I've always had a particular weakness for zombies in fiction.

Imagine if you will being sick in a prison cell, there's screaming going on outside and the alarms are blaring. Eventually, everything dies when the generators go off and you're stuck there, all alone. Something inside you is killing you. Hot flashes, vomiting. black-outs. You scream and scream for help but there's no one there for you. You're alone and you'll die alone. That's always been such a tragic draw to me, you had a life but now you've been forced to come back naught but a hollow shell rotting away. Denied the right to rest.

Pathogen: The Infected has always been, to me at least, is a diamond in the making. The original author never finished it and from what I've gathered the movement for TVTropes to finish it has lost steam and is most likely not going to be finished. And who knows maybe this bored college kid could fix it to be at least a little more popular.

• Fix idea 1: First things first I'm getting rid of the weird motifs involving children in the original write-up.

"Unborn: Your mother was infected while pregnant; it skipped her and dove straight for you."

is now stricken since infection of others is a possibility and even a cornerstone of playing a campaign. And unless properly talked about and broached with caution will lead to unnecessarily gross and uncomfortable scenes.

"Paedomorphosis: You "regress" in age, or else retain child-like characteristics and mannerisms."

C'mon... even If we're taking the charitable approach here this will just lead to shitty roleplaying. This feels like the Kenku of the WoD with just...weirder undertones especially since "Blood and sex" is in the introduction to the splat.

• Fix idea 2: Make the theme more coherent.

The original write-up almost had no real sense of what the hell was going on. There was a humanity meter relating to how much you "gave in" to your infection. Humans inherently had a monster in them that the Pathogen let loose, but also you needed to eat flesh to keep your powers. This to me is just Vampire The Masquerade with a decaying coat of paint. But any individuality a character you'd make was useless because eventually you'd exhibit all symptoms including the...child regressing one.

My fix would be going against the grain of a traditional splat. Unless I'm forgetting something every splat is a story about ultimately trying your best to live, to improve either society or your own lot in (un)life. In my rewrite of Pathogen: The Infected the main goal of the game is dying. The sickness won't let you rest and it's driving you insane. Your options are either to die, rise, die, rise, die, and rise again or hope that maybe whatever lead you have will let you finally go gently into that good night, whatever the cost. Like everything in the World Of Darkness it's a story about identity and what happens when there's no way out for your pain and grief.

That's all I have right now but I'm curious to hear this sub's thoughts on it. Maybe if I hear enough good things about it I'll open up a discord server where we could all collab and write it up.

Don't go hollow now.