Exploration

Point-to-Point Travel

No one wanders in the end of days. At least no one you can trust. That means that travel in Super Dead involves moving from one point to another. The process of traveling from place to place via point is known as point crawling.

Point Crawling has three stages, once the players have decided they would like to travel to a new location:

1. The players are presented the paths to their destination, as well as the information they have about each of those paths. They debate the best path to take.
2. The players make preparations and set out on their journey. Based on the when, how, and where they travel, they will face one or more encounters.
3. The encounters are resolved as they occur. Each of these encounters has a may interrupt the rest of the point crawl entirely.
4. The players arrive at the location for which they set out.

Encounters, Noise, and Danger

As the players travel between two places, the question becomes, what do they find as they travel.

This will break down into three kinds of answers:

1. Something the players expect, and you expect
2. Something the players do not expect, but you knew was there
3. Something that surprises both you and the players

In case one, the players have either been to this place before, or gathered information about it, and the situation is mostly as they left it. These types of encounters can be strategic for the players, when they involve people they players are looking to build relationships with or whose knowledge they wish to use.

In case two, the players have stumbled upon something you have kept hidden from them. These are the exciting things that make exploration special and make the world feel alive! These can be an extended series of encounters that takes the players away from their intended task, or a curiosity that they must come back to later.

In case three, we have entered the world of random encounters. These are the spice that makes the world seem alive. When you can, make your random encounters as specific to your setting and adventure hooks as possible.

Designing Encounter Tables

In Super Dead, random point crawl encounters serve as a way to color the world. If tabletop roleplaying games are 1/3 exploration, 1/3 roleplaying, and 1/3 combat, you should consider dividing your encounter tables into thirds as well.

That is, split your encounter tables in thirds.

The exploration third of your encounter tables should be filled suspicious or intriguing places. If the players investigate these places, they should find clues for current or future tasks, or useful equipment or gear.

The combat third of your encounter tables should be filled with zombies, opposing factions, lone wolf mutants, zombies, and even more zombies. This isn't the apocalypse for nothing! Make the number and activity of foe encountered memorable.

The roleplaying third of your encounter table can be stocked with faction figures, independent survivors, and even faction leaders out doing important things. For these encounters, it is critical that something important is going on before the players arrive.

Nighttime Encounter Tables

Because nighttime is more dangerous than daytime, once you've created your daytime encounter table, it is often beneficial to create a nighttime version of the same table. Good rules of them are fewer roleplaying encounters involving factions survivors, and more zombie encounters.

For example, the "Villain and Minions" encounter might become "Fiona Frost and her snowmen are entering a derelict jewelry store: Veronica's Diamond Atelier. After they enter, Fiona seals the entrance with a wall of ice..."

Generic Encounter Table

The following generic encounter table can serve as a boilerplate for your session prep. To prep for your game, replace the generic encounters with specific encounters relevant to ongoing storylines in your game.

Tables for Creating Random Encounters

Having trouble coming up with your own random encounters? Use the following tables to help. Again, it works best to take these general ideas for encounters and specify them down to specific encounter that can be used at the table.

Running a City

While Super Dead cities are not like their modern thriving forebearers, they are still cities. And running a city is a challenging feat at the table. Consider the following as a procedure for running Super Dead cities.

1. Create and maintain a list of factions that occupy the city along with the players
2. After each session, update the world based on what the factions did "off screen"
3. Create new clues and adventure hooks based on those off-screen events.
4. Provide those clues and adventure hooks to the players.

Enumerate the Factions

Because survival is hard, survivors will likely organize themselves into groups. These groups will want different things, even if they are all nominally working together. These groups are factions. They must take actions, independent of the players, to achieve their own interests.

Update the World

After each session, go through your list of factions and what they want. Then, think about what they would have been doing during the last session of gameplay to further their interests.

For example, a faction that wants to run away might be looking for gas or vehicles. A faction that is afraid might be looking for weapons or a powerful ally.

How did these endeavors go? Were they successful, or are they now worse off than they started? Decide what each faction did and which outcome they realized.

Create Clues + Hooks

For each outcome, create a clue or hook--some way that the players can learn about what the factions are up to. These are great to stock your random encounter tables, or to make the topic of conversation amongst your NPCs.

Provide Clues + Hooks

At the next session, provide those clues and hooks to the players. Don't feel like you need to provide all the clues and hooks you come up with at each session. But it is okay, even good, to provide more hooks than the players can act on.

In a city with three or more factions, there is more going on than the players could possible hope to be involved with. They will have to prioritize and strategize--an important part of the game!

Creating a Point-Crawl

One nice thing about point crawls is that they are easy to create. You write down the points of interest, draw lines between them, and you're (mostly) done.

If you have a map, point crawls can trivially be super-imposed on top of a map, by reducing the opacity of the map-layer, and drawing your points and connections on top of it.

Between each point on the map, indicate the number of encounters that would occur when traveling between those two locations. This should roughly correspond to the distance and danger of the journey.