Zombies in Hamburg: A little thought experiment part 2

In the last post I started the little Gedankenspiel on how a supernatural reanimation of corpses to zombies here in my home-city of Hamburg would play out, which can be useful as a backdrop for a role-playing campaign. Let's keep this show going by moving on to the next stage of the infestation of the now spreading Z and the finally reacting government agencies from outside the city.


So, let's see of things are going to turn out...

Zombies in Hamburg: A little thought experiment part 1

A few years ago, I hosted an roleplaying one-shot session for a few friends of mine with a simple conceit: You're playing realistic characters in a zombie apocalypse here in our home city of Hamburg, Germany. The second largest city in the country, we have the Bernhardt-Nocht-Institute for tropical diseases so there we would have the cause for the zombie-outbreak. I excessively used google maps and our own knowledge of the city for the campaign, which had three random survivors simply trying to reach the central police station from a southern part of the city, having to cross the port and the river in the process.

Now if you're going to play in the current day, why not take a place everyone at the table knows and can relate to? Where all you need maps-wise is available on line? Exactly. This has lead me to a new thought experiment though: How would a zombie-infestation in my city actually turn out? Let's find out!

Another Artemis Play Session

So, the bi-weekly bunch of Artemis-players met up again the other week to play the game once again. And we decided to get the difficulty to max. Well we did have a Dreadnought. And basically expected to die. What followed was some of the most epic and intense role-playing/video-gaming experiences I have ever had...

So difficulty ten. Space to "interesting" (as "very interesting" tends to litter enough black holes and mine-fields as to seriously obstruct the AI invasion). We in the mightiest of the ships that players can have, the intimidating Dreadnought-class. We had enough people for all stations. And I was the captain. I didn't really expect us to get far. Difficulty 8 had killed us quickly enough before. It was just a matter of doing things with our backs against the wall.

We came into the battle guns/nuclear torpedoes blazing, quickly wiping out the first few of the vast waves of enemy ships. Docking with one of the stations, we re-supplied. Looking at the incredible number of enemy fleets on the long-range scanner, I decided that we couldn't defend all of the stations and would concentrate on one of them, in order to keep things going for as long as possible. Having stocked up on ammunition and fuel, we engaged the nearest waves of enemy ships.

The first one went well, as we used ECMs to take out shields and then followed up with nukes, pelting the flottilla with heavy fire-power until it was over. The second wave got us without heavy weaponry though and the station was too close to the battle to be docked with. Well, the Dreadnaught does have its main beam weapon, a powerful ray-cannon taking out smaller ships with ease. At this point we had a wholly different problem: We were running out of energy. To conserve fuel, I ordered the shield shut down and all sytems lowered as far as possible and then drag the ship back to the station. That was when the Bird of Prey Skaraan Enforcer uncloaked and opened fire.