D&D 5E (2014) D&D meets the Walking Dead

[Quartz]

Isn't The Walking Dead supposed to (ironically) refer to the protagonists rather than the zombies?

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Here's an old thread about zombie plagues that I found very interesting.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?188172-Zombie-Plagues-in-your-Campaign-Setting

 

[Piratecat]

I've had a lot of fun with undead- and ghoul-themed adventures in the past. Make sure you consider tone; the feel of Walking Dead (survival horror) is very different from the feel of most D&D adventures, where clerics can blast undead and the PCs are big damn heroes. I suspect you could set them up as the people who deliver their country out from under the plague, thus turning them into folk heroes.

I think I'd set this up as there being a necromancer-run country that was infested with zombies, with a few villages here and there acting as enclaves that are trying to hold back the growing threat. The PCs are from one of these villages roughly in the middle of the country. Their goal is to get out, escape to a less miserable land, and perhaps lead a rescue party back to save their friends and loved ones. The general lack of reputable maps makes this interesting, although I'm not entirely sold on imposing a "we'll die if you don't rescue us" requirement on the group. Probably better that they make the choices themselves.

 

[Mercurius]

Some excellent ideas in this thread, thanks all.

I'm veering towards making it a regional thing, and not only zombies but a variety of undead. I'm thinking the PCs would start out in a small town and hear about "walking dead" in nearby farms, with calls for people to help out. It will soon get out of hand, with a veritable horde of zombies on the prowl. Hopefully the PCs will become interested in the cause of this, and as they explore they start encountering more powerful undead, that the lesser undead are actually being led and controlled. They start hearing of a Grey King, who they find is the undead former ruler of an elvish kingdom that was destroyed, partially due to human expansion

(I'm playing with a Native American/Frontier West theme, where the region is akin to the American West, with the natives being the non-humans who have been pushed back by human colonization; yet unlike the American West, there's a bit of a stalemate).

So in a way its more of a traditional "fight the undead lich/death knight/ancient ruler" campaign, but with elements of the Walking Dead, namely the constant threat of wandering undead over-running the land.

 

[Nachti]

Some excellent ideas in this thread, thanks all.

I'm veering towards making it a regional thing, and not only zombies but a variety of undead. I'm thinking the PCs would start out in a small town and hear about "walking dead" in nearby farms, with calls for people to help out. It will soon get out of hand, with a veritable horde of zombies on the prowl. Hopefully the PCs will become interested in the cause of this, and as they explore they start encountering more powerful undead, that the lesser undead are actually being led and controlled. They start hearing of a Grey King, who they find is the undead former ruler of an elvish kingdom that was destroyed, partially due to human expansion

This sounds like a hack & slay adventure.

Why are the undeads attacking? What does the leader want?

Why does the Grey King rise this days and not earlier?

What happens when the PCs just head elsewere and ignore the quest?

Give them an interest to fight the undeads.... maybe they surprised the PCs on resting and one of them got infected, slowly turning to undead. Do they want a cure for their companion?

Build in some twists in your story!

 

[Mercurius]

This sounds like a hack & slay adventure.

Why are the undeads attacking? What does the leader want?

Why does the Grey King rise this days and not earlier?

What happens when the PCs just head elsewere and ignore the quest?

Give them an interest to fight the undeads.... maybe they surprised the PCs on resting and one of them got infected, slowly turning to undead. Do they want a cure for their companion?

Build in some twists in your story!

My group only meets once every 2-3 weeks and is comprised of very casual gamers, so I find that combat and exploration works better than in-depth social, political, interpersonal stuff, although I like to build up interesting back-stories and lore for them to figure out.

But yeah, those are good questions and ones I am asking and have vague ideas for, I just didn't want to go into too much detail in that post. But to add a bit, the Grey King is the undead ruler of the Tainted Wood, which was once called the Golden Wood and an elven nation that was allied to the human kingdom of the region a few hundred years ago. The human king become power-hungry and obsessed with his expanding his borders, and started pushing his allies around - including the elves. A long war commenced, and the end result was the Tainting of the Golden Wood, which became dark and treacherous. All elves left, although there have been rumors of dark and shadowy elves that still live their and kill all people who enter. Anyhow, in recent years a wizard--a necromancer, perhaps--entered the Tainted Wood and found the tomb of the former ruler of the Golden Wood. He raised him from the dead, and the Grey King began gathering his host, desiring revenge on humankind...

That sort of thing. I'm imagining that the "walking dead" are the result of the necromancer's interest in gaining power, and his unholy alliance with the Grey King.

The interest in fighting the undead would initially be to defend their home region. This is built-in incentive to not head elsewhere, but if they do I'm fine with that - I'm hoping for a sandboxy feel to the campaign, but of course the necromancer and Grey King will still have their plans, and perhaps if the PCs return to their home they'll find it over-run by undead.

 

[Crothian]

When I've done this kind of game I start out letting and expecting the PCs to destroy a ton of undead. Then I slowly wear them down as they lose resources and slowly realize that these encounters are getting more frequent. When they rest make it difficult unless they plan a defensive place. Show others fighting the undead with various levels of success. Make sure they have allies and people to protect and to help them. And then slowly have them get killed off or just not heard from. Having a well liked NPC ally come at them as a brainless undead can be an unnerving encounter.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

1. Custom XP model: Nobody gets any XP because nobody in that show ever learns anything.

2. Create exciting quests, like "check the gas station for food."

3. Social encounters: remember that every group of more than two people is evil and corrupt.

4. Equipment: you'll need firearms, of course, but let's not forget that zombie skulls are apparently so brittle a ten-year-old can stab through them with a dull soup spoon.

5. Plot arc: there are zombies. The party wanders around and accomplishes nothing.

 

[mcbobbo]

One of the core themes to TWD is survival, and you'd want to find a way to incorporate this into your D&D campaign. In the series and the games inspired by it (Project Zomboid is awesome, BTW), you have to worry about food, water, shelter, and weapons on a regular basis. You have a finite supply, and when things run out you have to move into unsafe areas looking for more. So...

Food. There needs to be a reason why fresh food is a no-go. In the modern world, almost nobody had a non-market source of food before the fall. In rural D&D that's not the case, so you'll need a replacement.

Water. D&D scarcely worries about this at all, as far as I know. But the TV series largely glosses it over, too, so...

Shelter. I'd make my D&D campaign such that you simply cannot camp and rest outside without a lot of interruptions. Not even a short rest, I'd say, until that got old. Make them find somewhere to hole up to regain spells and the like.

Weapons. This is tough. D&D players expect to collect weapons and upgrade them as they advance. There's no 'ammo' for cantrips as well. So they're not going to feel resource-stressed without some possibly genre-breaking changes. But you could tie the zombie plague to some kind of rusting agent in the air, and introduce rules that make exposed items rot unless maintained. Then you could introduce some kind of maintenance mcguffin to mitigate it. That'd be like ammo for guns if you implement it right.

 

[Henrix]

Good points, mcbobbo.

I can see either the zombies spreading some sort of miasma that ruins food and drink, or some sort of pests (worms, perhaps) that spoils it.

Areas of negative energy might well ruin food, and perhaps be the source of the undead.


But in general horror and epic fantasy don't mix well. There are very few books of the sort.
Even if there are terrible and horrible things happening, the genre itself is about heroes who overcome things.

One way to do it is of course to do it like a real bildungsroman - a story where the characters grow up (metaphorically speaking) from next to nothing to power.
(A really popular theme in the genre as it is.)

That way the story can be horror at least at the beginning.

Start the PCs of as more or less ordinary people, with no real equipment, who get surrounded by zombies. The first chapters would be to get away - perhaps killing the occasional zombie if it is the direct way.

Have a slower than standard levelling.
That could be fun.



(Not exactly what the OP is asking for, but fun nonetheless.)