Old Battle grounds and environmental story telling.

[MyDolos]

There needs to be remnants of old battles on the map. If you have ever read World War Z, the Battle of Yonkers? Or the part in Walking Dead with the tank in the middle of the city? 

Something where you walk in and see all kinds of destroyed military vehicles, near by buildings burnt or destroyed, craters in the ground from explosions. things like that where you walk around a corner and go, "Damn, something serious happened here, and we lost." Something that says there were fights and battles before the world was lost, not just all of a sudden everyone was a zombie.

Maybe out in the open forest is a battle field. Or an entire small town had their last stand.  Maybe at the end of a street the people barricaded the street with their cars and junk to keep the zombies out of their homes.  Camp sites in the woods that are all torn up.  Homes with barricaded rooms with dead bodies inside as they tried to wait it out and failed. 

This would be a great way to do world building through environmental story telling.

[Laker]

I was thinking the same thing lately and totally agree with you.  It would help with immersion. 

 

I've been using mannequins in armed forces gear to create command centres at my bases complete with maps, desks, ham radioes, posters, etc.  Guards at the gates.  Medical office with staff dressed in medical scrubs.  Work areas with military working on weapons, civilians dressed in over-alls working on radios, etc.  

It helps with the immersion.

 

One thing I've been trying to do is use gravel bags/sand bags to create small checkpoints that have signs of having been overrun by hordes.  Am planning on leaving guns, helmets, ammo crates, camo clothes scattered around the checkpoint.  But either I have a bit of a glitch on my map where I can't create the sandbag walls, or I am doing something wrong.  

 

Going into towns that had over-run defences and scattered debris would add to the tension of gameplay.