Alternatives to Bugs

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Thu May 13, 2004 3:13 am

MattBaby is working on a setting based on the old Cold War fears of a Soviet takeover.

maasenstodt · Unread post by **maasenstodt** » Thu May 13, 2004 7:49 am

I ignored the bugs and replaced them with zombies for a post-apocalyptic survival horror game. The presented OCCs work quite well with very few modifications. Organitech had to go, of course, and a larger variety of modern weaponry had to be brought in, but that was about it setting wise, IIRC.

As regards results, it worked alright. While Eden's All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a must have for anyone running a zombie game, I think this mod makes Systems Failure work about as well as AFMBE for anyone who really prefers the Palladium ruleset.

LJ · Unread post by LJ » Thu May 13, 2004 1:12 pm

I call random Electrician or random CameraMan, Matt!!!

LJ · Unread post by LJ » Fri May 28, 2004 3:03 pm

I tell him to watch it all the time.....WOLVERINES!!!!

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Sat May 29, 2004 3:07 am

I saw Red Dawn on satellite at a friend's house back around 1985. About half of the posters on this board were either babies or not even born yet. Hehe.

Vidynn · Unread post by **Vidynn** » Sat May 29, 2004 1:55 pm

aw God, Red Dawn, one of the most terrible movies ever made. words fail me.

Vid

LJ · Unread post by LJ » Sat May 29, 2004 4:04 pm

Red Dawn was awesome.......WOLVERINES!!!!

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Sat May 29, 2004 5:22 pm

Vidynn wrote:aw God, Red Dawn, one of the most terrible movies ever made. words fail me.

Vid

Vid, you haven't seen many movies, have you? I can name several other movies that came out around the same time that were MUCH worse. Megaforce and American Ninja come to mind. Anyway, for an American kid growing up believing that the Russians were gonna come to get us someday, it was a great flick.

LJ · Unread post by LJ » Sun May 30, 2004 11:35 pm

It's not ripping off, it's "paying homage".

Unread post by **NMI** » Mon May 31, 2004 3:55 pm

Mike Taylor wrote:I saw Red Dawn on satellite at a friend's house back around 1985. About half of the posters on this board were either babies or not even born yet. Hehe.

I was 12

LJ · Unread post by LJ » Mon May 31, 2004 4:34 pm

I was 2 and still had a bunny kill count instead of a commie kill count.(instead of counting sheep, it was "Bang, 1 dead bunny rabbit!! Bang, 2 dead bunny rabbit!!" all the way to 6, which I guess meant I had a revolver, to which I replied "Oh, s-word!!! gotta reload!!")

But now that I've grown up and stuff, it's "bang!!! 1 Dead Communist!!" and when I get to six, I club #7 with my revolver and take his AK :lol:

zor_prime1 · Unread post by **zor_prime1** » Mon May 31, 2004 11:51 pm

You could always do the ol' "28 days later" (the movie) setting... That's gotta be a creepy thing. The people with the virus are just wild animals raging out of control. If you get the virus (passed on by the infected hurling blood into your eyes, mouth or nose), then you'll be affected in a matter of minutes. No one has found a cure, likely because anyone trying to look has been exposed and ended up passing it on.
You're best to travel during the day and travel in groups. Better be well versed in all kinds of weapons because there's thousands of infected people out there. Then find a nice isolated place to protect yourself...

Specter · Unread post by **Specter** » Mon Jun 07, 2004 1:42 am

LJavelle wrote:I was 2 and still had a bunny kill count instead of a commie kill count.(instead of counting sheep, it was "Bang, 1 dead bunny rabbit!! Bang, 2 dead bunny rabbit!!" all the way to 6, which I guess meant I had a revolver, to which I replied "Oh, s-word!!! gotta reload!!")

But now that I've grown up and stuff, it's "bang!!! 1 Dead Communist!!" and when I get to six, I club #7 with my revolver and take his AK

Great stuff... Now that's funny!

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Mon Jun 07, 2004 2:15 am

gwa1965 wrote:sounds more like what you might want is "the omega man" meets "the stand". just borrow a darklord from nightbane and you're set

He's running a straight up non-supernatural, non sci-fi modern setting. There won't be any Nightlords, unless its some street gang that calls themselves that.

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Tue Jun 08, 2004 1:46 am

wolfe wrote:was in germany playing cat n mouse along the border with a real Hind a not the puma mock ups used in the movie..red dawn bleh..

good call on not using that drivil for a source, not a single scene of warsaw pact counter insurgent tactics seen on screen.

Well, the movie wasn't really meant to have that level of realism. It was a popcorn flick for teenagers. It's not like anybody in that demographic, possibly barring eighteen year-olds in the service then, would know anything anything about the Warsaw Pact beyond the kinds of guns and vehicles they used, if even that much.

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 12:14 am

Geronimo 2.0 wrote:You could also invade the planet with Billions of Floopers.

Or just one LJ.

LJ · Unread post by LJ » Thu Nov 25, 2004 12:25 am

Mike Taylor wrote:
Geronimo 2.0 wrote:You could also invade the planet with Billions of Floopers.
Or just one LJ.

I don't get it......

Tinker Dragoon · Thu Nov 25, 2004 2:10 am

It means you have several Gigafloopers worth of destructive potential.

dark brandon · Unread post by **dark brandon** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 6:53 am

LJavelle wrote:I was 2 and still had a bunny kill count instead of a commie kill count.(instead of counting sheep, it was "Bang, 1 dead bunny rabbit!! Bang, 2 dead bunny rabbit!!" all the way to 6, which I guess meant I had a revolver, to which I replied "Oh, s-word!!! gotta reload!!")

But now that I've grown up and stuff, it's "bang!!! 1 Dead Communist!!" and when I get to six, I club #7 with my revolver and take his AK

Damn it, I wanted to be the first to mention bunnies in this thread!

I played a game where our GM replaced every no talent, lazy run of the mill NPC with NPCs who all now had Paired weapons: Modern/ Mini-gun and they all had Quick-draw "paried Mini-gun".

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 1:08 am

Were you playing Systems Failure or a pen & paper version of Serious Sam?

dark brandon · Unread post by **dark brandon** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 4:31 am

Mike Taylor wrote:Were you playing Systems Failure or a pen & paper version of Serious Sam?

At first it was Systems failure. Then we messed up the game real bad. He had to teach us a lesson. It was a lesson well learned.

Mental note to self: Never kill someone just cause you got caught cheating at cards. Just walk away.

glitterboy2098 · Mon Dec 27, 2004 4:00 pm

In the setting I am running, nuclear weapons will not be deployed. Whether this is the result of Soviet sabotage, or simple mercy by the Americans, or some other factor I have yet to determine.

MAD

Mutually Assured Destruction.

both sides have enough nukes to destroy the planet. if one launches, the other counter strikes with the whole arsenal before it can be destroyed.
end result, both nations nuked to oblivion, and the world dies a slow, painful, fallout covered death.

its the only reason the cold war conflicts stayed conventional.
neither side wanted to die, so neither side tried to kill the other in one strike.

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

you could work Zombies into SF easily. with the fleas, you have a bug related genome to experiment with and find out what genetic code allows the hardline transmission.

now, if you can find that, you can engineer flesh eating strep to infect bugs and survive the electrical transport. the result is a plague that will reduce the bugs numbers.

however, you could rule that it also results in "Zombies" if it infects humans.

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

i'm surpised no one mentioned this earlier.

Robots. i know its cliche, but a terminator-esq or I, Robot style robots enslve humanity setting would be an easy switch.

glitterboy2098 · Fri Dec 31, 2004 1:58 pm

some of the first soviet targets would be the strategic command systems. so once their in, the US can't do a darned thing.

glitterboy2098 · Sat Jan 08, 2005 8:00 pm

MattLing wrote:
glitterboy2098 wrote:some of the first soviet targets would be the strategic command systems. so once their in, the US can't do a darned thing.

Yea but what's the US gonna do, roll over and take it? I mean, what about nuclear subs, that kind of thing? What's to keep the missile silos from going hot themselves?

of course the US wouldn't just roll over and take it.

the thing keeping the silo commanders and subs from launching is good old american training. all nuclear deployment must be confirmed by multiple checks with command. and when a commander decides to ignore procedure, you still need 6 men to launch, and i doubt you can find 6 men all willing to end the world.

standard procedure in event of loss of contact is to return to port and continue attempting to contact.

also remember that the US has a "response only" appreach to nuclear deployment. for the most part, we won't launch unless they do.

by the time anyone thinks of nuclear retaliation and try's to get the orders out, it's too late to do much.

lather · Unread post by **lather** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:07 pm

At what point in the Cold War are you having the Soviet Union invade the United States? What about NATO, Europe, and other US forces around the world? What is the invasion plan?

The US always had/has a better and more powerful nuclear arsenal than the Soviets/Russia.

The USSR would have much to overcome and have to do it quickly, and it would only get harder as the Cold War progressed.

Kelorin · Unread post by **Kelorin** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 12:44 am

Some of the ideas here sound like an idea I've toyed with for a couple of years. A campaign concept that I've had for a while but never implemented.

Campaign would involve players making ordinary or contempory SDC setting characters from a wide range of Palladium Contemporary World settings, like say some of the more mundane characters from Heroes Unlimited, BTS2, Nightbane, Ninjas and Superspies, System Failure etc. But I don't tell the characters what the 'big threat' is going to be. Spend a couple of sessions just having the characters play their normal lives, and to get to know each other. (they all take the same bus to work, they meet at the same pub/bar afterwork, members of the same PTA, whatever).

Then you pull the 'Event' on them, whether the event is Dark Day from Nightbane, the Bug attack from System Failure, an extraterrestrial attack from one of the Aliens Unlimited races, a world-wide bio-plague, a humans only nuclear war, zombie invasion or whatever.

In theory, the fun of this would be that no one would know what skill/ability sets would be the best to have in your post-apocalypse, everyone would be playing relatively ordinary joes trying to cope with a world gone mad.

ehrnum · Unread post by **ehrnum** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 11:22 am

Mike Taylor wrote:
Vidynn wrote:aw God, Red Dawn, one of the most terrible movies ever made. words fail me.

Vid

Vid, you haven't seen many movies, have you? I can name several other movies that came out around the same time that were MUCH worse. Megaforce and American Ninja come to mind. Anyway, for an American kid growing up believing that the Russians were gonna come to get us someday, it was a great flick.

i'm thinking you are luky, 'cause you haven't seen the worst movie ever made : Faust of brian Yuzna!

ehrnum · Unread post by **ehrnum** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 11:37 am

Kelorin wrote:Some of the ideas here sound like an idea I've toyed with for a couple of years. A campaign concept that I've had for a while but never implemented.

Campaign would involve players making ordinary or contempory SDC setting characters from a wide range of Palladium Contemporary World settings, like say some of the more mundane characters from Heroes Unlimited, BTS2, Nightbane, Ninjas and Superspies, System Failure etc. But I don't tell the characters what the 'big threat' is going to be. Spend a couple of sessions just having the characters play their normal lives, and to get to know each other. (they all take the same bus to work, they meet at the same pub/bar afterwork, members of the same PTA, whatever).

Then you pull the 'Event' on them, whether the event is Dark Day from Nightbane, the Bug attack from System Failure, an extraterrestrial attack from one of the Aliens Unlimited races, a world-wide bio-plague, a humans only nuclear war, zombie invasion or whatever.

In theory, the fun of this would be that no one would know what skill/ability sets would be the best to have in your post-apocalypse, everyone would be playing relatively ordinary joes trying to cope with a world gone mad.

sure, but it seams as a strategy to fool your èlayers than enjoy them with a no-known campain...

For this kind of Campain plots, based on shocking the players, if you treat the events more softly and slowly, instead of an apocaliptic one, i think the players could be catch deep inside the drama.

Play all of your cards in a single moment it's rightfully movie-style but burns all suspance 'bout the campain mood too fast.

JLeVert · Unread post by **JLeVert** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 4:47 pm

mattling are you going to run this as an online game or are you running it locally?

I've been toying with stripping down SF some and having a group start out at the point the bugs invade in 1999. But strip down some of the bugs too. Have there be a LOT less of them and force them to use silk worm zombies for almost everything. So the players don't see the bugs for a long time. Also as a part of this the coming of the bugs permanently shuts down any solid state equipment from ever working again. So technology is taken back to the late 50's and early 60's.

As for skills and OCC's what I've done in the past is let people custom create their OCC with a combination of 10 occupational Skills and 7 personal skills. This has been pretty balanced. Then as their character needs to learn something new they simply declare that they want to learn it and I work with them to figure out how long it will take. This is obviously a method that takes a lot of cooperation between the GM and players. But if done well it can still remain balanced. It's a nice way to allow a group of characters that are "normal" to grow in a PA campaign setting.

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 7:43 pm

Meaning no disrespect to Matt, but as a player in two of his online games I have to say that his outside life has a way of intruding on his online gaming. He gets all of these great ideas-- and then can't implement them.

It's probably all for the best, though. I'd trade my online gaming time for a real life trip to Europe any day.

JLeVert · Unread post by **JLeVert** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:20 pm

Mike Taylor wrote:It's probably all for the best, though. I'd trade my online gaming time for a real life trip to Europe any day.

Yeah...that seems like an acceptable excuse! lol

gaby · Unread post by **gaby** » Tue Sep 27, 2005 8:20 am

I have two ideas

1)Mutant Animals from the After the Bomb,s earth.

At the started of 2000 a group of Scientist at Area 51 ,were woking on a New renewble Energy source,some thing gos wrgon and a 5 Mutant animal city of 5700 was rifted to this earth.

The Rifting cause a Blackout in all of the World.

2)The Cold War was Against the Nazi instead of the U.S.S.R.

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Sun Dec 04, 2005 10:09 pm

You... fasting? *tries to stifle unbridled laughter and fails miserably*

Anyway, good to see you, Matt. By the way, I found the baby lurking in the temp files on my PC. You really do need to keep a closer eye on your kids.

Mike Taylor · Unread post by **Mike Taylor** » Sun Dec 04, 2005 10:11 pm

ash_wednesday wrote:Place the bugs with Dawn of the dead type zombies. System Faliures has a great background almost the same as Land of the Dead.

Hell, there's already a built-in zombie menace thanks to the silkworms.