Zombie Apocalypse with BRP

[robert9zero]

Hi everyone, just got BRP book and I'm planning on running a gritty realistic zombie apocalypse with it. I'm wondering if anyone created some support materials for apocalypse settings.

Thank you

[tooley1chris]

Honestly everything I needed for my zombie game a few years ago was in the BIG Gold Book.

I used sanity rules, but only for NPCs. 

 Using Google maps with satellite view even provides your battle maps for free 😎 My game ended up at Six-Flags in Missouri. Great fun 

[AndreJarosch]

Not BRP, but based on Mythras (a cousin of BRP): 
SEASONS OF THE DEAD RPG 
https://tinyurl.com/mwewxacv

And there already are two Zombie BRP adventures: 
MALLRAISER
https://tinyurl.com/y3xs5s85

and 
THE SURFING DEAD 
https://tinyurl.com/3x4w2zj8

[g33k]

On 1/6/2025 at 11:10 AM, robert9zero said:

... realistic zombie apocalypse ...

TBH, that phrase right there is so entirely subjective, I cannot tell what you mean.

"Zombie" as in "walking dead"?
From my POV, that leaves "realistic" about 2 timezones back that-a-ways.  "Gritty low-fantasy" works here, being "fantasy" instead of "realistic."

"Zombies" as in, some still-alive but largely non-sapient victims of a plague-virus (or a cordyceps fungus or etc), making them ignore personal hygiene & shamble about hungering for Braaaains!!!  ?
Now we're into at least vaguely "realistic" (though we really need some other fall-of-civilization vector, as sapient humans with their tech & civilization intact should frankly wipe attacking zombie hordes off the field of conflict).

Of course, this is all my own POV; I'm relatively geeky, and furthermore married to a biologist(BS) & systems' ecologist(MS) and helped her with her field research & coding to analyze her results, so my own standards of "realism" on the question of "zombies as predators hunting humans" may be very-different from the players at your table; or maybe just my limited "suspension of disbelief."

But I too commend "Mallraiser" & "Surfing Dead."

[Atgxtg]

It depends a bit on how you are going to run things, but generally speaking you don't really need much more to run a zombie apocalypse setting. But I'd reccomend:

The Investigator Weapons series of supplements, especially Volume 2, Modern Day, might be helpful. I'd expect your PCs will probably need weapons to fight off the zombies, and IW covers that much better than the generic firearms table in BRP. You don't need IW to run firearms, but it will give you a lot more choices and options, some of which might prove useful against zombies. The close quarters shooting rules could be especially useful when fighting zombies. 

The Modern Equipment Catalog might be useful. It's got a lot of different gear and some of it could be useful. The Survival & Outdoor gear and rules in particular. But there is a lot of stuff in it, and it can go deep down the rabbit hole, so you'd probably only use a small amount of what's in it.