[Zombie Tuesday] When zombies attack

Welcome to my zombie Tuesday post : When zombies attack or rather Lessons learned from film and tv I look at scary movies as really expensive service announcements as what not to do in those situations, so here follows zombie survival tips gather from movies.

The number one zombie survival tip to follow:

• When you find all those other plucky people hoping to survive the attacks always make sure that you can outrun at least one of the gang. It really doesn’t matter what you do, just as long as you’re faster than Jane over there.
  • And remember you never, ever go back for that slow poke.

The other lessons and tips you can pick up from those costly tv and film mistakes are:

• Don’t trust your neighbours. Sure you think it’s a safe little community, but don’t be dumb and leave your doors unlocked so that the kid next door – now a zombie – can just wander in and attack you and your significant other.
• When the kid bites your loved one, locking yourself in the bathroom and crying is just dumb, especially if you have tiny windows and might not get out. Grab the car keys and get out of there.
• Don’t drive to work or the centre of town, get out-of-town avoiding the main roads…don’t forget to keep the radio on.
  • Don’t forget to keep a cricket bat or hockey sticky in the boot.
  • Don’t take your beloved dog with you, it’ll only get you killed later….same for anyone faster than you.
• When you find other survivors, scope out the slowest one and make him/her your best friend.
• Don’t camp out in a mall/bank/pub, that’s just dumb.
  • Pick up supplies and just keep on moving. Staying put in a mall or bank or any other big building that you all think you can defend, will be your downfall.

And lastly chainsaws are your friend.

-pb

Colour me a fangirl

I really enjoy watching The Guild. We pretty much watched the first season in one sitting, not that it’s hard to do, but you get my point. So it doesn’t surprise me that “Do you wanna date my avatar” is now stuck in my head, or that I’ve bombarded friends with the link and finally got them to watch the show. If you haven’t seen it…. watch it now

-pb

Complexity and why every game is a sandbox game.

So… what is Complexity (or for that matter, its big brother, Chaos)? It seems the term(s) get thrown around a lot. You’ll find references to it in everything from economics, to meteorology, to ecology and even in horrible Ashton Kutcher movies. But what is  this butterfly effect and how did it help the dinosaurs give Sam, Jeff and Newman such a hard time? And how does it impact on our RPG hobby?

Be warned, this post may contain Jurassic Park spoilers.

Well, in danger of providing an over-simplified definition (which is a bit odd to suggest when dealing with complexity), the more complex a system is, the more difficult it becomes to accurately predict the outcome of the interactions between the numerous parts of the system. Make sense? In Jurassic Park, dinosaurs were brought back to life by mixing the DNA harvested from fossilized mosquitoes (that fed off dinosaurs) with frog DNA. With so many variables in bringing the dinosaurs back to life, the only certainty was that the Park would lose control of the dinosaurs because they could not cover for all possible eventualities (like the dinosaurs overcoming their mono-gendered restriction and eventual breeding).

To avoid bloating this post’s word count, I’m going to assume all readers are familiar with the concepts of railroad and sandbox play. If not, here’s a link to a handy Wikipedia article. Right, so to continue with the Jurassic Park theme, a railroading GM can be likened to Hammond and InGen in JP. Initially, the dinosaurs (the players) will play along. Eventually, though, the players will derail the GM’s script as one cannot possibly predict the actions the PCs will attempt (or even what the variety of PC skills, spells, or powers would allow). Or (even worse) what the dice decide (Gasp! An element of randomness!). Sure, you, as railroading GM, may try to correct the course of the game, but this often entails anything from expecting extreme suspension of disbelief from the players to downright cheating. If you’re willing to deal with the tension that your course correction may fuel, by all means go for it. But, be warned, the PCs, like the dinosaurs, will find a way to breed derail your story again.

No, I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way.

This post was originally intended to form part of this month’s RPG blog carnival, with the topic of Dungeons and Dragons, hosted by 6d6 Fireball. The sub-topic I aimed to use in this post: You want to do what? But, as you can see, I’ve somehow managed to get myself sidetracked from writing about stories of awesome D&D  WTF? moments. Those will still be coming though, just not today.

- jatori

PS – Who else is busy likening their players to dinosaurs? You always get that one velociraptor in each play group that figures out how to open doors.

live long and prosper

a must see

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