Thoughts about the Zombie genre
 

First off I like to say that I'm a fan of the Zombie genre and RPGs, but not JRPGs or the doom & gloom European Zombie genre.

There's the obvious appeals:

Anarchy, chaos & breakdown of order.
Violence & shoot em up.
Survivor horror.

But then there's the genre's cliches:

Hand-waving modern military power.
Hand-waving the physics of decaying bodies.
Hand-waving the existence of militarized borders and quarantine.
Supernatural infection.
Massive inflation of the undead.
Everyone dies.

The power-gaming stat fiddler in me is bugged by the hand-waving of reality, but it's not a big bother.

I can stand most the the cliches but the RPG enthusiast in me can't get around the last one; everybody dies. It's the same problem I had with the book series, if the supporting characters keep getting killed off and replaced then it's hard to get invested especially if the main character is just a sock puppet for the player. (yes yes not everyone dies in the book but I hated the frequency of character turnovers)

What characters do we have left? Kenny the broken, Ben the traitor, 3 strangers, and the child. There isn't much to go for except the child-guardian relationship. I don't like it, I don't expect it to change since it's a bad precedent to cave to fan pressure post-release, I guess I was just in for another type of RPG.

Well thats how this series is. They love killing off your favorite characters. :D

Kenny Rules. I hope he just doesn't ... Release his inner anger spirit and just get eaten by walkers.
I'd quit and abandon all hope.

Do you read the graphics? Because, the main team is far from perfect...especially after the most recent issues.

Well that's just the thing, what would make episode 4 different from being a spin-off with a few familiar faces?

I did, it was a pinprick for me . Not saying that it couldn't happen, just that I'm not into that type of plot.

i don't know but i can't wait for it. Its gonna be even darker and more gruesome then Episode 3 :D

Understood. I just get a bit antsy when people say this group hardly has a chance anymore, look at Ricks group. Lees group is having a cakewalk in comparison.

That's one of the problems, once you get technical you start breaking the willing suspension of belief.

Why should talks of survivability be limited to what the survivors have/know? Why not discuss how zombies should be handled? Oh no we might question the magical attributes of zombies, or how the military couldn't prevent this, or the incredible fragility of society.

Oooohhh, I totally see what you did there, very subtle. :D

I've seen the tv show version of the walking dead. That does help in that you do get the sense that the military tried, they really did, but there was just too many walkers.

society is very fragile. I saw the events of hurricane Katrina on CNN. Four days to collapse...4 days.

As far as zombies go there is nothing magical...we just don't know is all.

CDC spokesman: I'll take your questions
Carley: Is it a virus?
CDC spokesman: We don't know.
Carley: How does it spread? Is it airborne?
CDC spokesman: Airborne is a possibility. We don't know.
Reporter [male]:Is this an international health hazzard or a military concern?
CDC spokesman: Both
Carley: Are these people alive or dead?
CDC spokesman [shakes head]: We don't know.

See they're working on it....just need a little more time is all.

In the absence of order


Well except in real life situations they would hazard a guess, or lie. Anything is better than public panic.

More importantly even if it somehow succeeds why couldn't there be pockets that gradually expand out? What's to stop an army base from fortifying and rolling out? This is literally cavemen using melee vs assault rifles and artillery.

Dead people running around would generate a military response right away, there would be no chance to spread. Considering that most countries vehemently guard their borders from traffickers, invasive species, and illegals the dead walking would definitely generate a response.

Except they don't exist, good fiction is resistant to inspection. We can't say that dragons don't exist, but there's no reason to assume that they exist until we have proof.

I don't like to but as soon as a technical discussion goes on it's hard to avoid touching the assumptions of the genre.

I disagree with some of the staples of the genre being bad. I'm not on a good interface to argue so I'll just stick with one question: since there is no definite cause for the zombies, do you consider this a supernatural infection?

I see. I think....

You want to know HOW it occured rather than being in a story where it has occured that is walkers are everywhere and it's a full blown ZA and you're just asked to accept it all without a plausible cause. if that's the case then I would say:

1) The people who make the movies and games simply do not want to tell that part of the story. They could but would rather focus on a group (not a group that is doing well or one where they got trapped and killed themselves for example) that maybe has a 50/50 shot of seeing tomorrow if they could just get along with each other.

2) There are many stories out there that would make a good game or movie those stories just are not told for some reason. I understand why Kirkman does not tell those stories but that does not mean those kinds of movies would not sell tickets. I think a Marine Colonel in charge of a Marine expeditionary force sent to Miami to quell a walker uprising would be pretty nice.

3) Lastly, there is a demand for what happened during the outbreak. That scene in the walking dead where the helicopters were moving towards Atlanta and people on the highway saw just how desperate things were becoming was very popular. More flashback scenes like that were requested from the fans.

Of course, when all else fails, YOU could write a story that focuses on exactly how a zombie comes into being and the worldwide civilian and military effort to contain the outbreak. Then everyone else can just say their movie or video game takes place 15 days after your story ends and is focused on how these few survivors deal with one another in a world overrun by zombies.

So you're a munchkin who believes everything should work out as long as you have a strong understanding of the rules? Man, I would hate to DM one of your games.

Dude, Australia can't even control frogs and rabbits. Americans can't control an amphibious fish, salmonella, or west nile virus.

The chances of the US military neatly swooping down, containing, and quarantining a population of 400,000 people (Atlanta) who are effectively inflicted with rabies and must be killed on sight would be slim. That's 1/8th of the entire military combined. Unless they plan on carpet bombing the entire population, you've seen how effective the military is at containing urban conflict (not very).

I'm not saying that it's impossible. I'm just saying that there's never been evidence that the US military can handle anything even close to this. We're very good at blowing things up, but a chaotic populace of infected people with an unknown vector of disease that drives them insane and then magically turns them invincible to anything but headshots? I'm sorry, but that's not a pretty picture.

Do what?

That doesn't even apply when you consider the fact the bodies are re-animate. :p

If you're going to hand-wave reality - might as well hand-wave it all.

speaking about decaying zombies, isnt the problem self solving?

sooner or later all zombies should be decayed to the point where they cannot move anymore, or is it different in kirkmans world?

depends on the genre... in some, re-animation seems to retard the decay process.

You should read World War Z.

Thing is, because of the world this is based on, that's how it is. Everyone's on borrowed time. It's doesnt bother mean in the comics because its not ending anytime soon so you know you'll have the time to learn the new entries into comic..
But since the game is only 5 parts I find myself thinking of these 3 new people as shields/bait

I've heard that one of the limiting factors on human strength is pain, and since walkers (presumably) feel no pain than it is feasible that they could be stronger than ordinary humans, no? And remember that in Ep2 Mark said that in the opening days it spread quickly, as in all over the country. I'm fairly certain that if that were the case the military wouldn't stand much of a chance. All bases would be under attack at once, and not a single soldier would know how to bring down a walker. Sure, they'll probably find out that head shots do the trick but they have no idea that the bites kill, and after death, no matter how you die, you'll reanimate if your brain is intact. Bases that held out against a seige could fall from the inside when dead comrades rise and nobody knows what's going on.

The virus spread quickly, too quickly for the military to effectively combat or contain is what it seems like happened. I kind of agree with you about the whole "everyone dying" aspect, but in reality we'll all die from old age anyway, even though "old age" is likely to be somewhere around 50-60 with walkers everyone, if that. As for borders and quarantine, who are we to say that the entirety of the world has fallen? We actually have no idea about the situation outside of the United States, or even within since we'll never be going further west than Georgia. While the situation seems bleak, and saying that rest of the world is in the same state is likely an accurate conclusion, we'll never truly know. For all we do truly know Canada and Mexico could be high-fiving each other for successfully containing the outbreak inside America, and saving the rest of the world.

And, I don't get what you mean by zombie inflation. Could you please explain that?