Kent at Some King's Kent has an interesting approach to the nature of encounters with zombies. I can't help but connect this with the story Dave Morris tells at Mirabilis - Year of Wonders of meeting a Dalek at BBC Television Centre as a boy in 1964.
But what is that connection? Do you sense it too? The zombie and
Dalek seem akin.
I think Kent gets at the movement link well with mention of resource management, and Dave in the suggestion of the sterile Dalek environments of the 1960s. Dave also hints at the body horror of the claustrophobic Dalek interior - "something small, vulnerable and fearful surrounded by electronics and armour" - and its world observed remotely, which ties in with the small but insurmountable distance separating us from a zombie.
In this sense, both creatures suggest an alienation from our bodies. That's something I remember played up well in a sequence from the novelisation of
Remembrance of the Daleks by
Ben Aaronovitch, and it could be part of what makes
Davros so compelling.
Zombie and Dalek are unlike us and yet oddly similar, recognisable, even if only by eyestalk, upper-limb-like extensions and voice. There's an uncanniness in there too.
Interestingly, both can also be product of an apocalypse, nuclear in the case of the Daleks; and that powerful image of the '60s Dalek comes back - the petrified forest - and what is that if not ranks of the dead? A potentially empty future.
Linked with all of this,
Beedo at
Dreams if the Lich House recently posted on the idea of
the familiar dead returning. That's another reminder of the triumph of death, of loss.
Isn't that the root of all the terrors our games evoke? Loss of a shot at greatness, of a squad, of a much-loved character. But also the loss of time as the years go by;
christian at
destination unknown had a wonderful post on this a while back, on a fleeting light. We may well play the good old games to relive the early feelings. The zombie and Dalek represent decay visibly, but also less visibly
entropy, as they slowly close us down.
That icy cold sweat.
Remember
Kirk and the
Kobayashi Maru? Here's the line from
The Wrath of Khan; very appropriately for Father's Day, it's Kirk speaking to his son,
David Marcus:
I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.
In a way we gamers cheat, every time we deploy our army afresh in yet another battle or roll up a new character. How about a
propluristemic rule then, a rule for many games?
The cold sweat
If your army loses the campaign or your character dies, close the ruleset, book or box, put it on the shelf and never open it again. You may hold a ceremony.
- - - - - -
My post at the House this week got a bit out of hand, trying to cover just a little too much. I did manage an approach to going inside the big kits, a look at character infection as a way to offset combat, and the idea of living delves and spaces.
