No Fiction today - Zombies on the Brain!

Taking a break from fiction writing today for something that dominates my imagination.  Resident Evil.

Okay, yeah, you got me, as I do in fact have a new copy of Resident Evil Revelations.  But the new release has only dredged up an old thought. 

Resident Evil the Role Playing game.  I know, awesome idea, right?  While I’m aware of the All Flesh Must Be Eaten version, I still want to try and do something original.  That’s how I started playing around with these old ideas.

There is no way that I would wander the halls looking for cryptic keys when I have a grenade launcher that fires acid rounds!  While I love the puzzles and backtracking to pieces, there has to be a reasonable limit beside invulnerable doors to make player characters move on.  The group I’m currently adventuring with (in AD&D 2.0) is likewise brutish, so I know that they would appreciate more realism and less punch, even if the puzzles would break them.

But what does removing the Grenade launcher do to game balance?  It isn’t fatal, but it hints at the problem: a lot of work needs to go into rethinking the balance, while eroding the player characters options for play.  Not a great recipe.

Magic is the next idea to cause problems.  I like magic, but the Resident Evil franchise does not lend itself well to zipping out of the mansion to pick up some new arcane spells, and divine magic would ruin the scary atmosphere.  This is a game universe that needs either its own rules, or at the least d20 modern.

Then I thought: d20 Modern has rules built in for changing the age of the setting.  Rather than copy Capcom’s Resident Evil faithfully, why not stage a similar disaster in a previous age?  You could reduce the weapons’ power and ban most magics, and still allow a few prestige classes to work advanced weapon and magical effects in for players who are prepared to work at it.

But that brings us back to game balance.  Zombies lend themselves to any age, but T-Virus researchers don’t.  BOWs likewise strain credibility.  So I turned the problem over for a while and came up with a new angle: suppose this is set in the Nineteenth century, with guns much as we have, reduced in power for Civil War or Boer War level.  What were people afraid of in that century?  Offhand, Victorians had many fears related to Jack the Ripper, of people going missing off of the streets, and of deep routed social issues like Opium dens.  This uptight century had many fears due to how easily evil folks blended in, and how beastly they could be in private.

And that was the spark.  I have my original campaign setting!

Picture if you will a rustic manor set in the hills of England, just after the American Civil War and in the height of the Pax Britannica in Europe.  With all of the Britons’ eyes focused outward to the colonial wars of the age, a shambly, shady character conducts secret abductions from the streets of London and carries his victims, sealed living in coffins, to his master’s villa.   

The PCs can either be victims of these abductions, or the local Constables called to address the growing smell or queer screams coming from the place.  Either way, they will be attacked the second that they are close to the mansion and cannot safely leave.  Baskerville like hounds leave a nice Victorian/RE feel, while Rabbid Squirrels could chorale anyone who needs something sillier.  You are trapped in a nut house, with terrible dangers lurking outside preventing you from leaving.  What do you do?

Tune in tomorrow as I continue to flesh out this concept.  It is writing itself now.