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View Full Version : Zombie Appocalypse: The Roleplaying Game?



Kyeudo
2010-10-14, 09:57 PM
I just finished reading the book Rot and Ruin by Jonathen Maberry, which paints a picture of a very believable post-zombie-appocalyptic America. Basically most people huddle behind fences and other fortifications, trying to pretend like the world as they knew it never collapsed under a tidal wave of undead and scraping out an existance as best they can. Only the brave and the greedy leave the fortified towns to clear out zombies and scavenge the wreckage of civilization, what they call the Rot and Ruin, for the things that no one can make anymore.

I couldn't help but think: those bounty hunters are alot like players in your prototypical D&D campaign. Maybe it would make a good roleplaying setting.

But that also got me to thinking: Wouldn't players get bored if the only enemies to fight are mindless zombies and other bounty hunters? Would such a setting be too limitted in the number of potential stories that could be told within it? Thoughts?

senrath
2010-10-14, 10:05 PM
I'm currently playing in a Zombie Apocalypse game on these very forums, and it's pretty fun. We haven't fought any other survivors (yet, anyway), but we also have to contend with intelligent undead, so I think it kinda evens out in that regard.

Another_Poet
2010-10-14, 10:10 PM
Yeah, there are like a million RPGs for that already. Here's a few suggestions, quoted from an email I sent to a friend of mine:


I promised zombie games and here are some zombie games! There are many, many zombie-themed games reviewed on rpg.net from whimiscal to gothic, from strategy card games to 300 page RPG rulebooks. These are the two that stood out in my mind as ones I hope to someday play.

First off the one I told you about about: Zombie Cinema (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14466.phtml)

Here is a quote from the review which I think sums ups why I love it:

"In other zombie games, you and your friends have clear objectives. You look for shotguns, find safehouses, and hope that your character can run fast enough to reach the helipad so you can be spirited away to safety. Winners are those who live. Losers are the ones who get eaten. Zombie Cinema is the only game I know where having your character devoured by shambling cadavers isn't necessary a bad thing. Simply put, the ultimate goal of Zombie Cinema isn't to escape, or to kill the most zombies. It's to make a really cool Zombie movie with your friends."

You can buy it as a physical product with all the game pieces (i.e. not just a .pdf) for $20 here (http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/search.php?mode=search&page=1).

Secondly I wanted to also point you toward what is meant as a more conventional RPG. It is called Savage tales #06: Zombie Run (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14779.phtml) and is an adventure for the Savage Worlds system. It sounds much better than other zombie adventures I've read, the reviewer's mild criticism notwithstanding. Savage Worlds has become a pretty popular ruleset and my understanding is it's easy to pick up. Of course if you're friend doesn't have the system or isn't interested in learning it, that may be less helpful. But just in case... you can buy "Zombie Run" for a whopping $8 as .pdf here (http://www.studio2publishing.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=2447).

(I am not affiliated with either of those products and I don't make any money by recommending them, I just read a LOT of game reviews and those two stood out as very good.)

A game called "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" is probably the most well-known one although I have heard a lot of criticism of it.

If you are hell-bent on using D&D to run your zombie game (although it is poorly suited to it) then google "oakspar77777 lessons from DMing with my GF zombie" and enjoy.

ap

dgnslyr
2010-10-14, 10:30 PM
Well, if hacking through wave after wave of mindless undead gets boring, then "they mutate."

Is there anything you CAN'T explain in a zombie survival game with that simple phrase? I Am Legend springs to mind...

FelixG
2010-10-14, 10:32 PM
It may seem limited at first but it can be anything you want, especially in the systems that let you design your own undead

I am fond of All Flesh Must be Eaten

I am gearing up at current to run a sandbox zombie survival game, starting at the begining of the outbreak.

Its pretty much a blank check for your players. Its a modern world suffering a catastrophe with them being able to do what ever they like.

My favorite bit about a Sandbox is the players will find ways to entertain themselves and you just run it and make it exciting!

Knaight
2010-10-14, 10:40 PM
My advice would be to go with Shotgun Diaries. Among other things, it avoids the tedium of killing zombies by never making you roll to kill zombies. Whenever you roll to do anything, you are also killing zombies. You roll to make a barricade and kill zombies, climb onto the roof and kill zombies, get the car started to drive away and kill zombies, etc. and as such killing zombies never gets old. Fun game too, and considering that it is a narrativist system, that is high praise coming from me.

Kyeudo
2010-10-14, 10:45 PM
A game called "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" is probably the most well-known one although I have heard a lot of criticism of it.

If you are hell-bent on using D&D to run your zombie game (although it is poorly suited to it) then google "oakspar77777 lessons from DMing with my GF zombie" and enjoy.

ap

I've read Oakspar's lessons (very excellent D&D campaigns all around from that guy, plus some good general advice), but I'm most certainly not fixated on D&D.

I'm really looking for thoughts on the viability of a post-zombie-appocalypse setting in the long term. I say "post" because I'm not looking for stuff during the initial zombie outbreak. There's already plenty about that. I'm talking about stuff set after the survivors of the initial outbreak have already banded together, found a way to keep zombies out of their stuff, and have set up a sustainable way of life. Humanity is no longer threatened with immenient destruction, but the world outside of guarded communities is still far from safe, if not immediately lethal.

I'm trying to evaluate if the average player would get bored with such a setting in the long term. One shot games are well and fine, but I like games where the characters get plenty of chances to show who they are as people and what matters to them, yet it looks to like the type of stories availible in a post-zombie-apocalypse setting would be restricted to variations on the dungeron crawl with very repeditive opposition.

FelixG
2010-10-14, 10:46 PM
Fun game too, and considering that it is a narrativist system, that is high praise coming from me.

You know, i have heard WoD called a storyteller system, and i realize i am not quite sure i understand the meaning implied by it, what separates a storyteller /narrativist system from any other?

The Rose Dragon
2010-10-14, 10:49 PM
You know, i have heard WoD called a storyteller system, and i realize i am not quite sure i understand the meaning implied by it, what separates a storyteller /narrativist system from any other?

Storyteller (or for new World of Darkness, Storytelling) is the system World of Darkness uses. It is the same as d20 System to Dungeons & Dragons. It has nothing to do with narrativism or whatever.

Knaight
2010-10-14, 10:56 PM
Yeah, the storyteller system is pretty much a textbook case of what is not narrativism. If you want the basic details, look up GNS and The Forge on google somewhere, though it has major narratavist bias. Its not incredibly useful, but it makes a nice shorthand.

Kyeudo
2010-10-15, 12:53 AM
Well, if hacking through wave after wave of mindless undead gets boring, then "they mutate."


Doesn't the fact that they are dead mean that they can't mutate? To grow and change usually requires ongoing biological processes . . . :smalltongue:

On a more serious note, it would seem to me that many of the classic alternative zombies - intelligent zombies, acid-spitting zombies, burrowing zombies, exploading zombies, etc. - would make any sort of permanent settlement by humans logically impossible.

Mewtarthio
2010-10-15, 01:08 AM
And don't even get started on the fast zombies (or "zoombies," as I've heard them called). When those guys show up, you've got twenty-four hours to resort to the Nuclear Option or civilization ends.

Lycan 01
2010-10-15, 01:29 AM
Doesn't the fact that they are dead mean that they can't mutate? To grow and change usually requires ongoing biological processes . . . :smalltongue:

Play the Resident Evil remake for the Gamecube or Wii, then come back and say that again. :smallwink:

Kyeudo
2010-10-15, 02:11 AM
Play the Resident Evil remake for the Gamecube or Wii, then come back and say that again. :smallwink:

That would require I own a Gamecube or Wii. When it came to picking a system to fork out money for, Halo beat Mario.

prufock
2010-10-15, 09:20 AM
Doesn't the fact that they are dead mean that they can't mutate? To grow and change usually requires ongoing biological processes

It would require reproduction, really. However, if you use the "zombism is a parasite" model, you could argue that the parasites reproduce and mutate, and thus have different effects when they infect someone.

Moriato
2010-10-15, 12:18 PM
Doesn't the fact that they are dead mean that they can't mutate?

Well... technically being dead should also mean that they can't get up, run around, or eat brains either, but they still manage to do those things. So why not mutate, too?

Mewtarthio
2010-10-15, 12:19 PM
It would require reproduction, really. However, if you use the "zombism is a parasite" model, you could argue that the parasites reproduce and mutate, and thus have different effects when they infect someone.

Of course, the other major model is the "zombism is magic" model, in which case the zombies mutate because magic.

Yeah, I know that "zombism is a disease" is pretty popular, but frankly any disease that keeps you mobile even after all your vital organs are rotting away falls squarely into the SCIENCE! category, which is just magic with more technobabble.

Kyeudo
2010-10-15, 03:04 PM
I was being facetious about the mutation thing. Everything in RPGs is handwaving to some extent or another, so its not the real problem. The real problem with alternate zombies would seem to be this:


On a more serious note, it would seem to me that many of the classic alternative zombies - intelligent zombies, acid-spitting zombies, burrowing zombies, exploading zombies, etc. - would make any sort of permanent settlement by humans logically impossible.

Archpaladin Zousha
2010-10-15, 03:15 PM
I remember when I came up with my own Zombie Apocalypse idea. It was pretty standard fare except for one main difference. There were three groups trying to survive:

The Pure, remnants of the military and scientific communities of America, who live in sterilized bunkers scattered throughout the country and are trying to find cures for the zombies and trying to retake zombie-infested cities. They also have armored haz-mat suits to protect them.

The Survivors, basically what you'd expect from post-zombie-apocalypse folks, adept at hiding and ambushing as well as jury-rigging and repairing abandoned supplies to survive.

The Plagued, zombies who didn't become drooling monsters when they were infected. They're very tough, and they can engage zombies in melee without fear of infection, but they need to eat human biomatter in order to regenerate their degrading tissues, or else they'll just become plain 'ol zombies. And they can spread the infection to others if they're not careful.

I had a game going in this world, where a group featuring different representatives of each faction (a group of Pure soldier/scientist who hired several Survivor and Plagued mercenaries to protect them) went around trying to rescue besieged Pure bunkers and Survivor cities, but it kind of pettered out.

LibraryOgre
2010-10-15, 03:47 PM
But that also got me to thinking: Wouldn't players get bored if the only enemies to fight are mindless zombies and other bounty hunters? Would such a setting be too limitted in the number of potential stories that could be told within it? Thoughts?

Yes and no. While broad strokes would be the same (D&D? Isn't that all killing people and taking their stuff?), the differences would come in the details.

1) What if those other bounty hunters have stopped going into the zombie-plagued cities (dangerous) and started doing night raids on safe houses (a different kind of dangerous). Get shot raiding a safe house, you patch up and heal... get bit raiding a city, you die and rot. Eventually, this group of raiders is going to have to be stopped.

2) Major shortage. Your particular safehouse has a major shortage, either of something essential (bullets, water, electricity) or of skill sets (you've got a lot of plumbers, but no hunters or electricians). How do you rectify this shortage?

3) Related to major shortage, how about mundane disease? What happens if everyone in the village comes down with something like diphtheria (too many people vaccinated, especially amongst the second generation) or dysentery (bad water pipe). It can be cured, but that means a trek to the mythical Sacred Heart (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiyDQUswtSA) (warning: link is silly), which still has stocks of such things.

4) Related to the Quest for the Sacred Heart, how about a treasure map? The party comes across a map to... something. Maybe it's a National Guard Armory (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/National_Guard_Depot), or a decommissioned battleship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Alabama_%28BB-60%29) that can be used as a secure point. That turns into a Quest for the Great Valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_before_time)... your group of survivors need to find the place they can go and be safe because there are no zombies on the ocean (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bC07e7PReM).

Kyeudo
2010-10-16, 01:43 AM
So, how many unusual zombie types do you guys think could be included without shattering versimilitude?

Kaldrin
2010-10-16, 04:45 AM
Actually I ran a GURPS zombie apoc game and for the first probably half of it the players were running around trying to secure the town, deal with looters and reavers, find supplies, find survivors and generally try to get enough resources together to help the town survive.

The key to a zombie game is the understanding that zombies are just the backdrop. Most of the story is going to be how the players interact with other survivors. It's fun to see them almost forget they're in a zombie apoc and have a hundred of the buggers show up and surround the van while they're trying to rescue a family from starvation.

In my game zombies froze in the winter so most of the running to distant places happened then. They carried around a thermometer with an alarm on it just in case. My phone had an alarm on it too I could set. It's great seeing people so into the game they actually jump a bit when your phone alarm goes off. So, coupled with all the challenges of surviving travel in winter they had to deal with the odd zombie trying to grab them from a slightly warmer than outside closet or something.

Kaldrin
2010-10-16, 04:46 AM
So, how many unusual zombie types do you guys think could be included without shattering versimilitude?

I had two types: Screamers which ran fast and were hard to take down. Stenches which were the slow-moving thoughtless shamblers.

LibraryOgre
2010-10-16, 11:29 AM
So, how many unusual zombie types do you guys think could be included without shattering versimilitude?

Kinda depends on method of infection, but I wouldn't go higher than three or four, and probably only two are common. Anything else would need to be tagged "special" and have a good reason for it being different.

Tyndmyr
2010-10-16, 11:34 AM
The easiest way to justify different types of zombies is to start with different base creatures. So, a zombie bird is going to inherently be a lot different than a zombie human.

Ponder the possibilities of zombie mosquitoes as well, if you truly want to see paranoia.

LibraryOgre
2010-10-16, 11:46 AM
Ponder the possibilities of zombie mosquitoes as well, if you truly want to see paranoia.

Oh, you're evil. Even if they're immune to zombifying, letting mosquitos be carriers...

Arbane
2010-10-16, 12:46 PM
Oh, you're evil. Even if they're immune to zombifying, letting mosquitos be carriers...

Total human extinction in 3...2...1...

jmbrown
2010-10-16, 01:07 PM
Traditionally in horror stories, monsters are used as an allegory or symbolism. A "realistic" post-apocalyptic situation is more about the characters and inter-party relationships than the actual adventure and danger. The monsters and environment are there to test the characters whose emotions grow wild and out of control. The characters have to learn how to deal with each other and function as a group or fall apart and die.

Basically, unless you toss in a lot of supernatural elements, the game would work under a more simulationist system like GURPS than d20.

Kyeudo
2010-10-16, 09:48 PM
Basically, unless you toss in a lot of supernatural elements, the game would work under a more simulationist system like GURPS than d20.

I was actually thinking about using the Storyteller system. I play a fair amount of Exalted, so its what I know.