To AoD fans - why aren't you looking forward to Dead State?

[JarlFrank]

So basically that's what's wrong with zombies. Not the zombies themselves, but everything else about the setting that just doesn't lend itself well to adventure-type of stories one is looking for fantasy movies and games.

Not really, some of your ideas in this post sound pretty cool. I'd like to play a post apoc game set during the apocalypse! I do like modern urban settings (I love urban fantasy, modern espionage or crime thriller stories, gangster movies, etc... a modern setting with magic, something like VtM:B would be great, or something like GTA as an RPG where you play a gangster, no fantasy elements needed). Heck, I would even be interested if you merely replaced the zombies in a zombie apoc game with aliens that invade.

I just have 0 interest in the zombie genre, the zombie creatures themselves, the storylines revolving around them, the specific drama associated with them (OH NO MY GIRLFRIEND GOT BITTEN BY A ZOMBIE I MUST KILL HER OR SHE TURNS INTO A MONSTER BUT I CANT; OH SHIT A ZOMBIE ATTACKS OH FUCK ITS MY DAD NOOOOO I HAVE TO SHOOT MY DAD IN THE FACE etc), the boring genericness of it all, and the low variety of zombies as either enemies or environmental hazard (it's hordes of zombies, they attack when they notice you; that's it. Post-apoc can have radiation zones, alien invasion can have alien patrols actively searching for survivors trying to kill them, etc; zombie setting has.... zombies, yaaaaaaaaaawn).

There is nothing about the zombie setting that could not be improved by merely replacing zombies with something else, even if you keep everything else the same.

 

[buzz]

JarlFrank, no, you see, even when you take those ideas, you're still applying speculative overflow into them. Modern setting with MAGIC, modern setting with GANGSTERS and so on. You're still not taking the basic backdrop of a zombie movie: Normal person finds himself in the middle of a suburban environment fighting a fairly dangerous yet predictable force of nature, tries to scavenge and survive then finds himself in conflict with other survivors.
My point is, you're making the setting inherently more interesting by adding more to it: magical creatures, crime mysteries, different cultural viewpoints (the life of crime) and so on. And that shit makes anything interesting whether or not there are zombies in it.
The thing with zombie fiction is that it almost ALWAYS follows that pattern, very rarely straying away from that. The inherent drama and storylines, like you said - those are the shit that remains stagnant.
Just like fantasy can be boring shit if it's about saving the world from evil dude, or can be very interesting if it involves other things like investigations, conspiracies, hard and questionable decisions to make and so on.

Point is, I want to see more on the backdrop of a zombie world apart from that specific drama and the quest for survival. World War Z for example is an interesting book because it tackles the zombie problem from a global, political perspective. Not a bunch of dudes in the concrete jungle, but political leaders and the military fighting each-other and trying to resolve this giant problem.
Or here other examples:
- mafia drama in a post-zombie apocalypse. Think New Reno in a zombie setting. The families trying to establish their businesses back in a world filled with crapola. Obligatory scene where they dispose of bodies by giving it to a horde.
- crime mystery where a serial killer takes advantage of the disorder to rape and kill various people; cops still trying to sort shit out
- a story where several zombies retain their intelligence and they have to survive human exterminators, maybe control zombies to fight back
- typical survival story turns into zombie urban fantasy where people find out about secret societies of voodoo practitioners using their powers to raise the dead as well as other ritualistic things
- alternatively, people discover that the zombie plague was created by aliens to ease their way into exterminating the planet
- fuck, even a zombie story in a different setting (medieval, futuristic, western) can be cool. Think what Arcanum and Shadowrun did to fantasy by mixing it with another fictive setting.
- a story where the zombie threat is easily dispatched but now scientists are doing experiments regarding making humans immortal
- a romeo and juliet type of story between a zombie and a human

I'm not the most creative type, so I'm sure plenty of great ideas can be made if people try. Zombies are just another creep, like wolves or bandits or dragons in whatever fantasy story you enjoy.

 

[poetic codex]

I think zombies are the monsters for people who are not really into monsters. Kind of like how Game of thrones' low fantasy political intrigue setting is for people who aren't really into fantasy. The same crowd who enjoys "the walking dead" and "game of thrones" on tv, might not enjoy Lovecraft's extra-dimensional monster mythos or the Silmarillion.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

JarlFrank- a romeo and juliet type of story between a zombie and a human

[src]
Also, many of your listed ideas were already done in both books and movies, though, admittedly, not in games.

As for me, I just want a Deadlands CRPG.

 

[Excidium]

Deadlands is sweet

 

[Commissar Draco]

AoD has Grim Snark post Apocalyptic Steam Magic Romans while Dead State has Zombies which Commissar has misfortune to deal with on everyday basis; Plus Comrade VD is BRO and Mitsodas deserted the Codex; should Commissar add more?

Even the Refugium was chosen to be most ; you think someone would choose fortified structure like Police Dept, Old Church, Castle or Mall for all the loot included? No let's bunker down in School which is indefensible and acts like giant magnet for Zombies. (all the sweet babymeat and brainz! inside)

 

[buzz]

Stainless Veteran I knew about Warm Bodies, mentioned it in my previous post (the Twilight ripoff). As for the other kind of stories, I'm sure someone did something like this at some point, but it's most likely not a very known and popular movie/book and like you said, certainly not a game. The main meat of zombie stuff is still about "surviving da zombii horde"

 

[SoupNazi]

Oh, I know what turns me off Dead State - the suburban setting. Classic american suburb with those little houses and white picket fences and everything. Why not do something interesting, like a city or better, Canadian countryside, or maybe something European with castle ruins (think DayZ) etc. I hated the episodes of Walking Dead that dealt with staying in the suburbs, it's just such a boring setting.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Stainless Veteran I knew about Warm Bodies, mentioned it in my previous post (the Twilight ripoff). As for the other kind of stories, I'm sure someone did something like this at some point, but it's most likely not a very known and popular movie/book and like you said, certainly not a game. The main meat of zombie stuff is still about "surviving da zombii horde"

Yeah, well, if only Warm Bodies was a singular thing, lol.

Spoiler

What's sexy about zombies? 51 authors answered that question with wild, weird, and titillating tales. From love during the apocalypse, to love that goes beyond the grave and back again, to love that well, never dies, you'll find these pages filled with desires demanding to be fufilled, hungers to be slaked, and lovers who won't let a little thing like death (or undeath) come between them. Do zombies need sex as much as they need brains? What would you do to bring a lover back from the dead? What if you survived the apocalypse only to find yourself alone and sexually frustrated?

Light some candles, put on some mood music, and cozy up with 50 Shades of Decay. The zombie sexpocalypse has begun...

Romance ain't dead...it's undead. In this thrilling zombie anthology, horror fans will finally get their fill of zombie-on-zombie action, zombie-human love, and zombie smut. Because why should vampires have all the fun?

This collection of never-before-published short stories includes:

--"Revanants Anonymous" by Francesca Lia Block: two zombies meet at a Revanants Anonymous meeting and when sparks fly they wonder how "dead" they really are

--"I Heart Brains" by Jaime Saare: a widow and a dead man get a second chance at love

--"Captive Hearts" by Brian Keene: zombie plagues can't stop a woman from caring for the man she loves

--"Everyone I Love is Dead" by Elizabeth Coldwell: what happens when your true love comes back from the dead--after you've already moved on with a new man?

--"Last Times at Ridgemont High" by Kilt Kilpatrick: an electrifying zombie romp

--and many more!

Zombies Ahead? Well, these zombies give head to survive. Club Zombie is a safe place for new zombies to transition and it provides a sexy environment for them to seek a mate while extracting from patrons the "male essence" that keeps the boys eternally hot.

New zombie Kai Bauer won't turn into a rotting, brain-devouring monster, but that's not much comfort when he discovers unmated zombies lose their ability to orgasm. He doesn’t know how he'll bring himself to ingest medicine, let alone take a male mate…until he moves in with Jasper, a hot ex-priest who makes Kai crave just that.

Jay didn't expect to be one of the very few survivors of the virus that decimated the country, leaving shambling, ravenous zombies behind. Fighting for his life amongst the dead, he keeps moving until the day he's surrounded and facing his bloody end-and shockingly, another zombie saves him. But not just any zombie... it's Dave, the first man Jay ever loved, and there's something special about him even now, in the midst of the horror around them.

Caring, professional SWGZ seeks open-minded SGM for dating and possible LTR...

Since his death two years ago, zombie Peter Reese's love life has been nonexistent. His attempts to meet a regular "live" guy through a blind dating website—without revealing an important detail about himself—have all blown up in his face. Now, his current blind date with "Shane1990" seems destined to end the same way, until the handsome guy inexplicably decides to give Peter another chance.

Can Peter prove that nice zombies don't always finish last?

When Darren meets concert cellist, Jude, he’s enraptured. Having gone as long as he has without sex, Jude is not only the passionate lover he’s ever experienced, but he has an unusual side-effect to his sleeping disorder. Jude rarely sleeps and has a raging libido and a cock that won’t quit. Normally that would be a good thing, but there are some strange things going on with moody, secretive Jude. His teeth and hair seem to be falling out. He also bleeds sometimes. Devastated, Darren consults his writing partner, Titch, and his agent, Suzanne. They ponder the problem. Is it Viagra? Or is it crack or some other illicit drug? Jude is offended. It’s a family problem, he assures Darren. His mom has it, so does his dad sometimes. Darren wants to believe him and tries not to stress. What kind of family problem does he have? HIV? Hepatitis? Leprosy? He becomes increasingly worried when Jude refuses to eat or drink and often disappears. Soon, Titch tells Darren he, too, is pretty ripe. With a huge TV deal pending for a reality show, With This Ring, Darren needs to decide just how far he is willing to go for love, a hit TV show and for a wedding ring?

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:incloosive:

 

[buzz]

I was talking about the other ideas.
Why the fuck did I open that spoiler?

 

[JarlFrank]

buzz and what about normal people trying to survive a hostile alien invasion? Or something like Terminator, where AI controlled machines are trying to kill humanity, especially with high tech human-lookalike cyborgs. Imagine the tension possible when everyone suspects a newcomer to be a possible cyborg spy! Kinda like the "who is a Cylon?" paranoia in the Battlestar Galactica series.

Any of these would be more interesting than zombies. As I said in my last post, just take the same idea but replace zombies with something less boring and BANG you got a game that's 100 times more interesting than anything with zombies!

In my opinion, a zombie setting is just inherently inferior to any and all possible alternatives, of which there are many. Common people trying to survive an orc assault in a fantasy setting? Yeah! Common people trying to survive alien invasion/AI robot wars? Yeah! Common people trying to survive in a hostile alien environment cause their tourist spaceship crashlanded on a weird planet? FUCK YEAH! Common people at the WW2 Eastern Front trying to survive between battles taking place and either nazi or commie troops wanting to exterminate them for some reason (filthy bolshevik/traitor to the motherland)? OH GOD YES!

Anything is better than fucking shitty boring zombies, and there are other things that can provide appropriate tension among a group of survivors other than "he might have been bitten by a zombie!". "He might be a cyborg" or "he might be a soviet commissar who infiltrated us" is way more interesting than anything a zombie a zombie setting could provide. Even if you want to stay within a modern urban or suburban setting, replacing zombies with aliens or cyborgs who can actually make plans and become a real danger to the player's group would make it a lot better and a lot more dangerous as you'd have to be extra careful in your choice of allies and must practice secrecy - if the enemy finds out where your shelter is, they may actually plan an organized offensive.
Heck, or even just replace zombies with some nuclear attack shit that irradiated some areas and made some people into mutants. The mutants could be very varied in type (think STALKER) rather than the boring zombies which are just dumb undead humans that are either slow and hardy or quick and strong, but that's it. It would also add irradiated areas as another environmental factor that needs to be considered.

ANYTHING is more interesting than zombies, there is an inherent boringness in zombies no matter how they are used.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Invasion from Warp Hell and Mass Demonic Possessions; you have to be vigilant on your Comrades and preserve the purity of your own soul too.

 

[Grunker]

Warm Bodies is not a Twilight rip-off. It's a self aware comedy satiring boring teenage chick flicks like Twilight.

 

[Azrael the cat]

buzz and what about normal people trying to survive a hostile alien invasion? Or something like Terminator, where AI controlled machines are trying to kill humanity, especially with high tech human-lookalike cyborgs. Imagine the tension possible when everyone suspects a newcomer to be a possible cyborg spy! Kinda like the "who is a Cylon?" paranoia in the Battlestar Galactica series.

Any of these would be more interesting than zombies. As I said in my last post, just take the same idea but replace zombies with something less boring and BANG you got a game that's 100 times more interesting than anything with zombies!

In my opinion, a zombie setting is just inherently inferior to any and all possible alternatives, of which there are many. Common people trying to survive an orc assault in a fantasy setting? Yeah! Common people trying to survive alien invasion/AI robot wars? Yeah! Common people trying to survive in a hostile alien environment cause their tourist spaceship crashlanded on a weird planet? FUCK YEAH! Common people at the WW2 Eastern Front trying to survive between battles taking place and either nazi or commie troops wanting to exterminate them for some reason (filthy bolshevik/traitor to the motherland)? OH GOD YES!

Anything is better than fucking shitty boring zombies, and there are other things that can provide appropriate tension among a group of survivors other than "he might have been bitten by a zombie!". "He might be a cyborg" or "he might be a soviet commissar who infiltrated us" is way more interesting than anything a zombie a zombie setting could provide. Even if you want to stay within a modern urban or suburban setting, replacing zombies with aliens or cyborgs who can actually make plans and become a real danger to the player's group would make it a lot better and a lot more dangerous as you'd have to be extra careful in your choice of allies and must practice secrecy - if the enemy finds out where your shelter is, they may actually plan an organized offensive.
Heck, or even just replace zombies with some nuclear attack shit that irradiated some areas and made some people into mutants. The mutants could be very varied in type (think STALKER) rather than the boring zombies which are just dumb undead humans that are either slow and hardy or quick and strong, but that's it. It would also add irradiated areas as another environmental factor that needs to be considered.

ANYTHING is more interesting than zombies, there is an inherent boringness in zombies no matter how they are used.

That's just a problem of zombies becoming the go to genre for b-grade monster film hacks, who inevitably try to copy the 1st couple of Romero films, without any of the films' depth or thematic exploration of consumerism. But the examples you give have far less scope for interesting storytelling - an orc/AI/alien invasion simply means that the only story available is about people fighting the orcs/AI/aliens. Zombie films tend to work when the zombies aren't much of a direct threat - i.e. when they're the straw that tips civilisation over the edge. To copy and paste an example from another thread, take the story in Land of the Dead:
- petty dictator reneges on deal with city's artillery team, team threatens to shell the city if dictator doesn't resign, dictator orders the previous leader of the team to put together a crew and take them out, two likeable and sympathetic crews in conflict - with zombie post-apocopalypse as the setting, i.e. 'stories in the zombie apocapylpse' instead of 'stories about the zombie apocalypse'

It's hard to see how you could have room for that kind of story in an 'oh no orcs/monsters/aliens are invading!!' setting.

Even though Land isn't as good as the 1st 2 films the series, it's a good illustration that there's plenty of room left in the concept so long as everyone doesn't keep making each film about the start of the outbreak. One of the neat things with Land is that (being a century or so after the dead rise), the main characters are no longer treating zombies as some ultra-scary threat. When a character gets bitten, nobody does the whole 'oh noes, he'll turn into a zombie - we have to kill him' schtick. Instead he says 'nah, don't bother with the bullet - I think I'll give the zombie thing a go; see how the other half lives', and it's treated as though this is a common enough occurrence to not be shocking.

There's also a lot more scope for what the zombies are, compared to how most modern films present it. Going back to Romero again, the zombies in that series aren't actually mindless - it's more that they're stripped back to the basics of human nature, while retaining aspects of their core memories. They crowd around the shopping mall in Dawn, not because there's survivors in there (unlike the remake), but because the mall was central to their lives. In Day of the Dead, you have people training the zombies by using Pavlovian conditioning, creating 'tame' zombie soldiers. In Land, the zombies have developed nascent intelligence, with some learning to use tools and weapons - it's also heavily suggested that the zombies wouldn't even bother attacking the city if they weren't being constantly provoked by armed incursions from the humans (the petty dictator in the film maintains his power by exaggerating the threat the zombies pose).

I think a lot of the desire for more zombie films/game is actually because the idea has been done so badly. Even TWD botched it - it made sense to do the whole 'oh no zombies AARRGGGHH!!!' story for the 1st couple of seasons, seeing as it's set at the start of the outbreak, but that's been done to death. With an ongoing tv series, they needed to move past that, to what happens when people adjust to the new world and start rebuilding.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Azrael the cat rises good points. As for me, well, I don't really care about the setting. Sure, some settings are so well done that they elevate all other game elements. But even the most banal shit boring setting - i.e. office, school life, etc, can be done quite good even without fantastical elements, and even more so with their (tastefully done) inclusion. For me a good RPG needs to have (in an order of importance):

• complex and layered characters;.

• interesting and non-linear main story;

• intricate, non-boring and non-grindy quests (preferably which can be done by multiple means);

• either polished or unorthodox (in a good way) gaming mechanics (or a combination thereof) — concerning world interaction, combat, dialogue etc;

• fun and challenging combat;

• interesting and/or original setting.

So if some game would score top marks in at least three first requirements, then I don't really care if the game's setting is a Japanese school, or is about USA space marines and alien invasion, or whatever else oversaturated trendy shit.
And, conversely, even most original setting won't save the game for me if the characters in it are cardboard cutouts, main story isn't interesting or relatable, and game's generally boring. I have such problem with earlier sci-fi authors, for example - wonderful ideas, fantastic worlds - but often one dimensional and unrepeatable characters and plot is built upon some tech idea, which fascinated the author, and he couldn't have care less about any other story elements.

 

[Morkar Left]

buzz and what about normal people trying to survive a hostile alien invasion? Or something like Terminator, where AI controlled machines are trying to kill humanity, especially with high tech human-lookalike cyborgs.

Because when it's a postapoc setting it means the aliens / ai have already overrun all human resistance and everything is just a lukewarm aftermath how long the small remaining humans can survive and not IF they can survive. Completely different genre. Zombies are manageable once you get accustomed to the new rules of life, where as this aliens / ai are clearly superior to humans and already proved it. The zombie genre orks when it's not about zombies but about survival and new upcoming morale values of humans living in the postapoc.
The horror element of zombies works only in the first hours / days of a zombieapocalypse when nobobdy knows what's going on and complete chaos ensues and everybody can be infected and indeed nearly everybody is. After that the pestilence rotting corpses bring in is way more dangerous than the attacking zombie.

 

[Zed]

VD at least is a good salesman and can encourage interest in his product.

to be fair, it's not hard to sell a game to people who want to be treated like shit.
"you WILL suffer, you MUST learn"
"yes! yes! more!"

 

[Morality Games]

According to the current poll, over half the the Codex is looking forward to Age of Decadence, but less than a third cares about Dead State, even though they share much of the same team and tech and are both Early Access. Rather than speculate, I started a poll.

I'm sure this feedback will help the devs too. You're welcome.

10+ years of Codex targeted marketing versus 2-3? For that matter, 10+ years of game development versus 2-3.

 

[Azrael the cat]

- a romeo and juliet type of story between a zombie and a human

There was a movie in the early 90s that did that (forgot the name). It was b-grade, with cheap actors and schlocky dialogue, but the zombie-human love story aspect was done really well (or so my younger self thought at the time).

Basically this girl gets kidnapped at the start, and exposed by a black ops researchers to a zombie-creating chemical, as part of a super-soldier project (the zombies are near-immortal save through dismemberment, even headshots won't drop them). Her boyfriend breaks her out, and they go on the run, hunted by some gang members as well as the black ops guys and their zombie minions.

From memory the films goes heavily into fetish territory, but in a relatively stylish way. As one would expect, the girl spends the film growing increasingly carnivorous, but (and here's the fetish part) physical pain - cutting, piercing, etc - temporarily dulls the urge to feed. It steers heavily into goth/body-piercing/punk counterculture territory - sort of like a zombie Barbarella - as she goes increasingly goth with more and more metal and glass piercings as the film goes on.

Needless to say, as a teenage goth, heavily into bodypiercing myself at the time, I was able to look past the film's shortcomings

 

[Wintermute]

Return of the Living Dead III ?

 

[Azrael the cat]

Return of the Living Dead III ?

Could be - it was over 20 years ago, and I watched a ton of b-grade horror around that time (that's the problem with Romero - he fools you into thinking that there must be other great films hiding under b-grade trappings, and you end up watching a whole lot of shitty film before you realise it was an outlier).

 

[Konjad]

anything with zombies puts me off and even if the game turns out to be great, i wouldn't enjoy it much because of the setting.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

I'll agree it's not the best setting. It doesn't exactly stretch anyone's creative ability, but I'll play it if it's good. I care more about strong systems and gameplay - setting doesn't do a whole lot to me as far as interesting me in a game.

 

[Deakul]

because my father touched me inappropriately as a child

 

[Borelli]

I am very looking forward to Dead State. Zombies in videogames have been used far too much as cheap action fodder instead of an apocalypse/survival scenario.
We finally getting a zombie game that deals with interparty management and with actual survival concerns makes me interested in how this will turn out.

 

[Konjad]

I'll agree it's not the best setting. It doesn't exactly stretch anyone's creative ability, but I'll play it if it's good. I care more about strong systems and gameplay - setting doesn't do a whole lot to me as far as interesting me in a game.

Oh, don't get me wrong. When the game is released I'm 90% sure I'll buy it and play it (that 10% is reserved for a possibility pf codex forum posts and reviews that the game is crap), it won't be a D1P though. I'm also just not interested in the development of a game that has zombies in it. When it's out, I'll give it a try, although I won't be expecting much, but before release I do not care whatever happens with this game.

 

[Western]

buzz and what about normal people trying to survive a hostile alien invasion? Or something like Terminator, where AI controlled machines are trying to kill humanity, especially with high tech human-lookalike cyborgs. Imagine the tension possible when everyone suspects a newcomer to be a possible cyborg spy! Kinda like the "who is a Cylon?" paranoia in the Battlestar Galactica series.

Any of these would be more interesting than zombies. As I said in my last post, just take the same idea but replace zombies with something less boring and BANG you got a game that's 100 times more interesting than anything with zombies!

In my opinion, a zombie setting is just inherently inferior to any and all possible alternatives, of which there are many. Common people trying to survive an orc assault in a fantasy setting? Yeah! Common people trying to survive alien invasion/AI robot wars? Yeah! Common people trying to survive in a hostile alien environment cause their tourist spaceship crashlanded on a weird planet? FUCK YEAH! Common people at the WW2 Eastern Front trying to survive between battles taking place and either nazi or commie troops wanting to exterminate them for some reason (filthy bolshevik/traitor to the motherland)? OH GOD YES!

Anything is better than fucking shitty boring zombies, and there are other things that can provide appropriate tension among a group of survivors other than "he might have been bitten by a zombie!". "He might be a cyborg" or "he might be a soviet commissar who infiltrated us" is way more interesting than anything a zombie a zombie setting could provide. Even if you want to stay within a modern urban or suburban setting, replacing zombies with aliens or cyborgs who can actually make plans and become a real danger to the player's group would make it a lot better and a lot more dangerous as you'd have to be extra careful in your choice of allies and must practice secrecy - if the enemy finds out where your shelter is, they may actually plan an organized offensive.
Heck, or even just replace zombies with some nuclear attack shit that irradiated some areas and made some people into mutants. The mutants could be very varied in type (think STALKER) rather than the boring zombies which are just dumb undead humans that are either slow and hardy or quick and strong, but that's it. It would also add irradiated areas as another environmental factor that needs to be considered.

ANYTHING is more interesting than zombies, there is an inherent boringness in zombies no matter how they are used.

I thought 'Cemetary man' was interesting even though it has zombies, but they were very divorced from the Hollywood trope so that's probably why it was interesting. It's a different medium (cinema), but I think it's worth a look to see a take giving zombies some new life.