Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="phindar" data-source="post: 3338770" data-attributes="member: 37198">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 <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089907/" target="_blank">Return of the Living Dead</a> 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: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: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.)</blockquote>

Verification