The next season of The Walking Dead can take place in your neighborhood

The final and 11th season of The Walking DeadThe franchise may have ended, but it will continue thanks to the creation of a tabletop role-playing board game. AMC Networks has partnered with Free League Publishing — a powerhouse with a stable of original and licensed tabletop games, settings, and systems — to create The Walking Dead Universe Roleplaying Game. Fans will have the opportunity to make their zombie apocalypse scenario with a few friends. This allows them to build friendships and create drama at a fortified location anywhere on the planet. Kickstarter launches a crowdfunding campaign on March 14. Polygon spoke with the developers about what to expect from them.

A woman wearing hocky pads and holding a knife is circled by a man in a trench coat wielding two large blades.

It’s hard to overstate just how spectacular the rise of Free League has been these past few years. There are a few keystone franchises that we work from, such as iconic games like Mutant: Year Zero Twilight 2000The Swedish company also owns more than a dozen TTRPGs that have been wildly successful. You can also find licensed pop culture hits, such as Alien: The Roleplaying Game. Blade Runner.The reboot of the Tolkien inspired TTRPG One Ring. Free League, just like Devolver Digital, has also been a great taste in videogames, and helped bring success stories like Mörk Borg And VaesenTo market. Now it’s going all in on zombies.

“The game is designed for you to be able to play at any place in the [The Walking Dead’s] timeline,” said Free League game director Mattias Johnsson, “and basically anywhere in the world.”

A person on horseback, trailed by a wagon, ambles along a highway toward an abandonded city. On the other side of the Jersey barricades, a four-lane highway is full of old cars. Crepuscular light leaks down from an overcast sky.

Players will use the core rules to begin the adventure. A lengthy “session zero” will touch on safety and consent before diving into world-building and character creation.

“What has fascinated me about this game is that every group I’ve seen play has done almost an entirely different thing,” producer Joe LeFavi said. “We give them archetypes [for]It’s not about who you are today but how you were at the beginning. Glenn used to be a pizza delivery man. They were homemakers and farmers and petty criminals, but they became these great people over time.”

A big part of what players will do as part of session-zero planning will be creating their initial haven, a base of operations where they’ll spend most of their down time. But groups don’t necessarily need to be tied to one geographic location — far from it, in fact.

A young man with unfeeling eyes and a frown. Behind him, inside an old abandonded place of business, are several of the shambling, slavering zombie horde.

“[Early playtesters] have been able to kind of pick their own path,” LeFavi continued. “If they want to focus on building a micro-society, they can do that. You can focus your efforts on the unknown. And if they just want to have one session where everyone is just co-op, trying to stay alive as a horde tries to overwhelm their stronghold, they can do that too.”

A sample of a spread on The Player Characters. It includes art of three survivors heavily armed and standing in the vestibule of an abandoned building.

A spread on The World of the Dead and The Player Characters, from The Walking Dead Universe tabletop RPG. A group of survivors comprises the art on the right-hand page, including a Black man leading a donkey. On the left-hand page is a blockout asking “Can I play Rick?”

Free League will draw on its many years of experience in making TTRPGs. Many of these align with themes, world-building and combat mechanics that are native to The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead has heavily influenced base-building and ranged fighting. Mutant: Year ZeroThe humanity system was from Blade RunnerThis article, which LeFavi wrote, has been the inspiration behind morale mechanics. The Walking Dead.

“There’s this ‘threat level’ that is basically the stress mechanics for the world itself,” LeFavi said. “There’s this incredible [emphasis on the]Where stakes are, Alien Blade RunnerYou may allow the pressures to rise and let stress take over. This will make you more vulnerable and test your limits. However, stress can make you more stressed. The Walking Dead kind of feels it and reacts.”

Polygon was told by developers that one of the most striking aspects of this project is the involvement of so many people. The Walking Dead’s creative team has been in the process.

A mockup of the boxed starter set for The Walking Dead Universe. Key art includes a man with a hatchet in silhouette.

“We’ve been working directly with AMC Publishing,” LeFavi said, “with [showrunner]Scott Gimple with other writers and producers of the TV show. They basically share the creative process. We want the game to accomplish this. These are the stories we desire to tell. Let us know what you think. How can we expand the scope of this canon? What can be done to expand the reach of this scope? Are we taking things too far? How do timelines work? And they’ve been feeding us inspiration the whole time — where we literally will have 30 notes on every page of the manuscript.”

Johnsson, the game director for AMC’s marquee franchises, was initially apprehensive about working with AMC.

“This is the first time I’ve worked on a really big licensed game,” Johnsson said. “I normally stay pretty close to home: SymbaroumThis is my baby. It’s the game I created and continue to write about. So I learned a lot, and it feels like they’re truly enthusiastic. What they bring to the table — it’s not just in terms of lore. It’s also actually in terms of mechanics.”

“There was not [a]PowerPoint Presentation of Like What exactly is a tabletop-based role-playing game?” LeFavi added. “They know what this stuff is. They were playing, and became really enthusiastic about the idea to create. [this], to the point where they’re like, This is not what we are looking for! — just like they will talk about [the] Tales of the Walking Dead anthology.”

AMC’s core rulebook will be finalized and the starter box set ordered. Developers will begin to work with AMC on casting and producing a televised play series. AMC already has a strong interest in such a format. They have worked closely with Hyper RPG to produce the KollokActual play for many years. Free League, in similar fashion as spinoff series expanded the universe of the game, hopes its TTRPG will continue to tell the story. The Walking DeadThe series is now past the 11th season. And while developers aren’t sure where the series will eventually be aired, they do have their eyes set on including characters and potentially talent from the original series.

“It was something that we really wanted to do to reach the core Walking Dead fandom,” LeFavi said. “To actually say, like, Hey, did you know there’s an RPG out there? To be able to put it on AMC’s actual owned channels and show the game, and show how fun it is, and show even people who they might know from on screen dip into the story, that’s the whole hope of it.”

Fundraising campaign The Walking Dead Universe Roleplaying Game This offer is valid through April 5. Start at $45, including the core rulesbook and the PDF version of your starter kit. The deluxe bundle, which includes both digital and printed copies of the items, costs approximately $120. The digital products will be shipped shortly after the campaign is over. Physical products should arrive at retailers in the fourth quarter of 2023.

#season #Walking #Dead #place #neighborhood