Loaded Dice Cast Season 3 Episode 9: A Stiff Drink

We're coming to get your brains!  We have none of our own!  Kevin, Evan, return guest Ryan, and blast from the past Matty G rises from his grave!  Together, we discuss the ever present Zombie genre.  It looks like the Walking Dead is really hitting its stride this season, and with Halloween just passed, we take a moment to survey the post-apocalyptic landscape.  We discuss, both in the draft and outside of the draft, what do Zombies really mean?  Is the genre dead, or undead?  Fast or slow?  And the best tropes that exist.  Laughs are had by all, and we drink our fair share of winter beers.

Additionally, Evan provides a fantastic review of the Fate Core RPG system that he, Kevin and wife-unit have been using to run a modern-zombie campaign.

Special bonus game this episode:  Drink every time Kevin says "like" or "narrative".

Show Notes:

Fate Core RPG

World War Z Audiobook

Zombies: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Zeds

At long last I return to the land of the living after not having internet access for weeks. Which means, I am long overdue to write some deep and meaningful nonsense. 

I love zombies, and as with many fans, it all started with watching Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, and Shaun of the Dead in high school and college. I've been spending the last several days eagerly pounding away at my mouse and keyboard to TellTale Games' The Walking Dead based on the much beloved comics (and from what I hear there is a TV show by the same name as well  - though I only watched the first season, and yes I'm sure that makes me a heathen in some circles.) So why the fondness for the flesh devouring masses? Simple. They give us stories that look at the hardest things we can imagine,
despite them being in front of us on a regular basis: the end of the world, extinction, morality, compassion, anarchy, society, grief, and more. This is what makes the genre worth a damn. It is not about cheap thrills and colossal moments of mayhem as the most recent blockbuster zed film World War Z would offer up (Read the book, it's by Max Brooks, you'll like it [Yes, that Mel Brooks one that made Space Balls]). It is the moments when you realized that you have only enough food to feed half your group, the children are wasting away, but the watchman needs food to protect your outpost; someone might have been bitten the last time you had to tangle with the shambling devourers, so choices must be made; maybe some group of yahoos with bigger and better guns are hunting you down for supplies. 

Where does it come from though? 


The idea of zombies has been around for some time. There is reference to the undead in some of our earliest texts and even more in our folklore. The most common folkloric tales are those of the voodoo style zombie; often an African slave in life damned to continue as one into un-death and never rest. Their entrance into media might be with the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari a German expressionist film, and the novel I Am Legend the much remade tale (though they are more vampiric) . It isn't until we get to the most modern zombie tales that are based around the work of George A. Romero (who is said to have drawn inspiration from 
I Am Legend when creating Night of the Living Dead) that zeds take on a heavier cultural weight. The starkness of the grim fates portrayed on the screen to those seeing war footage from Vietnam, and then the violent fate of the lead Ben; not by the gaping maws of zombies, but the pervasively ignorant assassination from a white posse. This also being a few years after Malcolm X's murder, and on the heels of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s as well, made the subversive content echo. 

Enough with the history lesson already, mister. 

400 Days of Zombie Summer

Zombies are never dead for long are they?

They may be defeated, cured, or locked outside the walls for a time, but they are the underworlds underdogs, the necrotic Rocky Balboa. Always taking a beating and coming back to kill Apollo Creed in the fourth round.

The latest zombie to pick itself off the stained concrete is Telltale's The Walking Dead video game.

Between April and November of 2012 Walking Dead fans were treated to 5 episodes set in the comic book world created by Robert Kirkman that spawned the AMC hit T.V show "The Walking Dead".

Instead of an action packed shooting game like Left 4 Dead where hundreds of zombies fell before your shotgun and machete, the Walking Dead video game felt more like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books you read in third grade on rainy days.

You hear someone screaming outside and banging on the door. 

If you open the door to help your fellow man turn to page 52.

 If you shoot your pistol three times through the door at head height turn to page 23.