Endangered Species
The end has come, the dead have risen from the Earth, but what will happen in the years after? A survival drama with intra-party tensions.
TYPE
SYSTEM
LANGUAGE
EXPERIENCE
AGE
$15.00
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Tuesday - 10:00 AM UTC
Session Duration / 3–4 hours
Campaign Length / 8–12 Sessions
0 / 5 Seats Filled
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About the adventure
One day, the rules of life & death changed without warning; there was one Golden Hour in which no-one died at all, but after that, those who passed away returned as zombies. This campaign begins on Zero Day, as a group of disparate survivors are thrown together while chaos erupts around them, and follows their initial attemps to find a place of safety. It doesn't stop there however, and day by day, year after year, the main cast must do what it takes to secrure their continued existence. Taking notes from sources like "The Walking Dead," this is part survival horror and part long-form drama, focused on a main cast of characters dealing with their baggage in the aftermath of the end of the world. Leads in this drama don't have plot armour though and if your ticket gets punched, that's it for you: no-one is completely safe. The game relies on player imput and creativity, agreeing on a starting point that brings the leads togethers to begin with and then working out where they go and what they do next, spinning a tale that covers more than the immediate aftermath. The game won't end until the story reaches a conclusion, for good or ill, and there will be time skips to see how they're faring months or years down the line. Beneath it all though, there is a mystery, a cohesive explanantion for the rise & evolution of the living dead: there is hope for the leads if they can discover why this has all happened and make the tough choices required to bring it all to an end. The world might never be the same again, but it does still have a chance.
Game style
Roleplay Heavy
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Sandbox / Open World
Theater of the Mind
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(1)
Less than a year on StartPlaying
Highly rated for: Inclusive, Storytelling, Creativity
About me
Dedicated indie storygamer based in the UK, been playing and running TTRPGs since Black Box Traveler and Red Box D&D (yes, it's a long time.) I like short, character focused campaigns with emerging stories, paying attention to narrative arcs for all players. Favourite games are Monsterhearts, Dead of Night, My Life with Master, Best Friends and others, and I also enjoy play-out-of-the-box games like For The Queen, Women Are Werewolves, Rest in Pieces and many more. I've run multiple campaigns for friends and TTRPG groups since college, both face-to-face and online, along with multiple attendances at UK conventions and have recently been recruited into the Games on Demand stream at UK Games Expo, running games for a new group of players every 2 hours, all day.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Character creation will take place during the first session, with players collaboratively creating a cohesive group; players are encouraged to create connections between their PCs, e.g. family, friends, colleagues, etc. Dead of Night uses a simple point buy system, assigning 10 points to each pair of stats, with the option to specialise in one area per pair at the cost of 2 points. All character information and other game details will be kept on a Google Sheet that players will have access to for editing, etc. All characters are part of the modern world, with no genre elements (no magic, no cyberware, etc) and are more or less ordinary, grounded people, with no particular survival advantages in a post-apocalyptic setting. Think of the type of main characters in The Walking Dead, Day of the Dead and even Shaun of the Dead for inspiration.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
Players will need a device with a Discord account and a microphone in order to play, but a camera is not essential. They will also need to be able to edit a Google Sheet to record their character details. The game will be played on a smalll, private Discord server which all players will receive an invite to.
What James brings to the table
Play will switch back and forth from group focused scenes to charac ter spotlights, giving each PC space to breathe and develop without losing sight of their relationships to the group. While there is a backstory to the game, the majority of the scenes will be created to suit the characters and their story, attempting to extrapolate the consequences of one scene into the next. Plot threads arise from PC backstories, their choices and the outcomes of their actions. This is a survival horror game at heart, so often plans will go awry due to an incursion of the living dead; if characters have taken time to prepare for this, they should get out alive, though perhaps at some personal cost. If they aren't prepared, due to internal conflicts or personal quests consuming their time, they might have to sacrifice everything they've built up in order to get out alive. As GM, I'm the players' ally, not their antagonist, but that doesn't mean they get an easy ride and sometimes I might suggest a PC do something that is good for them, but bad for the situation as a whole. Expect me to play Devil's Advocate often, tempting a player to have their PC act like a typical horror movie character in return for a mechanical reward; Dead of Night fully supports this style of play with a system of 'Bad Habits' that encourage exactly this.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How James creates a safe table
In Session 0, we'll talk about expectations for the game, using the Same Page tool to explicitly lay out assumptions of play, as well as a discussion of lines & veils for acceptable content and its portrayal. During play, anyone may puase the game at any time to skip content, rewind the scene a little bit to retake their portrayal of their character in the scene or discuss upcoming content and how best to handle it. At the end of each session, there will be time to decompress and unwind, with some discussion of the session, the characters and where we think things might go in the following session.
Content warnings
Safety tools used