Death Throes

Death Throes is a game about hope.

Death Throes is a game about the very beginning of the apocalypse: the early stages of a zombie outbreak, when there’s still a chance the infection can be contained and the world can go back to the way it was. The stakes are high, sacrifices have to be made, and there’s a damn good chance the characters will fail. But it’s not a foregone conclusion… and most importantly, the characters still have hope.

Death Throes is a Rooted in Trophy game. That means it uses the core Trophy mechanics to tell a story about escalating risk and characters pushing themselves to their limits. It creates deeply character-focused stories with heights of tension and emotion. With a few six-sided dice and a simple character sheet, players can quickly create a Survivor with motives, drives, and skills, and throw them into the worst day of their lives. Some of them will fail. Some will die, or become monsters. But they’ve all got a powerful reason to live.

You can use Death Throes to simulate most types of zombie outbreak story, from classic survival horror, to run-and-gun action horror, to the glorious absurdity of a zom-rom-com.

It’s compact enough to run as a one-shot and powerful enough to stretch out into a short story arc that lasts a few sessions.

It includes:

A full system (based on Trophy, with modifications to tailor it to the zombie horror genre)
Stats for a range of zombies
Character creation rules
Guidance on how to play — and how to play safely
Six ready-made scenarios spanning genres from claustrophobic survival horror to camp