Z is for Zombie - "Send... more... paramedics."

I tried to pick another topic for z. I really did. However the more I thought about it and looked around and my options, zombies just seemed to be the way to go. Much like vampires in recent years, zombies have been done to (un)death. Sorry I love my bad puns. 

In no particular order, my top five favorite zombie/zombie-esque flicks are Return of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Zombi 2 (known as Zombie in the US), Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (don't judge it's actually an interesting story), and Re-Animator. Evil Dead gets an honorable mention, but I don't consider Deadites zombies (though I did use World of Darkness: Antagonist's zombie rules when statting out my deadites). I'm a fan of zombie fiction too. Max Brook's zombie books are phenomenal. The early Marvel Zombies comics are good as is The Walking Dead. The early Resident Evil games and Left 4 Dead are my favorite zombie video games, although Tell-Tale's story based Walking Dead game is good too (and please don't confuse it with the dreadful first person shooter released a month or two ago).

Honestly if you want to run a zombie table top game I have to recommend Eden Studios' All Flesh Must Be Eaten.  It's a great game with excellent genre emulation rules alone. However, it also has kickass zombie rules, settings, and fiction too! I've made a few All Flesh posts in the past myself.

Despite All Flesh being designed specifically for zombie crunchiness, that doesn't mean that zombies don't have a place in the World of Darkness. As I mentioned earlier in this post, World of Darkness: Antagonists has zombie creation rules. They aren't as extensive as All Flesh's but they do the job. They even use the same principle. You have a "base" zombie template.  The book then gives you Zombie Aspects, which are positive abilities and things to give your undead minions. These attributes cost points and theirs a handy chart that lists how much many creation points a zombie should have (based on challenge). Finally you are given a short list of Zombie Weaknesses.

In addition to the creation rules, the book also has two sample zombies.

The first is the Voodoo Zombie. If you're familiar with classic voodoo zombie myths, then you know what you're dealing with here. The other sample zombie mentioned is the Chalice-Born. These zombies are tied to an unholy grail, the Chalice of Arista. The undead seek to steal the flesh of others (by biting living things) to spit into the chalice. If the chalice has been filled six times within six days the dark mage Arista will be resurrected. Both zombies are cool and would make great additions to a game.