AFMBE Morsel - The Community College

What follows is a morsel of a setting for the All Flesh Must Be Eaten roleplaying game. 

Neighborhood:  Beaverton Community College

The Beaverton Community College is on one edge of town, nestled between a shopping plaza, a wooded neighborhood, and a small apartment complex. The college has seven buildings, all brick. The properly is surrounded by a ten foot tall, gothic, wrought iron fence. There are two gates as points of egress. The buildings include the original Lutheran church, an administrative building, a mixed-sex dormitory used mostly by foreign students, a performing arts building, a science building, a business school building, and a general studies building.

This community college has a student population near 2,000 and most of its funding comes from the high cost of tuition. However, several of the college’s students are philanthropists who have bequeathed money to the college.

Sights

Person:  The Professor

1.        The professor is not an actual professor. The professor is actually a local who hung around the college discussing philosophy and other arts topics at the local coffee shops with students. He smells equally of body odor and marijuana.

2.        The professor is a local drug dealer who sold junk to the students at the university. The students provided the nickname to avoid suspicion by the real staff and professors on campus.

3.        The professor is a former instructor who was dismissed for unethical teaching. There are many rumors surrounding the professor’s dismal. They include creating drugs and selling them to students, teaching students how to make said drugs, inappropriate relationships with students, conducting scientific research against the college’s religious organization’s wishes, conducting scientific research deemed unethical by a scientific review board, and creating the drug that created zombie patient zero.

Place:  The Church

1.        The church has a basement. The basement has a door that leads to hallways under the college. At one time, the tunnel system connected all of the buildings. However, after a highly publicized rape occurred in the tunnels, they bricked over the doors in the other buildings. Various supplies are scattered throughout the hallways. There is a rumor one of the manhole covers on campus leads to the hallways.

2.        The church is on holy ground and the zombies will not go near the property. No one knows who originated this tail, as the gates and fence are intact and have been since everyone on site arrived.

3.        The priests of the church were heavily involved with helping the local food pantry. They would stockpile supplies at the church and make donations once a month. The goods gathered the month prior to the rise of the zombies are still in the church. Food, water, clothing, and toiletries are there for the taking.

Thing:  Medicine

1.        The science department had several grants from major pharmaceutical companies. They were working on several miracle drugs when the outbreak started. The different types of drugs in development included cures for cancer, cures for liver and kidney disease, and help recover from diarrhea and vomiting.

2.        The college offered a pharmaceutical degree. One of the professors taught an elective course on early medicinal practices and one aspect to the class included learning how to make the drugs used by early cultures and apothecaries. Those same drugs are still available on campus and so are the class notes on how to make the drugs.

3.        The infirmary is in the basement of the dormitory. It was rarely used and is fully stocked with first aid medical supplies, as well as, several prescription drugs of potential interest to the player characters (painkillers, antibiotics, antihistamines, and antidepressants).

Threats

1.        Rumors about the availability of drugs on the campus have many people interested in the community college. Which drugs are available does not matter; use any of the above storylines for this threat. If the drugs are of illicit nature, then that crowd is attracted to the college. Conversely, if using the infirmary or pharmaceutical angle, then a group of people arrives who have need of an important drug. Perhaps a young man broke his leg and needs painkillers. Someone with severe allergies and no source of antihistamines will desire those within the gated community.

2.        There is a small group of survivors living on campus. There is no discernable leader and the group tends to decide major decisions by committee. There are various cliques and alliances on campus and it is impossible to determine who really is on whose side.

3.        The ROTC unit attached to the college is in charge of the community. They fancy themselves a tough bunch and are actually bullies and thugs. They set fire to the nearby apartment complex when the people living there refused to give them tribute in the form of food. They raided the shopping plaza and left behind traps for unwitting scavengers. They take in people looking for a home, taking their things, and then offering them slavery or leaving without their things. This group is trouble and may have heard the right rumors about the player characters to consider the player characters their enemies.

Specific Locations

The Administrative Building

The Admin Building is a maze of cubicles, desks, and tables. Ingenious players may realize the cubicle walls, desks, tables, and filing cabinets make great barriers for zombies. Lining them against the fence to blocks the view of the campus. Affixing them across doors and windows creates a further barrier against anyone trying to gain entrance to the buildings. The admin building is also filled with boxes of copier paper, reports, ledgers, and other paper products to help with starting fires, creating documentation on experiments, and researching the college itself.

The Dormitory

Most of the students tried to take all of their belongings with them, when they fled. Very few succeeded in that endeavor. There are beds, sofas, chairs, desks, refrigerators still closed since the fall of man, clothing, boxes and cans of dried foods, toiletries, and drugs. Going through the entire six-story building will take some time, but it will be worth the effort.

The Gardens

The gardens were once a beautiful flower garden. Soon after the fall of man, the professor organized the residents to convert it into a vegetable garden. It is not producing much yet. However, they are working on a plan to bring in more water to help the plants grow. There are hoses running from the gardens into the arts building.

Connectivity

Travel times and difficulties to nearby, known communities

Place	Travel Time by Foot	Notes
Airport	1D6 (3) hours	Surrounded by zombies
High Rise Apartment Complex	1D4+2 (3) hours	Surrounded by zombies and connected to a parking garage with crashed vehicles blocking egress points
Big Box Store / Supermarket	1D4+2 (3) hours	Aggressive group currently controls this location
Hospital	1D6 (3) hours	Some floors are safe, some are not, surrounding by roving bands of zombies
Hotel	1D6 (3) hours	Defenses are not the great, but the residents are nice enough
Office Park	1D8 (4) hours	Poorly organized community with a Lord of the Flies feel to it
Police Station	1D8 (4) hours	Less than ten people here, none are police and all of the weapons were looted days ago