Virtual Front Porch Pages

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

TWD DOA

Sometime this week, we'll be receiving a package that contains various materials for The Walking Dead RPG, which I was glad to back on Kickstarter. It will make for some fun reading material over the Thanksgiving holiday, but unfortunately it won't serve as the rules system for our upcoming zombie campaign. 

Nathaniel and I have spent many hours combing through the PDF version of the core rulebook, and we both came to the conclusion that the system really needs to be used for "theater of the mind" gaming, and is altogether impractical for a fully 3D campaign like the one I've been cooking up. The rules are fast and fun, and -- like its sister game, the Alien RPG -- shockingly lethal to player characters. They are also abstract. Like, really abstract. This is not a game for maps and miniatures, let alone an entirely 3D environment. Nathaniel and I went down some house-ruling rabbit holes but ultimately were rewriting the game. We even explored the possibility of re-skinning Alien for a modern setting, but that don't work out very well either. 

As such, I've landed on the TinyD6 system, which we used for the Tales of the Ternion superhero campaign and then again more recently for our Doctor Who game. I really wanted to make TWD work, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

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