Building a better zombie

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Jasonft

That is a disturbingly good or evil idea. I am not sure which...

Why can't it be both? I find it a good and evil idea.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Jasonft

That is a disturbingly good or evil idea. I am not sure which...

First time I saw it was in Horror, by Ken Hite. Let your players know something is scary by killing some pre-gens the first session. That way you don' t have to kill off their lovingly crafted characters in order to make the bad guy feel threatening.

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

First time I saw it was in Horror, by Ken Hite. Let your players know something is scary by killing some pre-gens the first session. That way you don' t have to kill off their lovingly crafted characters in order to make the bad guy feel threatening.

I've actually used that method in non-horror games. In one game, the PCs found a video record of what happened before, and instead of narrating it to them, I handed them pre-gens and they got to play through it. Worked very well.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

I've actually used that method in non-horror games. In one game, the PCs found a video record of what happened before, and instead of narrating it to them, I handed them pre-gens and they got to play through it. Worked very well.

Clever! I like the idea quite a bit.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Kale

Clever! I like the idea quite a bit.

Yeah, it's a neat trick. Might have to use that sometime, Mark.

[Flyndaran]

If I remember correctly even D&D Advanced got into the act with an adventure giving pre-gens to play before the actual game characters get rolled up. Can't remember which module(s) that was.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

Ahem. There is the problem that highly infectious zombies have a strong chance of Infecting The Player Characters. If the players themselves are not willing to have their characters make a last minute speech before saying, "Shoot me now, while I can still remember my name," you probably want to make zombies less infectious and more murderous.

The other solution (and the one that I intend to use if I ever run my psionic knights versus astral alien powered zombie campaign Blight Years) is to require that PCs have some level of Resistant.

[Jasonft]

Pity the one poor bastard that is actually immune. Everyone thinks they are actually working for the enemy... but they *say* they aren't...

[Gizensha]

Zombies aren't scary.

The inevitable, slow, creeping, tangible sense of their inevitable victory? That's scary.

Until they reach that point, things might be tense, but they're a manageable threat. Once they reach that point your only hope is to barricade yourself into a small area with some fellow survivors, food, and weaponry. And, you know, things are tense, stressful, but... Hopeful. There must be dozens of this micro-community, and the military will sort the zombies out eventually, right, while you just hold out a little bit longer.

...Then you run out of food, and have to tear down the only thing between you and the hoard of zombies... Of which there are more than you have ammo. And you realize every other group of survivors on the planet is doing the exact. Same. Thing. And not all of them are going to make it to the next sealable area with food. And of the 10-20% that do? They're going to run out of food again, and another 90-95% of humanity is going to be lost, because they have less resources than last time.

The zombies, though? They're not the scary part. Your inevitable defeat due to the amount of them, and what will happen to you when you lose? That's what's scary.

Though I'm not particularly a Zombie connoisseur, so I'm probably missing some important thematic aspects of Zombie fiction that make them scary.

[Jasonft]

The scary thing to me, and another tip of the hat to "World War Z", is that a zombie outbreak is the perfect example of the concept of Total War. The idea of Total war being that every last moment of time and every last scrap of resources for one group in a conflict is devoted to winning said conflict.

This has never been done in the history of the human race. As a matter of fact, it literally can't be done by humans - there is always some percentage of time devoted to things other than the conflict (sleep for instance) no matter how motivated the group was.

Zombies on the other hand are engaging in Total War from day #1. Every single moment of every single day (or night) every last zombie without exception is devoting it's fullest effort to finding and either converting or consuming the remaining humans on the planet. And absolutely nothing at all can break zombie morale or make them turn aside or stop.

One zombie is next to nothing, at least if you know how to stop them. The entire zombified population of New York city advancing in a group would give even the Justice League nightmares.