FEB 12, 2019
TTRPG, Adventure
<aside> 📒 A one-shot adventure for a table-top RPG (5e compatible)
</aside>
Same post on Reddit
The dread claws into your mind as victims of weird "possession cases" come back as undead. Folks, scraped in the kerfuffle, start displaying the same symptoms. The immensity of a barely settled frontier gets you claustrophobic shivers: even if, by some miracle, there is someone capable of helping out there – the wilderness in between is vast and full of terrors...
Premise: a low-level party is put through a low-key zombie apocalypse. Human corpses are just starting to rise; there may be a horde or two of undead animals ravaging the woods – and the thrill is to unravel the mystery before the situation hits the point of no return.
Players' buy-in: some "roots" in the region, a reason to stay when the shit hits the fan. Family ties, half-finished research, divined spots to build a shrine, etc.
Mashroom Warrior by Egor Kapustin – your zombies might look like that
Mushroom-folk is a good excuse to early throw something alien at players: they're a sentient plant-based lifeform, with telepathic communication, metamorphosis, and a non-evil link to necromancy.I homebrewed them a bit, so they procreate by seeding a corpse with spores. The species is from Underdark, a place harsh and violent – so their seedlings developed a defensive mechanism, making their "compost" to fight off carrion eaters.
Spores made by juvenile seedlings aren't strong enough to take over an Underdark monster, who developed immunity against them – but overworld fauna isn't that lucky.
It's up to you why a "grove" of Myconids was forced out from the Underdark. Perhaps, foreshadow the next Big Bad?