Zombies Ate My Brains And I Like It

For the past couple of months I’ve been on a major zombie binge. It started with rewatching The Walking Dead before catching up on the most recent season. In the midst of binge watching I wondered about any cool zombie videos games out there and of course tabletop roleplaying games. I found both. I’ve been thinking a lot about the zombie survival genre lately, making my brains a tasty treat for the shambling undead. Let’s get into it.

All about survival

The thing about the zombie genre is the stories aren’t about the individuals in the group of survivors. Rather it’s the community, large or small, upon which the story unfolds. When the circumstances mean a single misstep quickly leads to a horrifying demise it gets complicated to focus on any individual for too long. Daryl gets a pass. Different zombie scenarios present varying degrees of zombie peril with D&D being perhaps the least threatening and certainly not in any way particularly dangerous. More on this later thanks to some great ideas that emerged during a recent live chat.

Sometime around season three or four of TWD when this notion crossed my mind I looked to see if there’s any zombie survival video games and discovered State of Decay 2. This game totally nails what I hoped to find. Your randomly generated survivors come and go through their own agency, death or exile from your community and it’s this last thing that lies at the game’s heart.

In a world overrun by mindless reanimated corpses hungering for the flesh of the living the folks you trust enough to band together with become your community. Your own personal survival depends on the continuation of the group and this starts with the very basics. Shelter, food and health sit at the top of the list so a zombie survival story prioritizes these components.

D&D Style: Characters in D&D quickly develop abilities and resources far beyond the scope of a zombie survival story set in a relatively mundane world. But these features primarily benefit an individual or small number of others. A cleric who survives until 5th level can expend their most powerful resources to feed 15-30 people for one day. Or a druid could feed 20 people every day right off the bat at 1st level. But still, it’s a resource to expend!

One way to make large scale resources fun and interesting for players is gamifying them. For an in-person game a pool of counters slowly dwindling can be effective. Create adventures around goals like discovering a new source of medicinal herbs or materials to reinforce a shelter. This helps evoke the feeling of a zombie survival story for otherwise powerful characters.

Next on the priority list comes defense and fuel. Once you set up your home you’ve got to protect it and keep things running. Defense includes not only making sure home is secure but also access to weapons. Even a pacifist can’t rationalize leaving zombies unharmed. These monsters get my vote for Most Unambiguous Threat Ever. Destroying a zombie is never a bad or even questionable thing!

D&D Style: Even a Monty Haul Dungeon Master like me could run a campaign with scarcity as a meaningful theme. A campaign featuring primarily zombies as antagonists could get boring pretty quickly with characters under-matched against even a small horde by around 5-7th level so the DM will have to get pretty creative already. Survivors who overcome the desperate challenges, probably shadowed with grief for an awful fate met by some friend along the way, should get some tangible reward.

Instead of new magic weapons and armor all the time I might instead introduce the means to imbue an existing piece of gear with the same feature. Sort of like uncovering something from the before times when this was more common, but now it’s only got enough juice left for one last whizbang.

Even better — the community builds their home around a powerful relic the small group stumbled upon out in the desolation. The artifact gives the possessor incredible might and resources but it requires a very rare fuel source. Now you’ve got yourself a campaign theme. Care for a free encounter that includes this very artifact? Check it out here.

All the necessities accounted for so the group of survivors in your zombie survival game don’t succumb to merely the harsh reality of life, there’s one crucial component to address — the zombies. I’m a slow, shambling, inexplicable zombie apocalypse guy myself. Whether there’s no more room in hell, or everyone everywhere is already infected and rises again after death, or whatever my preference is largely unexplained and unsolvable zombie problem.

D&D Style: Because D&D is pure fantasy the zombies here get some wiggle room. A cleric, wizard, Circle of Spores druid, Oathbreaker paladin and probably many other characters themselves could create zombies. Orcus could create zombies like they’re going out of style. Literally anything a DM can imagine could create zombies.

The flexibility for zombie origins helps keep a D&D zombie survival campaign fresh. Maybe it even becomes a fun sort of metagame for the players and their characters to wonder what kind of messed up zombie scenario will they face next? Keeping the circumstances new and interesting shouldn’t be a problem. Making encounters with the zombies engaging in a mechanical way? We’re getting there.

Before exploring how to liven up the shambling undead with some mechanical flair I want to enjoy The Quiet Year. Don’t worry — this post isn’t ending abruptly to pick up again in 2023. When it came to finding a tabletop zombie survival game, this time the game instead found me. I read about The Quiet Year in an article about obscure RPGs a while back and with my brains being consumed by zombie stuff I could not resist.

I’ve got my kitschy burlap bag full of The Quiet Year’s wonderful game resources like a deck of cards to represent a significant event each week, little skull Contempt Tokens. You can find out more about the game and get your own copy from creator Buried Without Ceremony’s website here. I very much appreciate any RPG with a wholly different approach and what sold me on The Quiet Year is none of the players creates or controls a character but rather collectively steers the direction of the whole community. Here’s the pitch from the creator Avery Alder.

“For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. Now, finally, we’ve driven them off, and we’re left with this: a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive the encounter. This is when the game will end. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.”

The Quiet Year is a map drawing game for 2-4 players and takes about 3-4 hours to play. The titular year in which a game takes place is broken down into weeks, with players introducing projects for the community and development of the shared map along with drawing a card from the deck to see what else transpires. For each game the players decide on important resources including which of them are abundant or scarce. Overall it’s a pleasantly simple to play game with lots of nuance and space for creativity.

It’s worth noting The Quiet Year is not technically a zombie genre game. The premise assumes an apocalyptic event of some sort, causing life as the people know it to change forever. This means The Quiet Year can represent whatever setting you imagine. Maybe when you finish a game the community and world you created becomes the basis for your zombie survival D&D campaign.

More dangerous D&D zombies

Let’s face it. D&D zombies pose little to no threat and certainly no peril from players or even characters who know anything about them. They’re about the lowest challenge rating there is, somewhat resilient but incredibly easy to hit with the possibility they might keep coming at you. But if they get you with their Slam attack watch out! The 2-7 damage sounds terrifying.

Two ways to punch up the zombies in your D&D game represent two sides of the zombie spectrum. On one hand zombies generally become inert if there’s nothing around to draw their attention, but if there is they tend to group together into an increasingly lethal swarm. You can get really creative with zombies and if you’re lucky the players might even think twice about heedlessly plunging forward into zombie hordes.

The possibly considerable passage of time while a zombie remains inert can bring about some interesting effects. Something might have grown on the zombies in the area and this can ramp up the danger. In an episode of TWD two survivors encounter a group of zombies overgrown with a plant that can cause blindness, and indeed one character experiences vision problems after getting too close. Imagine even a small group of zombies who become overgrown with oh, I don’t know, brown mold. Moving anywhere near any of the zombies brings a frosty surprise. And if you think every problem requires a fireball shaped solution, I apologize in advance.

In our own Out of the Box: Encounters for Fifth Edition collection adventurers might run afoul of the danger of gray mold, a hazard we came up with that could very well bring about a zombie apocalypse in your world. Approach with caution. In the Touch of Gray encounter a frightening throne room conceals an undead threat and a tempting treasure but everyone knows this means trouble, right? I’ve run this encounter several times, usually tweaking things to make it creepier for each particular group. One time all the zombies were missing a hand and an eye. That freaked the players out.

Along these same lines consider borrowing a trick from Ye Olde Diseased Giant Rat’s attack. “If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or contract a disease. Until the disease is cured, the target can’t regain hit points except by magical means, and the target’s hit point maximum decreases by 3 (1d6) every 24 hours. If the target’s hit point maximum drops to 0 as a result of this disease, the target dies.” And then rises later as a zombie, of course.

On the opposite end of just waiting around zombies on the move tend to herd together and if these mindless undead hope to pose any threat to adventurers rising in levels they’re going to need an assist. During a recent live chat someone asked about making a herd of zombies more dangerous so Nerdarchist Ted and I spitballed some ideas that had us pretty excited.

For starters try making the zombie horde a swarm. There’s lots of swarms in D&D and they all have one thing in common. The Swarm trait says it can occupy another creature’s space and vice versa, and the swarm can move through any opening large enough for a <Medium humanoid>. The swarm can’t regain hit points or gain temporary hit points. There’s even a monster from Ghosts of Saltmarsh called a Skeletal Swarm, but if you use the stat block and describe them as a zombie swarm your secret is safe with me. For a cherry on top the Skeletal Swarm

Want to make your D&D zombie horde really, really dangerous? Zombies kind of have a reputation for getting a bit grabby. Fun fact: if we’d thought of this years ago the challenge in our Frozen Lake encounter would be much different. As it stands though I kinda dig the more environmental hazard approach we took. It makes it more of an exploration challenge.

Anyway, add an addendum onto the zombie swarm’s Slam attack. Adjust the numbers and dice to taste.

“and the target is grappled (escape DC 13) if it is a Huge or smaller creature.”

Just grappled though? Our zombie swarm’s got to do better than this.

“Until this grapple ends, at the start of its turn the zombie swarm can move grappled creatures 5 feet.”

Anything else?

“The target is restrained…?”

How are these zombies looking now?

“Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 0 ft., one target in the swarm’s space. Hit: 11 (2d8 + 2) bludgeoning damage, or 6 (1d8 + 2) bludgeoning damage if the swarm has half of its hit points or fewer and the target is grappled (escape DC 13) if it is a Huge or smaller creature. Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained and at the start of its turn the zombie swarm can move grappled creatures 5 feet.”

One last thing I want to mention is playing State of Decay 2 put a whole different perspective on the leisurely country drives I enjoy taking on pleasant days. Now when I drive past Krieg’s It’z the Berries stand I think it would be a good place to check for food resources. That Mail Pouch Tobacco barn across the field probably has tools, materials and who knows what else up there. A quick drive across this corn field and we’ll be scavenging it in no time.

*Featured image — If you think fighting and destroying zombies gets tiresome and boring tell that to The Walking Dead. The survivors might grow weary (and some fans along the way too) of the zombie survival drama but they’ve put the kibosh on many thousands of undead on the show and it’s been on for 12 years!

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