Why are smart zombies so rare...

Why are smart zombies so rare? It's a scary fucking idea and it's not like it was never done before Return of the living dead had them altough it was a comedy (fuck this movie for spawning this brains meme that every fuckwit who never even watched any zombie movie spams), Marvel Zombies had them and it just feels more savage when something that can talk and plan indicating some level of self awarness still wants to eat people like an animal. Fuck dumb zombies. Necromancers should get their shit together.

Watch iZombi

Smart zombies add personality to the undead, when zombies as a meme enemy endures because they are blank slates that can be easily contextualized into a standin for whatever the cultural fear of the decade is.

Zombies have been standins for communism, mindless consumerism, and climate change so far. And that's just the big, obvious stuff.

Smart zombies lose that special quality and just make them harder to kill bad guys. They are also simply too dangerous an enemy to reasonably overcome, because a smart zombie is for most purposes human+, given that they maintain their intelligence but no longer need to rest and are hard as fuck to kill.

It changes the dynamic of the disaster and, as it turns out, it generally isn't as variant that people enjoy. It takes for a novel idea now and then, but it really doesn't add as much as it takes away from the core concept.

Why do people not call them zombies? It's always some other pretentious name.

You mean the saunterers?

Here is a good zombie movie with smart zombies. But your right they are not used enough.

She looks like regular girl also

>hurr zombies = brains because whole one movie series did it xDD

nah kill yourself zombies should look like rotten sacks of shit even when they are intelligent

>pretensious

you should learn what that word means

also it's because in Romero movies which started this genre no one calls them zombies in fact Romero himself didn't call them zombies at the time

It goes counter to the idea of zombies.

It's kind of like saying "why are dwarves that don't live underground so rare?" You could... but why are you calling them zombies, then?

If you're after the concept of intelligent undead, then consider liches, ghosts, or, wights. Wights would be what you're looking for, probably.

It's almost as if fictional creatures can evolve or something.

Protip: norse ''ice giants'' were human sized aside from Ymir and that guy with a glove so large Thor thought it's a building, original vampires were nothing like the post Dracula ones, goblins have fuck all to do with goblins you commonly see in fantasy.

Sure, but when you get down to it, how would you characterize a zombie? I would say that a zombie is a mindless shambling undead. All three of those are important. I think we can agree on "undead" being a strict requirement for something to be a zombie, "shambling" is a little bit more loose since there are fast zombies but these are usually the exception than the rule, and "mindless" is I think key to the whole idea of zombies. The original voodoo zombie doesn't really have much to do with what popular culture currently considers a zombie, and popular culture tends to use zombies as creatures who cannot be reasoned with, are in the uncanny valley of looking like something human but human no longer, and as symbolism for mindless consumerism or mindless and thoughtless me-tooism. This is the narrative role of the zombie archetype. If they are not mindless, then what is the symbolsim? The role of alien creatures that can't be reasoned with but that appear somewhat human but are also intelligent is filled by AI robots (see Spielberg's A.I. for a good example of "zombies but smart") or foreigners (especially communists or nazis).

From a narrative standpoint, when you take something that is already existing and then you say "except our zombies are different!" you add in complexity that the average audience doesn't much care for. This is why superhero movies tend to reuse the same characters and audiences expect certain things from those characters. People like familiar things.

Sure, to a tabletop game you can do whatever you want, but don't expect popular culture to change for you. Zombies have a specific narrative role and the proposed change to make them smart interferes with established roles.

Semi sentient voodoo nazi zombies is pretty good.

Smart zombies are shit they ruin the general premise of zombies. Izombie gets away with it due to not being about an outbreak in general.

Zombies are more like a natural disaster and also reflect our fear of death. It is an excuse to kill without guilt and represents us fighting against death in a very literal way

>muh death

that's why most zombies in media are actually infected humans not actual corpses rising from the graves right?

>it just feels more savage when something that can talk and plan indicating some level of self awarness still wants to eat people like an animal.
Wouldn't a zombie at that level of intelligence know that people don't want to be eaten? Does becoming a zombie turn you sociopathic?

Vampires are sentient yet don't give a fuck about how people feel so why zombies would?

Ohhh, I get it, you want zombies to be vampires

Eating brains dulls the pain of being dead.

I've always wanted to make a game about this, actually. A zombie apocalypse, and the story opens with the PCs dying... Then coming back. Except, for some reason, they still retain their sapience. Making them stronger, faster, and less worried about pain and the like, but... At the same time, they can't really heal wounds the old fashioned way, and then there's dealing with rot.

Maybe some mechanics about the more 'zombie like' they act, being violent, cannibalism, etc, the stronger they are, but the more they lose themself and become more and more mindless.

Death of the mind, not the body

I think most of the appeal is the endless horde, the grinding mass of corpses just trying to get at you and nothing else.

Giving them a personality, well they're just cannibals that happen to be dead.

This is actually a great example and how you have to do smart zombies, because the people talking about how zombies are mindless automatons are completely right. That's central to even the original idea of zombies.

But if you don't want zombies who just shamble around biting people you can do soldier zombies. Or just historical ones. People from some past era, hostile to the modern one, with no capacity to change their behavior but only to lash out risen and rotten in the patterns they are familiar with. You don't diverge too much from the core idea with that.

only in ROTD you stupid fuck not in every zombie movie

nah horseshit that's not what you even implied kill yourself

Or that they're just suffered so much being dead but still sentient probably trapped or buried alive that they have nothing but hatred and loathing for the living.

I like the idea of zombies that have their own intelligence - although it may come out damaged in some way, and they probably don't remember much from their former life - but they're completely dominated by the necromancer that raised them. The necro can issue them general commands and the zombies will obey them to the best of their ability, but don't really have much personal initiative beyond feeding and self-preservation, and both of those can be overriden.

What's with the retards going ''muh mindless swarm'' in this thread? Having one smart zombie leader and a bunch of tards is not out of the ordinary for zombie genre hell even Romero zombies were getting progressively smart Bub and pic related being good examples.

Also in Night of the Living Dead the very first zombie used a fucking brick so I don't know what gave you guys this idea od zombies being rats.

I don't like my zombies mindless, but I don't like them coherent. At least I think that's the right word. I like them doing simple shit. They talk and laugh to themselves. They use weapons, even guns, but not competently. They'll till a field but never get around to planting anything. They'll tear things down and hammer on walls before wandering off to sit around with their zombie family or head to a ramen shop to order food they don't need from a chef that isn't there and you'll think its just them being stupid unless you hang around for a few days and realize that they're actually trying to build something.

Little scraps of humanity go a long way to make the undead interesting.

Imagine you're stuck on the roof of a building. You've scrambled all the food and ammo you can and occasionally you dare to go out when the zombies seemingly pull off in a direction due to whatever triggers them.

As you watch them from your perch hoping against home that someone will fly over with a helicopter or something you notice out of your scope a zombie that just stands there elevated by standing atop a fountain and looks up.

You've seen this one more then a few times and every time it stops and looks as if assessing the building you've called your home and fortress.

On the one rare occasion you see it move. it's movement is not jerky in and uncoordinated but purposeful and effiencent like a cat stalking the trees and leaves of a jungle.

It was then you hear the bashing at the roof top. Somehow the zombies have broken their way into the building and up the stairs. This seems impossible given how you are the only one up here but then you remember that one you saw and your heart sinks into the abyss of hopelessness. You load your rifle and take shelter behind the barracade knowing that the door won't hold against the press of bodies and soon you will either go out blazing or in agony.

Just as the door gives way you hear a rueful chuckle behind you and the one you saw before is behind you. If you had time to see before it tears into your body you'd have seen the window washing lift that you had planned to use as your escape once but forgot about in your panick but now none of that matters as you are subdued and your flesh torn into with teeth and bony hands...

I can't find any reference to it on the internet, but I have in my collection somewhere a "comic book" that was actually one page of awesome illustration for each page of text.
It was about a zombie in your typical zombie apocalypse, who for whatever reason, retained his intellect entirely.
It's about him trying to survive in a world full of zombies and Zombie Killers.
In the particular issue I read it was freezing outside and he kept himself from freezing solid like the others by keeping a car battery in his abdomen cavity and connecting it to himself with jumper cables. There was a scene where he had to play possum while a bunch of rednecks we're laughing and crushing a bunch of zombies frozen snow.
It was called December and it was pretty good stuff.

If they're smart it kinda just stacks the odds too much in their favour if there's a horde of them.

I like this user's ideas though.

Because they're the walking dead not the calculus-doing dead.

Not to derail the thread but I have a problem here

>World is filling up with undead, countries have fallen and the number of safe areas are shrinking by the day
>The undead bear the trademark of a necromancer
>Killing the necromancer should at least stop the resurrection of undead, if not cut the head off his army
>All the party has is a name

How would you track down a necromancer when he could be anywhere on the planet?

Maybe make the mark and name connected? Like a Japanese name/symbol or something to lead a party towards the necromancer

Find the source nation first. The undead are spreading, finding the source area shouldn't be too hard. Just find out what fell first, then look for survivors, as many as you can, try and piece together which cities fell first, then which towns villages, any scrap of information you can gather to establish a timeline with locations and the more you narrow it down pray to the gods you can connect the name with the places, a local mage that disappears, a man barred from the local wizarding institutions, a local legend etc.

Well, necromantic magic is a thing, why not divination magic?
The quest to find surviving masters of divination offsets the ease of the diviner just working his mojo and handing the PC's the info on the guy.

Otherwise they need to full on detective the shit, and without a populace to question or an archive of necromancer names to research, they're screwed without deus ex machina.

And when you can't find your prey, make your prey come to you.
No idea what would be good bait though. Maybe a very public "necromancer killing ritual" or summat to draw his attention?

>All the party has is a name

Their real name? Because if so that might be all you need to have them by the short hairs, magic wise.

Would another necromancer be able to challenge him for control of the undead in a particular area. Can't think of better bait that he's have to deal with directly than another necromancer challenging his control.

The idea I had was that his undead have glowing red eyes, which no other undead have been shown to exhibit. But I don't have anything to connect that feature to discovering him

No other features? You might want to take up the other anons advice

>Why are smart zombies so rare?
Because then they'd be unsexy vampires, and who wants that?

Been awhile since I watched the movie and dont remember alot but In the movie Warm Bodies, I think the virus made them forgot who they were and ate brains to relive the victims memories and their emotions. Those who didn't became the fast zombies with a loss of flesh and a black skeleton. They could think too but weren't all that fast so they hunted mostly in groups.The cure was dumb but I like the idea of rather than dulling their pain they do it to feel something.

I don't like most undead in games or media due to overuse and also simplicity.

Zombies are not as bad as edgy contrarians on Veeky Forums make them out to be but they could be improved.

The ultra tough, ultra fast or ultra strong zombies are pretty cool because only a few movies/shows with zombies focus on these extremes. Zombies that mutate heavily like L4D are pretty neat, as are werido zombies like the fungus cordyceps one or larva zombies from SCREAM for example.

Vampires were originally zombies.

>All three of those are important. I think we can agree on "undead" being a strict requirement for something to be a zombie, "shambling" is a little bit more loose since there are fast zombies but these are usually the exception than the rule, and "mindless" is I think key to the whole idea of zombies.

I mean, the classic voodoo zombies are 0 out of 3. They are not dead, they don't shamble, and they possess enough intelligence to follow orders.