BASIC Zombies

From: James Frusetta <gerakkag_at_wam.umd.edu>
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 14:46:34 -0500 (EST)


Simon Phipp writes on Derak the Dark Troll's Zombies:

Good lord, I wish I'd had a GM _half_ that permissive. Carrying ballistas around on your back... getting a mantis... wow. My troll characters would have been a _lot_ more fun. ;)

> It took the Humakti in the party days to work that one out!
Well, if they hadn't figured out Derak was a Zorak Zorani (what with casting Create Zombie all the time), they couldn't have been that bright... "Hmmm. Troll. Lots of death runes... uses Seal Wound a lot... all the Humakti on guard duty with him seem to disappear... summoned that salamander last week. Must be a Karrg's Son!"

***

Just something to toss out in general: I've always quite enjoyed writing my Zombies to function as if they were using BASIC. (Yeah, yeah, I'm not a comp sci major, okay? Obviously, my Zombies are old, slow and obsolete. ;) I usually pass this along to my players, too, if they made zombies (which they, uh, never did. :(

Anyway, just adds kind of a fun feel -- one of the tricks to fighting zombies was to try and figure out what their limited programming could and couldn't cover. :) A flow chart works well, too. Not exactly a completely original trick, and I suspect it's been around before, but the that broo-demon zombie inspired the comment -- either you take _hours_ programing it as part of the ritual, or you do something like

10 	Kill stuff.
20	Goto 10

and deal with the consequences later. Depending on how good the enchanter is, they can add more "lines" of programming, and thus make zombies that can react to more and different stimuli.

Just a thought! :)

James Frusetta


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