I love zombies.  The amount of zombie movies I’ve seen is absurd.  I also love gaming with zombies.  The survival horror aspect is something that is the most basic of plots, but somehow remains one the most compelling.  I’ve ran quite a few zombie scenarios in RPGs.  I own (and have actively used) All Flesh Must Be Eaten.  One-shots are always tons of fun, but I’ve tried to run a zombie apocalypse campaign, and I’ve run into a big hitch:  after you are done whacking zombies for a couple sessions, how do you keep story momentum?  I could run another, “we need to loot canned food from the zombie-infested store,” but that quickly approaches ad-nauseum.

I had recently been thinking about instincts and beliefs from Burning Wheel and musing on how the mechanic can be easily ported to any other system.  It then struck me that beliefs would be a perfect way to fuel a zombie apocalypse campaign–let the players generate their own hooks for scenarios.  You don’t have to use the actual Burning Wheel system for a game like this, but BW does have a fairly gritty damage system, which is always good for a zombie game.

Just imagine the fun you could have defining beliefs for your character.  “I need a gun.”  “I must save my girlfriend.”  “God has damned us all.”  Instant scenario-generating goodness.

Tags: Zombies

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Burning Wheel, RPG Thought of the Moment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.