How To Play The Walking Dead
How To Play The Walking Dead
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for The Walking Dead. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own The Walking Dead game at home.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
Game category
Skills
Pushing and stress
How to attack
Armor
Cover
Moving
Dueling
Sneak attacks
Brawling
Leadership
Swarms
Threat levels
Single walker attack
Fighting a swarm
Sacrifice someone
Relieving stress
Dying
Healing
Helping allies
Jargon
Building a character
Game category. This is the official tabletop roleplaying game of the famous TV show, The Walking Dead. You are role playing as a character in a world where society has collapsed. An unidentified malady has spread to all living people, infecting everyone. Anyone who dies, regardless of the cause of the death, is reanimated into what is called a Walker, an undead shambling corpse driven by a compulsion to consume living flesh. If one of the living gets scratched or bitten by a walker, they will succumb, quickly becoming one if the bitten limb is not amputated. Your character can kill an individual Walker, but never enough of them to make a dent in how many there are in the world. It’s not safe out there. You might be able to clear the Walkers from a small haven, such as a roof top, so you can sleep. At your haven you can store food, water, medicine, and other resources, maybe collaborating with a close knit group of fellow survivors. But in a world with no law enforcement, can you trust the people you meet? They might be robbers eyeing your limited food, or murderers, or cannibals, or could simply make too much noise and attract a Walker swarm, a gathering of the undead so numerous that they overrun anything in their path. How long will you survive in this roleplaying game before you become one of… the walking dead. To describe the mechanics in five sentences, this is a game where you will roll six sided dice, also called d6. You succeed when you see at least one six in the dice you rolled. You can push to re roll failures, which adds stress dice. If you get a one on a stress dice, something goes wrong. Weapons deal a set number of damage depending on the weapon, and all characters have three hit points.
Skills. When your character tries to accomplish something in the game world, you might roll dice to see if they are successful or not. A good game master will call for a dice roll any time the character failing could increase tension, make the situation much worse, or make the game more exciting. How do you know how many dice you will roll? Find the skill that best fits what you’re trying to do, and the attribute associated with that skill. The number next to the skill, plus the number next to the attribute, are how many dice you get to roll.
Here is an example skill roll. Rick is trapped, surrounded by Walkers on all sides with no way out. Glenn’s player wants to help Rick. She proposes that Glenn sneak through the Walker filled streets, find a car without being detected, hot wire it, and drive it back to Rick to pick him up. Because the first part of her plan is sneaking, and because if that fails that dramatically changes the outcome of this plan, the game master calls for a roll. Glenn’s player looks at his character sheet. The number three is written next to the stealth skill, and it’s one of three skills under the agility attribute, which has the number four. With three dice from the stealth skill and four dice from the agility attribute, Glenn’s player rolls seven dice total. There are very good odds that at least one of them will be a six. The player rolls and the result is… two sixes! Excellent. Glenn’s stealthy sneaking through the streets was successful, he found a car with no Walkers around. For the extra six, the game master rewards Glenn’s player with a little something extra, such as asking her what color the car is. She says orange. Sweet. The next step will be hot wiring it.
Pushing and stress. In The Walking Dead, a roll isn’t necessarily over if you don’t get any sixes. You can choose to push. Pushing is when you pick up all those dice, add one point of stress to your character, and roll again. For each point of stress, you add one more special dice to the pool. This special stress dice could be a different color than the other dice, or have different symbols on its faces, or can be rolled after the other dice on its own, or could be rolled in a different location on your table, etc. Anyway, to push, you pick up all those failed dice and re roll them, and also re roll as many extra dice called stress dice as you have points of stress. This is another chance to see a six. If you get at least one six as a result, congratulations, your skill roll succeeded. From now on, you’ll roll as many extra dice on all rolls as you have points of stress. If you’ve pushed once, you have one stress, and roll one extra dice. If you’ve pushed twice, you have two stress, and roll two extra dice. Now here’s where keeping track of which dice are the stress dice matter. If you get a one on specifically a stress dice, not your regular dice, then the one on the stress dice means you’ve quote, “messed up”. When you mess up, the threat level on page seventy nine raises. For example you didn’t notice a Walker until it got close enough to attack you, or you were loud enough to get the attention of a Walker Swarm, etc. Something goes very wrong. Stress stays with you until you do something to relieve the stress. This includes narrating a roleplaying scene with your anchor, narrating a roleplaying scene with another character, and resting. When you sleep a full night’s rest, roll two dice and relieve the lower number of stress.
Here is an example of pushing. Glenn is at the car he found. There aren’t any Walkers around. He’d like to try to hot wire the car, so he can drive it back to where Rick is trapped and rescue him. Hot wiring a car is the tech skill. The player looks at Glenn’s character sheet. There’s a zero written next to the tech skill, uh oh. But the tech skill is under the wits attribute, which Glenn has a four in, whew. Glenn’s player will be rolling four dice. She rolls the four dice and gets… four, one, two, two. Yikes, there aren’t any sixes. Glenn’s not going to be able to hot wire this car because he doesn’t have any tech skills. But wait! She can push! Glenn’s player adds one point of stress to his character sheet. This means all future rolls will be made with one extra dice, a stress dice. She picks up the dice and rolls them, and then rolls one extra dice to represent the stress dice. Three, six, two, one, and the stress dice is a… five! Excellent. She narrates how the first time, the car’s engine turns and sputters, sputters, sputters, and fails to roll over. Glenn was about to give up, rather than risk the noise of the engine attracting Walkers. But then he remembered how he knows, based on his knowledge gathered while working as a pizza delivery driver before the outbreak, that this road is a dead end surrounded by the tall concrete walls of a warehouse. There’s not likely to be many Walkers, kept out by the anti tresspassing architecture. It’s safe to make a bit of noise here. He tries the engine again, symbolically re rolling. And gets that six! The engine rumbles to life, the car starts, and Glenn drives away, off to rescue Rick. Huzzah! Because this is a training guide, let’s also discuss what would have happened if Glenn’s player had gotten that six and also gotten a one on the stress dice. The rule book calls this succeeding and also messing up. Yes, the car would have started. And also, something would have gone terribly wrong in a different aspect. The game master gets to choose how. For example there’s the classic attract a swarm of Walkers result, or the classic you didn’t notice a Walker was about to attack you result. You might run out of bullets, get lost, break an important item, or get injured. Or the GM can do something creative, like, Glenn didn’t know the previous occupant of the car had seen the zombie apocalypse, panicked, and hidden in their trunk, not realizing they didn’t know how to open it. Days trapped in the hot trunk had led to their demise, until they had reawoken, undead, but still trapped. Grumbling in zombie speak, the former car occupant now thumps their head softly into the roof of the trunk, shaken and stirred by Glenn’s speedy driving, as Glenn whips around curves and flies over speed bumps, off to rescue Rick, unaware he’s bringing a Walker companion along for the ride. Depending on the scene and how creative they’re feeling at the moment, the GM might ask the player to pick and describe how they messed up.
How to attack. Attacks in The Walking Dead are basically skill rolls. Your weapon will come from the list of gear. Each weapon gives you a specified number of extra dice you roll, and does a set number of damage if it hits.
Here’s an example attack. Rick is trapped. He’s surrounded by Walkers. His weapon is a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver. You can see the revolver’s stats on page 74 of the rule book. They can target enemies a short distance away, they give the player two extra dice on their ranged attack skill roll, and they deal two damage if they hit. Rick has three in the ranged combat skill and two in the agililty attribute. Three dice from the ranged combat skill plus two dice from the agility attribute plus two dice from the revolver equals seven dice overall. The ranged combat skill says that for every extra six you get, you can increase the damage you deal by one. Rick gets two sixes! That’s great. The Walker he hits takes three damage.
Armor. If you’re wearing armor, when you get attacked, roll as many dice as you have level in armor. For example, metal plate armor has an armor level of eight, so you’d roll eight dice. Each resulting six reduces the damage you take by one. There is a trade off to mobility from wearing armor. For example the metal plate armor reduces all the skill rolls you make that feasibly use mobility by three dice.
Cover. To get behind cover, make a mobility roll. That means rolling your agility attribute plus mobility skill number of dice. Rolling a six means you succeed. If a character is behind cover, enemies firing ranged attacks at them need an extra six to hit. Cover doesn’t affect close combat.
Moving. If you want to increase or decrease the distance between yourself and someone or something, that requires a roll. Mobility is a skill in The Walking Dead. Roll your agility attribute and mobility skill number of dice, and if at least one dice rolls a six, you succeeded.
Dueling. Dueling is the most basic way to fight. There’s one player character and one enemy who isn’t a zombie. Both of you roll dice, as many dice as you have in your combat skill, your attribute, and your weapon bonus. If neither of you rolls a six, then nobody did any damage. If you both roll the same number of sixes, then you both deal your weapon damage to each other. If one of you rolls more sixes, you deal your weapon damage to the other person, and don’t take any. Every extra six past the first one deals one extra damage. If a friend role plays helping you some how, you get an extra dice for your duel. After the first round, you could choose to end the combat and try to accomplish that through roleplaying, or you could keep dueling.
Sneak attacks. If someone is unaware they are being attacked, they don’t roll for that first round of opposed rolls in a duel.
Brawling. If two people gang up on a single target, the lone fighter duels one of the pair and is defenseless against the other. Everyone’s attack for the round happens at the same time. If there are multiple people fighting on each side, you can use the brawling mechanics. A brawl starts with the Game Master, often abbreviated as GM, declaring how far apart everyone is from each other and from objects in the environment, like cover, enemies, etc. Then the GM walks everyone through the six phases in a round. You can do one action per round. This action involves a skill roll, and can be something like a ranged attack, a stealth roll, a mobility roll to move, etc. Drawing your weapon doesn’t take an action. NPCs will say what they’re doing to start each phase. When the GM calls out the phase you want to take your action in, after the NPCs have all said what they will do, say what you want to do and then roll to see if you succeed. The phases are: 1 taking cover, 2 ranged combat, 3 close combat, 4 moving, 5 first aid, and 6 anything else.
Leadership. In a brawl, you have the option of taking the leadership action. Roll your leadership skill plus empathy attribute number of dice. Every six you get is a bonus dice you can give to another player, while telling them what to do, that they can roll if they do what you told them to. Three is the maximum number of leadership dice you can give to a single person.
Swarms. Walkers who are moving around in a group of five or more are called a swarm. The swarm size matters, mechanically, so here’s the definition for it. Five to ten Walkers is a swarm size of one. Eleven to twenty Walkers is a swarm size of two. Twenty one to fifty Walkers is a swarm size of three. Fifty one to a hundred Walkers is a swarm size of four. More than a hundred but less than a thousand Walkers is a swarm size of five. More than a thousand Walkers is a swarm size of six.
Threat levels. The Game Master will declare the threat level publicly to describe settings and at the start of combats. A threat level of zero means you’re in an area that has been cleared of Walkers and are safe for now. A threat level of 1 means there are probably Walkers somewhere around you but not anywhere specifically. They haven’t noticed you and won’t bother you, unless you mess up a skill test, in which case a single Walker might show up for a bite. A threat level of 2 means the Walkers are at defined places on the map that the GM can mark if asked, but they haven’t noticed you yet. When the threat level is 1 or 2, you could try rolling your skills to avoid the Walkers. Examples include stealth to quietly bypass them, or mobility to run away. If you fail, a single Walker might attack you or the threat level will go up. A threat level of 3 means there are Walkers visible, they can see you as much as you can see them, they’re shambling towards you, and all players gain a stress dice. They know you’re there and won’t go away, just standing and waiting for you patiently. Players are limited to only using the skills endure, force, mobility, ranged combat, and stealth. A threat level of 4 means the Walkers are getting pretty close to you. Not arm’s reach, but, they’re coming. Players are limited to only using the skills force, mobility, and ranged combat. A threat level of 5 means they are now within an arm’s reach of you. Their arms. Which they are, in fact, reaching towards you. Players are limited to only using the skills force, close combat, and ranged combat. And lastly a threat level of six means you are surrounded on all sized by Walkers within biting distance. Players are limited to only using the skills force and close combat. Threat levels of three, four, five, and six initiate the swarm fighting mechanics. An example of a threat level is if you try to disguise yourself as a Walker but your disguise breaks down, they’d notice you while within an arm’s reach of you, which is threat level 5 but just like, for you, individually.
There are four ways to increase the threat level. Rolling a one on a stress dice, failing a skill roll intended to avoid Walkers, entering an area that has Walkers in it, and making noise. When a player rolls a one on a stress dice, that is called messing up, and often the GM will say the threat level raises while something else goes wrong, such as friendly fire, injuring yourself, the environment gets worse, running out of ammo, etc.
Single Walker attack. Walkers don’t have hit points, attributes, or skills. When just a single one of them attacks you, make a skill roll of your choice to avoid getting bitten. Which skill you pick will probably depend on the situation. This defense roll doesn’t count as an action in combat, it just happes every time a single Walker goes to attack you. If you pass this skill roll, congratulations, the Walker didn’t make contact with you and due to whatever you did, is no longer threatening you. If you fail this skill roll, uh oh, you will make a roll on the Walker attack table on page 81. That table is pretty diverse, and includes some effects that can immediately kill your character. After rolling on the table, the attack is over and the Walker no longer threatens you. So pass or fail, a single Walker attack is resolved by that skill roll.
Fighting a swarm. Anytime the threat level is three, four, five, or six, you’re going to be fighting a swarm. Like brawls, this combat will be done in rounds. Every round, up to three player characters and or non player characters can take an action. So if there are four of you, or if you have three players and an NPC, remember that sentence during the game. Extra people can help allies and one person can use the leadership skill each round, but only three people can participate adding their successes to the running total for the swarm combat. There are three skill rolls per round, so if you have two player characters, one of you is making two rolls in a round, and the second roll gets two fewer dice. If there’s only one person facing a swarm, the first roll is normal, the second roll gets two fewer dice, and the third roll gets four fewer dice.
Swarm threat. Swarm threat is a number you calculate and keep track of during swarm fights. Swarm threat equals swarm size plus threat level. Each round, three players will do skill rolls and will add together their successes. Any player who fails their individual skill roll receives a single Walker attack. They do another skill roll that is separate from the roll for the round, to see if the single Walker attack hits them or misses.
Here is an example. If the swarm size is three and the threat is four, the players will need to get seven successes in their three skill rolls to win the round.
The round is won if the number of successes reaches the number for the swarm threat. Winning a round will end the fight if the swarm size is three or less. If the swarm size is four, five, or six, then winning a round will reduce the swarm size by one. If you don’t get as many successes as you were hoping for but do get at least half, then you get one free extra success next round. If you don’t get even half as many successes as the swarm threat, which again is the swarm size plus the threat level, then the players lost the round to the Walkers and the GM chooses one of three things. Either the threat level is increased, or the swarm size is increased, or the swarm attacks. If the round is lost and anyone rolled a one on a stress dice, then the GM chooses two things.
The swarm attacking means different things at different threat levels. Below threat level six, it either means a single Walker attack, or a block. A block is when the Walkers have crowded into the escape routes, so mobility and stealth rolls need one extra six to succeed. At threat level six, things go horribly wrong and something called a mass attack happens when the swarm attacks. The GM rolls a random dice to see who’s affected, and that person can’t make the defensive roll, and rolls on the single Walker attack table with no way to avoid it. Every time the swarm attacks, the swarm threat number gets reduced by one afterwards. Eventually the Walkers will move on naturally, if you can hold out that long.
Sacrifice someone. There is a mechanic for sacrificing someone, basically shoving them into the Walker swarm while running in the opposite direction. The two people roll opposed force skill and strength attribute number of dice, and the person who wins is out of the fight while the person who loses has to roll on the Walker attack table on page eighty one. Regardless, that force roll takes up one of the three rolls the party was allowed to make.
Relieving stress. After a roleplaying scene that involves a social interaction with another player character or nonplayer character, a player can tell the Game Master that they relieved stress, and can remove one stress dice. If the scene was with your anchor and lasted an hour of in game time or more, then you can choose to relieve all stress. An anchor can relieve your stress once per session. Relieving stress starts to be important in long term campaigns where you’re using the one healing point per day mechanic, because you don’t get that one healing point a day if you have five or more stress.
Dying. When your character takes three points of damage, they become broken. Broken characters can’t walk, can’t attack, automatically fail all skill rolls, and generally just lay on the ground. Immediately gain one stress and roll on the critical injury table. A broken character that gets hit again, dies.
Critical injuries can come in three levels of lethality: not lethal, potentially lethal after a while, and immediately lethal. Here are three example results from rolling on the critical injury table. If you roll a 1 and then a 1, your character is winded. Being winded isn’t lethal, so you aren’t at risk of dying. You do have a penalty of minus one, meaning one less dice on all your rolls. And this lasts even after you’re not broken anymore, for between one and six hours. Your GM will tell you when you’ve recovered. That was one example. Here’s a second example. If you roll a three and a three, that’s a deep flesh wound. You have a minus two on all your rolls, meaning two fewer dice. The deep flesh wound could be fatal. Your fellow players can make a medicine skill roll to try to stabilize you once a day. If they haven’t succeeded by eight days, then your character dies. Here’s a third example. If you roll a six and a six on the critical injury table, your character’s heart was impaled, and they die immediately.
Healing. As long as you’ve got food, a player character recovers one hit point with each new day. If an ally succeeds on a medicine skill roll to help you, gain a hit point and you’re back up on your feet and no longer broken. The critical injury is still there, though. Every extra six on a medicine roll is one extra recovered hit point.
Helping allies. Allies can spend their entire action to help each other. Each person helping you narrates what they’re doing in the story to contribute, and this gives you one extra dice on a roll, to a maximum of three extra dice.
Jargon. The term d6 means a six sided dice. The phrase d66 means rolling first one, then a second six sided dice. The order they’re rolled matters. For example if you roll a 1 and then a 4, that’s the order they’re in, not four one. A d666 means rolling three six sided dice, and again the order matters. If you roll a two, a five, and a three, that’s the result, not in a different order. Double high means rolling two dice and keeping the highest. Double low means rolling two dice and keeping the lowest. Random dice means everyone rolls one dice and the lowest result loses. For example if a swarm attacks and the phrase ‘random dice’ is used to determine who gets bitten, every player rolls a d6 and the person with the lowest result is the person who got bitten. Opposed rolls where two people are butting heads, such as a race only one person can win or when one person is hiding and another is trying to find them, are resolved by both people rolling and the person with more sixes wins.
Building a character in The Walking Dead involves assigning eleven categories to your character sheet: archetype, name, issue, drive, attribute points, skill points, talent, gear, player character relationships, anchors, and haven. I have the rare opportunity to demonstrate character creation using someone people know and love from a TV show, so I’m going to do that. The creators of this game have made a character sheet for Glenn, so I’ll walk you through each choice they made to make him.
First, there are twelve archetypes, optional prebuilt classes you can use, if you want to quickly generate a pre built character of sorts. People like a doctor, a criminal, a farmer, a kid, a cop, a politician, a preacher, etc. These archetypes are like pregenerated characters that make the game really quick to pick up if you want to play now and think of character building never. Because we have a good idea of who Glenn is as a person, we won’t be using one of those pregenerated archetypes, but if you want to use that, it’s most of the way to a completed character sheet for you. But we don’t need an archetype, we’re making Glenn, who Free League publishing describes like this. Before the outbreak, Glenn was a pizza delivery driver in Atlanta, whose knowledge of the city streets and where to go saved him during the beginning of the outbreak. He soon joined a group of survivors camping outside Atlanta, and their trust in him, being the best at revisiting the city to find provisions, awakened a part of Glenn that had been asleep for a long time. He’s a scout and a runner for the group. Courageous, smart, and fast. But his real strength is his ability to see the best in others, to inspire trust, and to keep the group together. I agree, Free League publishing. It’s fun to play TTRPGs based on a show you’ve all watched, this is neat. Anyway, back to character creation, archetype is custom. Name is Glenn. His issue is that he’s eager to take risks for others. His drive is a desire for everyone to make it, together. All characters have thirteen points in attributes. For Glenn, that’s 2 in strength, 4 in agility, 4 in wits, and 3 in empathy. Starting level characters have twelve points in skills. You will get more as you level up. Glenn starts with one skill point in close combat, one in endure, zero in force, two skill points in mobility, one in ranged combat, three in stealth, two skill points in scout, one in survival, zero in tech, zero skill points in leadership, one in manipulation, and zero in medicine. As you level up, you may gain more skill points and talents. Glenn’s character sheet has two talents, so he’s slightly above starter level characters who have one talent. His two talents are Gatherer and Packmule. Gatherer gives Glenn a plus two to stealth, which means rolling two more dice, when Glenn is on his own. Packmule lets Glenn carry one extra slot of items. Next, Glenn has the gear of a pistol, a backpack with four rations, and a pair of walkie talkies. The pistol has the weapon stats of plus two, which means two extra dice when you roll with it, that it is able to target short range or closer enemies, and that it deals two damage when it hits. We write a few notes about Glenn’s relationships with the other player characters, name two anchors who are people in the group who are important to Glenn, who he can role play with to relieve stress points. For example a friend he can open up to about how he feels. This will depend on who the fellow player characters are. And lastly, we describe his haven, which depends on the adventure, and could range from a bus, a factory with a secure chain link fence surrounding it, a rich person’s house, or simply that old classic, a roof top.
For players in my upcoming The Walking Dead game, when you build your character, please follow the starting character rules, and because we’re late in the season playing high powered characters, please get an additional five skill points and three talents. Starting characters have twelve skill points, you have seventeen, with a max of five in any skill. Starting characters have one talents, you have four.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing The Walking Dead in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of The Walking Dead in action. We encourage you to find the The Walking Dead rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
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