The Zombie Plan

In The Zombie Plan, you play normal people dealing with a zombie attack. After the first turn, the group will have found shelter from the zombies – and one of you will be dead.

Death means you keep playing – only now you’re a zombie and your goal is to turn everyone else into zombies while the survivors try to kill you.

It’s based on the Romero rules of zombies: If you die (in any way), you’ll turn into a zombie. If you’re bitten, you’ll turn into one. If you’re bitten and die, you’ll turn into one that much faster. Your characters don’t know any of this at the start of the game.

All you need to decide before the game starts is whether the zombies are fast or slow.

The game’s set wherever you’re playing the game – and whatever you can see around you right now is allowed to be described as being in the game.

Your character has the same first name as you. Your character’s occupation is something that you have done at some point in your life. Aside from that, your character doesn’t need to have any similarities to you at all. You don’t need to tell any of the other players this information until it comes up in the game.

With rules for betrayal, solo heroics, and player vs. player conflict, The Zombie Plan is a 3 page RPG designed to played wherever you are with just the coins in your pockets.

Describing what happens

The game?s set wherever we?re playing the game – and whatever you can see around you right now is allowed to be described as being in the game. Choose the player to start describing things.

Women go before men, characters with more Life goes before ones with less. If there?s a tie, the younger person goes first. Starting player, take hold of that “Ball”. You explain why your character is here, describe the arrival of the first zombie(s) and describes how you react to that. Then flip all of your Life coins, and pass the Ball (and the turn) to the person on your left.

NB: For this first phase, every time the Ball passes hands, the person who was just speaking flips all their Life coins.

Next player, describe how your character reacts to the situation and then pass their turn to the person on your left – unless… … Other players, at any time you can point your finger at the talking player, and take the Ball (and the right to speak) from them. Just remember that everyone has to have a turn in this first phase before you can have a second go.

Once everyone?s flipped all their coins, look at who has Heads on the coin with the highest value. They become the first zombie. If there?s a tie, only the tying players keep narrating (and flipping their coins at the end of their narration) until one player is left.

NB: All that coin flipping was just for this set-up phase. You won?t need to do that again as you keep on describing stuff.

“Let it ride”: The key to this is that everyone?s got to abide by the stuff people have previously described. If the place you?re sheltering in has been completely cleared of zombies, for instance, then no-one should narrate a zombie ‘just happening’ to pop up to bite someone inside the shelter. What?s done is done.

Download

• The_Zombie_Plan.pdf

Tags: Steve Hickey

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Free RPGs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.