Zombie Apocalypse campaign

[Bedrockgames]

All Flesh Must be Eaten has a whole line of books. At the very least, even if you don't go for the system, there is a lot of flavor material there.

Otherwise my suggestion is take whatever system you are comfortable with and crank up the lethality (unless it is already a lethal system). With a Zombie Apocalypse, your probably going to be doing a lot of customization to get the exact style and flavor you want. For Walking Dead I think you need something pretty gritty but you also need to be able to divide zombies into classes of diminishing strength as they rot.

Personally I would go with a system where NPCs and PCs are roughly similar in Health and damage output (maybe making room for characters like Carol to develop over time if you want). But I'd probably keep it lethal myself, with lots of back-up characters on hand.

More than system, I think with walking dead type campaigns you are looking at doing a lot of world building and preparing for exploration. This is really a setting where you can jus prep out the map of survivors, groups, etc and let the players do what they want. I think a big draw to it is the players devising strategies for surviving and dealing with potentially hostile survivor groups (and friendlies).

 

[Bedrockgames]

To do The Walking Dead, the PCs are just normal people, and those core rules can handle them. The zombies are monsters, and they don't really have many special powers to speak of. You may need some rules for how to deal with them in large groups, but the individuals are very basic things you can whip up yourself without much issue.

I devised a simple method for handling zombies in my games: the head of a zombie has an effective health of 1, while the rest of it has something like a 10 (so you can spend a bunch of time hacking and whittling them down from 10 to 0 or if you can aim your shot to the head, you can take them out in one solid hit). That worked pretty well and I think it is a principle that can be applied to most systems fairly easily (as long as they have a way of measuring health that isn't too involved and rules for things like aiming). You also need rules for getting infected.

 

[Ampolitor]

All Flesh Must Be eaten, and they have a D20 variant of it. probably the most detailed of any of the games out there. Plenty of sourcebooks.

 

[slachance6]

This is a generic system, but I've run two different zombie apocalypse games using GURPS, and they have gone quite well. The system is especially realistic by RPG standards, so you should consider it if you want the PCs to feel like normal people in a realistic survival situation.

 

[Jhaelen]

I thought World of Darkness was mainly for vampires, the supernatural and such? Is there a supplement that goes at length about the Walking Dead?

If you are looking for rules to create Zombie characters, there was an oWoD supplement for Wraith: The Oblivion called The Risen.

Here's some more information about the Risen.
Of course these aren't your run-of-the-mill standard zombies, they much more closely represent strong-willed, intelligent revenants like the main character in "The Crow".

 

[JediMasterGunner]

I bought After Zombies a week ago and it looks great. It runs a lot like Call of Cthulhu with modifiers for perks and flaws. There is an action economy to throttle attack and damage. I haven't run it but it looks worth the price.

 

[nomotog]

Outbrake: Undead is really neat. It has a strong simulation bent to it.

I keep trying to hack together a ZA game based off of 5ed. I have most of my ideas I just need to put them together and figure out what to do for classes. (I am leaning to having no classes.)

 

[AnimeSniper]

When it comes to most apocalypse type campaigns there a few things to remember be it a nuclear WW III apocalypse or your Zombie apocalypse scenario... and the ruleset you run it on. I'll look through my notes related to Zombie campaigns.

1: Time since the apocalypse has happened plays a factor in how readily available or scarcity of certain resources; two weeks is different then say a decade since the zombie outbreak. This can factor into how fresh or rotted the corpses the player encounter are.
2: Character class can be any with access or deniability to them and the starting Level at your discretion.
3: Allow for the players to read up appropriate knowledge skills, i.e. gunsmithing & reloading for when the ammo run lows

There are at DanD wiki a few useful rules and what have you... the following I've found useful.
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Zombie
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Zombie_Mass_(3.5e_Variant_Rule)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Zombie_Rules_(D20_Modern_Variant_Rule)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Targeting_Rules_(Fallout_Supplement)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Critical_Miss_Table_(Fallout_Supplement)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Local_Damage_(D20_Modern_Variant_Rule)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Weapon_Skill_(D20_Modern_Variant_Rule)

 

[Desh-Rae-Halra]

How about Dead Reign?

If you want Zombie Apocalypse Supers, go with Rotted Capes

 

[AnimeSniper]

Zombie Survival Guide, http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Surviv...ide&qid=1461441595&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1, was once used by a fellow GM as reference for their zombie campaign.