The Last Hope: Zombie Apocalypse

Creating your character

Creating Your Character Character creation will happen together during Session Zero, so you don't need to arrive with a finished character or know Daggerheart inside and out. I’ll guide everyone through the process, help you build a character who fits the campaign, and make sure the group has connections and reasons to work together. We’ll create characters using Demiplane, then integrate them with Roll20 for play. Daggerheart gives us plenty of classes, ancestries, communities, abilities, and magic to choose from, so there is still lots of room to make your survivor distinctly yours. There is one important difference from a typical fantasy adventure: your character should feel like a relatively normal civilian: not a heavily armed adventurer expecting a fight. Think teacher, mechanic, journalist, student, doctor, office worker, travelling performer, researcher, or simply someone with an interesting life and useful skills. Your Daggerheart class and abilities still matter, but we'll work together to reinterpret and flavour them for this modern survival-horror setting. Your character will also need a reason to be travelling back to Sparrow's Rest when our story begins. Maybe you're returning home to see family, starting a new job, meeting an old friend, investigating something unusual, or coming back to a place you thought you'd left behind. Whatever the reason, you certainly weren't expecting a zombie outbreak. And that means you don't begin the game armed for war. Guns, ammunition, medical supplies, and serious weapons are things you'll need to find as the situation deteriorates. Until then, you'll have to rely on your character's abilities, ingenuity, everyday possessions, improvised weapons, and whatever else you can get your hands on. Your Class Isn't Your Job This is a modern Daggerheart world, so magic and fantastical ancestries still exist alongside cars, smartphones, firearms, universities, and everyday modern life. Your class represents the extraordinary things your character can do, while your occupation represents what they actually do for a living. This also means you will start with very little: No armour A Brawler might be a boxer, a Bard a singer, and a Rogue a streetwise pickpocket. Magical classes work the same way: a Wizard might be a professor of magical studies, while a Druid could be a wildlife conservationist who genuinely transforms into animals as part of their magic. So don't worry about making your Daggerheart abilities feel mundane. Magic belongs in this world. Zombies and the horrors waiting in Sparrow's Rest are what don't. Please note, the following classes are not available for this campaign: - Brawler - Guardian - Witch The following abilities will not be available for this campaign: - Bare bones armour Please speak to me directly if you wanted to make use of any other Void content.

Preparing for the session

No prior experience with Daggerheart, virtual tabletops, or any of the software we use is required. I’ll guide you through everything during Session Zero and make sure you're set up before we begin. We’ll use a few different tools to run the game: Discord: Our main hub for the campaign. We'll use Discord for communication between sessions, voice chat, and video during the game. Demiplane: This is where you'll create and manage your Daggerheart character. The necessary content will be shared with the group, giving you access to the character options you need. We'll create characters together during Session Zero. Roll20: Our virtual tabletop (VTT), where the game itself takes place. Your character will be imported into Roll20 and be represented by a token that you can move around the environment as we explore. Saga 20: I use this in the background to automatically take session notes using AI. You don't need to install, manage, or interact with Saga 20 yourself. Before Session Zero, all you need to do is join the campaign Discord and create free Demiplane and Roll20 accounts using the links I'll provide. Don't worry if you've never used any of these platforms before. We'll go through character creation, Roll20, and everything else you need to know together. You bring the character idea; I'll help with the technical stuff.

What GM DarkSpyder brings to the table

My goal is to make each session feel like you're playing through a survival-horror game together, rather than simply moving from encounter to encounter. I put a lot of preparation into the atmosphere and presentation of my games. Expect custom maps, dynamic lighting, character and monster tokens, handouts, ambient music and sound, visual aids, and plenty of environmental details to investigate. Exploration matters: you'll physically move your characters through locations, open doors without knowing what's on the other side, search rooms for scarce supplies, discover shortcuts, solve problems, and gradually piece together what happened in Sparrow's Rest as you try to survive it. I enjoy roleplay and character voices, but I'm equally interested in giving your characters the spotlight. NPCs have personalities, motivations, and secrets, while your choices determine where the story goes. I want you discussing whether to investigate the bloodstained corridor, arguing over who gets the last healing item, celebrating when someone finds ammunition, and occasionally screaming at each other to RUN. Combat will be cinematic, dangerous, and driven by the survival-horror experience. Not every creature is something you're expected to kill. Ammunition and healing will be found in the environment, so retreat is a perfectly legitimate strategy. Clever plans and creative use of the environment are encouraged. I love to engage with a great idea than shut it down because it wasn't the solution I expected. We'll use Daggerheart as our foundation, adapted where necessary to support this modern survival-horror setting. I'm interested in the spirit of the rules and meaningful consequences rather than stopping an exciting scene every few minutes to debate technicalities. When something unusual happens, I'll make a ruling, keep the game moving, and we can clarify it afterwards if necessary. Most importantly, I'll provide a table where new and experienced players are equally welcome. I'll handle the maps, technology, rules support, atmosphere, and horrors lurking behind the next door. You just need to bring a character you're excited to play, engage with the other survivors, and hopefully make some very difficult decisions as you battle between rolling hope and fear!

Homebrew rules

Tag team roll: The players can split the cost between them of the 3 hope. Double the severe threshold is an extra 4th marked HP. To mimic elements of Resident Evil, for example healing potions will need to be made by collecting herbs. Player gathers two green herbs = one potion equivalent. To add a bit of excitement...there will be new colours and you will not be exactly sure what you are making until you make it. What will a pink and blue herb combination reward you with...? Custom resting (Work in progress). You will only be able to short or long rest when you have gathered enough supplies to do so: HP - PROVISIONS - supplies that sustain the body. STRESS - COMFORTS - supplies that help someone mentally decompress. ARMOUR - ARMOUR PARTS - materials for repairing protective equipment. CRAFTING PARTS - general components used to make items. I want players to feel like they can creatively use items they find to make and improve their weapons. Spending some time during a long rest on a project would be a great time to do this. For example looting a locker might grant you some supplies. You can aid in describing what these might be as well. DM: "You find 2 provisions and 2 comforts." Player: "I pull out a freddo bar, some crackers alongside a Walkman and a couple of albums." During a short rest later, if a player has found at least 4 provisions, they can heal rolling 1d4 + tier. I have some other homebrew rules that come up but I keep forgetting to write them down.

How GM DarkSpyder creates a safe table

Player Safety & Content Warnings This is a survival-horror campaign inspired by Resident Evil, and horror is intended to be a significant part of the experience. While we’ll establish individual boundaries together during Session Zero, players should expect the game may include: Zombies, infected humans, and other undead Graphic violence, blood, gore, and descriptions of injury Body horror, mutation, transformation, and grotesque creatures Disease, infection, medical experimentation, and pharmaceutical/corporate malpractice Death and the possibility of character death NPC deaths and discovering dead bodies Hospitals, medical procedures, laboratories, and needles Confinement, isolation, claustrophobic environments, and being trapped Darkness and limited visibility Being pursued, hunted, surrounded, or overwhelmed Jump-scare-style moments and sudden threats Scarcity of food, medicine, ammunition, and other essential resources Firearms and other weapons Police, military, and emergency-response imagery Civilian casualties and large-scale disaster Themes of fear, helplessness, desperation, and survival under extreme circumstances Session Zero will give us an opportunity to discuss boundaries before play begins. You never need to explain or justify a boundary to the group. The X-Card We will use the X-Card during play. If something enters the game that you are uncomfortable with, you can use the X-Card (equivalent of writing an X in the chat to the group or privately to the GM) and we will stop, remove or move past that content, and continue the game. You do not have to explain why. This applies even if the subject wasn't discussed during Session Zero. Sometimes you don't know that something will bother you until it actually appears at the table. Private Messages Are Always Welcome If you would rather not raise something in front of the group, send me a private Discord message at any time. That can be during a session, after a session, or between games. You can tell me that something needs to stop, ask me to reduce its intensity, or let me know that you would prefer particular content not to appear again. I'll handle the adjustment without requiring you to discuss your reasons with the rest of the table. Debriefing After the Horror We'll also have opportunities to debrief after sessions, particularly after intense ones. Survival horror can deliberately create tension, uncertainty, and uncomfortable situations for the characters; checking in afterwards gives us a chance to step out of the fiction, talk about the session, and flag anything we want handled differently next time. The goal is to create a game that can be tense, frightening, gruesome, and dangerous for the characters while remaining enjoyable and comfortable for the players. Horror works best when everyone at the table trusts that their boundaries will be respected.