got multiple naval bases and international airports in just a 10 mile area lol.  Our options are quite extensive to say the least.  I'll be blowing several bridges, creating walls with cargo containers, and setting up machinegun emplacements all over the place.  It's unknown how many survivors we'll have to work with in the beginning and how many may come to us afterwards.  Monroe Fort has thousands of people on it most of the time.  I have some ideas for checkpoints that'll safely allow accumulation and clearance of refugees to strengthen our numbers.  The most important aspect will be prioritizing locations on Fort Monroe, it's quite extensive and some of it is expendable.  The marina is quite important, I want to keep it active.  The northwest bridges should probably be blown or heavily barricaded.  The northeastern end is an issue all on it's own; I'll be aiming most of the fort's remaining artillery at that area in addition to trying to make a full blown wall.

Have your zombies been slow shambling types so far, or are there aggressive agile sprinters?

Meanwhile I'm inputting this character into UniForge for the ZM.  Making a few adjustments here and there for simplicity's sake for everyone involved.  Simplifying my Rank for example so you guys don't have to learn the very very specific and typically unknown structure of Warrant Officers and so on.  Given that I'm training soldiers at the Fort, I should have such capacity, which I believe means, ideally, given his age and experience, means Captain.  So I'm chucking another point into Rank.  This also helps us stay slightly clear of being subject to the average soldier's whims.  This still leaves room for a high level Major or Colonel of a major operation coming in and so on.

*Contemplates over his list of things to do* Ahh, skill consolidation I've gotta talk to the ZM about, though, I suppose.... meh.  :P I have redundant Electronics, Mechanics, Engineering skills etc.  Now that I know how to use Specialties I'm gonna make some mods to specialize in helicopters.  He was a Repairman before he was a pilot and in between he was a gunner.

Mostly slow shamblers, but we also have fast sprinters, mutated diggers, and intelligent gun wielding psychic zombies too. They're definitely not your typical zombie either, shooting for the head does nothing, you have to kill the parasite controlling the body, which usually means silver nitrate, blessed bullets, or being dead accurate and knowing where the little devils are.

So you're Mr. Fix-it with a gun flying a helicopter, which has even more guns?

Wtf'ing hell lol :P So we best keep our distance and make our walls high, jeebus.  Sounds like my focus on cleansing with fire is going to be the focus, silver isn't very practical.  Damn supernatural stuff :P Oy'vey.  We might not be 100% on the offensive end against these apparently, so the focus is going to be on defense and survival.  We can still blow the bodies apart with total damage right?  Zombies don't show effect from damage, typically unless hit in their weakspot (Parasite in this case), until they achieve total damage.  I mean, a zombie can't move it's leg without leg muscles right?  Whereas in Dungeons and Dragons you have skeletons somehow mystically compelled/propelled despite no actual physiological means to effect locomotion.

Actually I'm Mr Helicopter, with a helicopter, with massive cargo capacity and range which happens to be able to mount 3-5 machine guns, and I'm lucky enough to be able to service that helicopter with prior experience if my flight engineer dies, and that advanced knowledge defaults to being able to work on most things, and of course I have immediate access to the typical 9mm pistol and M4A1 carbine, though I excel in the Chinook specific machineguns.

If I were you I'd upgrade that to an FN FAL or M1A/M14, or anything 7.62x51 Nato or larger at the very least if you expect to do anything against the latest baddies we've been running across, Big Bad took a shotgun blast through the chest, didn't state if it severed the spine or not but there's a nice sized hole through him now if I remember correctly, and is still coming. Apparently his parasite isn't in the usual location.

As for total damage, perhaps, as long as it kills the parasite, though from the look of Big Bad that's looking less like a possibility at the moment, though he and the other Big Bads could simply be the exception to the rule.

My equipment is based on the reality of the military, not it's function against zombies I don't yet know exist.  And trust me.... no one has anything more effective than my M134 General Electric 7.62mm 6 barrel miniguns ;)

Well if the parasites don't have a body left to control... That's my theory.  Anyhow, as for parasite control, they'd have to have neurological access and would ideally be at the brain stem/upper spine.

Like I said, defense is more important than offense.  Our #1 weapon will be the steel cargo container.  If we have any chance of holding our ground, it's with impenetrable defenses.  If they can swim, we're fucked and will be bugging out on the Chinook and boats.  It's my job to keep you guys alive.  My Rank includes features like Contacts and Resources, but it may not be enough to wage war, so keep that in mind.  Fort Monroe has some great aspects, but if these zombies are of exceptional quality and have unexpected features, we may need to go even further away, an island, etc.

Sigh... OK, quick grammar lesson (Gramm'er? I barely know 'er... And why do I have to remind grammar rules to the $Deity$Blessed native speakers? Go figure...): the simple rule is, possessives do not have apostrophes.

It's its. Is it? It is.

I's it? Doesn't sound quite right... Sounds quiet, right? He's his, but she's hers.

If your GM goes insane from reading more of that stuff, you will get plenty more of this. Bottom line: when in doubt, expand. Actually, scratch that: *always* expand. Problem solved, GM's sanity preserved.

Moving back to the game: all equipment on a vehicle that is native to it benefits from a Specialty bonus if you have a Specialty in that vehicle's specific make and model. This applies to weapons systems as well, as long as they are native equipment.

The general rule to disable a zombie through the judicious application of A CRAPLOAD OF BRUTE FORCE is that you have to deal something like 200 points of damage. The resulting bits are usually not big enough to be dangerous.

Of course, if you blow bits and pieces of zombie everywhere, you risk spreading the poison...

As soon as I have a reasonably final charsheet for John I will start a thread to describe the descent into chaos of Fort Monroe, and find out how he survived...

This will be relevant for the Straight and Narrow Path storyline so I will try to juggle the loose ties to avoid excessive retconning...
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:17, Wed 27 Apr 2011.

Are you not familiar with the contraction of "it is" to "it's"?

I'll be trying to finish up the character in that Uniforge thing.  Equipment will be sparse and brief to save time and sanity.

Why, of course we are... That's why we wrote: "It's its. Is it? It is." and "Actually, scratch that: *always* expand."

As well, we could have written: "they're there, and there's theirs there, too, there is...", but we thought it was clear enough.

It is an unfortunate fact of biology that humans are designed in a way that makes preventing incorrect feedback from establishing bad behavior (e.g., learning to write a sentence incorrectly after reading the wrong spelling several times) non-trivial.

It takes a strong negative stimulus to deny the "correction" imposed by each instance of bad spelling, and brain bleach is about as bad for one's mental health as regular bleach is for overall well-being; that is why we are finally slowly going insane from having to scrub the wrong feedback from our brain over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

Seriously, imagine someone kicking you in the head every time you read (read, not write) "could of". Wouldn't you get pissed rather quickly at those guys who cannot spell?

Could of would be wrong, what they're actually trying to write is Could've, as in Could Have.  Anyhow, I'm not sure what errors you think you saw and are fretting over, as I can't find any while reading back.  Are you rambling about the possessive form of "it", as in it's?

Can you do me a favor boss?  I would like to see the exact specifics of the Rank Quality put into the character creation area if possible.  I have a quandary regarding the mention of it providing resources.  Did it ultimately just equal a Status mod & Specialty gained per level of it?  Did it officially included a version or alteration to Resources or Contacts?

Um, yes... That was kinda my point? Why else would I have put it there?



And again: "it's" is NOT a possessive.

I find it somewhat disconcerting (and frankly annoying when [1]) that so many people have trouble with that concept: if "Alice's leg" is not "she's leg", and "Bob's arm" is not "he's arm", why would "the car's window" be "it's window"???

---

This is the Military Rank Quality taken from Armageddon, as it's not in the base book and ATM I can't seem to find it...

Military Rank
Variable Social Quality or Drawback

The character belongs to the armed forces.
High rank has privileges: soldiers or sailors obey
the character’s orders. On the other hand, low-
ranking soldiers are at a disadvantage. They get
ordered around, and disobeying is not a good
option. The value of Military Ranks ranges from
–1 to +9, and costs 1 point per level (positive or
negative). Keep in mind that high Rank also
entails numerous duties that may restrict the
character’s actions even more than very low
Rank. The rank names in the table below are
taken from the U.S. Army system; other services
and other nations have different names for
equivalent ranks.

Military Rank Table




[1] See post above about negative feedback. Time to go to work...
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:10, Thu 28 Apr 2011.

Thank you for the Rank update!  That doesn't seem to even touch on the Specialties stuff though, can you add your house rules to it?  Making the character for your campaign afterall. :)

Good to see you're familiar with tables as well.

[1] We use It's as a possessive contraction to refer to obvious nonliving or nongender specific nouns.  I'm not going to say "The chinook helicopter's blah blah" everytime, I'm going to say "It's blah blah blah" because that's how English is natively operated.  That's why the car's window would be it's window, because the car is the only thing with a window in the course of a conversation likely.  Bob and Sally don't have windows, the car does, so you logically don't have to specify the car all the time, you can use "it" because it's an object.  Though car isn't necessarily the best example because it's a one syllable noun and the functional desire to contract it is far less likely than if you were talking about something with a more extensive title, like a CH47D Chinook.  I hope that helps clear up etc etc.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:11, Thu 28 Apr 2011.

Oooh, OK, now I see the problem.

"It's" is not a possessive, and whoever taught you that did you a disservice: "it's" is only ever a contraction of "it is" or "it has". Saxon genitive only applies to nouns, not to pronouns. The exception is the impersonal use of "one", such as, e.g., "one's expected to keep one's head", where the former is a contraction of "one is" and the latter is a possessive.

http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000227.htm
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000134.htm

To use your example: Sally does have windows at home: if I break HER window, the window that I broke was HERS; by the same token, if I break the car's window, I break ITS window. I probably wouldn't say that the window I broke was its, but I believe that's a semantic issue rather than a syntactic one...

On the same line we find more funny words like "whose" (possession), and not "who's" (identity)[1], "theirs" (possession) and not their's (does not exist) et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Oh yes, English is a lot of fun. Spent 15 years of my life trying to make sense of it. Should I ever succeed, I'll make sure to let you know :P

Incidentally, French is a lot of fun as well, but for entirely different reasons.

I presume Italian is equally as entertaining, but I would need somebody who hasn't been using it since birth to tell me why :P

[1] "Who's car" means "who is car". And Car (short for Carrie, short for Caroline, short for... something, I'm sure), is an insane 16-year-old with telekinetic powers who is going to kill you dead, and then some.

---

Updated Quality with house rules:

Military Rank
Variable Social Quality or Drawback

The character belongs to the armed forces.
High rank has privileges: soldiers or sailors obey
the character’s orders. On the other hand, low-
ranking soldiers are at a disadvantage. They get
ordered around, and disobeying is not a good
option. The value of Military Ranks ranges from
–1 to +9, and costs 1 point per level (positive or
negative). Keep in mind that high Rank also
entails numerous duties that may restrict the
character’s actions even more than very low
Rank. The rank names in the table below are
taken from the U.S. Army system; other services
and other nations have different names for
equivalent ranks.

Military Rank Table


The following house rules apply to Rank:

- The cost of the Quality applies to the character's social modifier.

- Each level of Rank grants one free military Specialty.

Common specialties include choosing specific make and models for Guns, Driving, and Piloting that will receive the usual +2 bonus.

"Underwater" is an interesting specialty for some special forces, such as Navy Seals: normally you would choose as a Demolitions Specialty, but the bonus carries over to all other underwater activities.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:47, Thu 28 Apr 2011.

Internet still down, using the library's connection.  Will get on as much as possible, but don't expect me every day.

Ok, I'm confused... who is shot now?