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BY MICHAEL TRESCA
FOR MY DAD, A TRUE ZOMBIE.
COVER ART
JEREMY SIMMONS
INTERIOR ART
JOHN LONGENBAUGH
LAYOUT
CHRIS DAVIS
EDITING
ANDY RAU
Requires the use of the d20 Modern Roleplaying Game and the
Urban Arcana Campaign Setting, published by Wizards of the
Coast, Inc
The ‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are Trademarks
owned by Wizards of the Coast and are used according to the
terms of the d20 System License version 1.0a. A copy of this
License can be found at www.wizards.com.
“d20 Modern, Dungeons & Dragons, and Wizards of the Coast
are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. in the United States
and other countries and are used with permission.
From Michael:
I’d like to thank Shane O’Connor for his
original critique of the first version of this document.
Visit our Website:
www.RPGObjects.com
Copyright 2004 © RPG Objects. All rights Reserved.
Visit our web site at www.RPGObjects.com.
Characters
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER 1: CHARACTERS 6
OCCUPATIONS 6
BOY SCOUT 6
CHEERLEADER 6
JOCK 6
MENTAL PATIENT 6
NCRPC EMPLOYEE 7
NERD 7
PREP 8
SCREAM QUEEN 8
STONER 8
Y-MART EMPLOYEE 8
ADVANCED CLASSES 8
BOKOR 8
MAD SCIENTIST 10
NECROMANCER 11
PSYCHOKINETIC 14
ZOMBIE HUNER 17
FEATS 17
BACKHAND SLASH 18
BRING IT ON 18
CHAINSAW IMPALE 18
COOL 18
FIRST IMPRESSION 18
HARDWARE 19
IMPROVISED IMPLEMENTS 19
IMPROVISED WEAPONS 19
IMPROVISED WEAPON DAMAGE 19
OVER THE SHOULDER 19
RIFLE SPIN 19
SLAPSTICK 19
STUD 20
SUCK ON THIS 20
VIRGIN 20
WHATEVER 20
CHAPTER 2: ZOMBIE HUNTING 21
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
About the Author: Michael Tresca
Michael “Talien” Tresca is a writer, communicator, speaker, artist, gamer, and secret member of the
National Center for Reanimation Prevention and Control (NCRPC).
Oops.
Michael “Talien” Tresca is a writer, communicator, speaker, artist, gamer, and he was just kidding about
that whole zombie hunting thing. He has an 11-year-old D&D role-playing campaign, Welstar, which is one
of the six worlds in RetroMUD and where many of his short stories take place. Michael has published three
D20 modules: “Tsar Rising,” “All the King’s Men,” and “The Dancing Hut” from MonkeyGod Enterprises.
He has written numerous supplements, including “Frost and Fur” and “Abyss,” also from MonkeyGod
Enterprises, “Mercenaries: Born of Blood” from Otherworld Creations, and “Combat Missions” from
Paradigm Concepts. Michael has also contributed to “Relics” from AEG and “The Iron Kingdoms
Campaign Guide” from Privateer Press. Michael has also written magazine articles for Spectre Press’
Survival Kit series, Dragon Magazine, Scrollworks, and D20 Weekly. He has written a multitude of reviews
of role-playing and computer games for RPG.net, Gamers.com, Allgame.com, and Talien and Maleficent’s
Bazaar. Michael has presented at various panels, including Dragon*Con, I-Con, and Bakuretsucon.
When he’s not writing, Michael can be found as his alter ego, Talien, on RetroMUD as an administrator.
Michael kills zombies in Connecticut with his wife, who is a sexy zombie slayer, and his zombie cat, who
eats brains but everyone still thinks is too cute to slay.
FEAR AND LOATHING 28
MADNESS 30
TRUST 32
CHAPTER THREE: ZOMBIE FX 33
SPELLCASTING & MAGIC DEVICES 33
NEW POWERS 33
NEW SPELLS 34
FX ITEMS 47
CHAPTER FOUR: FIELD GUIDE 49
BLOODSUCKING WIND
ZOMBIE, BLUE
59
ZOMBIE, BRAINLESS
59
ZOMBIE, CREEP
60
ZOMBIE, CRYONOID
60
ZOMBIE, DEMONIC
60
ZOMBIE, FOG
61
ZOMBIE, FORMALDEHYDE
61
ZOMBIE, KYOSHI SPAWN
61
ZOMBIE LORD
61
ZOMBIE, NAZI
62
49
ZOMBIE, OKOKIYAT
63
CREEP
49
ZOMBIE, PROTOZOAN
63
HSING-SING
50
ZOMBIE, RADIATION
63
KYOSHI
51
ZOMBIE, REVENANT
64
SUMATRAN RAT MONKEY
52
ZOMBIE, TEMPLAR
64
TRILLIAN
52
ZOMBIE, TOXIC
65
21
ZOMBIE
53
ZOMBIE, ULTRASONIC
65
ZOMBIE, ATOMIC
58
ZOMBIE, VIDEO
65
COMBAT TECHNIQUES
27
ZOMBIE, ASTRO
58
SHOTGUNS
27
ZOMBIE, BLOODSUCKING
58
SUPPRESSIVE FIRE
28
CRITICAL DAMAGE TO UNDEAD
28
BLOOD AND BRAINS
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Characters
INTRODUCTION
ghosts, and a lot of other things, so let’s dig a little
deeper, shall we?
The dictionary has several definitions of the word
“zombie”:
Zombie (ZOM-bee):
1. A snake god of voodoo
cults in West Africa, Haiti, and the southern United
States. 2. A supernatural power or spell that according
to voodoo belief can enter into and reanimate a corpse.
3. One who looks or behaves like an automaton. 4. A
tall mixed drink made of various rums, liqueur, and
fruit juice.
HARDWARE MAN
Billy kicked the chair out from under his feet, causing
the rope around his neck to tighten as his full weight
finally, blessedly, made it possible to hang himself.
Hanging from the center of the room, Billy could
feel the blood swirl around the inside of his head. All
his eyes could focus on was the clock. Its hands inched
along, slower and slower. Or was that his heartbeat?
He couldn’t tell.
Tick.
The clock didn’t tock. It just ticked. Stupid clock,
thought Billy. Nothing works around this damn place.
He hoped it would stop. A century passed between
the ticks. It occurred to Billy that there were many,
many moments within a second. There was a lot of
stuff you could do in that space of time.
For God’s sake, why can’t I kill myself quickly?
The highest roof in his mom’s house was in the
basement. Which was fine, because Billy lived there.
He was 30 and still living with his mom. Why God
hadn’t stricken him down already out of sheer disgust
at his pathetic existence, Billy wasn’t sure. But he was
going to fix that little problem. Just another…
Tick.
Good, thought Billy. I’ll be dead any second now.
The last straw had been the Killer Robotz
competition. Billy, with his pal Gerald—whom
everyone nicknamed “Goofus” because he was such
a goof—had created the Spatulomatic Supreme,
a whirling bot of doom with spatulas for hands.
Sharpened spatulas.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
It had seemed like a great idea, actually, up until
the unimaginatively named “Hackster” hacked
Spatulamatic up into tiny metal shards. The crowd
cheered. Billy was crushed. Two years. Two goddamn
years and he…
Why the hell aren’t I dead yet?
Tick.
Three seconds. Come on!
He was descending. For a second, Billy postulated
that this was what death felt like. Maybe he was going
to hell. Cool.
So you want to hunt zombies, eh?
Zombie hunting is a bit different
than other types of hunting. Nobody
complains if you kill (or perhaps that’s
“re-kill”) a zombie.
Nobody
likes zombies.
Not even other zombies.
Perhaps it’s that zombies ate someone you
like. That’s fair, we can understand. Killing
zombies is definitely a noble task. Unless,
of course, someone you like has become
a zombie. Then there’s a lot of crying and
weeping and angst before you blow its head off.
Or maybe it’s that you’re really bored and want to
shoot people without getting arrested. Zombies are
about as close to moving targets as you can get. Just
make sure everyone knows that it’s a zombie’s brains
you just spattered across your backyard fence.
Or maybe the world just went down the crapper and
you’re the last person alive. May as well take out a
few zombies on the way down, right?
The Zombie Hunter’s Guide
is a rules supplement
for d20 games. For more information on the
d20 system, see Section 15 of the Open Gaming
License. Our professionals at the National Center
for Reanimation Prevention and Control (NCRPC)
have done all the hard work so you don’t have
to—chopping, hacking, chainsawing, and blasting
the bloody gibbets off of the shambling undead, all to
make your life a little easier. If you’ve got a case of
the zombie blues, this book’s the cure.
Tales from Reality… One Man’s Encounter with
Zombie Definition #4
A sailor,* while on shore leave somewhere in
Latin America, decided to prove to his buddies
just how tough he really was. They went to the
local bar, where he promptly downed not one, not
two, but THREE ZOMBIES in a span of a few
minutes.
“See?” He said triumphantly. “No problem at
all.”
His friends were amazed. The conversation
continued while the sailor sat there, his palm
propping up his face.
Eventually, the other sailors noticed that their
drinking buddy hadn’t said anything in a while.
“You okay?” one of them asked.
When the sailor attempted to speak, his
tongue dangled from his mouth like a worm on a
fishhook. He sputtered “ThHBBHTHHTHTH”
and promptly collapsed onto the floor.
One hospital trip later, the sailor understood
that liquid zombies are the most dangerous
zombies of all.
*Any resemblance to family members of
the author is most assuredly due to a zombie
conspiracy.
WHAT THE HELL IS IT?
What is a zombie, precisely?
Short answer: dead people who don’t stay dead.
But that answer could encompass vampires, ghouls,
BLOOD AND BRAINS
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Characters
“Zombie” is possibly derived from a Caribbean
French and English Creole word, “zumbi,” which
refers to a ghost or departed spirit. That word in turn
has its roots in the Congo word “nzambi,” which also
means “spirit of a dead person.”
The word “zombie” came into use by 1830 and was
used in the vernacular by 1929, after the publication
of William B. Seabrook’s
The Magic Island
. Or
maybe a wave of zombies descended upon the Earth at
about that time, making the term much more common.
Zombies first appeared in 1920s media as typical
voodoo undead. They didn’t spread their condition,
they didn’t moan or stumble around, and for the most
part they pretty much did what they were told. In
essence, they could have been standard onscreen
thugs, except for the fact that early movie zombies
usually had glazed looks on their faces. At this stage,
zombies weren’t really dead so much as dazed.
In the 1950s, everything changed. Zombies were
no longer mindless and drugged-up natives from a
foreign land. The enemy was us—corporate zombies
in suits and ties. Recently discovered nuclear
technology became the new excuse for zombies.
Zombies were not contagious, but they were powered
by strange and unique power sources: atomic energy,
mad scientists, and aliens.
In the 70s, zombies began to take on the modern
characteristics we know and hate. It was only
then that zombies began to show signs of rot (TV
censorship will do that to you). Now they were truly
the living dead.
With their new attributes came one vulnerability
and one horrible side effect. As everyone knows,
piercing a zombie’s brain supposedly kills it.
Let us, the zombie hunting experts, go on record
stating that this is not always true. Sometimes, a
zombie hunter hits a zombie in the head so hard
that it goes down—but then, if you hit
anything
hard enough (like, say, with a bazooka), it will stop
moving. Sometimes, zombies like to pretend they’re
dead… and then get back up. And sometimes it really
is true (see the blue zombie in the Monsters chapter).
Zombie hunters who assume things about the undead
make a zombie “ass” out of “u” and… oh forget it,
you get the idea.
This one, rare zombie vulnerability came at a
terrible price. Fear about sexually transmitted
diseases in the 80s carried over to zombie infestations.
Not only might a zombie eat you, it could “get zombie
on you.”
With the number of zombies in the world, and the
amount of communicable diseases you can catch from
playing with corpses as well as other human beings,
it’s not hard to understand why nobody likes zombies.
There was a horrible creak as the beam over Billy’s
head finally gave up the struggle to bear his entire
258 pounds. With a shriek of defeat, it snapped in
half, dumping dust, rat droppings, and the rope Billy
had made out of the remaining wires of Spatulamatic
unceremoniously into a pile of pasty limbs and
electrical parts.
Billy lay there for a while. Maybe he would just die.
He’d heard stories about people who thought they were
dead and then really died because they believed it so
strongly.
It became apparent after a few minutes that that
wasn’t going to happen. Billy swore and rose up out
of the pile, a phoenix rising from the ashes—if the
phoenix was a fat, pale-skinned man in a stained shirt
that read “Team Spatulamatic” on the back.
“Hey!” shouted Goofus from the open basement
window. “Hey, hey!”
Billy took a deep breath and kicked some of the
debris out of the way. He didn’t want to hurt Goofus’
feelings, but he was beginning to even hate Goofus.
His only friend, and he hated him. Billy wanted to kill
himself even more.
Goofus was rail thin, a trait that wasn’t lost on the
few eligible women still in their small town. Especially
when the two friends stood next to each other. Billy
was the fat one. It was a veritable plethora of comedy
material.
Goofus used his incredibly emaciated body to
good effect, slipping in doors, sliding through open
windows, “hiding” in lockers. Goofus pretended he did
the last “because it was funny.”
He slid in through the window, landing on his feet.
Despite his smooth landing, he stumbled backward and
smacked his head into the unpainted cement wall of the
basement.
“Hey,” he said, rubbing the back of his head, “you
know that vacant lot right beside the gas station?”
Billy picked up the glasses he’d left on the table next
to his computer. The table wasn’t very far from his
bed. Actually, everything was in immediate reach.
“Yeah?” he said, noncommittally. That particular
spot had long since been paved over. Billy’s dad used
WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?
You are the last hope of mankind.
Only you know just how fragile the borders
between our reality and hell are. Only you know the
sort of thing that lurks in the dark. And only you are
mad enough to level a shotgun at said monstrosity and
blow its screeching head off.
If you’re fond of doing this sort of thing, you’re
probably more than a little crazy. After looking into
the pulsating, pustule-ridden heart of evil, how can
anyone stay sane?
And yet zombie hunters battle on. Insanity is
common—zombie hunters are likely to be pushed to
the brink of madness just by dealing with the forces
of evil. Then they fall off the edge, smash into the
bottom of the gorge, and the cliff falls on top of them.
And they
still
keep fighting.
For all their eccentricities, zombie hunters are just
normal Joes. They make bad decisions, run screaming
in the face of Ultimate Evil, and get cocky when
loaded down with a lot of firepower. Zombie hunters
don’t always do the right thing, don’t always cast the
right spell, and sometimes miss the bad guys even
with carefully aimed shotgun blasts. But they do what
they have to, because nobody else will.
BLOOD AND BRAINS
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If you’ve ever screamed, “Why don’t you get a gun
and SHOOT IT!” at the pathetic victims of any horror
movie… this is the game for you.
Level Two:
This is an outbreak in a populated area.
The zombies can number up to 100 or more. The
incidence of infection is generally high due to the
density of the nearby population. If the zombie plague
strikes a rural area, it can be quite a while before
anyone with heavy firepower shows up. Therefore,
zombie hunters are advised to go on the defensive
rather than the offensive—the zombie population
density means that the infection rate is simply too high
for anyone without serious firepower to effectively
stop.
Level Three:
By the time a zombie plague hits
Level Three, the world is beginning to go down the
toilet. The zombie population has spread as far as it
can; the infected area can range from an entire city
to a whole continent. When zombie levels become
this high, government officials and the military take
notice. And since zombies don’t contribute (much)
to any political coffers, said military and government
officials react with extreme prejudice. When they’re
not sending in tanks, flamethrowers, or grenades, they
drop nuclear weapons to “clean out the infection.”
For a zombie hunter on the same side as the military,
it’s a wet dream; for a zombie hunter who happens to
be in the wrong place at the wrong time… it’s a really
bad place to be.
Level Four:
If the government wasn’t able to take
out the zombies at Level Three, this is what happens
next: All Zombies, All the Time! At this point,
humanity is outnumbered; zombies rule the world.
For zombie hunters with the technology, fleeing into
outer space is advisable. For zombie hunters who
can’t… save one bullet for yourself.
to work at the factory there. Billy didn’t visit that gas
station. Ever. (It helped that he didn’t have a car.)
Goofus hadn’t made the connection. Goofus had a
very short-term memory—it was why he was always
so excited about things that any sane human would be
jaded and bitter about.
“Well, somebody bought it. They’re gonna build a
shop where we can go buy bolts and screws!”
Billy took his glasses off and cleaned them on his
shirt, a nervous habit. “Don’t fool with me today,
Goofus. That’s not funny.”
“No man, I’m serious! Where were you, anyway?
I’ve been trying to call you all morning. I know
today’s—well, I know today’s the anniversary of your
dad’s… uh…”
“You can say it,” Billy snapped at him, a little more
vehemently than he meant to. “He died.”
Billy’s dad had been a cryogeneticist, specializing
in preserving bodies. He’d won a Noble Prize for it.
Those were the good old days, when his parents were
happy. Five years seemed like five millennia, back
when humanity was figuring out the secret of fire.
Instead, one man was concocting something awful
in a laboratory. Cryogenix said it was an accident, but
Billy’s family didn’t believe them. His family knew
that their pride and joy, the smartest one in the family,
could never have made a mistake like that.
The accident was so bad that Cryogenix claimed
there was no body for the funeral.
“Yeah. Look, I’m sorry. And maybe this isn’t
appropriate, but I thought you’d like the news.”
Billy looked down at the pile of debris. Goofus
looked up at the place where the broken beam had once
been. He put one hand on Billy’s shoulder.
“Dude. You gotta stop trying to do pull-ups. You’re
too heavy.”
Billy shrugged. That was in the past. There was a
hardware store coming into town.
To the average person, a hardware store was an
orange and white symbol of civilization. Mystical
things happened there. From its loins, houses were
built. With tools from the depths of its many aisles,
pipes were mended, walls were painted, and structures
WHERE THE HELL ARE
WE?
The Zombie Hunter’s Guide
is a frenetic, action-
packed battle with the forces of the dead that never
lets up. A zombie hunting campaign can be macabre
and terrifying or darkly comic. Zombies never give
up—they keep coming and coming and coming until
somebody drops (and then rises up again as another
zombie).
Zombie hunting is disgusting. These are
zombies
we’re talking about. Eyeballs fly, guts spew, blood
gushes, and heads explode. People get their eyes
smashed in, hands chopped off, and throats slashed.
Zombie hunting has a high body count.
But zombie hunting has another side. Zombie
hunting doesn’t always take itself too seriously. How
could anyone take the living dead seriously when they
moan, shuffle, stumble, and bump into each other?
The level of zombie threat varies depending on
the kind of campaign you’re playing. There are four
levels of zombie encounters:
Level One:
This is the one-off zombie menace,
often featuring zombies who cannot transmit their
undead condition or who were recently animated from
a local graveyard. In these situations, the undead
rarely number more than 20 or so zombies, usually
less. These kinds of outbreaks are easily covered
up by local officials and are manageable by citizens
with the right tools. If the zombies are capable of
transmitting their condition, it’s not long before it
becomes…
BLOOD AND BRAINS
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