Pilfer this Spooky Plot Seed: Late Night/Early Morning, and the dead walk…

Welcome back to another plot seed for you to steal and use as you see fit. This one is very much a modern horror game seed, and is directly inspired by one very surreal New Years morning I spent with a small handful of very close friends. This may have even happened to you at some point, so I trust you’ll have no problem putting your own spin on it. Ideally, this will be a short game, as zombie plots tend not to last too long, but use your best judgement.

It was new year’s eve, and as the party wound on past midnight, the crowd started to shrink. It was good though, you were at a friend’s huge place on the outskirts of town. It had over a dozen bedrooms, and most people were already making use of them. The rest of you decided that you wanted to watch the sunrise, so drinks in hand and years of friendship based anecdotes easily recollected, you decided to stick it out. As the grey light of pre-dawn started to filter through the curtains, you swung them open and watched the rolling fog come over the surrounding hills. It was deathly silent out there, with not a single living thing moving. You all had some fun scarring each other with the idea that you might be the only people left alive, and a fair few of you drunk at that. Then you heard an unpleasant noise behind you, as the sun rose over the horizon, and your day got a damned sight worse.

Because zombie apocalypses have to start somewhere, so why not when everyone is in a great mood, a little bit the worse for wear as a result of drinking and a lack of sleep? The fact that the players will be have been awake all night should give you an idea about where this one is going though. Anyone asleep at a certain point in time, will be changed.

As with all of the best zombie stories, there is simply no need for an explanation as to why this has occurred, but feel free to add you own if you do think it is required. There is even the freedom to play around with the type of zombie you’d prefer. If you want something that is less of a challenge, the slower-moving traditional type will serve you well, but the speedy remake zombies will take the game quickly into very dangerous territory.

To begin with, there’s the noise they’ve just heard. One of the party guests did not close their bedroom door fully when they retired, and as such, had no problem in freeing themselves from their room, honing in on the friendly banter coming from down the stairs. This zombie will need to be either dealt with, or escaped from. A fight at this point should not be life threatening – let that come later – and if the players are resourceful enough, then taking it down without too much fuss should not present too much of a problem. When you are describing the room they are in, make note of the large size, floor to ceiling windows, and lack of other exits.

Leave almost everything else up to the players. If they think the best weapon they could find would be a fire poker, then let rip and add one to the set dressing. A lot of free form or short games can be run like this as it requires less planning on the part of the GM. If it makes sense, and gives the players a touch of control of their environment, then be generous with what is left laying around after a party.

If they choose not to escape, and manage to destroy the walking dead, then they have the rest of the house to explore. Each of the bedrooms – apart from one – will have its door closed, and the sounds of movement can clearly be heard coming from within. These undead can be dealt with easily enough one at a time, but not all the rooms were single occupancy…

The rest of the house will yield up – in terms of useful equipment – no more than would be expected in any standard house.  It is large though, so expect there to be plenty of whatever there is. Tinned food and bottled water shouldn’t be a problem, but weapons will be slightly harder to get hold of. Heavy metal hand tools such as a hatchet or wrecking bar should be moderately easy to come across, but not really anything bigger, and even then, just one of each.

Expect the players to be tech savvy and try to contact their friends with cell phones and the like, and even try to turn on the TV for news. For now most things will be working fine, with emergency broadcasts on all channels. Exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to happen. Their friends will be unavailable though, including family. Emergency numbers will be busy with the high volume of calls going in to a small group of workers who got the night shift.

It is a fact that the only people who stayed up all night drinking (or people on the night shift) will remain uninfected. This group includes some emergency service personnel, along with party people and those cursed to work in fast food eateries at all hours. Hardly a force to save the world. Exploring outside of the house will reveal much of the same as within. At the moment, most walking corpses are individuals, but as time progresses, they will start to swarm. Hunting by sound, they will flock to each others moans.

Is there a cure for this plague? Who knows. Most zombie stories don’t end well.

Possible future plot threads:

• The players get rounded up by an interim government and kept in a ‘clean’ camp’ with their sole purpose being to breed a new humanity.
• Pick your favourite zombie movie, and just have fun.
• It was all a shared delusion of the group, brought upon by drinking some tainted gin…