Dawn of the Dead in DnD?

[The_Old_one]

I've been pondering a campaign like this for a long time now. My first 2e adventure was 'Night of the Walking Dead' for Ravenloft, Night of the Living Dead is my all time favourite film, and I just luuurrvve zombies

I've run several adventures involving the rise of the dead, but in all honesty I have to say that All Flesh Must Be Eaten is the better game for it, especially if you use the Dungeons & Zombies sourcebook that Eden put out. Even if you're not going to use the game though, the books are excellent zombie idea fodder...huh, I'm starting to sound like a salesman now!

Back on topic, I'm running the Age of Worms, and I can see my party having to face the Wight Apocalypse following CB...given their party performance thus far, I can't see them being the ones to forestall total disaster. Should be fun...

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Nitpick

That wasn't a Romero zombie. That was from the remake, which was not associated with Romero.

The Romero rules were essentially followed however. She was in fact dead before giving birth. No one recovers from a bite, which is why letting cure disease, remove curse, heal or whatever work defeats the point. I really dont think D&D works for this.

 

[The_Old_one]

I can see this kind of scenario being less NotLD, and more like The Last Man on Earth/Omega Man in D&D, with intelligent zombies roaming the streets after dark hunting for the last few survivors. That and your average PCs would be likely to set up a safehouse and go out looking for fellow survivors while battling the undead when they encountered them, rather than running scared throughout the whole disaster.

Still, a very cool idea.

 

[Erstwhile]

A bit of overkill, perhaps, but along the lines of "hell is full", Clerics of Good alignment may find that the "cosmic balance" is out of whack and therefore their Turning abilities no longer work at all - against any undead. Which could of course lead to an Epic Quest (TM) to right the world and allow those who die to remain dead, and to bring divine powers back to normal.

Heck, if you really want to mess with 'em, make healing magic not work, either. In a standard polytheistic D&D world, maybe the God of Healing and the God of Death are both incapacitated for some reason. (This would work quite well in one gameworld I ran, where you had a benevolent god who oversaw both Death and Healing... )

Of course, as others have noted, you could simply come up with an origin for the disease that renders it immune to Cure spells; I think something like that was done in the old Dragonlance novel Kaz the Minotaur (though it's been ages since I've read it so I could be wrong).

I guess that still doesn't prevent the ol' standby from the party wizard - "A horde of zombies? Fireball!"

 

[Kristivas]

I would make the zombies completely un-turnable. The concept of turning undead is based on exorcism and vampire legends, not on zombies. In fiction, zombies are completely unaffected by a strongly presented holy symbol. If this is the basis for an entire campaign, then I would give clerics an extra feat or domain to make up for the inability to turn undead.

Some posters have mentioned using ghouls instead, but I would start out with normal zombies, and then work up to ghouls and greater undead. In several zombie settings, the initial undead are pretty much mindless zombies. But then, after a period of time, they begin to become more intelligent and organized. They start displaying personalities and intelligence and even additional abilities. If you do this, the PC's really experience the horror aspect of the setting, because as soon as they learn how to deal with the threat, it mutates into a more dangerous form. I owuld imagine the PC's would survive the inital zombie horde, perhaps realizing that the movement limitations of the zombies means that the PC's can always outrun them if they need to. Then they would be truly horrified the first time they see one of the zombies break from the slow shambling pack and just start running full speed at them.

I would also be sure to consider the extent of the zombie infection, how it spreads, and the means, if any, to end it. In "The Rising", the author allowed the zombie plague to affect all animal and insect life, and anything that died would come back, regardless of getting bitten, and there was no way to stop or reverse the plague. Plus, the fact that all of the animals and insects were affected meant that even if somehow the plague were stopped, the ecology of the entire planet was already destroyed. That made the initial threat perhaps more interesting, but ultimately made the story pointless (IMO), because the heroes had zero chance for an eventual victory or escape, and part of the tension in a good zombie story is that the heroes just might make it if they can just hold out a little longer. (In Night of the Living Dead, they just needed to survive until help arrived. In 28 Days, they just needed to survive until the zombies starved themselves out. ) That slight chance of escape or victory is what keeps the tension from turning into despair, at which point it gets boring.

Also, a large portion of the shock of a zombie film is in seeing the harmless and familiar become dangerous and alien. Specifically, seeing empty city streets and burned out buildings, seeing the PC's home town become a battlefield, seeing the beloved NPC's turned into monsters. So just dropping them in during the first session with a bunch of zombies, they will miss out on that. I would recommend at least a few sessions or an entire adventure to give them time to get comfortable before unveiling the undead. Maybe have hints and rumors in the first adventure of a disturbance in the next town that the PC's ought to check into as soon as they are done here, etc.

Finally, I would be sure to have some goal in mind for the campaign, either for the PC's to escape to an ultimately zombie-free area, or for them to somehow eliminate the cause of the plague, and try to plan out how they will get the information that they need to make that happen.

Awesome post. I think I'm gonna go with some of those ideas.

Nerf turning! Or rather, it'll work ok at first, and then quickly become less potent until it stops working all together. It'll be nerfed on the premise that, since the gods are losing followers at a horribly fast rate, yet their souls aren't ascending to their respective planes, this weakens the deities overall power (hence the reason the gods just don't 'fix' the problem). Maybe even the pantheon will become a little cannabilistic as the gods.. now weakened.. fight each other for their remaining power? That would be awesome. A religious struggle amidst all the carnage occurring on the prime material.

...Yet, at the same time, I don't want the PCs to lose their spells and whatnot. While the idea of a 'remove curse' kinda cheats, I'd rather them have remove curse than one lucky roll on the part of the living dead killing off a character in a random encounter. Then again, maybe that's what makes zombies so scary. I'll have to think more about this...

"Evolving Living Dead". Starting out as zombies and then later moving into ghoul-like stats sounds awesome! Reminds me of the Land of the Dead remake where the zombies became smarter, organized, ect. Plus, it's pretty freakin' scary thing to think of.

I don't really want to have zombie deer or bears or other such animals. I think I'll leave the animal kingdom alone as far as that goes. Maybe only sentient things rise up as living dead? Once birds can become living dead, there's pretty much a no-win situation and I don't like going there with games. Maybe a 'very slim chance of a win', but no-win just sucks.

I've also worked out an "ending" in my head. I just need to get it all written down and fine-tuned.

I had finished reading Monster Island last night. When I was laying in bed afterward, about to go to sleep, I was thinking about this game and got an idea. I wanna stick a "DMPC" in for the first couple adventures. A paladin, LG-anal retentitve. Everything you don't like about paladins that we've all complained about.. and in the thick of the rising of the living dead... bam.. ripped to shreds before the PCs very eyes!

Think that would be too cheesy?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Just as a semi-relevant aside...

I just saw part of a Japanese movie called "Versus" (circa 2000): Gangsters with a kidnapped woman and a couple of escaped convicts meet in the woods, only to find that the gangsters' past victims are rising from the dead. Oh yeah...the gangs' leader shows up later and seems to be some kind of supernatural being.

We are talking slick, sharply attired Japanese gangsters with guns, daggers and martial arts...against zombies with the same!

Simply staggering!

 

[The_Old_one]

Just as a semi-relevant aside...

I just saw part of a Japanese movie called "Versus" (circa 2000): Gangsters with a kidnapped woman and a couple of escaped convicts meet in the woods, only to find that the gangsters' past victims are rising from the dead. Oh yeah...the gangs' leader shows up later and seems to be some kind of supernatural being.

We are talking slick, sharply attired Japanese gangsters with guns, daggers and martial arts...against zombies with the same!

Simply staggering!

Versus rocks! I like the idea of a world where there are 666 portals to the 'Other Side', and any of them can be the source of zombie nastiness.

BTW, the same guy made a film called Wolf Zero if I recall...Japanese rock group V. zombies. Well worth checking out.

 

[JoeGKushner]

And the easy way to do that?

When an evil god commits suicide, he does so in a way to strike out against the multiverse. He kills himself by pure immersion in the borders between the positive and negative planes but his own dark energies blow open the gates and allow the negative plane to contaminate the positive energy plane making all things that rely on it, like turning and healing, into their opposites and since good clerics can't turn, their abilities dry up.

Of course the real point here would be no clerics.

Which you could just tell the players at the start of the game.

A bit of overkill, perhaps, but along the lines of "hell is full", Clerics of Good alignment may find that the "cosmic balance" is out of whack and therefore their Turning abilities no longer work at all - against any undead. Which could of course lead to an Epic Quest (TM) to right the world and allow those who die to remain dead, and to bring divine powers back to normal.

Heck, if you really want to mess with 'em, make healing magic not work, either. In a standard polytheistic D&D world, maybe the God of Healing and the God of Death are both incapacitated for some reason. (This would work quite well in one gameworld I ran, where you had a benevolent god who oversaw both Death and Healing... )

Of course, as others have noted, you could simply come up with an origin for the disease that renders it immune to Cure spells; I think something like that was done in the old Dragonlance novel Kaz the Minotaur (though it's been ages since I've read it so I could be wrong).

I guess that still doesn't prevent the ol' standby from the party wizard - "A horde of zombies? Fireball!"

 

[Old Drew Id]

Nerf turning! Or rather, it'll work ok at first, and then quickly become less potent until it stops working all together. It'll be nerfed on the premise that, since the gods are losing followers at a horribly fast rate, yet their souls aren't ascending to their respective planes, this weakens the deities overall power (hence the reason the gods just don't 'fix' the problem).

That is a really cool idea. That could even explain a little more about the origin of the zombie plague. It is some kind of "soul paralysis" or "soul necrosis" which traps, kills, and eventually rots the soul. It's contagious like a disease, but it is a spiritual disease, not a physical one, which is why the normal spells don't work to cure it.

I'd rather them have remove curse than one lucky roll on the part of the living dead killing off a character in a random encounter. Then again, maybe that's what makes zombies so scary. I'll have to think more about this...

My vote would be for the extra scary. It would set things apart from the normal campaign. If a bite causes the infection, you still have an attack roll and multiple Fort saves to resist and delay the effects, so the PC's are not quite at the mercy of a single roll, but if your players enjoy some drama, the infected-but-not-dead-yet PC is an angst-feast waiting to happen. Do they go out in a blaze of glory or keep on holding on as long as possible hoping for a cure? And how do their companions cope when they rise again?

"Evolving Living Dead". Starting out as zombies and then later moving into ghoul-like stats sounds awesome! Reminds me of the Land of the Dead remake where the zombies became smarter, organized, ect. Plus, it's pretty freakin' scary thing to think of.

LotD was my original source on that, but also "Cell" by Stephen King, and I am sure there are others. By letting the PC's develop some tactics in the first few adventures that they rely on, and then having those tactics start to fail, you set up a real stomach-dropping feeling of the ground falling out from under you. For instance, the early zombies might not be able to figure out how to open doors, so they just beat on them and break windows to get into a building. And they can not run or communicate with each other. But then the first time the PC's close a door behind them and the door opens a moment later with a zombie turning the handle, the PC's will freak. Then when they run away and the zombies run after them instead of just shambling forward, it's like their very first feeling of security just vanished. (And at the same time, their turning ability is weakening...)

A paladin, LG-anal retentitve. Everything you don't like about paladins that we've all complained about.. and in the thick of the rising of the living dead... bam.. ripped to shreds before the PCs very eyes!

I think that rocks. If it were a movie I would cast Kurt Fuller in the role. Really play up the "well you may dislike me, but you're lucky I'm here, and I'm gonna be the thorn in your side the entire time we OH MY GOD IT's GOT MY LEG!!!!!!"

 

[Mark Plemmons]

Nerf turning! Or rather, it'll work ok at first, and then quickly become less potent until it stops working all together. It'll be nerfed on the premise that, since the gods are losing followers at a horribly fast rate, yet their souls aren't ascending to their respective planes, this weakens the deities overall power (hence the reason the gods just don't 'fix' the problem). Maybe even the pantheon will become a little cannabilistic as the gods.. now weakened.. fight each other for their remaining power? That would be awesome. A religious struggle amidst all the carnage occurring on the prime material.

Instead of (or in addition to) having the other gods are losing power, I'd have the god of the dead be growing in power exponentially. Heck, maybe cleric spells stop working entirely because the other gods are using all their powers to slow his rise to supreme deific status.