The Green Meteor

I don't know about you, but when I saw the animated film Heavy Metal (1982) in 1985 I was immediately and forever changed. This film is a well-spring of cool ideas and bits that I've found infinitely useful for running RPGs throughout my life. There are clear influences of H.P. Lovecraft in here and some great (and funny) writing by Corben, O'Bannon, and Mœbius. The main antagonist through the film is a super-natural megaversal entity called the Loc-Nar.

One segment, "B-17", centres around how the the Loc-Nar affects the dead, turning them into rotting zombies. This very interesting tale pre-dates the zombie-craze that wound up to speed during the late 90's. The way the green meteor Loc-Nar arrived on earth and caused this zombie disease was the basis for a main story arc in a homebrew fantasy campaign I ran using 4th Edition D&D.

The characters were all survivors of the cosmic event that put a great burning meteor streaking across the night sky. This homebrew world did not feature a lot of undead prior to the arrival of the meteor - and each time the sun would go down and the green meteor would glow a terrible necrotic rain would fall upon the world in swathes that caused zombie hordes to rise. Their goal was to try to end the strife caused by the presence of this terrible mystic evil and destroy (and often avoid) the undead legions spawned from its terrible death rain.

D&D 4e was a strange system to use for a post-apocalyptic fantasy, but it was the current version of the worlds most famous RPG at the time and we were using it for our semi-regular Eberron and Forgotten Realms games. Looking back, I think using something like Savage Worlds may have provided more flexibility and a less D&D feel, but we had a really good time and made use of classes and races from PHB2 (Deva Invoker) to give it a flavour of its own.

Incidentally, the soundtrack is an album I've listened to continuously for almost 30 years (I owned it first on cassette tape in 1989, then on CD in 1995, and finally now as 320 kbps mp3 on my phone). If you have never listened to this collection, you should check it out. Cuts by Devo, Blue Öyster Cult, Stevie Nicks, Black Sabbath and many others are timeless classics. You can check out the album on Amazon (and probably iTunes).