We tend to imagine that the hardest part of surviving a zombie apocalypse would be, well, the zombies. But as properties like the last of us, The living dead, and Navaar Jackson's tabletop role-playing game The corrupt Show us that they are actually other people.
While there are other games that address the theme of zombies, such as the Free League-licensed role-playing game for The living dead and D&D Domains of terrorthe magnitude of the problems in The corrupt they are reduced to an interpersonal level, which arguably makes them more devastating. An intimate game about a small group of survivors, The corrupt uses a familiar basic d20 system and adds mechanics that highlight the difficulties of adapting to the new normal of a post-fall world with people you don't even know.
While there are combat mechanics for high-intensity moments, the main focus of the game is the emotional toll the apocalypse takes on this small group. Resource management increases the survival element of The corruptas food, water and other tools, such as bullets, are tracked over time.
The game's core abilities include Empathy, Intellect, Judgment, Strength, Agility, and Vitality, and almost all of them appear during the game outside of combat. Failed rolls not only prevent players from achieving their goals, they also actively cause stress and a unique “compromise” condition that raises the risks of any conflict. Unresolved stress then accumulates into conflicts.
The conflict system mechanically represents tensions that arise from the literal stress and trauma of not only survival, but of existing alongside other people. Those mechanics affect how player characters relate to each other and themselves, providing opportunities for conflicts to arise between players as the outside world throws an endless series of obstacles at them.
For those interested in seeing how emotionally devastating this game can be, Jackson produced ties that unite. A real realistic zombie apocalypse game. The corrupt, ties that unite features Jackson alongside award-winning royal artists Hamnah Shahid and Josephine Kim. The incredibly edited AP audio interweaves the daily lives of three survivors as they navigate the interpersonal and ethical complications of figuring out what comes after the apocalypse, with the lives they led before the pathogen swept across the United States.