Only 5 month.

[Brian Manning]

I think 5 months is plenty of time to figure out how to kill zombies. We're not talking about 5 months of casual observation and occasional skims of zombie wiki articles. We're talking about weeks of solid surviving against the waves of the living dead. That kind of "on the job training" can get you up to speed pretty quickly. And after a few months, you will most likely have a few tricks up your sleeve.

However, if your party is starting on a cruise ship, then I would imagine that limiting OCCs works out just fine. It would be weird if you've got a Hound Master, Reaper and Shepherd of the Damned stepping off the ship when it hits the (heavily infested) docks. The limited information that they would have would really make for some tense situations, and some odd decisions. I think it would be fun to run it that way.

[Brian Manning]

If the players don't have access to information that the reapers have gathered, then yes I agree that they would lack a lot of necessary info about permanently deanimating the dead. Like your example of sticking around an hour after dropping a zombie by blasting away at the chest, of course they shouldn't know about that, and I think it would be cool for them to find out the hard way (didn't we clear this room already? Where's the fat one-armed zombie we killed this morning?)

However I think the Reapers would have this kind of information after 5 months of fighting zombies (5 months is a long time, and I think there would be someone that would have noticed zombies getting back up from a field that was previously killed at some point in the initial fighting. Something like killing zombies, which doesn't really have a lot of nuances, can be experimented with pretty easily if they are having a hard time keeping them down.

I know this is a silly comparison, but I learned how to build playable game demos in Flash after only 3 or 4 weeks of "on the job" training (8 hours a day, 5 days a week). By the 3 month mark, I already had a few tips and tricks I was able to pass along to some of the other guys I was working with. I would think that after all the fighting they do, the Reapers would know about things like burning the bodies, shooting the head, and other "tricks of the trade" from classic zombie films/entertainment. After all, they are a rather large group, that is more than willing to share any and all information with their "brothers" in arms.

[DtMK]

In the original manuscript North America, and to a lesser extent Northern Europe and Australia, had a an ad hoc group of "War Corespondents" (ham radio, TV, and broadcast radio stations that were up and running) distributing information. They were called the Survivor Information Network (SIN).

I LIKE that! For my future games, SIN is in and on the air!

[Tricky]

You could do some nice introduction of the Reapers: To people who have more or less just found themselves in the DR world, the sight of a bunch of Bikers riding through the hordes of undead might be more intimidating and frightnening then the dead themselves, at least on some levels. ("This is what has survived this tragedy? A bunch of road trash!?!")

OH, and wait till these people find some cultitists!

[Brian Manning]

Docks/Warehouses are generally speaking fairly low threat areas from what I was reading, so when the PCs arrive (with or without surviving passangers) they will have some time to get their orientation. ...

>>>----Therumancer--->

Oops, I guess I mixed that up with World War Z. I was re reading it at the same time I was flipping through Dead Reign.

[Tricky]

I think everyone would know to shoot them in the head. That was even stated in the original black and white Night of the Living Dead.
My husband is getting a group together to play this.

Just remember, Gypsy, that hitting them in the head is going to be much, much harder for a DR campaign than in any of the Romero Classics.

(might as well hand that gun to that 7 year old girl next to you; you both have the exact same chance to hit a zombie with it.... )