Wednesday, February 24, 2010

AFMBE - It's a shame

I started AFMBE scenario with lots of enthusiasm. As I have told before, I had lots of inspiration from various zombie-movies and the book itself is really inspiring. But unfortunately, my player didn't buy it. We played around 3 short sessions, and after it the game withered. I couldn't get player to continue it.

I think the setting itself wasn't that bad at all, but the player isn't that big for the zombie-action. She enjoys zombie movies, but gaming a zombie movie didn't turn her on. So sadly, no All Flesh Must Be Eaten for me.

I tried to plan it to be quite short game, but still. I personally have lots of drive for running it, but if player doesn't enjoy it, then it wont happen.

So, after 3 short sessions my AFMBE scenario is frozen. I don't know if it is just temporary, or is it for good.

4 comments:

Anarchangel said...

Zombie movies usually centre around the interpersonal strife of the survivors under the pressure of nigh-unstoppable death. How did you generate that interpersonal strife with one player? Was there a cast of accompanying NPCs or did the player come across other groups suffering such strife and have to mediate somehow?

DeadGod said...

With All Flesh, my best results have all been one-shot adventures. I would bake up some interesting event, location, or type of zombie, and unleash it on the players in one short session.

The one time I tried to run a long-term game, it seems like it petered out around the 3rd or 4th session. I think I was the one who pulled the plug--it was difficult to keep finding new and interesting things to throw at the group.

Sami Koponen said...

Did she give any reason for backing out? I'm not saying that she did anything wrong, but to avoid these kinds of situations in the future I suppose it would be handy if you knew what was the problem. The way I see it is that you put a somewhat lot of effort into the preparation, which now seems to be wasted time. Gaming only gets better, when you find stuff that suits you both, as we all know.

Unknown said...

@Anarchangel: Yes, in zombie movies there rarely is solo-time, but there is a exception. Evil Dead 2 what mostly is Ash against supernatural. In some degree Re-Animators are also struggle of an individual (even if there are two main characters). But in general yes, zombie action involves a party of survivors. With one player, other survivors were supposed to be NPC's. Two player games have been good this far with npc's, so I am not convinced that is a problem in here.

@DeadGod: I remember that even in AFMBE core book there was the mood of one-shots and campaigns were "introduced" in later publishings? Well, anyways, my intention was to make a adventure. Not that long. Problem is, that we can play often but game time per session is limited. So, even a shorter session turns out to be few nights long. But 10 sessions game is lots of shorter than year long campaigns.

@Sami Koponen: Well, didn't get actually any good reasons, except it isn't interesting enough her to be fascinated or willing to play (when suggested another game, she was right in). We have played quite succesfully even Praedor. And Praedor is one game she hates, though she enjoyed the adventure. So, I hope that problem was in AFMBE itself, not my gm'ing ;)
And we have played stuff what suits us both for 8 years or so, and now as I have mostly played with her and my game shelf is full of interesting games (for me) and we are taking a break from Vampires, we decided to try out other games we never or rarely played. But I quess, that AFMBE wasn't her thing after all.

When this campaign is going and she actually enjoys it, I could suggest that we pull the plug out of AFMBE and just don't let it wither. We could try to find time to properly make mega-session to get rid of it at once. I still want to play it. Didn't have even a change to roll attack rolls! Even if there was hints of infected (zombie) people visible already.