[the Infected] Zombies of the Carribean

[Darcy Burgess]

Social Set-Up
For my second game of the Infected, I was back with my regular gaming group.  In fact, this game marked my return to "regularly scheduled gaming" from a newborn-induced year-long hiatus.  I GM'd and the players were: Glenn W (same guy as in our Corporate Whores game), who I've been friends with for 7+ years, Tymen V (I've gamed with him for about 2 years now - Sorcerer, Dogs, some playtesting, a few one-shots), and Steve C (the "newest" addition to our group, who I've gelled with really well.  In fact, Steve was one of my Co-GMs at the Indie RPG Demo table at CanGames).


Genre & Setting
I'd made it clear before getting together that I was personally more interested in something grittier and darker this time out.  This was echoed pretty strongly by Glenn, and Tymen and Steve seemed to be on-board.  We waffled a lot in locking the genre down (Western?  Well, our next game is Dust Devils, so let's not over-do it? etc.)  Finally, we settled on here-and-now "everyman" stuff.

An important note: I got the timing of Motivation distribution right this time.  This is big!  As it turns out, the motivations were a large part of the reason that the players were so contemplative during Genre selection -- they really wanted to make sure that they could integrate a character concept into the setting.

We settled on a Lindsay-Lohan style rehab clinic in the Carribean.  Which I liked, because I find that having a nice closed environment (like and island) is a great fit for the basic premise (survival horror).


Film Style
Tarantino-esque saturday afternoon matinee.  I mentioned that I wanted to make use of colour a lot (which I didn't end up doing, but should have).  The carribean setting worked well for this, too!


Characters & Motivations
Again, Motivations were of course secret at this point, but I'm including them here for reference.

Steve played a lawyer who'd botched a major case due to his multiple addictions.  Motivation: Justice.
Glenn played a Ms. Lohan clone.  Motivation: Escape.
Tymen played a papparazo who was masquerading as a patient.  Motivation: Fame.


Rules
We played with all of the rule ammendments in Patch 3, and additionally, we played with the alternate "going for it" rules in the same patch (convert unshed tokens into infected dice).  More on that rule later.

We also played with the "when the protags win as a group, the highest roll among the protags gets to narrate" rule that Eric and I had discussed via email.  This isn't in a patch anywhere.  It's clean, simple, and works well.  It should be in the game.


The Infection
I opened the infection-crafting up a little more this time.  I was genuinely open to what the players wanted.  However, as soon as they got something that everyone liked, I authored the rest of it on my own.  This was a nice amalgam of the two techniques suggested in the rules text.

Here's how it played out (in chronological order!):

Origin: secret treatment gone horribly wrong (and that's where I took over).  I had the treatment be a throwback to old-school shock treatments (pre-electroshock, when actual diseases were used to shock the system).  I picked Ebola.

Vector: bodily fluids.

Physical: flesh eating disease.  spontaneous bleeding from soft tissue.  aggression.  super-strength.  Pretty much "classic Romero" minus "shambling".


In-Game Fiction
This was brutal, violent, bloody and tense.  It was a riot!  We had some excellent scenes centered around the "research island in the lagoon"  and the bridge that connected it to the main island.

No one availed themselves of extra scenes once the infected dice ran out in either Reel 1 or 2.

Some highlights:

• The "hi Fred" circle as the addicts introduce themselves.
• Sneaking past the security guard because he's too busy watching the Lohan Sex-Tape on the internet.
• The catfight on the beach between the almost-over-the-hill-starlet and the starlet-in-training.
• The captured zombie being wheeled away on a gurney, and parts of him smear off on the stucco walls.
• The first zombie toting a severed limb as a club for the whole frickin' movie.
• The zombies cutting a deal with the protags to let them leave, so long as they don't take the "infected women" with them.

In general, a wild ride, full of blood, gore, and the occasional tough choice.


Rules in Action
1. The alternate "going for it" rule sucked big time for us.  Here's why: when the tag end of reel 3 rolled 'round, all the protags were down to 2 or fewer tokens left on their motivations.  Additionally, the odds were stacked against them in a spectacular fashion.  However, they were troopers and soldiered on (they were cool with a bleak ending).  As things turned out, the fiction pretty much dictated that "going for" their goals was best handled in the same conflict.  Whoop!  My infected pool blossoms by 4 or 5 dice.  However, because everyone's individual token pile was below the reel limit, the only effect was that the reel was extended.  I couldn't bring any additional force to bear in that conflict.

What did this mean?

As soon as they failed (all together!), they were faced with an artificially-lengthened reel.  Oh my god, it was suck.  In fact, it sucked so hard, we called the game there-and-then.

I know that the old rule involved a tiny bit of math, but man, it didn't make this happen!  The players were cool with the big climactic moment not going their way.  What they weren't cool with was another 3 conflicts of system-mandated denoument.  No thanks.

2. I noticed that the "Escape" motivation is probably the weakest of the 12 in the book.  It's survival horror, dammit!  Escape is everyone's goal.  Glenn came up with a good work-around, colouring the escape as "escape from her past" rather than actual physical escape.  However, compared to the other 11 motivations, it seems to be the only one where this kind of creative maneuvering is absolutely necessary.  That's not cool.


Summary
The game ticks along nicely.  I still think that "desperate and crazed" should be the suggestion, not the rule (although, they were the perfect suggestion for this game.)

I'm very interested in hearing about what other ashcanners discover.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Eric Provost]

More awesome feedback, Darcy.  I'm extra-super happy that you were able to playtest that alternate rule, it didn't go well, and you had the presense of mind to keep track of why it didn't work.  I'm still not happy with the math in the regular rule, but I can clearly see that the alternate rule isn't an improvement.

I'm a bit short for time right now, so I'll take some time to absorb all this good stuff and I'll be back later on with more to say.

-Eric

[TomTancredi]

Hey Eric,

Is anyone running a game of this at GenCon? Sounds intriguing.

[Eric Provost]

Hiya Tom,

As far as I know, no one will be running the Infected at GenCon.  There are only ten folks out there with copies of the game right now and those that are going to GenCon already have a lot on their plates.  I don't suspect running the Infected is going to be high priority for them.

Maybe next year.

[Eric Provost]

Darcy,

First off, thanks again for the amazing feedback.  You regularly hit all my immediate questions about how the game went.  Now lemmie hit you with a flurry of pestering questions.

As you already know, I didn't address every issue that you had from your first session.  Did any of those issues pop up again in your second session?

Did any of the PCs turn into a monster?  Did it feel like there were too many or not enough PC-infected dice in play?

Did you get a chance to use any alternate conflict resolution narration (like 'Scooby Doo' or 'Flashback')?

Was everyone pushing for their Goals?  Were there very many scenes that weren't connected to the motivations or goals?

-Eric

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Eric,

1.
Old issues rearing their heads?  Yeah.  I'm still hating the Infected-pool-as-pacing tool.  It's just so...fake.  I'm going to spend those dice as hard and fast as I can.  Honestly, just make the reels "4 conflicts long" and let me spend 1, 2 and 3 dice in each.  And then, the players get to call "bullshit" if I haven't earned my dice.

And then, when I challenge their call, they get to tell me what they'd do to get those dice.


I still ran into luke-warm "1 rolling".  However, this was mitigated a great deal by the player option to self-infect (which at least 2 players did.  cool!)


Not really an old issue, but we once again had an NPC monsterizing before appearing on a card.  This time out, he was clearly a zombie, and clearly out for blood.  Once again, the fiction didn't break in two, and within seconds the players put him on a card.  He was an awesome character.  All zombified and ally-ish.  Until the inevitable betrayal...


I really, really really hate the rules for NPC treason.  It's just too heavy-handed a club to put in the GM's hands.  I think that a lot of your "fuck it, we're screwed" problems lie here (not in PC infection).  Tone it down -- make it a scalpel for the GM to wield.  This will increase tension.


2.
I don't remember any PCs monsterizing (although at least one was at 2 dice).  I felt like the levels of PC infected dice were ok.  Keep in mind that I was more concerned with the looming apparition of the massive suck that was the alternate token rule.  Honestly, the protags were completely fucked by the end, and a few infected dice here or there was completely irrelevant.

That raises a really important point: the alternated token rules' suckitude was only enhanced by the treason rules.  Too many NPCs were traitorous sons of bitches, which meant that the players couldn't frame them into scenes.  However, I could!  And of course, to do my job, I did.


3.
No alternate narration stuff came up, no.


4.
Oh my god, Goals?  Shit yeah.  I don't know what all these other whiny bitches are going on about (sorry, Joe!).  Just about every scene was goal-related.   Seriously, though, I think the trick here is to make explaining the IIEE subtlety of the token removal rule an explicit part of pre-game prep.  Because if the players fuck that up, they're cheating.

Cheers,
Darcy