Zombie Options for ttRPGS Using Tactical Maps (Patreon)

I've been thinking about horror-movie-zombies and F20 games 9and to some extent all games that are generally played with exact-positioning tactical maps and miniatures). I don't think the slow horror-movie zombies work best as individually tracked monsters. Segmented movement gets too wonky, and players get too hung up on staying out of reach where a zombie is NOW, and delaying character's actions to all move in a clump.

I DO think they'd work as a kind of terrain. You'd define a zombie-strewn area as having Light Zombies, Moderate Zombies, or Heavy Zombies. There'd be skill checks and/or saving throws to avoid being grabbed or (much worse) bitten. Attacks against a zombie-strewn zone could give temporary bonuses to save DCs, or area attacks might lower an area by a step (from Medium zombies to Light). Medium zombies might be difficult terrain, but Light zombies aren't.

You might even just allow attacks against zombies as player-made reactions (or attacks of opportunity, or whatever act-in-response rule makes sense in that game system) that negate a zombie grapple attempt. That parses well with the run-run-run-shoot-one-zombie-run-run scenes common in zombie stories. And if players have loud attacks, they might be risking increased zombie presence in the long run (along with more difficult DCs to avoid being grabbed) in return for negating immediate attacks right now. Each zone of zombie terrain might have a grapple check that increases each round, as more zombies grab you. That gives us the heroes pulling away if they manage to get free of one zombie, but being dragged to the ground if they stick around for a few rounds.

Combined with some other clear goal (leave the city, get supplies to an outpost, scout on an enemy fortress with zombies outside of it), this also removes the focus on killing zombies. They aren't tokens on a map, they are a field of threat, dense enough (even at the "light zombies" stage) destroying one, or two, or five doesn't make a difference in the long run.

(Yep, letting the fence go down could be a baaaaaad idea. Illo by PT88)

This mechanic also allows a GM to add things to give players concerns and interesting choices. If characters must succeed at some king of notice or perception mechanic to accurately read how dense a zombie zone is, and those rolls are made in secret by the GM, players may be warier or a street with lots of ruble and cars because while they don't SEE a lot of zombies, the walking dead might all just be dormant and behind cover. A fence might separate a light zombie zone from a heavy zombie zone... but once the heavy zombie zone sees the PCs, it tries to take down the fence, and the PCs don't know how long it will hold. The heavy zombie zone behind a fence might also be a really short route, while running through the light zombie zone takes much longer, but is safer at any given moment.

And of course if you want "special" zombies, as are common in a lot of video games, those could be run as normal individual figures who just ignore zombie terrain.