@wanderer said:
Also, zombies are lame and so overdone. Come up with your own apocalyptic bad guy. Alien infestation. Triffids. Monsters from a secret government laboratory... well, okay, the horror of zombies is that they were once human, so you have to kill a decayed former-person. That's pretty cool. But the way they've been overplayed, especially in computer games like L4D, it's just gratuitous slaying of hordes. Zombies work best when it's not strangers, when the zombies are humanized. When they are family and close friends that the protagonist has to confront/kill. I guess ease of infection is a significant factor in this regard.
I think you may be missing the point in turning something like this into the game.
With a few exceptions - if you want to dangle the apocalypse's resolution in front of your characters as a potential goal, for example - it doesn't really matter what manner of creature has caused the breakdown. Whether it's brain-eating zombies or aliens craving human flesh, everyday roleplay will be between normal people thrust into abnormal circumstances, which means the threat works as just one of many environmental variables; that's what's interesting here, how the PCs' respond to these things.
With the caveat that there are more than one ways to make a game the focus should be on those interactions. Do you see the other person - or group - as a potential ally? As a joiner? As a competitor? As an enemy? Other human beings are your greatest potential asset and biggest threat, far more so than mindless hordes of whatever it is that's out there. Dealing with resource deprivation, psychological trauma and the knowledge all it takes is one bad day for it all to end.
In that context it doesn't matter what it is that's out there. You won't interact with it outside PrPs, it's just a point of reference.
IMHO one of the benchmarks to see if your game might be going the wrong way is if you have Flintstones-minded people trying to fix the apocalypse on channels, purely OOC. Let's build a steel wall, surrounded by an acid-filled moat leading into corridors with zombie-killing grinders powered by zombies on treadmills who're also providing infinite electricity, woohoo. If that gets traction it's all going into a different direction.