Myth?! Has it occurred to you the dead HAVE been rising from the grave?

[BishopofB&W]

My apologies to Mr. Winston Zeddmore for abridging his words.

 

Steve’s original Hero System Universe outline is understandably vague about the hows and whys of the undead. Do any of you use a particular background premise for ghosts, vampires, zombies, and other undead? I’m posting here on the Champions board because I want to make definitions that are reasonably consistent across genres.

Mine is a work in progress based on comic book science, pop parapsychology (some would say this also is comic book science), and an idea I ripped off—er, paid homage to, from the Ghostbusters movies.

Basically, almost all undead are either spirit equivalents of artificially intelligent automatons, bodies controlled by bound spirit entities from the Netherworld (a spirit dimension within the realms of Apophis, my version of Qlipoth that I’m still defining), or in the case of vampires and liches only, either an infusion of Netherworld energies to transform a willing, living soul into a Netherworld spirit or a process (only vampires) by which the living soul is bound and left unable to influence its body and a Netherworld spirit is left in control with full access to the living soul’s memories. This can be either by spell or vampiric attack. There can be many variations in powers and weaknesses because not only is creation imprecise, but there are many, many different types of Netherworld spirits. Very rarely, something goes completely wrong and the living soul gets in the dominant position. Such a vampire can choose to restrain its urges and do good.

Ghosts are usually the result of psychic imprints left by strong emotions or personalities left in objects or places and subsequently activated when filled with enough stray bio-energy from passersby (who ya’ gonna’ call?). Depending on how strong the imprint is and how much it has faded over time, the ghost can be anything from an unexplained noise to a poltergeist to a full-blown spiritual automaton with the appearance and memories of the original person and the belief that it is the person. The latter can be a pretty tragic figure, indeed. I still have a lot of fine-tuning to do.

 

What do you guys do?

[Blue]

I ascribe to the means set forth in most movies: "Mr. Jenkins' coffin got doused with chemical waste and now he walks and has a hunger for brains." WHY doesn't matter so much.

 

Fighting the damned should always be uncertain. Players should never go into a first encounter with someone/something and know exactly how to deal with it. If I ironed out all those rules so that everything followed a conventional wisdom then things might get too easy.

 

Plus I enjoy that look when the players go, "Hey, how come he didn't dissolve in the holy water like that guy we doused last year?"

 

BUT your thinking certainly is fitting and seems to work pretty darn well.

[BishopofB&W]

Originally posted by Blue

I ascribe to the means set forth in most movies: "Mr. Jenkins' coffin got doused with chemical waste and now he walks and has a hunger for brains." WHY doesn't matter so much.

 

Fighting the damned should always be uncertain. Players should never go into a first encounter with someone/something and know exactly how to deal with it. If I ironed out all those rules so that everything followed a conventional wisdom then things might get too easy.

 

Plus I enjoy that look when the players go, "Hey, how come he didn't dissolve in the holy water like that guy we doused last year?"

 

BUT your thinking certainly is fitting and seems to work pretty darn well.

 

I agree. That's why I put in the bit about variations because of imprecision and different types of spirits. That way I can also account for more than just European-style undead. And thanks.

[Ghost who Walks]

I've had a couple forms of undead. It would be nice to see some definitions.

 

I've never had any PC undead, I usually have them show up as threats to the mystical guys.

 

One concept I like is the retured spirit, who comes back from the afterlife to possess a dead body (form of Zombie). Play wise, this allows historical figureds to return from the dead.

 

I've used homonculi a couple of times, inanimate objects that have a spirit implanted in them. Not undead, but spirit based.

 

Only certain Vampires, the master ones are contagious. This is because learning how to do it is actually a technique, that takes practice.

 

I have some zombie bikers that have been driving around since the 1950's. They are all survivors of the Chosen reservoir battle in Korea. the anguish of their deaths caused them to be reborn, so they could help their units escape.

 

I've hinted at Nazi vampires surviving the war, and werewolves who fought against the Bolsheviks for the Czars, but thats about it.

[Twilight]

*Twilight points to the evil cabal of dread necromancers over yonder in the distance. The ones chanting by the evil looking mauseleum.*

 

"Because those buggers summoned them here, THAT'S WHY!"

 

*Twilight goes back to battling the swarms of undead*

[BoneDaddy]

BishopofB&W:

 

Your ideas look fine. This is a theme I was thinking of exploring/exploiting in a campaign, and you've given me food for thought.

 

As for your ghosts, they seem to pass the Turing test (if everyone else thinks they are independant intelligences, they are,) and I really can't find much difference between there plight and our own - a consciousness created from fabricated memory, defined by its interactions with others in the same predicament.

 

Zombies are usually created on purpose, unless you are going for something Romero-esque (talk about a grim evening!). The big villain is usually the culprit here. The mechanics are where the fun comes in. Is the zombism contagious? Can one become infected? Can Ash get his Bad Hand?

[AnotherSkip]

Why could be an accident, or "cosmic radiation"

 

perhaps the same thing that gave a living hero his powers makes the dead riiiiiise.

 

Or as a side effect of some of the more munchkin players powers has is that the dead will return to haunt those that they have killed....

[BishopofB&W]

Originally posted by BoneDaddy

BishopofB&W:

 

Your ideas look fine. This is a theme I was thinking of exploring/exploiting in a campaign, and you've given me food for thought.

 

As for your ghosts, they seem to pass the Turing test (if everyone else thinks they are independant intelligences, they are,) and I really can't find much difference between there plight and our own - a consciousness created from fabricated memory, defined by its interactions with others in the same predicament.

 

Zombies are usually created on purpose, unless you are going for something Romero-esque (talk about a grim evening!). The big villain is usually the culprit here. The mechanics are where the fun comes in. Is the zombism contagious? Can one become infected? Can Ash get his Bad Hand?

 

There's one idea I've seen a lot of by various authors since White Wolf started that never sat well with me. If a person can be taken against their will and transformed mind, body, and soul into something evil, then good and evil are just convenient labels and it's ridiculous to portray humanity as the "white hats". Kind of like assigning moral superiority to a football team just because you're rooting for it.

The original Euro-vamp legends were about corpses animated by evil spirits. Even the early Hollywood movies had a little sympathy for people who had monstrous urges forced on them. Thus the hunters would talk about "laying them to rest". It makes no more sense to hate a Buffy- or White Wolf-style vampire than it does to hate a rabid dog. Both would be extremely dangerous and have to be destroyed to protect the rest of us but they couldn't help being what they are.

My idea for an involuntary vampiric transformation of a living person is an attempt to compromise between "kill the evil undead!" and the peaceful after-staking facial expressions in the old legends and early pop fiction and films. You can despise the parasitic spirit that is controlling the body and feel sympathy for the bound soul forced to watch helplessly. Unfortunately, destroying the vampire releases the living soul to its final reward but a whole set of adventures could be based on finding a method of exorcising the evil spirit and restoring the person's mortality. A willing transformee, OTOH, you can despise to your heart's content.

 

As for ghosts, I don't rule out the actual person's spirit making an appearance, but it should be rare and never automatic.

 

As far as zombies go, I'm not ruling out means that aren't overtly supernatural. What I decided is that if an event, supernatural or otherwise, allows the Netherworld to interact with the campaign world, you can get undead roaming around. If the interaction is prolonged and powerful enough, zombies can be infectious. Resident Evil would fit easily into this. As evidence of this I would point to Michelle Rodriguez turning into a zombie instead of the hunter-beast even though she was still alive when she got infected.