Zombies -- All About the Bite

Contagion

Zombies. We all know them. We all have re-deaded hundreds, if not thousands, of them. We all have a love and/or hate relationship with them. With all this experience, with all the popularity they've had, there is still one area of zombies that I rarely see done well (or at all) in gaming -- the infection. This is certainly going to be focused more towards the video game market than tabletop -- tabletop tends to do it fairly well, or just get it hacked in by the players. Video games, on the other hand, rarely introduce the infection to the players. Prime examples being the Left 4 Dead series or the Dead Island series where all of the player characters are inherently immune to the disease, or in any number of RPG that features hordes of zombies and no player infection. Now, the video games are not completely devoid of the infection -- two examples on PC right now are Contagion and the Source mod No More Room in Hell (both of which are the screenshots for this article).  Not only do these games feature the infection, but I would say No More Room in Hell features it in one of the best ways I've seen as it persists and any medication found will only buy you a bit more time.

Contagion

I'm harping on the infection here because I feel it is one of the most important aspects of a zombie setting. Zombies, by themselves, are really not that scary, nor are they terribly threatening (except in massive quantities, but then, isn't everything?). All they really have going for them is their relentless nature and resilience.  The infection, however, changes that. Knowing that only one stray bite, scratch, or spray of bodily fluid could infect you and turn you into a ticking time-bomb is far scarier than the zombies, themselves. It is this vulnerability and need to always be aware and careful that, when combined with the zombie's relentlessness and resilience, the whole package starts to come together. And that is what I want to see more in zombie games.

Many people would say that zombie games are past their prime and should be carted off to the morgue. I, however, think there is still room for improvement. That there is still at least one really good zombie game waiting to be made.  We just need one that truly distills the essence of the zombie apocalypse. And for that, it's gonna need some bite.

Skyrim and Hexcrawls

Recently, I've hopped back into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to do some adventuring and have some fun. Like most Elder Scrolls games, Skyrim lets you really dig in and explore -- go completely off the rails and do whatever you feel like, within the limitations of the engine. And that's why I love it and the series, in general. Playing it, though, is bringing to mind another type of gaming that I also love -- hexcrawl adventures.

Overlooking Solstheim in Skyrim.

For those unfamiliar, a hexcrawl is a tabletop RPG campaign that has few, if any, strict storyline limits or focuses. It generally takes place in a sizable world that the GM has already roughly (or thoroughly) mapped out and placed various bits of content in. A lot like Skyrim, basically. The appeal of such game play, to me at least, is the exploration into the unknown and the discovery of what lies within it. Freedom of choice also plays a big part, as there is no (obvious) railroading adventure that you are forced to follow. Skyrim does differ in that aspect, as there is still a central storyline to the game, but that storyline is also easily ignored.

So, explanations out of the way, what does all of this have to do with anything? Well, while lightly pondering the subject I started to apply different aspects of Skyrim to a hexcrawl. Nothing terribly in-depth or detailed, as most of my ideas tend to be, but still potentially ripe for further ideas and picking.

One of the most important aspects that I believe both types of games share is that of exploration. In a hexcrawl you might bring your band of adventurers into an unexplored hex and be given a rough outline of what is there -- typically the geography, maybe some major land marks or towns -- and then require further searching (and maybe some skill checks) to root out the more exotic points of interest. While in Skyrim you have a compass that displays icons of nearby locations and a map of the world that highlights the geography, as well as major cities and any locations you have discovered.

The point here to highlight, and think about in a tabletop sense, is Skyrim's handling of nearby locations. This could be easily done on the tabletop by just having the party determine which direction they are heading in and then give them a rough description of locations within a certain radius -- possibly dependent on visibility. I really like the feel that such a style of exploration gives off. Not just heading in a random direction and going until they hit something, or just heading straight for a known city and picking up quests at the tavern, but really exploring out into the wilds and seeing what the world has to offer -- then deciding on what to check out.

Of course, tabletop has one more aspect that really helps with building immersion for the exploration -- the drawing of personal maps. Since Skyrim tends to handle all of the mapping for you, you don't really get to enjoy that aspect. On the tabletop, I would love to have a blown-up, simple map of the hex being crawled, allowing the party to then trace their current route and make their own icons and marks of potential sites to explore. It really does add to the experience.

There is one major downside, potentially, in the attempt to marry Skyrim-style exploration and hexcrawls. Work. Skyrim had a large team of developers and years of full-time work on it. Not many, if any, GM's have that type of manpower behind their campaigns. Coming up with enough locations to fill in each hex would take quite a bit of time and energy -- probably too much. But, with some of the random generation tables that some RPGs -- like the Adventurer Conqueror King System -- and some standalone products have, it may not be too difficult.

Definitely something to think about further.

New Tower of Guns Patch Released - V0.56

The still-in-development FPS (First Person Shooter) Roguelike from Terrible Posture Games, Tower of Guns, got a new patch earlier today, seeing the introduction of a bit of new content as well as some other changes. (For a full list of patch notes, look here.)

So, how is it?

Well, I've had a chance to play around with it and saw some of the changes. My favorite, so far, has to be the Champion monsters. The Champion monsters appear similar to their non-Champion brethren with one important difference -- they're a different color. Often some type of bright neon green or blue. The Champions tend to be a bit harder to kill -- more health and, possibly, some changes in their attacks. One of the Champion spin bots I faced seemed to be a bit faster and more damaging in its attack than the normals. My bloodied nose found that out, painfully.

Apart from that there are new rooms that introduce new mechanics in the form of giant incorporeal blocks that manipulate physics.  The two that I saw allowed the player (or anything that passed through it, really) to either accelerate in the direction they were pointing or to immediately slow down to a crawl when passing through. Both effects also work while in mid-air. What is really interesting about this addition is that the rooms the blocks were in made use of the blocks' traits in order to create semi-puzzles in navigation and to hide away secret areas accessible only by using the blocks in certain ways.

I'll be covering more updates as they come.

VTT: Fork in the Road

Taking out security cameras

This week sees the last of the PAYDAY focused articles on VTT. I'm ending it simply with a feature of the game that is a core idea of most tabletop RPGs: multiple paths to success.

VTT: Time & Trouble

Drilling...

"The drill's jammed, get it going again!" a shout bellows over the roar of automatic weapon fire. Bursts of flame illuminate the surrounding warehouse, bullets ricochet off of concrete and a few find their mark, sending a security guard crumpling to the cold, hard floor.
   "We've got a police assault incoming!" a voice crackles over the radio. Suddenly, the surrounding windows burst inward, spraying shards of glass all around, as a SWAT team swings in with guns blazing.

That's a fairly typical scene in PAYDAY: the Heist, a PC-based FPS game developed by OVERKILL Software and published by SOE. I've been going through it the past few days and have come up with some ideas that would work well with tabletop gaming (indeed, they're already apart of it). Enough to cover this week and the next two, in fact.

VTT: Creative Solutions

This week I'm taking a look at 'solving problems' (killing monsters) the creative way with some inspiration from newly released Orcs Must Die! 2 (OMD!2).

Spring Traps + Lava Pits = Fried Orc (and Gnoll)

Introducing: VTT

In this inaugural post, I attempt to resuscitate this blog and embark on a new weekly feature. VTT – Video to Table – is focused on taking elements of video games and discussing them around tabletop gaming.

I could think of no better game to feature than the DayZ mod for Arma II. This mod functions very much like a standard tabletop RPG – there is an open world, perma-death, plenty of risk versus reward scenarios and story elements are crafted through a player’s actions.