The Gaming Outpost

Ever since George Romero’s groundbreaking NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was released in the late 60′s, zombies have held a special place in horror film history. Romero followed up this breakthrough film with the equally impressive DAWN OF THE DEAD, a film which ignited a horde of imitators. The zombie film as role playing game combines two of the hottest genres around: apocalyptic gaming and horror gaming. Not only are the zombies terrifying creatures, but in most films their arrival is associated with a general collapse of society as government proves incapable of protecting its citizens. When great-grandma Edith shows up to eat your brain, the first guy to the gun shop is most likely to live. Law and order be damned.

What we have here are the basic elements of a good story: there’s plenty of opportunity for conflict and motivated folks (read: the characters) have a chance to make a real difference in the world.

Researching the Subject

The best way to get a zombie apocalypse game going is to sit down and watch a few films. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD. These films are superior zombie films not only for their sheer horror and suspense but because George Romero also focused on the conflicts between his human characters, a necessary ingredient if you don’t want a game set in this genre to devolve into endless die rolls as characters hunt and kill zombies.

I Was a Teenage Zombie (and Here Are the Game Stats to Prove It)

Here’s what we know about zombies from NIGHT and DAWN:

• Zombies hunger for human flesh. They will shamble towards humans on sight and will continue to attack until destroyed or their prey escapes.
• Zombies have elevated strength. They are able to tear flesh from their prey with both their teeth and hands.
• Zombies have extremely limited cognitive ability. They have no capability to plan attacks or predict human actions. They tend to move towards the last spot they saw a living human and are determined pursuers.
• Zombies can only be destroyed by massive head trauma, such as a gun shot or bludgeon to the head. Zombies will ignore all pain, though of course blowing off their limbs might make them a little less effective.
• Any human bitten by a zombie will die and arise as one of the walking dead within 72 hours after the wound was inflicted. At the GM’s option, the human will not perish if the wounded limb is amputated up to 10 minutes after the human is wounded. Yup, you’re out of luck if you get a bit on your head or torso.
• Any human who dies with his brain intact, no matter what the cause, will arise as a zombie within 6 hours of death.

Translating This into Game Stats

First, don’t try working out stats for every zombie in town. There’s going to be thousands of the critters all over the place. Instead, keep a rough count of how many are after the players. Any successful attack is a head shot. Most games treat shots to the head as called shots and penalize them, but zombies don’t make any effort to shield their heads from harm. Also, their slow, jerky movements make them easy targets.

The Meat of the Issue

Zombies don’t make great villains. The zombies are more of a plot device than anything else. They just shamble around looking for food. Horrifying, yes. Dramatically satisfying, no. Your human characters are what will make this sort of game entertaining. So who do we call on to provide drama and tension? Good old reliable humanity

In the zombie apocalypse, only the strong survive. At least, that’s how a lot of people feel in Romero’s films. The characters could easily go that route, scrounging for food, ammo, and secure shelter while duking it out with anyone who gets in their way. Or maybe they’re in the army, or they’re cops, and they feel some sense of duty to protect and serve even as society collapses. Maybe their sense of duty is magnified as people need protection now more than ever. There’s a lot of story goals you can use. Here’s a few examples:

• Survival Uber Alles
  
  With anarchy in full swing, it’s every man for himself. In this case, the characters have pretty much given up on civilization. If they want to survive, they’re going to do it on their own. The characters may strive to build something out of the wreckage of society, a community to weather the zombie storm. Or perhaps the characters give up on society all together and simply seek an isolated place to eke out a living on their own. Whatever the case, they’ll face a lot of challenges. The government may actively round up anyone not in a refugee camp, especially if martial law is declared. Remember that a lot of other people will seek the same resources and hideouts as the characters. Sure, everyone may want to get along, but if there aren’t enough bullets/guns/cans of Spam to go around, things will get ugly, fast. A major theme in both Romero films is the fundamentally selfish and destructive nature of man. Nobody can get along as it is. With the zombies around, things are only worse.
• Serve and Protect
  
  In this story line, the characters are members of an organization, typically governmental, that existed before the rise of the zombies. Not only do the players have to watch out for themselves, but now they have to worry about saving others. There’s a lot of potential here for dramatic conflict. Perhaps the organziation that the characters work for is riddled with incompetence. Maybe politicians bicker and squabble while the zombies claim more victims, or the soldiers that are supposed to be evacuating the ‘burbs are too busy looting downtown. Keep in mind that protecting the defenseless does not necessarily mean the party has to wade into the fray both guns blazing. They could be relief workers, doctors at a hospital swamped with casualties, or the leaders of a small town trying desperately to come up with a plan to avert disaster. Take any real world occupation, add the zombie problem, and think of story lines that would logically follow.
• Rip Sh!t Up
  
  The ultimate beer and pretzels game. Pick your poison: outlaw bikers finally given the chance to act out Mad Max; suburban middle managers gone postal; religious cultists reveling in the apocalypse that finally decided to show up. Play it up for laughs, as the players abuse zombies and beat on other equally maladjusted survivors. The biker gang from the finale of DAWN is the perfect template for this sort of game. Shoot zombies. Loot malls. Dust off that copy of Car Wars and run down the zombies that ate Midville. Whoever gets overwhelmed and eaten with the most stuff stuck in their pockets wins!

Rules to Use

There’s a lot of games that are easily adaptable to a zombie movie game. GURPS works wonderfully with the genre no matter what slant you put on it. Call of Cthulhu is good for those GMs that want to emphasize horror over wanton destruction and character conflict. My personal favorite, especailly for a dramatic zombie game, is Unknown Armies. What makes UA good for a zombie game is its insanity rules, which give guidelines for insanity caused by isolation or self-doubt. The zombies themselves are not necessarily terrifying a la Call of Cthulhu. It’s the situations they force people into that tend to produce stress and strain. In both NIGHT and DAWN, the main characters have more problems dealing with the social and psychological reprecussions of the zombie menace than fear of the zombies themselves. Whatever set you use, I’d suggest going with a cinematic, rules light approach. The action in both NIGHT and DAWN is fast and furious. Don’t ruin the feel of the movies by getting mired down in complex rules.

Starting Your Game

This is where basing a game on a movie really plays off. Instead of sitting your players down and explaining what’s going on, set aside your first gaming session for a little work in film studies. I would suggest that you work with your players to figure out what tone you want the game to have. Run the game types I detailed above by them and see which one really catches their interest. Now, create characters and immediately put them aside. With their characters in mind, it’s time for your players to watch NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD. If you don’t have time to watch both, I’d suggest DAWN, since the story is a bit grander in scale and thus gives a bit better big picture view of a zombie-infested world. At the end of the movie, your campaign is ready to roll. The players have a good idea about what’s going on, and, if they have any taste in horror movies, they’re pumped up to start kicking zombie butt. This is why movies are a great resource for campaigns. They immerse your players and set them up perfectly for your own masterpiece. So get out there, watch some zombie movies, and make your own unique mark on the genre.

Just remember, always shoot for the head!

Resources

• http://www.homepageofthedead.com
  
  Gives a good overview of Romero’s zombie trilogy. A wealth of fan fiction gives GMs plenty of inspiration. In particular, the piece titled FM-101-97 makes a great hand out for in-game use.
• http://www2.gol.com/users/noman/
  
  Features amusing write-ups of some of the zombies from DAWN OF THE DEAD. A good resource for those looking to add a humorous slant to their zombie game.