Hey Man, well this is Babylon

I’ve signed up to run a session of Cannibal Contagion at the upcoming Go Play! SEPDX #17. The date will be Saturday, December 6th, and the location is Guardian Games (they’re linked on the right sidebar). I’ve got room for four, possibly five players, so go over and sign up if you want to enjoy an afternoon of zombie comedy action!

Just an update, I’ve got four freshly-printed drafts of the the Cannibal Contagion 4th draft rules sitting right here. I’ll be mailing them out tomorrow during a list of other errands I need to run. If you’ve requested such a draft, expect it sometime next week!

- NPC

Here’s another update from the art desk, sent to me freshly inked by the amazing Vero and Leo. This piece will open chapter two: “The Survivors”

Awright! I’ve just now compiled and uploaded the new fourth draft of the Cannibal Contagion playtest rules. There have been a crapload of updates and revisions. This will be the last major revision for a while, so download it, read it, and let me know how your play goes!

• Threat Pool now called Adversity pool, so as to no longer cause confusion with Threat scores
• Bad Guys are now called Threats, and have been made a lot easier to distinguish and employ
• Added new Allies rules, which function as special Gear
• Added clarifications to existing Gear and Weapons rules
• Updated and improved rules on Turning characters and threats
• Updated the contagion aftermath effects to fit the new Adversity rules.
• Added a whole mess of new sample NPCs and Threats
• Implemented new “cold open” narrative structure
• Added lots and lots of example text
• Updated CiC and Player sheets to have lots more information and better use of space

As always, the downloads can be found here

I posted this on my personal blog, but figured I’d try the same here. I’m currently looking for a few groups across the country who would be willing to try out Cannibal Contagion’s upcoming Fourth Draft Playtest. To best facilitate this, I’m offering to print out the copies of the playtest rules and send them out to you at no cost. I’ll even include some character sheets in the mix.

So, if you have a group that is up for playtesting something new, and the idea of a comedic survival horror session interests you, drop me a comment, and we’ll work it out. Thanks!

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

Bitches

• Not being able to play Resident Evil all the damn time is a new bitch for me. Fortunately, Resident Evil: Deadly Silence makes that desire a little more possible.

Roses

• I very recently acquired a GameCube, and now I’m addicted to Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. It could very well replace Beyond Good & Evil as my most favorite video game, and that’s a bold, almost dirty statement.
• I’m nearing completion of the fourth playtest draft of Cannibal Contagion. Stay tuned, as it’s going to be a big one!

Hopes

• I’m organizing a group read-along of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones in the next two weeks. I’m really, really excited about this, and I do hope it comes together nicely and turns into a grand fun time for all involved.

I recently started playing Oblivion on the PS3. Okay, I like this game, but… let’s just say were I ten years younger, I would love this game. I just don’t have the time these days to devote to traveling this fully-immersive fantasy world. There’s just so much to do that I’m completely overwhelmed. I wonder how this bodes for the upcoming release of Fallout 3, which I’ve actually reserved a day off from work so I can play all day? Will it too be a completely suffocating expanse, or will there actually be some kind of story I can play along with? Hmmm, we shall see…

I’ve been updating a crap-ton of stuff for Cannibal Contagion. I’m gonna wait a few more weeks before I post the new playtest update, as there are so many changes and additions that I think it deserves a bigger all-encompassing release. The Contagion and NPC rules have been drastically re-written, I’ve added a big mess o’ sample bad guys, and I’ve made allies easier to incorporate into the flow of the game. Slowly but surely, the game is falling into the perfect flow, and I’m very proud.

I’m totally in love with the stuff that Vero and Leo have been sending me. Here’s a sneak peek at a piece from the core rules, intended to introduce the section of the rules for running and arranging the game:

Fabulous! Every new pic they send me makes me all the more excited. So far, with spacers for full-page art, the game is quickly approaching my original mark of 125 pages, and there’s a small chance it might even be more.

Thanks to Travis Brown, Cannibal Contagion now has discussion forums over on the GoPlay! PDX website. Drop on in if you have questions or ideas!

Finally, all the updates are live. There’s quite a few, which is why this has taken so long to get out:

• Added option rule in the Gear section for “inventory slot” mechanics, allowing a simulation of the Survival-Horror game inventory management.
• The “Threat Pool” and NPC sections of the GM side of the book have been almost entirely re-written, and completely reorganized. NPCs are now purchased with fewer Threat Pool tokens, and enter the game with frequently-higher Threat scores. They’re supposed to be dangerous, and now they are.
• Expanded section on game themes, and how to effectively incorporate them.
• More info in both the Player Tips and CiC Tips sections.
• A bit more detail in the introductory scenario. Still working on that one.
• A large handful of errata updates, typo fixes, and corrections to outdated information.
• Added spacers for several future additions, such as Index, character sheets, and a few planned art pieces.
• A few more sections of example text have been added.
• Added advice for using player-framed scenes.

The updated rules and sheets can be found here, as usual. Next on the immediate design list is to create some additional helper cards, to assist with management of the optional limited inventory system.

In Cannibal Contagion, the CiC uses the Threat Pool to create NPCs, directly purchasing their Threat scores with points from the pool. As it currently stands, the mechanics for creating NPCs and generating Threat are.. well… a tad sloppy.

Today I had a new idea that I’m considering using instead. This would make the Threat Pool system a lot more modular, less haphazard, and give the CiC a lot more control over the NPCs and Dangers without overburdening him with oodles of tokens. Here’s the idea:

The CiC would use tokens from the Threat Pool to purchase an NPC, with the token cost being based upon the NPC’s Role. Fodder NPCs would cost 1 token, Hindrances 2, Minions 4, Big Bads 6, and Bigger-Badder-Big-Bads 10. Once brought into the game, the CiC then draws cards to determine their actual Threat scores. If you’re using the little NPC cards, it’s really easy to then just set the drawn cards beside or underneath the associated NPC card for quick reference in play. For Fodder, draw two and keep the lowest. For Hindrances, draw 1. For Minions, draw 2 and keep the highest, for Big Bads draw three and add together the highest two, and for BBBBs draw four and add together the highest three.

In this system, the actual composition of the NPC is still irrelevant: a Threat 5 Hindrance could just as easily be a group of five zombies as it could be one really tough zombie.

Threat Pool could still also be used as Awesome tokens as per normal rules. The amount of Threat pool available would decrease significantly, though. I’m thinking, at the beginning of each scene the CiC gains 1 for each scene that has passed and one for each player at the table.

Whaddaya think?