Ever want to pull a "Dawn of the Dead?"

[ChimericDream]

Well, I did it a bit differently, but I'd also like opinions. I couldn't come up with a name for them, so (if it's no difference to you) I'll also call them Horror Zombies.

Edit: Here's the link.

 

[phindar]

I chopped my zombies up a bit more (so to speak), based on the rate of decay. For simplicity, I referred to them as types 1-4 in my notes. Type 1's were like ghouls; fast, cunning, and capable of speech. These were the recently dead with relatively intact brains. Type 2's were Int: 3, still fast, but barely over animal intelligence. Type 3's were D&D zombies, Int: 0. Type 4's weren't much of a threat, their bodies had rotted away so much all they could do was crawl along and bite whatever fell into their mouths (still deadly if you fell in a pit of them, or something).

Type 1's were my Return of the Living Dead type zombies. Type 2's were the new Dawn of the Dead/28 Days Later style, Type 3's were original Night/Dawn/Day of the Dead, and Type 4's are those corpses you always see in the movies dragging themselves along by their hands. For a reference point and a little local color, here are a few of my favorite lines of dialogue from Return of the Living Dead, which was the main reason I wanted talking zombies:

Freddy: I can finally see, the one thing... the only thing that will relieve this horrible suffering.
Tina: What, Freddy? What?
Freddy: Live... BRAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIINS!

Freddy: [to Tina] See? You made me hurt myself again! I broke my hand off completely at the wrist this time, Tina! But that's okay, Darlin', because I love you, and that's why you have to let me EAT YOUR BRAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIINS!

I chose to have my zombies slowly rotting away to give them a real desire for the braaaiiiins. Type 1's become Type 2's after a few days, Type 3's in a few weeks, and Type 4's in a few months. (Also, corpses which had been dead for a few months rose as Type 4's, as did corpses with severe brain damage.) The only thing that would stave off the rotting was eating fresh braaaaiiiiins. Like so:

Ernie Kaltenbrunner: You can hear me?
1/2 Woman Corpse: Yes.
Ernie Kaltenbrunner: Why do you eat people?
1/2 Woman Corpse: Not people. Brains.
Ernie Kaltenbrunner: Brains only?
1/2 Woman Corpse: Yes.
Ernie Kaltenbrunner: Why?
1/2 Woman Corpse: The PAIN!
Ernie Kaltenbrunner: What about the pain?
1/2 Woman Corpse: The pain of being DEAD!
Ernie Kaltenbrunner: [laughing in surprise to his friends] It hurts... to be dead.
1/2 Woman Corpse: I can feel myself rotting.
Ernie Kaltenbrunner: Eating brains... How does that make you feel?
1/2 Woman Corpse: It makes the pain go away!

Some notes. I gave most of my zombies DR, which increased the more they rotted away. (At some point, you're just beating dead flesh.) Since the campaign was going to be primarily focused on fighting undead, I let critical hits have partial effects, usually in the form of lopping off arms or legs. Running the game, my adjectives tended to the Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts school of description, no one just hit a zombie when they could instead have their warhammer crack open it's skull and spray rancid brains across the room, stinging the eyes of characters in the splat pattern. It was all about zombies with ripped open stomachs slipping on their own greasy entrails. (I find it particularly effective to save a really good description until right before someone takes a big bite of pizza. GMing is a form of psychological warfare.)

Other than that, I tried to stay pretty close to the zombie movie rules. Everybody dead begins to rise. Newly dead rise in d4 rounds. Zombie criticals were bites, which led to escalating Fort Saves until either the victim was a zombie or Cure Disease spells were used. Most of this I never got to use, since the games weren't that long. Beyond that, I had some ideas about intelligent undead, areas more strongly infused with negative energy, and some of the bigger nasties. I really wanted to get into the undead dragons and zombie frost giants and creepy, rotting beholders, but the game only ran four sessions, and after all that dying the group was ready for lighter fare.

I never saw Land of the Dead, but that's where my ideas for the higher level games were going. The only governments being those of intelligent undead, great breeding farms for the vampires, small pockets of living resistance. Somewhere between Ravenloft and the Terminator future. Its the type of brutal, dark, unforgiving game I'd really like to play in someday. (I wish I could con one of my friends into running Grim Tales or Midnight, or just unrelentingly grim D&D.)

 

[Darklone]

I made these a bit tougher than I previously suggested, so that they might last a bit longer against a typical mid-level party and more fully horrify a low(er) level party. There is nothing quite like seeing your attack have little or no effect against a relentless foe. Their hp is not that great, but their protection is enough that I think they are at least a CR 2 foe and maybe even a CR 3 foe.


Horror Zombie
...

Nice, but I don't like their movement speed and the pounce ability. Zombies have to shamble!

CR3 IMHO.

I always preferred undead heavy campaigns. There's nothing like PCs coming back to town after a few levels, looking for their new armors they ordered... food, sleep, spells regain. And there's noone there.

Ghost ships are cool too... sadly my PCs start to throw all corpses they find overboard ASAP. Too many bad experiences.

 

[Nyeshet]

Nice, but I don't like their movement speed and the pounce ability. Zombies have to shamble!

I recently watched "Dawn of the Dead" with my brother and father. The more recent of the two movies of that name. The undead in the first one - and in many zombie horror flicks - shamble, but the ones in that one charged, jumped, etc. If anything, I think it made them more frightening than their shambling cousins.

The first Dawn of the Dead movie (I've seen that one in the last month too, also with my father and brother.) was more comic than horrific. At points one or two of the characters in the movie would jog (more than walk, but not really run) through a loose crowd of zombies, shoving them aside, striking them in the head as they passed, etc. They were even laughing at times as they did this, feeling no real sense of fright or even worry unless the crowds got too thick or one of the zombies managed to get a good grip on them - thus slowing them down enough for the others to also start latching on.

The second Dawn of the Dead was different. Very different. From the beginning the zombies are terrifying the characters. Even a few of them - not even a crowd, just a few - is enough to take down one or more of the characters, and if there is not much room to run, a single one could easily take down a character not appropriately armed (with a gun, etc and the skill to make head shots at 30+ feet in a difficult situation). At times the zombies were punching through thin boards of wood, panes of glass, etc to get to the living on the other side. In the first one a (very) thin false wall managed to hide the group's get-away for over a month before one of their own - now a zombie - shambled back, following the route he had followed scores of times before.

So, when I created these zombies, I used ideas from the second - more frightful - Dawn of the Dead: faster, stronger, etc zombies seemingly enraged in their lust for blood and flesh, breaking through wooden doors, glass, etc - even beating uselessly on the metal door of a metal cabinet (enough to make impression of their fists upon the surface of the metal) - to reach the living on the other side.

To make them more frightful for a fantasy rpg, I granted them several small but useful protections against common means of slaying monsters: energy resistance, a little SR (little better than what a dwarf receives, but still . . . ), some DR, etc. They still had their weaknesses, of course - critical hits might actually deal more damage, vulnerability to fire, a chance of exiting their useful rage if they eat enough, etc. A single one is a frightful encounter for a group of low level PCs, but a group of them has the potential for TPK at low levels - and could present a challenge at mid levels just as easily, depending on the numbers involved. High levels still will be able to deal with them without much trouble. The little energy resistance the Horror Zombies have is just not enough to deal with high level fireballs, chain lightnings, etc.

CR3 IMHO.

Yeah, I tended to think they were around 2.5 to 2.75, so CR 3 is probably about right. I'll fix that after this post.

I always preferred undead heavy campaigns. There's nothing like PCs coming back to town after a few levels, looking for their new armors they ordered... food, sleep, spells regain. And there's noone there.

Ghost ships are cool too... sadly my PCs start to throw all corpses they find overboard ASAP. Too many bad experiences.

I haven't used a ghost ship yet. Most campaigns tend to stay on land . . . often on frontier lands, where exploration, unknown, etc can play and interesting part.

 

[phindar]

Well, technically, the "zombies" in the new Dawn of the Dead movies were ghouls, but that's not a distinction most of the theater going public is going to know. For me, the best zombie movie to come out in quite some time was Shaun of the Dead. But I like all sorts of zombies, so that's why my game ended up with 4 seperate types.

 

[BOZ]

technically all the zombies from all the Romero movies were ghouls as well, by D&D standards. plus, the word "zombie" to the best of my knowledge, is never used in the films.

 

[sckeener]

I thought I'd toss out a game I recently ran...in the past the world had a year of the amethyst comet where everyone that died came back as a Zomibe (but with the stat block of the flesh golem)

Needless to say villagers died pretty fast against cr 7s only to rise as CR7!

That was in the past and lasted a whole year over the world....

about 2 centuries later, the comet is gone, but sisters of it actually fell on to the world...now only those certain spots are where the contamination exists. Those that die in that region rise again as zombies (stat of flesh golems.)

The party needed a relic located in a once major city that happened to be one of those lucky spots. Many of the undead from 2 centuries earlier still were 'alive' there and some were intelligent and some were advanced versions of the flesh golem stats.

The party was only warrior types and one cleric. It was brutal and they had to kill one of the players after he rose again.

I loved it.