Movie Zombies...Not Really Zombies?

Last week a gaming buddy and I (the same guy that inspired the Assassin Psychology thread) watched "Shaun of the Dead" all the way through.

Mildly funny movie, but NOT a spoof! It is DEFINATELY a zombie movie, so don't get it for your kids!

Anyway, we began talking about the differences between movie zombies and DnD zombies.

In DnD, Zombies are Negative Energy robots. Not really a will, no real direction, no hunger...they just mill around until commanded. They aren't contagious either. All in all, a mid level adventurer sighs when he sees a city full of zombies.

In the movies, Zombies are ravenous. They eat and eat and eat. They're also contagious, so one bite and your toast. They move relatively fast (when they want to), and they seem to have a malign intelligence about them.

So...according to my logic, movie zombies aren't zombies at all.

They're ghouls.

Think about it! Cannibalistic, contagious, intelligent, hungry...and have you ever noticed how zombie victims just stand there and scream while their brain is eaten? Maybe that is another form of Ghoul Paralysis?!

What do you guys think?

Sound idea. Wow, that works well, I mean really.....

Neat observation.

And of course, in a DnD setting folks would probably refer to any kind of walking dead as a "zombie". Could be a nasty surprise for a metagaming group of players.

The Zombie could get a Bite attack at -5, with "infection (ex): The zombie's bite carries a nasty disease. Anyone bitten must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 1/2 HD) or be infested with Zombie fever."

"Zombie fever: incubation 1 minute, damage 1w4 Con. Zombie fever is especially quick-working, so each character must succed at a new save or take damage every hour. Zombie fever is a supernatural disease, it can only be cured by magical means. Instead of dying, a character whose Constitution is reduced to 0 is turned into a zombie and tries to eat his former friends' brains."

Also, I'd change a character's Intelligence by -6 when it gets zombiefied, so the typical human would have Int 4, but smarter types are possible. Alignment would be NE, possible CE.

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Cutter XXIII said:

Or check out the "Viral Deathspawn" template in d20 Apocalypse.

DC 16, Incubates in 4d6 hrs., Initial 1d6 Dex, Secondary 1d6 Con. Nasty.

Click to expand...

And if you die either by the infection or by the damage caused by the viral deathspawn, you rise as a new deathspawn in mere minutes.

oh yes, "movie zombies" are way more like ghouls than zombies in D&D. D&D zombies are more like the zombie legends involving witch doctors.

Zombie 101

Ok, since I love me some zombies, I'll explain that just this once DnD has got it backwards a bit, and a bit more right than the movies at the same time.

While the ghoul and the zombie are related the basic differences are this. Ghouls are not cannibalistic. They eat long dead corpses. They are known to inhabit graveyards and eat the those buried there. Zombies, in non movie sense, are not flesh eaters at all. The idea of flesh eating undead was originally associated with the word Vampires (in it's many spellings). Movie zombies, and flesh eating dead are actually versions of the Vampire myths. Zombies are created by a process that makes them mindless slaves much like voodoo, exactly like necromancy creates zombies in DnD.

So to sum up:

Ghouls - Corpse eating creatures known to haunt graveyards, only attack the living if their homes are in peril. Also in myth ghouls aren't always "undead" many times they are supposed to be able to breed like humans.

Zombie - Mindless voodoo created slaves. DnD got this one right!

Vampires - Flesh eating undead that hunt the living. The come in many styles such as the traditional vampire, the "Movie Zombie", and a wide variety of other mythical creatures.

Final Thought:
No zombie/ghoul/vampire idea is either right or wrong, mostly because it's a myth, but also because throughout history the tales involving these and similar creatures always very from town to town, city to city, culture to culture.

I feel like I must mention the Plague Zombie I created for Counter Collection: Undead, released at Halloween 2004. Even the counter is inspired by the poster of Dawn of the Dead (not that I watched the movie... I'm a fraidy cat).

Has any of you played the Thief computer game series? Thief zombies are semi-mindless (as intelligent as the less intelligent animals, INT 1 max I'd say) animated corpses, but are immune to normal weapon damage (enough of it causes them to collapse, but they'll get up in a few seconds, so I think that mundane weapons will inflict merely Subdual damage on them). To kill them one would need either a supernaturally strong lightsource (Thief's "Flash Bombs"), explosives, or holy water.

They also make "hungry" noises so they might also be after the protagonist's flesh, just like in zombie movies.