Twilight of the Dead

Introduction
Chapter I: World of the Living Dead
Chapter II: Rules
Chapter III: The Survival Horror Genre
Chapter IV: Survival Horror Campaigns
Chapter V: Permutations
Afterword and Acknowledgments

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In 1968, a young independent filmmaker by the name of George A. Romero made his feature film debut with Night of the Living Dead and changed the face of horror forever with one simple, nightmarish premise...

Zombies. Lots of them.

These zombies were not the passive minions of sinister voodoo priests that we knew from folklore, but rather vicious, unstoppable predators. An inexhaustible shambling hoard of rotting savages with only one goal: To devour their still-living human victims alive!

Arrayed against the merciless flesheaters was a ragtag group of everyday human survivors. Brought together by chance, scared, confused and trapped in isolation, they struggled to repel wave after wave of the undead invaders even while mounting conflict within the group threatened to make them easy prey.

Scared yet? You should be.

Now, it’s your turn.

Welcome to Twilight of the Dead (TotD), a free online guide to survival horror roleplaying in George Romero’s Living Dead setting! All game information in TotD is designed to be fully-compatible with the popular HERO System generic roleplaying rules, but can be easily converted to any game system of your choice with a minimum of effort.

This chapter serves as a brief introduction to and overview of the Living Dead world. A world that's a mirror image of our own in every way but one.

Everything was going just fine until that night.

Well, not fine, really. People still died from AIDS and terrorist attacks and wars and drive-bys. Half the people in the world were still busy oppressing the other half for centuries-old reasons that neither half really remembered too well. Your boss was still an asshole.

But nothing compared to this. Nothing.

The first reports started coming in right around dusk, mostly from suburbs and rural areas. There were mass murders being committed. First dozens, then hundreds, then thousands all around the world before the sun finally made it back up the next day. These murders were committed not by lone individuals, but by mobs of unknown assailants acting in concert without any apparent motive.

As more and more reports filtered in to the news agencies of the world, other baffling details began to emerge. The murderers were silent, slow-moving, and unspeakably ugly. They kept on coming after sustaining gunshot wounds that would drop elephants.

They were also eating their victims. Victims that were difficult to locate after the attacks, as bodies often went missing from the crime scenes, almost as though they'd gotten back up and wandered off....

A scientific team was soon able to capture one of the mystery assailants for study. Some team members were said to have gone mad in order to avoid believing what they soon discovered.

Simply, the dead were returning to life and attacking the living. Attacking and eating them. The people they killed then got right back up and killed in turn. Even those merely wounded by the creatures would inevitably sicken, die, and join them in a matter of hours. Consequently, their numbers were increasing rapidly.

There were only one way to permanently deactivate the ghouls: Destroy their brains.

There was no obvious explanation as to why the dead had begun to reanimate en-masse. Some speculated that an exotic virus was responsible, possibly a human-engineered one that got out of control and escaped its creators. Others advanced theories that exotic cosmic radiation was the cause, and pointed to the recent return to Earth of an experimental space probe sent to Venus. Still others suggested that an excess of countless environmental pollutants combining in hitherto unknown ways might be to blame.

Many of the laymen who encountered the creatures had their own theories. An angry God, Satan, space aliens, black magic, and sketchily-defined "government conspiracies" topped the list.

Much of the scientific community laughed. Many news outlets at first refused to report the story, suspecting a hoax. The ones that did report it did so in a condescending wink-nudge fashion that let the audience know exactly how serious they thought the report should be taken.

Vital time lost to their skepticism cost us all dearly. The zombies had reached the cities.

Traditional authority figures and institutions were powerless to slow, let alone halt the endless waves of hungry dead. Even highly-trained police and military personnel often hesitated to shoot at what looked like their own friends and family members until it was too late. Some individuals even actively shielded their newly-undead loved ones from discovery and attack, hoping for a cure that never came. Others, citing cultural and religious objections, refused to surrender their dead to the state for proper "processing", only to suffer gruesome fates when their dearly-departed kin reanimated and murdered them. Before long, it was everyone for themselves as organized governments across the board crumbled like sandcastles.

Cities became slaughterhouses as a terrified urban populace struggled to flee, often on fatal one-way trips to "safe houses" and government shelters that had long since been overrun by zombies. Less savory elements of society sensed an opportunity to rage unchecked and incidents of rioting, looting, and random murder shot through the roof. The crisis forced a total halt in agricultural production and long-range shipments of food and other vital supplies, leading to mass-starvation in tightly-packed urban areas. With access to professional medical care increasingly rare, many common injuries and illnesses among survivors proved needlessly fatal. Eventually, power, utility, and communications systems worldwide began to fail, leaving survivors without light, heat, connections to the outside world, and sometimes even fresh water.

In a matter of weeks, the great cities of the world had been reduced to ruined necropoli. Rural areas fared slightly better, but even there many entire communities were utterly extinguished by roving zombie mobs.

Humanity might have fared better, had it not been so blinded by its ignorance, superstition, and fear....

What few humans now remain can be loosely divided into two often-overlapping camps. Some live as nomads, keeping to the open road and relying on their guts, mobility, and firepower to survive. Others seek a fortified shelter of any kind, although one that comes already stocked with food and supplies is especially coveted.

Far from demonstrating a sense of unity as humans, the remaining survivors all too often come into conflict as one group comes to covet what another has already laid claim to, whether it's a choice vehicle, a cache of supplies, or a richly-stocked fortified shelter. Some groups are made up of wild, violent individuals who harass other humans for no real reason at all, other than the sheer bloody hell of it.

The zombies, of course, are still out there. Their numbers are actually far greater than ever, having now added more than 99% of the world's former human population to their ranks. Survivors are now outnumbered in their former domains by a factor of thousands to one. With such a small population scattered over such a wide and perilous landscape, it's unclear if the few humans remaining will even be able to perpetuate the species for more than another generation or two at most. Joy, security, community; all of these are now things of the past for the fractured remnants of mankind.

This is the hellish world into which TotD characters find themselves thrust.

Before we move on to the juicy bits, here’s the dry stuff: The rules guidelines necessary for running TotD campaigns with the HERO System.

All of the characters in the Living Dead films can be considered to be Normals in HERO System terms. Some are more combat capable than others owing to backgrounds in especially martial professions (Peter, Roger, the Army personnel in Day of the Dead), but all are fundamentally regular people like any one of us. Therein lies the basic appeal of the survival horror genre. Faced with zombies, a typical superhuman being has little difficulty with survival and, consequently, true horror is unlikely at best. Even a Competent Normal, built on up to twice as many points, is much more of a match for a zombie hoard.

Because of this, the default power level for TotD campaigns as defined by the Character Types Guidelines Table and Character Ability Guidelines Table on page 15 of the Hero System 5th Edition rulebook is Skilled Normal, a character built on 25 base points and up to 25 additional points from Disadvantages. Players who desire to portray Standard or Incompetent Normals for roleplaying reasons (typically to represent a child, frail elderly person, or ineffectual bumbler) should be permitted to do so. Typically, though, this is quite rare.

Don’t feel left out if you don’t prefer to use Normals, though, as this doesn’t preclude Heroic or Superheroic zombie fighters in the least! It’s your game after all, and slavish attention to genre emulation isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, several of the campaign ideas detailed in Chapter IV are highly appropriate for Heroic and Superheroic PCs.

TotD is set in the modern day. Absolutely any character concept that makes sense on a normal, late 20th/early21st century Earth is valid here. Sample characters concepts from the Living Dead films are included below. Countless others are possible.

Drifters (Ben)
Country folk (Tom, Judy)
News reporters (Fran)
Helicopter pilots (Stephen, John)
SWAT team members (Peter, Roger)
Biker gang members (“Blades”)
Military personnel (Captain Rhodes and company)
Technicians (Billy McDermott)
Scientists (Sarah, Dr. Logan)

Normal Characteristic Maxima rules should be observed at all times.

Any are permissible. Penalty Skill Levels to offset the OCV penalty for Placed Shots are especially useful for scoring those all-important zombie head shots. Everyman Skills (with which typical characters are automatically considered Familiar with and roll against at 8- unless otherwise noted) are as follows:

Acting
AK: Home country or region
Climbing
Concealment
Conversation
Deduction
Native Language (4 points' worth, includes literacy)
PS of player's choice at 11-
Persuasion
Shadowing
Stealth
Transport Familiarity: Common Motorized Ground Vehicles

All except Combat Luck, Danger Sense and Universal Translator.

Any are permissible. However, most will be minimally useful in the TotD world, where wealth, personal reputation, high-placed contacts, and deep covers are usually rendered worthless once the world has become a zombie-haunted wasteland with no organized society to speak of. Followers, Vehicles, and Bases are the probably the most clearly-viable Perks in such a setting.

All are prohibited. TotD PCs are normal people with no supernatural capabilities whatsoever. Only if a Power explanation would make sense in that context should even the most permissive GM even consider it. In general, players should just ignore Powers entirely.

"A Disadvantage which isn't a disadvantage isn't worth any points!" So says the HERO System rules. It's important to keep this in mind in the TotD setting, where some Disadvantages, like Hunted, Reputation, and many Social Limitations might not be much of a burden after the fall of human society. Needless to say, no player should bother with anything like Hunted: Zombies. That's just silly.

Combat

Battles in TotD are typically short and bloody. To simulate this, all of the following optional rules should be in full effect:

Wounding
Hit Location
Placed Shots
Impairing
Disabling
Knockdown
Bleeding

None of the optional combat maneuvers are completely inappropriate for the setting. At the same time, none are mandatory for proper genre emulation. The individual GM should feel free to utilize any desired and disregard any not.

Miscellaneous Rules

Pushing on the part of PCs should be possible, but very, very rare. Only in the most extreme life-or-death circumstances should the GM consider approving an attempt to do so. Zombies may never push under any circumstances.

Equipment

All vehicles and non-science fiction arms and armor from the HERO System 5th Edition rulebook exist in the TotD setting. That being the case, the GM should still keep careful control over what PCs are and aren’t allowed to list as starting possessions on their character sheets, exercising veto power when necessary. Characters encased in full platemail and brandishing grenade launchers while zipping around in their trusty Abrams tanks and F-15 jet fighters are badly out of flavor in a genre that emphases the human element of horror over the “guy with the most/best goodies wins” mentality. Exceptions are at GM discretion, but common sense and proper genre emulation should be the rule.

Of course, sensible PCs are still going to pack at least some heat if they know what's good for them....

Zombies

Of course, the setting would be incomplete without its primary antagonists.

Whether they're called "things", "creatures", "ghouls", or "zombies", the shambling flesheaters of George Romero's Living Dead films are the ultimate consumers. Their sole motivation at all times is to seek out and devour live human prey. What makes the existence of zombies possible is a true mystery. While everything from black magic to divine wrath to a virus to cosmic radiation have been proposed as potential explanations, the force that grants such unnatural life to the dead remains unknown.

A zombie appears much as it did in life, with a few exceptions. Firstly, most zombies are obviously the reanimated dead. While an extraordinarily "fresh" specimen might be mistaken for a short time as a live (albeit oddly-behaving) human, most are visibly decayed and reek horribly. Others feature torn-off limbs, autopsy incisions, and a host of other seemingly fatal wounds that betray their grotesque status to onlookers. A zombie's manual dexterity, coordination, and sense of balance are all next to nil, and its resulting slow, stiff-limbed gait is unmistakable to anyone familiar with the creatures. Guttural moans and snarls are the extent of their vocalizations.

The mysterious process which makes reanimation possible also significant slows a zombie's natural rate of decomposition. In theory, an average zombie is capable of constant activity for up to several decades before it would become so decomposed that its was completely unable to move and feed.

Intellectually, a zombie is comparable to an insect, being a simple-minded organism driven entirely by basic instinct. Zombies do not feel pain or discomfort of any kind, do not communicate in any way, and display no emotion other than a savage, sub-human lust for flesh and a powerful dread of any open flame. A zombie possesses no concrete memories of its previous existence as a human, but many retain the very dimmest vestiges of their former personalities and will instinctively pantomime old behaviors or frequent favorite places even in undeath. Certain zombies have been known to employ tools on occasion, although this is usually limited to the utilization of hand-held objects as crude bludgeons to batter down barriers between the zombie and its human prey. Whether it is possible for an individual zombie to deviate from this psychological profile at all (in the manner of Bub from Day of the Dead, for example), is entirely up to the individual GM.

In combat, a zombie is a relentless and unsubtle opponent. Slow-moving and clumsy, its sole tactic is to shamble toward and then attempt to grab and devour its prey. More advanced maneuvers are wholly unknown to them, and multiple zombies fight not as a coordinated group, but as individual predators completely indifferent to one another. In fact, except to occasionally squabble over choice bits of a shared carcass in the manner of jackals or vultures, zombies are typically indifferent to one another at all times. Nevertheless, these creatures are still vastly more dangerous in large numbers, where their individual lack of speed and coordination can be compensated for with the ability to simply swarm and overwhelm hapless victims. Zombies do not dodge, parry blows, or otherwise attempt to prevent successful attacks on their person.

One of the most unnerving things about zombies is that fact that they're endlessly patient. Although they hunger constantly for human flesh, a zombie never actually needs to eat, drink, or sleep. If potential prey seals itself up inside a building, a zombie can easily lurk outside that building for weeks, months, or even years, waiting patiently for that prey to show itself again. As long as it is still reasonably sure that a potential victim is trapped inside, it won't wander far.

A zombie's primary weakness is its brain. Without an intact brain, it cannot function. Permanently deactivating one means either destroying the brain, severing the head from the body (somewhat more risky, as the still-animated head can continue to bite), or annihilating the creature's body completely through explosion, incineration, or other similarly dramatic means. In the bleak world of Living Dead, any human corpse that isn't treated according to these guidelines will reanimate as a zombie in under an hour.

While being eaten alive by a zombie is indeed a terrible fate, those merely wounded by their bite attacks are perhaps even less fortunate. Through still-unknown means, a zombie's bite transmits a terrible sickness to the recipient. Those so wounded are doomed to inevitably weaken and die within a few short days, rising as a zombie immediately thereafter. There is no known cure, but some have speculated that prompt amputation of a bitten appendage may be able to prevent the sickness from taking hold. This is little comfort to those bitten on the torso, neck, or head, of course.

To the overconfident or dimwitted, the mindless, slow-moving zombie may seem like an easy threat to dismiss. Those who know better realize that they're tireless, relentless, already number in the millions, and are increasing their ranks all the time.

Yes, the end has arrived, and it looks an awful lot like us....

Zombie

Characteristics:

STR: 10, Roll: 11-, Lift 100 kg, Damage: 2d6
DEX: 5, Roll: 10-, OCV/DCV: 2
CON: 10, Roll: 11-
BODY: 10, Roll: 11-
INT: 5, Roll: 10-, PER Roll: 10-
EGO: 0, Roll: -, ECV: -
PRE: 10, Roll: 11-, PRE Attack: 2d6
COM: 4, Roll: 10-

PD: 8
ED: 4
REC: 4
END: 20
STUN: -
SPD: 1
Phases: 7

Movement:

Running: 2”/4"
Leaping: 0"
Swimming: 0”

Total Characteristic Cost: -17

Skills:

Climbing 10-
Concealment 10-, Self Only (-1/2)
Stealth 10-

Total Skill Cost: 8

Powers:

Bite: HKA 1 pip (up to 1/2d6 with STR), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (7 Active Points) plus Zombie Contagion: Major Transform 16d6 (human to zombie, heals back through amuptation of bitten extremity within 5 minutes), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Standard Effect Rule (+0), Time Delay (24 hours; +1/4) (420 Active Points), Gradual Effect (1 point of effect every hour for 48 hours; -2), Linked (-1/4), No Range (-1/2), Bite Must Do BODY Damage (-1/4), Limited Target (humans; -1/2), Total Cost: 100 Points

Undead Toughness: Damage Resistance (8 PD/4 ED) (6 Active Points), Total Cost: 6 Points

Tireless: Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) on STR (5 Active Points), Total Cost: 5 Points

Tireless: Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) on Running (6 Active Points), Total Cost: 6 Points

Unliving: Cannot Be Stunned (15 Active Points), Total Cost: 15 Points

Unliving: Does Not Bleed (15 Active Points), Total Cost: 15 Points

Unliving: Takes No Stun (60 Active Points), Total Cost: 60 Points

Unliving: Life Support (total, except for Longevity) (45 Active Points), Total Cost: 45 Points

Total Power Cost: 252

Disadvantages:

Distinctive Features: Zombie, Not Concealable, Feature Causes Extreme Reaction, 25 Character Points

Physical Limitation: Animal Intelligence, Frequently, Greatly Impairing, 15 Character Points

Physical Limitation: Doesn't Heal, Frequently, Greatly Impairing, 15 Character Points

Physical Limitation: PD/ED Don't Protect Head, Frequently, Greatly Impairing, 15 Character Points

Psychological Limitation: Hunger for Human Flesh, Very Common, Total, 25 Character Points

Psychological Limitation: Fear of Fire, Common, Strong, 10 Character Points

Total Disadvantage Points: 105

Total Cost: 243

A zombie's behavior is defined entirely by its Psychological Limitations. The overall more powerful of the two, the drive to seek out and devour human Flesh, functions constantly and dictates the creature's default program. The other, its fear of fire, while powerful, is subordinate to its urge to feed.

As a general rule, a zombie won't come within 1" (two meters) of a flame of any significant size. At the same time, they won't retreat more than 1" from one, either. Thus, characters can hold zombies at bay with fire, but can't use it to drive them off entirely. A character who wishes to hold a zombie off with a torch or other handheld burning object will only be able to simultaneously threaten a maximum of three adjacent hexes no more than 1" away. Characters can change those hexes as a half-phase action, but had still better hope that they don't find themselves completely surrounded by the undead!

Zombies do not heal. All BODY damage they sustain is permanent.

Zombies do not have the campaign's usual Everyman Skills.

Finally, one of the most important elements of the Living Dead setting is the “zombie contagion”, the horrid sickness that zombie bite survivors inevitably contract which causes them to weaken and die within a few days, becoming zombies themselves. In game terms, this takes the form of a large Major Transform with the Standard Effect Rule applied that deals out a total of 48 points of effect over 48 hours once the 24 hour incubation period has elapsed. This is sufficient to Transform virtually any character in the Normal range.

Should you elect to run a TotD campaign with Heroic or Superheroic characters, it’s vital that you increase the effectiveness of the contagion accordingly. It should always pack enough effect that no character can really afford to buy their BODY high enough to avoid succumbing to it. Similarly, characters should not be permitted to circumvent the effect with any kind of Power. It’s vital to the genre that zombie bites be a true death sentence, barring rapid amputation at the GM’s discretion. If there is to be any zombie vaccine or cure, it should be a GM-controlled plot device, not something a player can buy with points.

Human corpses that aren't subjected to immediate cremation or brain destruction automatically become zombies within one hour of death. This is a campaign-wide special effect of sorts, however, and is not represented by a rules mechanic. If the GM desires, a random reanimation time can be determined by rolling 1d6 and multiplying the result by 10 to set a number of minutes until the corpse activates as a zombie.

A human that reanimates as a zombie immediately and permanently acquires all the characteristics, capabilities, and limitations of one (see zombie statistics, above). The human character's former status is lost forever, completely "overwritten" by the basic zombie template.

In this chapter, we'll examine some of the key underlying themes that make the Living Dead films distinctive within the horror genre, as well as how to best incorporate those themes into a TotD roleplaying campaign.

The most important element that sets the Living Dead setting apart from other horror films and literature that feature zombies is its overall mood. Romero's films are grim and deadly serious. Rarely, if ever, are the lighthearted and corny antics of films like Return of the Living Dead or Evil Dead 2 appropriate here. The zombies are not merely a handful of run-of-the-mill monsters to be vanquished by the heroes just in time for the happy ending. They're omnipresent and ultimately unstoppable by any force known to man. Their arrival represents nothing less than the birth of a new dominant species on our planet. A new society destined to grind ours into the dust and take our place as masters of the Earth. They are the end of our world.

GMs should play this up for their PCs as much as possible. Emphasize how rapidly human society descends into anarchy and chaos and how widespread and daunting the undead menace truly is.

The primary device that Romero uses to accomplish this in his stories is the mass media. His characters frequently sit spellbound as they watch and listen to eerily-realistic television and radio reports on the zombie crisis. Due to extensive social training, people in industrialized nations tend to hold a special reverence for the news media. We all depend to some extent on newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet for information on the world at large, and, cynical proclamations from many aside, we tend to trust what our newsmen tell us more often than not. This is why Orson Welles' infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast was able to convince real people listening in that marauding Martians intent on world conquest had really landed among us.

Even if the PCs are physically isolated, grant them at least some insight into the big picture, whether through news media, important NPCs, or some other technique. They're not just playing out a monster movie, they're eyewitnesses to the Apocalypse. Keep things grim. Avoid excessive mirth, cheesiness, or action hero-style grandstanding. It should always seems as though the PCs are experiencing only one small part of a much larger nightmare.

The most prominent element of the zombie survival horror genre is, of course, the zombies themselves. This is completely obvious and, at the same time, bears further exploration.

In the Living Dead films, the zombies are utilized as a plot device in two primary ways. When they oppose the human characters directly and physically, they're blatant antagonists; movie monsters in the most traditional sense. In this capacity, they require little explanation.

Most of the time, though, the zombies lurk offscreen and are used in the story almost the same way that an impersonal force of nature like a hurricane or a blizzard would be. They serve to drive the characters from place to place seeking viable shelter and, once they find it, to keep them there. They're an ever-present hostile condition outside wherever the characters are holed-up that serves to box them in and limit their options.

Each of the films uses the zombies in this way at some point. The farmhouse in Night, the shopping mall in Dawn, and the underground research complex in Day all function as islands of relative security in a sea of the undead, at least for most of the film. All these fragile sanctuaries are eventually breached with catastrophic consequences.

In the context of a roleplaying campaign, this theme is highly mutable. Onscreen, Romero's humans naturally preferred to expose themselves to zombie mobs as little as possible. Consequently, they tended to stick close to fortified shelter the majority of the time. In the game, however, the technique of keeping the main characters boxed-up tight may be less appealing to a GM and group of players who'd prefer to run more active characters that make regular journeys out into the wide, ghoul-infested world, regardless of the danger.

Still, the zombie menace is everywhere at all times. Characters should never, ever be allowed to take their temporary absence for granted, nevermind put them out of mind entirely. Even when the PCs are sealed-up tight in their most secure den, let them hear the sounds of the world around them. The low moaning on the wind, the ceaseless scratching of undead claws on the other side of the door, the death shrieks of the occasional distant human victim in the night. If they don't sleep with one eye open, you're not doing it right.

Remember, complacency is the enemy. Don't ever be afraid of making PCs pay a terrible price for underestimating the enemy or putting all their eggs in one basket with the promise of an "unbreachable" shelter. Keep them on the edge. If you sense them beginning to develop even the most superficial sense of security, shatter it mercilessly as soon as possible!

Most of us have probably fantasized at one time or another about how fun it would be to be the last person on Earth. Just imagine it. You'd be able to go anywhere anytime, never need to work or go to school, and never be bossed around by anyone ever again. You'd have the entire material bounty of modern civilization just laying around unguarded in deserted shops and homes waiting for you to claim it as you saw fit. If you wanted, you could run naked through Times Square at high noon before diving head-first into a mountain of thousand dollar bills and there'd be nobody anywhere who could even notice it, let alone stop you.

The Living Dead setting takes this common fantasy and adds to it a most sinister twist.

As the zombie hoards grow ever larger and human society dissolves into anarchy, PCs find that their once-ordered world now exists in a state of utter lawlessness. Most of its former population is either dead, undead, or far too busy with basic survival to worry too much about hoarding possessions. If they need a car, they find one and take it. A gun? Take it. Food? Take it. Their weight in gold and diamonds? Take it. In fact, other survivors, if they know what's good for them, are much more likely to have already laid claim to the gun or the food than the now not-so-precious gold and diamonds.

Of course, all this freedom comes at a price. All the free goodies the PCs enjoy are only possible because most of humanity, and probably all or most of the people they once loved, have been either slain and consumed by the zombies or have joined their ranks (possibly both, if enough of the corpse was left over after feeding). Furthermore, the PCs are in no position to actually enjoy any of the frivolous consumer goods they once coveted. Sure, they can smash their way into an abandoned game store and stroll back out a few minutes later with the entire PlayStation game library in an overflowing shopping cart, but what are they actually going to do with it? And all but the most unwise and doomed survivors are going to realize that their time and carrying capacity is better spent locating and transporting necessities like food, water, and ammo in the first place.

So the PCs may indeed be holding the "keys to the kingdom", but as Dawn of the Dead so clearly illustrated, their situation is more grim irony than real advantage. In your games, be sure to highlight this dark side of the common wish-fulfillment fantasy whenever possible.

Characters in the Living Dead films can be a lonely, lonely bunch. In Dawn and Day particularly, we see up close and in detail the very real mental and emotional toll that long-term isolation from human society exacts. Characters cooped-up together under stressful circumstances for extended periods of time will eventually have their very worst neuroses and inner demons forced to the surface, with disturbing and sometimes dangerous consequences.

In the game, this kind of drama is best simulated by appropriate roleplaying and clever interpretations of a character's existing Psychological Limitations. Each character will bring his or her normal coping strategies to bear against the alternating boredom, loneliness, and sheer terror. Those same strategies will become more and more desperate and extreme as long as such conditions persist. Characters who are introspective will turn inward even moreso, treating the outside world as an abstract problem to be solved and perhaps losing sight of the human element (as with Dr. Logan in Day). Characters who rely on their senses of humor to get by may find themselves in situations where their cocky, devil-may-care attitude lands them in way over their heads (as with Roger in Dawn). Characters who are naturally bullies or other controlling types will balk at nothing, eventually committing any kind of harassment or assault to assert their dominance (as with Harry Cooper in Night). Some characters may simply fall into a suicidal despair that could very well end up finishing them where the zombies couldn't (Peter very nearly met this sad fate at the climax of Dawn).

Sooner or later, the stress of life after the zombie nightmare will catch up with everyone. Even the PCs.

Interpersonal conflict between human survivors is a staple of the Living Dead films, usually, and most dramatically, courtesy of domineering characters like Day of the Dead's Captain Rhodes. In fact, it might be fairly argued that the primary theme throughout the series is that humanity can be its own worst enemy, surpassing even the threat of a worldwide zombie plague when all is said and done. Such characters bicker over everything, harass others constantly, waste time that could be spent confronting the problem at hand launching a seemingly-neverending series of personal power plays, and eventually even initiate physical violence against their fellow survivors.

Why? Simply, the desire for security. An overbearing, power-mad character wants nothing more or less than what anyone else in his or her situation would: For the world to be safe and logical again. For an antidote to the omnipresent horror of the nightmare unfolding all around them. Unfortunately, for certainly personality types, the only situation that offers them any measure of security is one that they wield complete control over. Combine this with the assumed lack of consequences for cruel and immoral behavior engendered by the lawlessness and isolation that defines the genre, and you have a recipe for ruin.

Such miscreants are surprisingly common in the survival horror genre, and not without good reason. Due to their ruthlessly selfish nature and general amorality, such an individual might well be more likely than average to survive the first stages of a zombie epidemic. Sad, but true. Anyone unlucky enough to be trapped in the company of such a petty despot once things hit the fan has the daunting task of fending off both the gnashing teeth of the living dead and the backstabbing of their fellow humans at the same time.

This theme is usually incorporated into a roleplaying game in the form of appropriately villainous NPCs. While no hard and fast rules preclude PCs from adopting such a antagonistic attitude toward one another, it’s not likely to make for much more than hard feelings at the gaming table, unless the players behind said PCs are extraordinarily mature in their approach.

Perhaps the most difficult of Romero's themes to capture in a roleplaying campaign, this category is a catch-all for his frequent attempts to use his character's reactions to the zombie crisis, and occasionally even the zombies themselves, as subtle metaphors for the less noble aspects of the human condition.

The most obvious manifestation of this theme is the clumsy pantomiming of activities from their former lives that zombies throughout the films demonstrate. One zombie woman carried a filthy doll as though it were a human baby. Others instinctively frequented shopping malls because they were important places in their lives. Additional examples you could include in your games would be a zombie police officer that continually clutches a gun it doesn't know how to fire or a zombie mailman that absent-mindedly fiddles with mailboxes. A GM should make note of this tendency whenever possible during play. The PCs sometimes need reminding that the legions of flesheating ghouls they gun down so casually were once people just like them, and indeed that there, but for the grace of God, go they.

Examples of this technique at work in specific films:

The original Night of the Living Dead used the tragic fate of the Ben character as a loose analogy for the racial tensions of the 1960s. The 1990 remake also raised the question of who the true monsters were when it highlighted the callous treatment that the packs of roving zombie hunters inflicted on their prey, including exploiting them for sport.

In Dawn of the Dead, both the mindless zombies' lingering attraction to the shopping mall and the way the human survivors eventually become overly dependent on the creature comforts the mall provides are presented as a cautionary lesson on the shallowness and ultimate folly of consumerism as religion.

In perhaps the ultimate expression of this principal, Day of the Dead's "trained" zombie, Bub, is presented as considerably more sympathetic, even noble, than many of the humans around him!

As Barbara observes at the end of the 1990 remake of Night: "We're them, they're us." Bringing this home to the players is one of the GMs most difficult tasks.

One thing that the TotD GM must initially decide is what point in the timeline of the zombie crisis that the campaign begins. Most campaigns are assumed to begin at or slightly before the start of the crisis (around the time that Night of the Living Dead opens). This allows the characters to experience the full measure of shock and disbelief as seemingly impossible (and impossibly horrific) events first begin to unfold all around them.

Is it possible, however, to start a campaign further down the line, after the crisis is already in full swing. Dawn of the Dead, for example, picked-up after the fight to save human civilization from the zombie hoards had begun, but before it was decided. Day of the Dead takes place months after the zombies had already obliterated virtually the entire human species.

Any time is acceptable for your game, just as long as you take care to convey the full backstory to your players.

What role will the PCs take in your campaign? Will they be have the opportunity to be heroes, or will they struggle constantly just to survive? Will they be strangers drawn together by fate, a tightly-knit team with roots stretching back to before the dawn of the campaign, or something else entirely?

This is the default niche for player characters in a TotD campaign. They are everyday, normal people fighting to survive in a world gone mad.

This category is deliberately broad, and can easily encompass any group of characters, provided that the GM and players can devise a plausible way for fate to bring (and keep) them together. Dawn of the Dead, for example, features an archetypal group of survivors. Fran (a television newswoman) is involved in a romantic relationship with Stephen (a traffic helicopter pilot), who is friends with Roger (a cop), who is in turn friends with Peter, another cop. This chain of associations explains how all four end up fleeing the doomed city of Pittsburgh together one night in a stolen helicopter.

The primary goal of these characters is simple: Survive the zombie crisis, ideally in one piece. This could mean searching for an isolated desert island, locating (or taking) a fortified shelter, or relying on a nomadic lifestyle to keep one step ahead of the ghouls. It's quite possible, of course, for the same group to adopt different survival strategies over the course of a single campaign.

While characters like this may form emotional bonds and watch out for each other, the emphasis is on survival, not heroism or any other abstract goal.

Some groups of characters are united by a common background, profession, or long-term goal. They're effectively organized into a team of sorts. They could be police or soldiers fighting the grim losing battle against the hoards of walking dead, scientists sequestered in a secret lab working to find an answer to the problem, government officials struggling to maintain order, members of the same family, or any other conceivable variation on this theme.

As social order in the campaign world breaks down, it may be difficult for some of these characters to justify continued devotion to their team or its cause. It's perfectly normal for such characters to eventually adopt another way of pursuing their roles within the campaign.

Some characters aren't content to live life on the run from the undead. Instead, they take the offensive and bring the war to the ghouls in the interest of protecting their fellow survivors and perhaps even ultimately reclaiming the world for the living. They are the true adventurers and heroes of the post-apocalyptic landscape.

While they have no precedent whatsoever in the Living Dead films, these characters are especially appropriate to a roleplaying campaign due to the proactive way that they approach the world. The one thing they all have in common is the way they travel the countryside helping those in need. They may do this with the heartfelt altruism and zeal of the classic hero, the grim, near-suicidal determination of the jaded antihero with nothing else to live for, or any other attitude in-between.

Individuals who protected others for a living in their old lives (soldiers, police, etc) are the most likely to adopt this dangerous lifestyle.

These characters are usually tough, experienced, and highly combat-capable. Because of this, they are ideally suited for Heroic level gaming.

One interesting alternative is to simply let the players play themselves! After all, most fans of the survival horror genre have probably asked themselves at one point what they would do if the events depicted in the Living Dead films were to actually transpire. Would they and their friends, family, schoolmates, and co-workers be able to survive an undead onslaught that turns their hometown into a peril-fraught wasteland virtually overnight?

Since the settings and characters are already in place, the trickiest parts of running such a campaign are insuring proper character creation and the issue of the players' willingness to bring their real lives into their roleplaying. Are the players mature enough to create realistic game versions of themselves ("I'm about Strength 25 and Comeliness 30, right guys?")? Are they okay with the notion of a game where their real life loved ones are potential NPCs in need of protection (and potential zombie chow) or one where they may be forced to gun down their newly-zombified neighbors? Some players will relish this level of personalized tension and angst, while others will find it uncomfortable and unwelcome. Test the waters first.

After the initial novelty of this approach wears off, the GM and players should feel free to steer the campaign in any direction that's mutually acceptable to all. A "play as yourself" campaign can easily conform to any of the campaign models detailed elsewhere in this document.

Any number of fascinating stories can be set against the backdrop of a zombie plague. Here are just a few of the major archetypes.

The default TotD story involves the PCs struggling to survive as the dead start returning to life and attacking the living. This is the classic scenario presented in the film that started it all, Night of the Living Dead.

In this type of adventure, the PCs have to survive their very first confusing and nightmarish encounters with the undead. Remember, while savvy players might be familiar with zombies and the survival horror genre in general, their characters almost certainly are not. They may at first even be reluctant to believe that the individuals attacking them are undead at all, perhaps mistaking them for drugged criminals or disheveled madmen.

Before long, the truth becomes known, perhaps courtesy of the panicked newscasts that Romero favors as expository devices, and the PCs have to figure out how to evade the living dead and reach safely. Or die trying, of course.

In these kinds of adventures, the crisis is in full swing and PCs are wanderers traversing the post-apocalyptic landscape in a ceaseless struggle to stay one step ahead of both the ghouls and the more vicious of their fellow survivors. Such PCs could be:

Normal survivors searching for a new place to live after their old shelter was overrun by zombies or taken over by another group of humans.

Lawless thugs like the motorcycle gang in Dawn of the Dead, content to loot and rampage aimlessly throughout the mass graveyard that was civilization.

The remnants of an old military unit that lost the fight to keep the zombies from taking over.

Desperate individuals in search of any kind of organized human society that may have possibly survived the disaster.

Heroic types who scour the ruins intent on rescuing other survivors in trouble.

The human protagonists of the Living Dead films often had access to private air transportation (in the form of helicopters) that assisted them in locating and accessing secure shelters as well as safely traversing miles of zombie-infested countryside. This doesn't need to be the case in your game, however.

Characters might have to rely on ground transportation to cross vast expanses of dangerous territory. Furthermore, the rail and interstate highway systems would almost certainly be blocked at countless points along their lengths, forcing the PCs to abandon the quickest and most direct routes in favor of numerous unplanned detours through cities large and small.

Along the way, they could encounter the full range of standard post-apocalyptic obstacles. Possibilities include other scattered groups of survivors desperate for news and assistance, small fiefdoms ruled by charismatic madmen with stockpiles of powerful weaponry, dangerous gangs of looters who want what the PCs have, and twisted doomsday cults (that might even ritualistically sacrifice captured "infidels" to the zombies).

Some characters in the world of the living dead just can't help but yearn for answers. Why are the dead returning to life and attacking the living? Can the process be halted or even reversed?

Adventures centered around these questions usually involve PCs that are scientists in some capacity. They may brave the world outside their shelters in order to locate and explore facilities that other teams of scientists were using to study the problem before they were overrun, hoping that their research notes, at the very least, but be intact and salvageable.

What the real cause behind the zombie plague is and whether or not it can be stopped by any means is something for each individual GM to decide. The films provide no definitive answers in this department and neither does TotD.

Once characters have survived the initial chaos of the zombie crisis, some may elect to undertake a truly grand and risky scheme: Rebuilding human civilization from the ground up!

Can they locate a suitable site for a fortified or hidden city? If so, can they attract enough sympathetic survivors to populate it while at the same time holding off hoards of ghouls and barbaric humans determined to destroy everything they've built?

For an interesting perspective on the challenges of rebuilding society after a horrendous disaster kills off almost all of the people and leaves their "toys" laying around intact, see Stephen King's excellent novel The Stand.

Roleplaying campaigns inevitably change over time, sometimes drastically. This section addresses some potentially thorny issues that commonly arise only in the long run.

Survival horror is arguably less-suited to long campaigns than other genres. This is due to a variety of factors.

Firstly, the novelty may simply be short-lived for some players. Sustaining an atmosphere of genuine horror over the course of a single play session is somewhat tricky. Sustaining one over the course of dozens can be downright difficult, especially when you're continually dealing with the same threat. Other than for a few die-hards, there's a very real limit to how long most players can stomach a non-stop diet of zombies (and vice-versa, of course). They may desire a change of pace sooner rather than later.

Furthermore, because character creation and combat favors the low-powered, gritty, and realistic, PC death can be quite common relative to more traditional heroic roleplaying where characters tend to be more resilient and powerful.

There's no right or wrong answer for how long a Twilight of the Dead campaign should or shouldn't last. Just remember to follow the players' leads. If they want something that lasts for months, that's fine. If they only want to play what amounts to a single Living Dead film's worth of story as a "one shot" adventure, that's fine too.

Player characters in roleplaying games invariably improve their abilities over time, typically through the acquisition and expenditure of experience points. This phenomenon isn't unprecedented in the Living Dead films. Fran and Stephen improve their marksmanship dramatically over the course of Dawn of the Dead. Fran also learns how to fly the helicopter.

Over the course of a very long campaign, however, this process can result in "power creep" as characters grow to become several times more powerful and capable than they were when they began the game.

In TotD, at least some level of serious PC vulnerability is mandatory. In order to maintain this, the GM may wish to set absolute maximums to Characteristics. The usual NCM threshold, or up to 125% of it, is a typical restriction. After this point, players should be encouraged to spend their character's experience points mostly on Skills and Perks.

Normal character should only very rarely be permitted to cross the line into Heroic point totals, and Heroic character should be allowed to verge into the Superheroic even less.

PCs die. It's a fact of life in almost any roleplaying game and it's even more common than usual during the course of a low-powered horror campaign.

When one zombie bite can mean certain death, should the GM ever "fudge" unlucky die rolls in the interest of keeping the characters alive to fight another day?

Yes and no.

Players should always feel like they're in control of their character's fates. Bad luck should almost never be the sole cause of a PC death. A contributing factor, yes, but never the sole cause.

So what should be the deciding factor? To answer that question, let's examine the source material. Almost without exception, characters in horror films die for four reasons:

Demonstration. In order to demonstrate the deadliness of the horror antagonist(s), some poor sap needs to die. These characters are usually minor ones, the equivalent of the "red shirt" security troopers that beamed-down to their deaths each week on the old Star Trek show for no other reason than to graphically showcase the peril of that episode's alien menace. They die so that the heroes don't have to and the villains can still make their dastardly mark. This is obviously not a way to dispose of key main characters (like the PCs).

Karma. They're bad people. The audience likes to see villains and general scumbags get their due. This also won't generally be applicable to PCs.

Mistakes. They slip up. Somewhere along the line, a character chooses to investigate the wrong bump in the night (it's never just a stray cat), ignore an ancient native curse, not believe in "unscientific" notions like zombies until they get munched, or leave a downed monster that's obviously just playing possum for dead. Situations like this are appropriate ones to kill PCs in. The GM is never obligated to save characters who end up in peril due to their own preventable mistakes.

Heroic sacrifice. The character willingly forfeits his or her own life so that friends can either defeat or escape from some terrible threat. Heroic sacrifice is high drama to be sure and typically the emotional climax of an entire story. This is an ideal way to stage a PC fatality.

In short, use your common and dramatic sense. Always consider the circumstances. If a single botched defense roll a quarter of the way into the first play session could mean your entire campaign's demise, don't use it! The dice aren't gods. Don't treat them like it.

As player characters become more and more powerful and knowledgeable, maintaining the zombies as a genuine threat can be difficult. Here are a few ideas.

Numbers. No matter how skilled the PCs become, the zombies will always outnumber them. If they linger too long in any one place, they can easily attract every ghoul within miles to their location. Don't be afraid to make the face overwhelming odds.

Terrain. Even a huge zombie hoard can be rendered irrelevant if the PCs always have a ready escape route on hand. Don't let them always maintain an easy out. The character could be trapped with the zombies inside the same old house, office building, underground laboratory, etc. If there is a known way out, make it difficult to locate, reach, secure, or utilize.

Surprise. Simply, don't allow the players to prepare themselves for every encounter. "As you reach out your hand to grasp the knob, the closet door suddenly bursts open and you find yourself standing almost literally nose-to-nose with a very hungry blood-soaked zombie! What do you do?"

Human frailty. The PCs need food water, shelter, sleep, ammunition, and other supplies. Eventually, their own basic needs will force them into harm's way.

The lure. Draw the PCs out of hiding and into danger with the promise of reward or the threat of harm to their friends or loved ones. Maybe they hear a rumor that a lost research facility may hold the key to halting the zombie crisis. Perhaps they receive a frantic distress call from another group of survivors over shortwave radio (a trap?).

Don't let your PCs forget that the zombies are almost everywhere at all times (and in large numbers). As long as you can always do this, they'll always be a true threat to the group's continued survival.

Twilight of the Dead was designed with the HERO System in mind because of the author's personal belief that it is the most well-designed and versatile roleplaying system ever created. This hardly means, however, that you can't adapt the setting to any rules set you desire. As long as the system in question can handle low-powered characters, all you need to do is draft a new set of zombie game statistics. To do so, just keep the following general guidelines regarding their powers and limitations in mind. Note that "normal human" refers to an everyday, standard person, not one with exceptional power, experience, and combat ability (such as a PC in most roleplaying campaigns).

Strength/Constitution: As normal human.

Dexterity: Approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of normal human value.

Intelligence/Wisdom: Approximately 1/5 of normal human value.

Charisma/Comeliness: Approximately 1/3 or less of normal human value. Personality and appearance-based abilities that act to incite fear may be rated at up to twice normal human value, however.

Damage absorption capability (Health, Hit Points, etc): As normal human.

Attack skill: Approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of normal human value.

Defense rating: Approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of normal human value.

Combat speed (Initiative, Reaction, etc): Approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of normal human value.

Movement speed: Approximately 1/3 of normal human value. Cannot climb well. Cannot jump or swim.

Special abilities: Bite deals little initial damage but causes certain death within 72 hours, doesn't need to eat/sleep/breathe, immune to normal environmental effects (such as extremely hot or cold weather), effectively mindless (immune to mind-control and telepathic powers), never tires, can't be knocked-out or stunned, can't heal wounds, doesn't bleed, ignores virtually all damage to areas other than head, fears fire and will avoid it at all times.

No two play groups have the same character creation preferences. Thus, a desire to deviate from the guidelines presented here is healthy and expected. There are some things you'll need to keep in mind, though.

The standard TotD campaign assumes that the player characters are fundamentally normal people. They may be slightly above-average, but they're still very, very mortal and vulnerable. In HERO System terms, this means Skilled Normals, characters build on up to 50 points.

Some players, however, are reluctant to run what they see as weak characters built on too few points. Ignoring the basic question of whether a survival horror campaign is appropriate to such a group at all (that's the individual GM's call), this section offers advice for incorporating higher-powered characters into TotD campaigns.

The next step up from Skilled Normal is Competent Normal, a character built on up to 100 points. For the most part. TotD can function pretty much as written with characters of this power level. PCs will tend to be noticeably more resilient and combat-capable than normal people, but they'll still have much to fear from being cornered by a few dozen (or hundred) zombies. In fact, there was no small amount of fretting done over whether Skilled or Competent was to be established as the standard for character creation in TotD. Skilled was finally chosen in the interest of emphasizing the grittier aspects of the source material by keeping the very real human frailities of the PCs at the forefront of the proceedings.

Heroic characters are another story. PCs built on 150-200 points can regularly wade through virtually unlimited numbers of standard zombies without breaking a sweat. At this level, the primal survival horror of the Living Dead films becomes extremely difficult to capture and a more comic book-style atmosphere begins to dominate. This is the territory that both the protagonists of the Resident Evil games and cult movie hero Ash (at least as he's seen in Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness) tend to occupy. As that source material proves, the play can still be spooky and fun at this level, but the pure horror is somewhat less pressing. The zombies function more as mobile set dressing and occasional targets for the PCs' overwhelming firepower than true threats. They're rarely capable of invoking the feelings of dread and helplessness that true horror thrives on.

The best way to really challenge and frighten players in Heroic campaigns is to increase the power of their enemies accordingly. Zombies with strange new abilities, vicious undead animals, and even completely unrelated monsters should make appearances in place of or in addition to the standard ghouls (see "Changing the Zombies" below).

Superheroic characters built on 250+ points are the greatest challenge to integrate into TotD campaigns. Some might be tempted to simply declare it impossible and leave it at that. Characters at this level are so massively powerful as to be supremely self-sufficient. They hold so much power over their surroundings that while the entire world going to Hell in a handbasket courtesy of the walking dead might be profoundly harrowing emotionally, it poses little to no real challenge to their own continued survival. A Superheroic campaign can include zombies, but in practice, they're little more than animate props to lend a bit of atmosphere here and there. What you have then is not true survival horror, but rather standard superheroics with a superficial horror motif. For these reasons, Superheroic characters are highly-discouraged across the board in TotD campaigns.

The standard TotD rules for PC Powers are simple: No. After all, none of the humans in the Living Dead films ever demonstrated anything that might be considered a supernatural or superhuman ability. Characteristics, Skills, Perks, and Talents are usually deemed sufficient to accurately model any normal person in game terms.

You might not prefer things that way, though. Maybe you want characters with psychic abilities, magic spells, super strength, and other extraordinary capabilities. Fair enough. There are some dangers, though.

Any Power that would grant a PC near-total immunity to the threat of zombie attacks is generally a bad idea. Characters that can fly, teleport, or become immaterial are virtually untouchable by such comparatively limited opponents as zombies.

Similarly, characters shouldn't be allowed to buy resistant defenses that protect their entire bodies without any significant drawbacks. Normal armor is fine, as even the most all-encompassing practical suit of armor either hampers its wearer prohibitively in the long term (a suit of full plate mail, for example) or doesn't protect all possible hit locations. If you choose to buy, for example, a Force Field, make sure that it has a significant drawback (like a fragile Focus, increased END cost, or nasty Side Effect). If a resistant defense with no drawbacks automatically protects the entire body against more damage than a zombie bite can potentially deal, you have a problem on your hands.

Because the transformation caused by the zombie contagion is supposed to be supremely lethal, any Power that might make survival of such possible (Dispel, Power Defense, etc), should be disallowed or extremely limited.

Careful consideration on the part of the GM is necessary when evaluating all potential PC Powers. Mind Scan or a modest-sized Energy Blast would probably be acceptable. Desolidification (Inherent, only to protect against zombie attacks) would almost certainly be a bad idea.

As the only real difference between the Living Dead world and our own, the tone of an entire campaign can be radically altered by even the slightest change to these primary antagonists.

Zombies are slow, uncoordinated, too stupid to make proper use of weapons, and only about as strong as an average person (if that). The challenge writer/director George Romero faced was to make these wretched creatures seem like a genuine threat to his human protagonists. Having them appear in overwhelming numbers was part of the solution. The other part was the zombie bite contagion. Humans that sustain even the smallest bite wound from a zombie are doomed to transform into one themselves in matter of days.

In the context of a roleplaying campaign, it's easy to see why some GMs might want to cut players a little slack in this department. The threat of a single attack roll deciding a character's fate that completely can be scary. PCs have to be careful at all times, and one tiny slip can be their last.

There are several ways to make zombie bites a little less deadly:

Weaken the effect of the Zombie Contagion. This gives certain characters a chance to resist it successfully once infected.

Create a special cure that players can seek to acquire when bitten. This substance could either eliminate the disease completely or simply weaken it, giving the character a better chance to resist.

Remove the threat entirely. In this case, you might consider strengthening the zombies in other ways in order to keep them a viable threat.

Zombies can be quite predictable. They shamble, they kill, and they eat. Some players don't mind this too much, nursing as they do a deep and abiding appreciation for the "plain vanilla" genre staple. Others, though, like to be surprised. If your group happens to fall into the latter category, feel free to give them what they want!

Maybe instead of a loose mob of snail's-paced individuals, your zombies band together like wolves in highly-sophisticated hunting packs that bound across the landscape at speeds surpassing those of normal humans, efficiently flanking and bringing down their prey.

Normal zombies are no stronger than regular humans, but yours might be endowed with prodigious supernatural strength.

Standard zombies can't swim or leap, but maybe yours can, possibly to a startling degree. Or can they cling to walls and ceilings like spiders or tunnel through all but the hardest-packed earth?

Can your zombies actually detect and track their prey over long distances through supernatural means? Perhaps they can psychically detect fear or catch even the faintest scent of live humans from miles away courtesy of drastically-enhanced senses.

Zombie parts severed from the whole might continue to move and even attack independently. This ability might even extend to the creature's internal organs (as with the infamous strangling intestine so vividly depicted in the schlock horror classic Reanimator).

Consider relocating the classic zombie weak spot: The brain. Perhaps only incineration, a shot to the heart, total bodily dismemberment, or exposure to a certain chemical or specific form of exotic radiation can stop your ghouls. Maybe they can repeatedly regenerate from "death" and keep on coming back to torment your players. It could be that your zombies have no true weak spot and enough damage to any area of the body can "kill" them almost as if they were normal (but still incredibly tough and damage-resistant) people. The zombies of the Resident Evil games function this way.

Possibly the most dramatic way to functionally change zombies is to increase their intelligence or even give them the power of speech. It would be interesting to see if this technique could be used to good effect in a "serious" campaign, as its only real cinematic precedent is the decidedly tongue-in-cheek Return of the Living Dead films (the birthplace of "Braaaaaaaains...").

These are just a few possibilities. They sky's the limit when it comes to customizing your own undead hoards. Think outside the box. Just because you haven't seen it in a movie, that doesn't mean that it can't be done. In fact, the change that none of your players can predict is usually the best one of all. Be devious.

A fixture in many other settings that feature zombies is zombie animals. In these settings, the malignant force that gives life to the dead doesn't limit itself to reanimating humans. Capcom's popular Resident Evil video games are especially noteworthy in this respect, sporting vicious zombie dogs, crows, sharks, and others.

If you decide that you want to include zombie animals in your games, you have a few choices to make, but not a lot of real work to do.

First, you need to decide which creatures in your campaign are subject to reanimation. Are only mammals affected? Only vertebrates? Only a small, unrelated handful of species that strike your fancy? Perhaps all deceased creatures in the campaign world (which would lead to things getting very crowded very fast).

Next, define the role that zombie animals play in what passes for undead ecology. Do animal zombies prey only on their own in the same way human ones generally do, or is anything living fair game? Does a human bitten by a zombie animal sicken and die as normal, or does each species only "infect" its own?

Finally, you need appropriate game statistics for your new creations. Here, it's helpful to view the suite of standard zombie Powers detailed in Chapter II (Damage Reduction, Life Support, the various automaton abilities, etc) as a template of sorts and then just adapt it to your needs with a few simple tweaks.

An average zombie dog, for example, would probably have more DEX (possibly as high as 10 or 11), increased Running movement (6" or more total), Leaping movement (2"), less BODY (perhaps only 5-8), and a more powerful bite attack (perhaps RKA 1/2d6 with Reduced Penetration).

For a crow, increase DEX (to 14), add Flight movement (9" or so), drastically reduce STR, CON, and BODY (STR -20, CON 6, and 3 at most).

To make a large zombie shark, a very high STR, CON, and BODY are appropriate (likely all in the 20+ range), as well as an increased PRE (25 or more) to reflect the beast's huge and fearsome nature. Swimming movement (6") and a powerful bite attack (1d6 or more HKA) round things out.

Viola! A veritable menagerie of undead creatures at your fingertips!

Some survival horror outings also include monstrous creatures wholly unrelated to zombies. These can include anything from giant insects to rampaging dinosaurs to bloodthirsty clawed mutants. This is yet another area where the influence of the Resident Evil games is clear and undeniable.

A complete discussion of the various sundry terrors that can be incorporated into survival horror campaigns is beyond the scope of this document. Suffice to say, however, that anything goes. For this reason, the use of a non-zombie-exclusive setting is one of the best ways to adapt TotD for higher-powered Heroic level PCs. (see "Points" above).

There is one danger to this technique, however. Genre purists may resent the way that more exotic (and typically more deadly) monsters can sometimes seem to completely overshadow the zombies themselves, turning them into virtual guest stars on their own turf. If this isn't a problem for you and your group, though, go for it.

The world of the Living Dead films is a fine roleplaying setting, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. Your group might prefer something less grim, more cheesy, or just plain unusual. This section deals with a number of both common and extremely unorthodox variations on the classic theme.

When the dead start rising in the Living Dead films, it's assumed that it represents a global phenomenon that threatens the very survival of the human species. On the other hand, if you would prefer the "outbreak" of zombies in your game to be smaller in scope or more localized, that's fine, too.

In the videogame Resident Evil, for example, the zombie-generating T-virus outbreak is at first limited to a single secluded mansion in the woods, along with a small handful of attached structures. In the sequel, the horror is confined to a single city.

If you elect to go this route, however, you need to take extreme care in crafting a plausible explanation for why the PCs would travel to and remain in the area of a zombie infestation. Logically, most would simply avoid the area at all costs or, barring that, seek to escape it by the quickest and most direct route as soon as possible. Resident Evil solved this problem by making the monster-haunted woods outside the mansion even more dangerous than its interior. Resident Evil 2 made escaping the zombie-filled Raccoon City the focus of the entire game.

Consider well how you'll solve this problem in your own games. An insufficient answer can lead to PCs who'd rather sidestep the planned adventure entirely! Who could blame them? Would you willingly hang around with the homicidal undead?

The Living Dead films are set entirely in the United States of America. The nature of the zombie crisis, however, clearly implies that it is a worldwide condition. Setting your games in other places around the world can produce some interesting results that are similar enough to those in the films to feel "right", but still possess enough local flavor to keep things fresh.

For example, an adventure set in the Caribbean could provide an interesting blend of more traditional zombie folklore and the cannibalistic flesheaters of Romero's works.

A zombie tale set in the dark, frigid reachs of the poles has great potential for isolating the PCs from their fellow humans at the time of crisis. John Carpainter's remake of the horror classic The Thing is an excellent source of inspiration for Arctic survival horror.

Any location can work if you do your homework.

What if the zombie crisis was to occur at a point in human history other than the late 20th/early 21st century?

Your PCs could be stoic samurai or stealthy ninja during Japan's feudal period. How would these elite warriors cope with the unholy flesheating menace?

Wild West PCs could run afoul of a vengeful Native American shaman's curse, designed to punish perceived defilers of his tribe's sacred lands.

Turn-of-the-century adventurer PCs might encounter zombies in the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian London or the endless jungles of Darkest Africa.

Unfortunate World War II PCs could be unwitting guinea pigs in the field testing of Nazi scientists' and/or occultists' latest secret weapon: The living dead.

Clearly, any point in history becomes much more entertaining with the introduction of flesheating ghouls.

Of course, there's no reason you can't run zombie-based adventures on worlds other than our Earth.

Maybe you're interested in throwing a survival horror twist into the classic sword and sorcery fantasy campaign. The PCs could be the champions of a peaceful land when the spell of one of the king's vile enemies, a mighty necromancer, calls down a plague of undead on the unsuspecting countryside. Can the PCs locate and defeat the necromancer before his otherwise unstoppable army of ghouls reaches the capital?

Perhaps your players are intrepid space explorers sent to investigate the loss of all communications between Earth and a distant colony world. Once they arrive, they discover that a previously-unknown extraterrestrial virus (or parasite, psionic entity, etc) has transformed the hundreds of colony dome residents into bloodthirsty alien zombies. At that point, a little untimely starship engine trouble could leave them stranded there for an uncomfortably long time....

Let your imagination run wild. As long as your players are game, absolutely anything goes.

I hope you've enjoyed Twilight of the Dead. Started on a whim after a viewing of Elite Entertainment's excellent Millennium Edition DVD of Night, it soon came to devour (in true zombie fashion!) much more of my spare time than I had ever anticipated. Still, I think the end result is more than worth it for fans of the films and I hope you'll agree. Thanks for reading. I wish you all good gaming and may all your zombie bites fail to break the skin!

- William Mistretta, January 2003

These films, books, and games have fueled my own passion for zombie and post-apocalyptic horror through the years and are certain to do the same for you. Check them out if you haven't already. You won't regret it.

Hero Games is the online home of the HERO System, the critically-acclaimed roleplaying engine behind Twilight of the Dead.

Homepage of the Dead is a long-lived and exhaustive Living Dead fan resource.

To George A. Romero, for being the man behind the madness.

To George MacDonald, Wayne Shaw, Steve Peterson, Rob Bell, Steven S. Long and everyone else who helped to create and sustain the HERO System up to its current fifth incarnation.

To Ryan Graff, Ryan Youngblood, Keegan Lacy, Jake Geiger, and the rest of the Big Bear Crew for being a damn fine group of guys to discover the joys of roleplaying with.

To Libbie, for being my sunshine.

The work known as Twilight of the Dead is based primarily on the films of Mr. George A. Romero. Additionally, it uses rules drawn from the HERO System roleplaying game. The presence of this material should in no way be interpreted as a challenge to the trademarks or intellectual property rights of their respective owners.