Click through and have a full read. It's Zombtastic!

I'm also somewhat inspired by the Trust mechanics from "The Mountain Witch".

I'm looking to emulate the advantages of sticking together, of taking a risk when you know there are others looking out for you and the ability to 'summon a saviour' which, in Left4Dead, is handled in music, dialogue, and video graphics.

Originally Posted by CHARLIBANANAS
I'd also say ZOMBI The earth won't hold the dead...I was surprised to see mentioned so quickly, I have AFMBE and Savage Worlds but zombi does exactly what I want from a Zombie game, and it was cheap...Other than that WoD.

Originally Posted by BigJackBrass
Zombi is a great little game and rarely seems to get mentioned. Since I'm pushed for time I'll just direct you to Jeff's gameblog and his description of it as one of Five Overlooked RPGs.

Excellent. Special thanks to CHARLIBANANAS and BigJackBrass.

Some of us (me, Savage_MF, kinnygraham and Pulse4333) have been playing this in the evenings and I must say it's probably the best FPS I've played in a while due to the need to be co-operative rather than selfish.

And it has Zombies. So it's win-win as far as I'm concerned.

I've thoroughly enjoyed playing Left4Dead over the last couple of days - there's something really satisfying in playing one of the 'boss infected' and stopping the PCs from reaching their safehouse. The music is excellent and really adds to the atmosphere. I've written up some statistics and additional rules for running a Left4Dead game using the Zombi rules and I'd love to hear your thoughts on them.

The stats for a basic zombi are:

Modified Rules for Left4Dead:
Fast Zombis:

Rule: When someone comes within sight or hearing range of a Zombi it will run at the source of the noise and climb over objects to reach the source. This is especially dangerous where car or building alarms are concerned - the Zombi is especially attracted to these sources of noise, something that can be taken advantage of when a grenade is retrofitted with sound and light emitters. Zombis move at normal humans speeds.

Ganging Up:

Rule: When large numbers of zombis gang up, they will attempt to beat, hit or bite the survivor. Zombi attacks are simple closecombat attacks but if a PC is attacked by more than 4 zombis, then they have their panic rating reduced by two for every 4 zombis present - this can be very serious if attacked by 10+ zombis. A GM will roll the attack once for four zombis involved in the attack and if the result is a hit, add one point to the damage score. e.g Four Zombis attack a Player. They score a hit and roll once for damage, (1d6/3)+1 giving a result between 2 and 3 points of damage. If eight zombis make the same attack, it is treated as two groups of four. The only defense against this is a Shove which is a CloseCombat attack made by the survivor against the group. Only one group of four can be shoved at any one time and this requires that the Survivor make a successful CloseCombat attack taking into account his reduced Panic rating. There's an advantage to keeping your back to a wall.

Fire Damage:

Rule: All zombis are severely affected by fire and even a small blaze will cause 1d6 damage per turn.

The most common boss infected is the Hunter, who has a pounce attack that pins survivors to the ground and renders them unable to defend themselves while the Hunter attacks.

Rule: The Hunter can leap up to sixty feet ( 20 metres ) in any direction. If it makes a successful Movement, then it will land on a Survivor within range and pin them. The only defense on this is assistance from other Survivors (or shooting the Hunter first by winning initiative). Once pinned, the Hunter does not need to make CloseCombat rolls to successfully hurt the Survivor but inflicts 1d6/3 every turn.

The Smoker has a long, grasping tongue which can capture survivors and drag them away from their teammates.

Rule: The Smoker may make an Awareness roll to ensnare and drag a Survivor up to thirty feet (10 metres). The survivor may again only be released through the intervention of another Survivor. Once ensnared, the Survivor is helpless against other attacks (from other Zombies) and after 1 turn of dragging, will also be attacked by the Smoker itself for 1d6/3 per turn.

The Boomer, a bloated infected whose vomit and bile attract the common infected and temporarily blinds the player.

Rule: A successful Movement roll means the Boomer has successfully vomited over every Survivor within 10 feet (3 metres). If shot, the Boomer will explode and coat everyone within the same range in his foul-smelling bile. The Boomer only has 5 hit points so this can happen easily. Once covered in the bile, the Survivor's panic rating drops by a full five points for two turns as the liquid distorts vision. The bile will also attract every Zombi within a kilometre (half mile) to the Survivors (GMs will likely roll 2d6+6 to see how many show up.

The Tank is a huge, muscular infected and the most difficult to kill. The Tanks can knock the survivors back a distance and throw objects in the environment or large pieces of earth.

Rule: The Tank's CloseCombat Score increases to 10. It may also pick up rocks and anything to hand and throw them using it's Movement score with a range of 100 feet (30 metres) doing up to 1d6 damage. This may be dodged. The Tank has thirty hit points and will therefore take a lot of gunfire to take down.

The Witch is not aggressive, unlike the other boss infected. She will not attack the player unless provoked; by loud noises, lights or being near her. However her attack is the most damaging, on all difficulties her attack will knock down a player in one hit and on the expert difficulty is instantly fatal.

Rule: The Witch has Movement 10 and CloseCombat 10. She also has 30 hit points. But she will not move unless there is loud noise within 10 feet (3 metres). She will then attack doing 1d6 damage per successful hit.

Terms (Left4Dead, Hunter, Smoker, Boomer, Tank and Witch) and contexts used in this post are likely trademarks of Valve Software and is not meant to infringe. The game is $49 on Steam and also available in good games stores worldwide.

Click on the image (or here) to go through to Store. We'll be adding more Ts as time goes on.

The original was quite clean and had a name like 'corroded' or 'corrupted'.

The potential new one is CM Corruged by Charly Masci (link is down).

I think it's actually an improvement.

I'm also going to work on providing a PDF version so people can download it from Key20.

Watch this space!

Wildtalents fanzine 1 60K PDF
Wildtalents 3 fanzine 1.5MB PDF
Wildtalents 5 fanzine 373K PDF
23rd letter character sheet 22K PDF
zombi character sheet 86K PDF

If there's anything else in particular that people are looking for, please mention it and I'll see what I can dig up. Please note that this wildtalents fanzine was something I was doing nearly a decade before Wild Talents (the superhero RPG) was released.