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Greatest Hits 2013: Zombies: Breathing Life into an Overused Undead

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2013. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

This article was the final entry of our A to Z Blogger Challenge in April and it’s the final entry of our 2013 Greatest Hits. Nothing says “The End” like Zombies.

Zombies are still some of the most popular creatures in pop culture and mass media entertainment. The Walking Dead – both the TV show on AMC and the comic book – are still going strong and generating huge dollars. The Zombie obsession phenomenon seems to be as difficult to kill as actual Zombies.

In D&D Zombies are good monsters to throw at unsuspecting PCs regardless of their level. Zombies can be level 1 minions or epic level marauders. The beauty of Zombies is that they’re such a straight forward archetype. The problem is that they get repetitive and boring, hence the purpose of the original article.

Since writing this article I’ve tried to come up with new ways to make Zombies fresh and original and I’ve struggled. There seems to be only so much you can do with them before they stop being Zombies and start being something else. So if you find that you’ve hit that rut in your game my advice is to focus on making them scary. Don’t worry so much about the mechanics; try to make an impression on the players.

In a recent 4e game I used a bunch of Zombie minions. They fell easily enough with a single hit. However, on the Zombie’s next turn a roll of 16-20 on a d20 meant the Zombie got back up. This is a standard 4e mechanic. My tweak was to forego the first roll and have ALL the Zombies get back up the first time. They then rolled the 16-20 to see if they’d get up a second time.

The players, most of whom had faced Zombies before, were not expecting this and it made the encounter a lot scarier. Where they’d originally been content to fight, they were now seriously contemplating if they should run. A simple adjustment made a huge impact on the encounter. So if you want to use Zombies in your game and you feel they’ve become tiresome, try making small adjustments to increase the fear factor.

From April 30, 2013, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Zombies: Breathing Life into an Overused Undead.

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Greatest Hits 2012: Undead of Different Races

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2012. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

Many years ago my home group played an extended campaign in the Ravenloft setting. In this setting each country (or Domain as they’re called in Ravenloft) is ruled by a Lord. The overwhelming majority of these Lords are undead and exceptionally evil. Any campaign that takes place in Ravenloft is going to be filled with every kind of undead imaginable. Most Lords have undead armies at their disposal so Skeletons, Zombies and Vampire Spawn are the typical foot soldiers that PCs will engage, at least initially.

As much as we loved playing in Ravenloft we eventually just got sick of fighting undead. So when we finally escaped from the horrific setting and returned to the Forgotten Realms we decided as a group that none of the DMs would use undead for a long time to come. For years following our Ravenloft expedition our party never ran into a single undead opponent – which we were ok with.

Looking back on our decision to ban undead from the game I realize that it wasn’t so much undead that we were sick of but the plainness of the undead we fought most often. The only variation between the Skeletons was the weapon in their hand. Even though each new Monster Manual presented us with plenty of new undead creatures, none were really that different than what we’d seen before.

I suspect there are other DMs and gaming groups that have gone through undead fatigue much like my group did, and I’ll bet that in many cases it was the lack of variation that led to the problem. Before taking an extreme measure like we did all those years ago, take steps to make your undead more interesting. You don’t necessarily have to give them new powers (although that is certainly an option); you just have to make them interesting. By describing a detail as simple as their original race you can add life back into your undead, so to speak. And if you feel that giving them access to their racial power that’s certainly a way to make even the most boring and predictable undead foe something to fear again.

From October 15, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Undead of Different Races.

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5 Ways to Make Mindless Undead More Interesting

A lot of DMs have a love/hate relationship with undead; I know I do. Whenever I need a monster to round out an encounter I know that some kind of undead will always fill the gap. With so many different kinds of undead to choose from they can easily become the go-to monsters. However, as the party gets tougher I find that I’m less likely to use undead staples like skeletons and zombies. Sure I can adjust their scores to make them level-appropriate for tougher parties but these undead are really one-trick ponies. By the time the party reaches upper heroic tier they know the trick and they’re no longer impressed.

This is why I try to limit how often I use undead creatures in my campaign. Some of the most common undead, at least the ones you’re most likely to encounter in great numbers (skeletons and zombies) tend to be mindless. They rely on their overwhelming numbers rather than any advanced tactics. After all, how can a creature with no brain, or a rotten decaying brain, think at all? This lack of reason makes them boring and predictable.

But undead have their place in D&D and we shouldn’t just cast any of them aside, regardless of the PCs’ level. So in order to make mindless undead more interesting I’ve come up with 5 tips that the players won’t see coming and the PCs will never forget.

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Undead of Different Races

When the DM describes zombies, skeletons or any other undead that attacks the party, how often does he mention what race the creature was in life? How often do you even think to ask?

As a player when I hear “skeleton” I always assume it’s a Human skeleton. I never ask if it was originally any other race. The same goes for zombies, mummies, and ghouls. I always just assume that it was human and now it’s undead. Even the description in the Monster Manual and online compendium just classifies these monsters as medium undead. But in a fantasy setting there’s no reason to assume that every undead you face was once Human. With so many other races represented in the world why wouldn’t some undead creatures have once been a race other than Human?

This might seem like a really small detail, but it can really change the way an encounter plays out. Not to mention it can drastically change the mood of the encounter. Think about it, how much more terrifying would a skeletal army be if they were once Minotaurs? What about a zombie horde full of animated Dragonborn corpses? What about Halfling mummies? Or Pixie ghouls? It only takes the DM a few minutes to identify what race the creature was before it became undead yet it can drastically alter how the players perceive the encounter. Where they might rush haphazardly into a group of “normal” skeletons, they may now rethink their tactic once they realize that these undead are special.

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7 Tips For Running an All-Zombie Campaign

With the season two premier of AMC’s Walking Dead airing yesterday, zombies are again the flavour of the month, especially with fantasy gamers. If you’re like me then every time you watch Walking Dead, or any other zombie move, you start thinking about running a zombie apocalypse campaign in D&D.

I’ve given considerable thought over the years on the best way to run a game where all the monsters were zombies. It’s tough if you’re as deeply engrained in D&D as I am. After all, one of the great things about D&D is that there are a wide variety of monsters. One week you might fight trolls, the next week a beholder, and the week after that zombies and the next week a dragon. Between the wide variety of creatures available in the Monster Manuals and the relative easy of creating your own creatures with Monster Builder, it seems kind of ridiculous to even want to create a camping where you battle the same creatures again and again.

But if there’s one thing the zombie genre has taught me it’s that a campaign with only one monster type can be very exciting if you play your cards right. Today I’m going to share 7 tips for how to pull off a successful zombie campaign in the world of 4e D&D.

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Undead Make the Scariest Villains

Would you rather fight a beholder or a zombie? This is a much more complicated question than you might realize. Look at this through the eyes of your character and not through the eyes of a meta-gamer. In-character what is the scariest monster you can imagine? For me it’s undead more than any other.

Most monsters are, well, monstrous. They are clearly different than you and they must be destroyed. The beholder is an abomination. It’s scary, and a big party of what makes it scary is that it doesn’t conform to a physical shape you’re comfortable with. It’s a giant floating ball with eyestalks swirling about. Even if you’d never seen a beholder before and knew nothing about it, your initial instinct as an adventurer would be to attack and destroy something so awful.

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