Destiny is my own little RPG that I've posted about previously. Assuming Real Life doesn't intervene, in about a month I'll be moving to a town where I can do some actual playtesting. To do so, I need a campaign setting that allows me to try the rules out in a number of scenarios. And that setting is...

Dead Man's Land

Zombies roam the Earth. Most of civilization is gone, washed away by the tide of the walking dead.

Those who die in infected areas, all rise as zombies. Those who are just bitten, and do not die, become Carriers.

Still human, still mostly normal, nevertheless the disease eats away at them. Every day they become a little more like the ravenous dead they fight.

As their humanity leeches away, they no longer need sleep. They become capable of regenerating horrific wounds. They gain a sixth sense about the location of full zombies. Eventually, they can see through the eyes of other undead.

Carriers are a constant danger to the uninfected. A kiss, a sneeze, a single drop of blood and they can infect others. They are barred from all sanctuaries.

A constant danger to those uninfected, yet they are a critical resource. For only Carriers can safely traverse the areas overrun by zombies.

Only they can scavenge supplies and equipment from ruined cities. Only they can ferry mail and freight across the wastes. Only they can locate and save the uninfected trapped in the zombie-ruled territories known as...

Dead Man's Land.

The Nano-Apocalypse

It was a colony ship of an alien race. A ship that held almost a million colonists, in a vessel the size of the Chrysler building.

The colonists were preserved, not in suspended animation but as mind-tapes in the memory banks of the ship's computers. The colony vessel was essentially a huge bank of computers, a power core, and jump engines.

When it reached a suitable uninhabited planet, nano-tech pods would be released, transforming the alien planet into something they could inhabit, reconstructing their bodies and allowing their minds to be downloaded. They could recreate their home, far out in space.

Something went terribly wrong.

The ship emerged unexpectedly in the Sol system, almost directly above the North Pole, accompanied by a massive burst of hard radiation from the ship's ruptured reactors. The explosion could be seen over half the planet. An EMP blast of immense size burned out all electronics and electrical circuits in the Northern Hemisphere (basically everything north of the Equator).

The ship de-orbited above Canada, eventually crashing in southern Mexico, much of it breaking up during the descent. The nanotech pods were ruptured, and namomachines were released in the high atmosphere.

The first areas affected were Canada, the United States, and Mexico, though clouds of them eventually drifted to Europe and Asia. In all these places, the nanites attempted to carry out their programming.

First, duplicate themselves. Second, recreate the climate of their alien world and seed alien life forms. Third, create bodies for the colonists to inhabit.

The nanites, deprived of a central command and control, did their best. But what they succeeded in producing wasn't the hoped-for alien ecosystem, but millions of reanimated corpses, controlled by nanites and driven to spread their nanophage to every living being. And so the zombies were born.

The Campaign

The zombie plague is in fact a nanotechnological accident. "Zombies" are dead bodies, reanimated by the nanites. And Carriers (PC's) are those who are slowly succumbing to the nanotech scourge.

In Dead Man's Land, all PC's are Carriers: those infected by the plague, who have not yet turned into full zombies. The process of zombification can take weeks, months, perhaps even years. (Since the Pulse and the Comet happened 6 months ago, no one knows.)

Part of the game is the gradual descent into zombie-dom, losing their humanity while gaining zombie abilities. Eventually, all PC's will turn.

Another part is fairly traditional adventuring.

High altitude settlements and northerly climes are free from the zombie plague. These are known as Sanctuaries.

Carriers are not allowed in Sanctuaries, but have their own colonies. They are hired by the uninfected for any number of missions out in Dead Man's Land (those areas overrun by zombies).

At the beginning, the PC's will be adventurers for hire. Slowly, as the campaign progresses, they may discover the truth of the plague, and may even find a way to stop it.

This campaign setting will allow me to playtest combat mechanics, skill use, advancement, and all the other goodies a game system needs. Hopefully, time and Real Life permitting, I can report back on my progress here.

Comments welcome!

EDIT:

I've got some more details about the planned setting. I'm leaving those for another post.

Very interesting; I would sign up for the game in a heartbeat.

Is the Destiny RPG you're going to use specific to the zombie genre?  Or is it a more universal game and you are applying a zombie lens to it?

Quote from: Drohem;530107Very interesting; I would sign up for the game in a heartbeat.

Cool. :cool:

Even though I'm writing it up just to give the playtest sessions some continuity (character advancement is one of the areas I want to test), I want to make it as interesting as possible in and of itself.

Quote from: Drohem;530107Is the Destiny RPG you're going to use specific to the zombie genre?  Or is it a more universal game and you are applying a zombie lens to it?

I've posted a little about Destiny before. It's not a Universal system, but it is genre-neutral.

Destiny began as an updated system for use in Torg (or my version of Torg, called "Storm Knights"). "Storm Knights" is trans-genre setting: there is a cyber-religious reality, a techno-horror reality, a High Magic reality, a Pulp Supers reality, a primitive Lost Worlds reality, and more.

So, you can have a party consisting of a magician's apprentice, a cybered GodNet hacker, and a pulp avenger (ala The Shadow) hunting a pride of technodemons through the ruins of San Francisco.

As a result, the genre doesn't matter to the system, it can be fantasy, cyberpunk, Torg's baroque Reality War, or any other setting. But it isn't a generic or universal system.

Destiny is built with cinematic action and heroic protagonists in mind. It is built around the notion the each setting has "baked-in" secrets that PC's can discover, then use to change their world. Destiny PC's start off as unknown neophytes who can grow into figures of legends.

Each Destiny setting has those as common assumptions, regardless of genre. The game assumes that characters are meant to, and can, have a great impact on their specific setting.

In this case, it is entirely possible for characters to discover and cure the nanophage. Or fail.

So, a zombie campaign is one way the system can be applied. Still cinematic, still built on the notion that you start out rank newbs who grow in fame, resources, abilities, and skills until they are capable of nearly anything.

So not a universal or generic system, but a genre-neutral system. I hope the distinction makes sense.

I've posted about it before. If you're interested, here are the threads:

• So, Can I Say Hi? (Screw it.) Hi, Everybody!
  
• [Destiny] Playing Heroes/System Overview
  
• [Storm Knights] "Discover the Truth. Rally the Planet. Win the War."
  
• [Destiny] Initiative and Combat: Rewarding Aggression
  
• Playing Without Initiative (Not my thread, but includes a discussion of Destiny's Initiative system.)
  
• [Destiny] and [Storm Knights] Who? What? Why?
  
• [Destiny] Dice Mechanics and Other Forms of Torture
  
• [Destiny] Magic Systems & The Only Magic Meta-System
  
• [Destiny] Attributes, Skills, and Shooting People in the Face
  

Have you ever seen the zombie flick Meat Market? It is very, very low budget and quirky but has a similar premise with the whole nano-tech zombies

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;530183Have you ever seen the zombie flick Meat Market? It is very, very low budget and quirky but has a similar premise with the whole nano-tech zombies

No, I haven't. I've seen a lot of Zombie flicks, and read several Zombie novels, but that one has slipped by me.

There are so many zombie stories, novels, and films, it's hard to come up with something completely unique. So, I'm going with distinctive instead.

In this case, the distinction is that the nanophage is slow-acting, so PC's are infected but can expect to live months or perhaps years before turning. As they slowly turn, they gain zombie-like abilities.

And the nanotech behind the plague means that I can include several apparently-supernatural elements that turn out to be wholly scientific.

Zombie telepathy? Radio contact between zombies.

Zombies become smarter in herds? Local Area Network, allowing parallell processing clusters to form, increasing the computing power available to local nanites.

Huge groups of zombies building machinery? Yeah, they're very smart in crowds.

Zombies tracking you across huge distances? GPS.

Killing a zombie, only to discover it's mutating and has non-human organs? Nanites altering the host.

Fight and kill an obviously non-human creature (an alien), only to find out it has human DNA? Heavily altered human host.

Climactic changes? Nanite interference in weather patterns.

I want to stick all of these oddities (and more, including animal zombies and infected plant life) into the game, as clues to the mystery. Eventually, players can piece these together and begin to do something about the "invasion."

And with all the above aberrations in the genre, I think Dead Man's Land will achieve distinctiveness, even if it isn't absolutely unique in every way. I can live with that.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;530196No, I have not. I've seen a lot of Zombie flicks, and read several Zombie novels, but that one has slipped me by.

There are so many zombie stories, novels, and films, it's hard to come up with something completely unique. So, I'm going with distinctive instead.

In this case, the distinction is that the nanophage is slow-acting, so PC's are infected but can expect to live months or perhaps years before turning. As they slowly turn, they gain zombie-like abilities.

And the nanotech behind the plague means that I can include several apparently-supernatural elements that turn out to be wholly scientific.

Zombie telepathy? Radio contact between zombies.

Zombies become smarter in herds? Local Area Network, allowing parallell processing clusters to form, increasing the computing power available to local nanites.

Huge groups of zombies building machinery? Yeah, they're very smart in crowds.

Zombies tracking you across huge wide distances? GPS.

Killing a zombie, only to discover it's mutating and has non-human organs? Nanites altering the host.

Fight and kill an obviously non-human creature (an alien), only to find out it has human DNA? Heavily altered human host.

Climactic changes? Nanite interference in weather patterns.

I want to stick all of these oddities (and more, including animal zombies and infected plant life) into the game, as clues to the mystery. Eventually, players can piece these together and begin to do something about the "invasion."

It was an easy one to miss, and believe me you have taken the concept to a much more workable level than in the film. Just to give you an idea of what I mean: yes there were nano-tech zombies in Meat Market, but there were also lesbian vampires and a luchador.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;530203It was an easy one to miss, and believe me you have taken the concept to a much more workable level than in the film. Just to give you an idea of what I mean: yes there were nano-tech zombies in Meat Market, but there were also lesbian vampires and a luchador.

Sounds I need to watch that one.

Quote from: Rincewind1;530205Sounds I need to watch that one.

You should. It is up there with Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and Return of the Living Dead 3.

Sorry for the Tangent, Daddy Warpig, but I must say it:

Whoah, they made sequels of the Return of the Living Dead? Maaaan. I remember watching it in a small cinema in Lodz, on a Halloween Festival Night. The cinema moved to another location, but I still have very fond memories of that night. Both the company and the movies .

Quote from: Rincewind1;530214Sorry for the Tangent, Daddy Warpig,

No worries. My earliest zombie movie was seeing Day of the Dead on TV, in Ft. Knox, KY. I was fairly young, and have been a fan of zombies ever since.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;530240No worries. My earliest zombie movie was seeing Day of the Dead on TV, in Ft. Knox, KY. I was fairly young, and have been a fan of zombies ever since.

I think my first zombie movie was the first return of the living dead (unless you consider Night of the Comet a zombie movie, which i believe I may have seen before that).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;530247I think my first zombie movie was the first return of the living dead (unless you consider Night of the Comet a zombie movie, which i believe I may have seen before that).

Night of the Comet wasn't a zombie movie at the time, but has become one retroactively. The 1980's were dominated by Romero zombies and spin-offs thereof, but during the current Golden Age of zombie media, the definition of "zombie" has been expanded to the point where it would include Comet mutants.

This infuriates zombie purists, but I'm more laid back about the whole thing. Whatever works for you is cool with me.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;530249Night of the Comet wasn't a zombie movie at the time, but has become one retroactively. The 1980's were dominated by Romero zombies and spin-offs thereof, but during the current Golden Age of zombie media, the definition of "zombie" has been expanded to the point where it would include Comet mutants.

This infuriates zombie purists, but I'm more laid back about the whole thing. Whatever works for you is cool with me.

I usually think of it as a zombie film with an asterisk. But I am no purist (do love zombies though).

While I am no fan of zombie films when played straight, I had utilised the "zombie - style" to great success in my Cthulhu games.

I do love zombie comedies though. The gorier, the better ^.^

Quote from: Rincewind1;530261While I am no fan of zombie films when played straight, I had utilised the "zombie - style" to great success in my Cthulhu games.

I do love zombie comedies though. The gorier, the better ^.^

Did you like Dead Aive? That is gory and funny.