The next four sessions I had with the Zombie Survival RPG were pretty much one, straight and narrow path to the endgame. Starting off the finale is a personalized session where it has the ulterior motive of getting a sixth member of the team from the five newly introduced NPCs.
I began the session with a massive party split where each PC is separated and doing their own scene. My character is with Maliss where they fight some zombies and cause the deserted island to be set on fire. Meanwhile, Ken finds himself coming across Bill’s followers who try to kill him. Ken, however, manages to intimidate the group enough to get out of his way, right on time for my character to come. Ken insists on saving Tsukasa, being reminded of his sister (it’s not confirmed, but heavily implied).
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Bane have a chat that leads to the Doctor talking about his past. While hinted at by Mythic, the Doctor that has been following me and the others is the War Doctor, a lost incarnation of the Doctor played by John Hurt who participated in the Time War and whose actions caused the other Doctors to denounce him until the 50th anniversary special: “The Day of the Doctor”.
This campaign took place before that was broadcast, when all that was known of this incarnation was that the other Doctors rejected him. With the magic of hindsight, I think I gave this character an alternative closure to his character arc, in which he realizes that, despite the wrongdoings he has done that have earned him his self-loathing, him helping out the group gave him the importance he needed.
Bane and the Doctor go off, where they bump into Dante and Brenda. Bane reveals that the Ghuls turned on him as well and that he had no idea why they would betray him. Brenda, however, distrusts the bug alien and leaves. He later manages to get the Ghuls to follow him again as he explains why he broke his directive of not making alliances with other races. Meanwhile, Tsukasa is cured as Hinako is kidnapped by skeletons, all while seemingly followed by a Ghul named Joker.
After that, I made Bane the new PC and the group fight against zombies before a random event causes the survivors that Ken previously told off to grab them and offer them as sacrifices for Mythic. Mythic, however, stops them and informs them that the entire world will be deleted within 24 hours. Realizing what’s going on, the survivors instantly help the party get to Mythic by putting out the fire.
Mythic ends up going into an all out offensive, triggering three random events targeted on Maliss in a row and causing him to go crazy. In the middle of this, Joker confronts the group, revealing herself to be Hajiko and asking for my character’s cooperation in exchange for Hinako’s safety. Malareth comes out and reveals that Hajiko was working for Malareth the whole time. To add to the twists, Malareth reveals that Lee was already dead and that the Lee I met was a Ghul impersonator. The reason for having Lee “die”? To make my character angry. Before more could be explained, the group rush out of the next zombie horde and run into Dante and Brenda.
Dante pretty much says that this is the most fun he’s had and this causes Brenda to quit being his maiden. This is when I realize that the island has a castle: the castle of King Draco.
Turns out Hinako was okay and was bunking in a room with a Rust Monster. The attempt to kill it fails as it destroys one of the Particle Throwers. As the group runs, the Doctor calls out my character for running and assures him that this is where he has to stand and fight. When my character tries to direct it back at him, the Doctor mentions how he made a vow that he was a “Doctor no more” and that he doesn’t run from conflicts. He ends them. The others also affirm that they won’t run which gives my character the pep he needs to go and confront Malareth.
However, the group runs into Bill, who taunts my character with a familiar hissing. My character realizes that thus guy was Profion, the villain from the Dungeons and Dragons movie, who previously appeared in my first 3.5 game as an in-universe reason for why I added traps… Long story short, he disguised himself as Admiral Ackbar in that game and ended up revealing himself to be Profion.
So, yeah, Profion’s here, and he reveals the entire reason they were running these programs, going all the way back to the first 3.5 game. It’s a pretty long story, but to make it short, the group wanted my character to be angry because then they could lock him in a suit of armor and thus force him to know only rage, thus becoming a weapon of mass destruction. However, my character managed to stop that project from being realized a while ago and so Profion didn’t get the memo. The moment he does, he stops being evil and tells the others how to get out: through the skull that Malareth has.
And so, Ken and the Doctor go to look for it while the others continue on. Soon, they find Malareth. Profion tries to reason with him and say the project’s been canned, but Malareth says how he thrives off the world’s suffering, then taunts my character with lines ripped straight from the first Avengers movie. Right down to how he says “we have a Hulk” only for it to be a hulking zombie. This leads my character and Malareth to have a one-on-one fight while the others take on the zombie.
It’s here that my character abuses the hell out of the Mythic Fate Chart and its synergy with the Brownie Points by using those points to lower the result of an Impossible roll down to negatives. All it did, though, was cause the end of the world to go faster, all while Malareth rubs it in: “There is no throne, there is no version of this where you come out on top. Fight me… We shall stand upon this earth, together, as it burns!”
The group manages to kill the Hulking Zombie while the Doctor and Ken are saved by Maliss, who got brainwashed by a mysterious white wizard in armor. They go to save Brenda from Hajiko and off the latter before she could kill Brenda. Meanwhile, the fight with Malareth has him reveal that he was originally going to die during the 4E game, but was saved by a goddess who wanted him to create a world of suffering to supplant and fuel her world. She saved him by messing with the dice and making Malareth more powerful, making him a god of the virtual world.
From here, it gets a little confusing as it incorporates lore from my non-RPG liveblogs, but the long story short of it is that while everyone else was focused on my character’s rage, Malareth wanted to cultivate his sorrow and turn it into despair. However, after a well-placed deck to the face, Malareth’s army disappears with a few questions from my character. However, the White Wizard appears and grabs my character before leaving, all while ominously saying that they must make sacrificed when asked about the others.
And then the story ends with my character brought back to the real world, only to find that his entire place has been abandoned because he was gone for two years. This was going to build up to a long arc of me reviewing various movies and comics akin to how Linkara does his arcs, but it never came to fruition and thus we have a rather bittersweet story where my character finally breaks out of the zombie world, but all his friends are gone in the process.
I mean, I guess I can make up an ending right now where the group comes to my character’s aid, stop Malareth and the world from ending, but what’s done is done and to be frank, I liked it. I liked the campaign I ran and I actually kinda wanna run something like this again in the future, though removed from past lore and instead working on stories and characters made within this site. This campaign had some rather cool stories and ideas for me to work on in the future and I think this was a good idea to have a retrospective of my old RPGs in order to realize what I need to do in the future.
Now, of course, I have two more RPGs I’ve solo’d, but they were after I made this site and on a completely different site altogether, so I’m going to touch up on them after I do my 99th, 100th, and 101st. Until then, Bon Voyage, gamers!
???: So… Who was this guy you played with a year ago?
Enterprise: Well, he’s a nice guy, but he definitely needs some help reviewing these RPGs. He’s doing everything solo!
???: Hmm… In that case, I should give him a helping hand… After all, I heard he’s reviewing a very dark RPG… Something that’s just my tastes…
Enterprise: Okay… Brother.
{The non-existent camera pans to reveal Enterprise’s twin brother: Enterprise-D.}
Solo RPG Voyages 