- Trample the zombies underfoot; tear together a safe zone; and rebuild civilization.

Zombies in the Vineyard

What I mean is, have the characters be Dogs, Morrow, Damocles, Templar types whose mission/life's calling/instructions from god/assignment from a secret volcano base/whatever is to
1. Find settlements and survivors struggling to make it.
2. Secure their safety.
3. Exterminate/Crucify/Burn at the stake all the evil cocksuckers who will sell their grandma for a C battery.
4. Move on.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;586258I have run a number of zombie apocalypse one shots or scenarios over the years but never a full ZA campaign. Usually it is a threat that can be overcome and reversed or we dont carry the game past the players surviving the initial outbreak. Now that its nearly october i may run a zombie campaign if I can squeeze in the time (depending on the style my players want will either use savage worlds, all flesh must be eaten or horror show---though i am open to using some of the newer zombie games if people rave about them).

For those who have run a lengthy zombie apocalypse campaign, how do you sustain it over time without things imploing or getting repetitive? Having a little trouble visualizing something like the walking dead working quite as well in play (though the show definitely gives some cool ideas).

Oh, I think the Walking Dead has proven that it's not sustainable. The comic has become a parody of itself 100 issues in, and the TV show was never as good as the comic.

That said, War of the Dead by Daring Entertainment uses Savage Worlds and is a full, 52 adventure campaign...it takes you a good ways into the apocalypse (and sets up a full blown setting book for it).

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;586605That said, War of the Dead by Daring Entertainment uses Savage Worlds and is a full, 52 adventure campaign...it takes you a good ways into the apocalypse (and sets up a full blown setting book for it).

i will have to check it out. How many books is it?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;586607i will have to check it out. How many books is it?

Four, designed in 13 week arcs. Full disclosure: I did edit the second two books.

http://mostunreadblogever.blogspot.com/search/label/War%20of%20the%20Dead

Some blog links in case you want to see the reviews of the two chapters before I was hired on as editor.

I don't think Zombies are interesting enough to be sustainable as a long-term antagonist.

I agree that if you have any chance at doing it at all, it has to be that your game is a Post-apocalyptic game FIRST, where the zombies are just the backdrop of that apocalypse.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;586672I don't think Zombies are interesting enough to be sustainable as a long-term antagonist.

I agree that if you have any chance at doing it at all, it has to be that your game is a Post-apocalyptic game FIRST, where the zombies are just the backdrop of that apocalypse.

Yeah, touching on that, I think that if you're planning to run a "zombie apocalypse" game, then you need to decide up front how bad the apocalypse is going to be. After all, it's unlikely that it will be the PCs who decide whether humanity lives or dies, so the wider war is going on around them in the background.

If your zombie apocalypse is something that burns out after a while (the military fight back enough of the zombies that over time people are able to get communities going, and maybe zombism is even eliminated completely from the setting), then you can naturally segue in to Mad Max.

Walking Dead I guess is the middle path - the zombies keep on ticking indefinitely in defiance of the laws of thermodynamics, but people are able to scatter and hunker down enough that the risk of zombie attack is a constant problem but not an overwhelming enough. The zombie apocalypse is just kind of always there in the background on a slow burn, and the expectation is that over 10 years or so they'll eventually win.  

Then the harsh path is a full on zombie wave that keeps on growing, so the PCs need to either get to Madagascar or die.

Quote from: Grymbok;586689Yeah, touching on that, I think that if you're planning to run a "zombie apocalypse" game, then you need to decide up front how bad the apocalypse is going to be. After all, it's unlikely that it will be the PCs who decide whether humanity lives or dies, so the wider war is going on around them in the background.

If your zombie apocalypse is something that burns out after a while (the military fight back enough of the zombies that over time people are able to get communities going, and maybe zombism is even eliminated completely from the setting), then you can naturally segue in to Mad Max.

Walking Dead I guess is the middle path - the zombies keep on ticking indefinitely in defiance of the laws of thermodynamics, but people are able to scatter and hunker down enough that the risk of zombie attack is a constant problem but not an overwhelming enough. The zombie apocalypse is just kind of always there in the background on a slow burn, and the expectation is that over 10 years or so they'll eventually win.  

Then the harsh path is a full on zombie wave that keeps on growing, so the PCs need to either get to Madagascar or die.

Yes, that is also a consideration.  But the first of your choices is not really all that viable if you still want it to be a "zombie" themed game.

RPGPundit

'Course there's the Zombie non-Apocalypse. Mira Grant wrote three novels, the first of which is Feed, about a world where zombies happen, but civilization keeps ticking.

See, everybody is sick, and could transform ("amplify") at any time. So society develops a lot of safety measures to track who is and isn't sick, to wall themselves away from a person who suddenly turns, and so forth.

It's a very different take, and makes for a very different setting.