Hello, dear readers. I have a favor to ask.
If you’ve read my posts here on the blog or across social media over the years, you may have seen me mention tinkering with game design. I’ve tried my hand at it a few times, sometimes putting projects away for years, only to come back a decade later, abandon them completely, or rewrite them endlessly. Since this year marks my 40th anniversary in the TTRPG hobby, my goal has been to “publish” a game, even if just digitally. Earlier this year, I worked on MUGeS, a simple narrative game. I playtested it, received some excellent feedback, and it has unfortunately languished in the revision stage ever since.
Then I considered collecting the NPCs I created for the #RPGaDay2026 challenge and releasing them as a supplement. That project is still ongoing; I’m currently tinkering with the format and presentation, but I fully intend to finish it. I assumed that would be the project I poured all my energy into before 2026 ended.
Imagine my surprise when I ended up writing a completely different mini-game this past weekend instead! Here’s how it happened.
I’m a long-time fan of Resident Evil, both the classic video games
As well as the early movies.
While I haven’t played the recent game installments, the originals remain some of my favorite action-horror titles. So, when a new Resident Evil movie was released, especially one helmed by the director of Barbarian and Weapons, I had to see it. Real life kept me from seeing it on opening weekend, but I finally caught it in theaters last Friday.
It is very different from the original film series (which, thankfully, became a mess as the sequels went on) and somewhat a departure from the classic games, but many of the core details are still there. It’s more than a simple horror film; I’d describe it as action horror for the Guardians of the Galaxy era. I get that doesn’t appeal to everyone, but it made me tense and outright scared during some jump scares, and I laughed at other moments.
Leaving the theater, the idea of running a zombie game was fresh in my mind. I’ve run a couple of times over the years, including a short seven-session Savage Worlds campaign where the players were isolated on a reality TV show as the apocalypse unfolded. (This was years before I had ever heard of the British TV show Dead Set, by the way!) I also ran a fun Halloween one-shot using The Dead Are Coming by Diogo Nogueira.
But the urge to run another zombie game persisted, especially after watching the new movie. I kept thinking about zombie tropes and stories in general, and when I went to bed last Saturday, game mechanics literally came to me in my sleep. I hurriedly got up and scribbled down the core concepts for Survival: A Mini-Game of the Zombie Apocalypse.
I spent a large chunk of Sunday reviewing and rewriting what I came up with. I shared the draft with Michael Wolf (the titular Stargazer of the blog!) and tinkered some more. It’s a compact system, just over two pages long, designed primarily for one-shot survival horror scenarios. However, I also included about two pages of additional rules for continuing adventures, featuring simple “Resources & Settlements” mechanics. I want to polish and officially publish this game, which brings me to this long post.
I’m putting the game out there in the hope that you, the readers, can take a few moments to look it over and share feedback if you want to get it to the table and playtest it- even better! I’d love to hear how it runs.
Here are the links to the game’s PDF and the character sheet PDF. Feel free to leave comments on the blog, reach out via social media (Facebook, Instagram, Discord, Threads, or Bluesky), or email me. All feedback is highly appreciated.
Thank you!
