Have You Tried Playing Project Zomboid Like This? Project Zomboid Done Quick! 

i remember trying to do a realistic playthrough where i just played as myself and immediately died after spawning

bro invented roleplaying

One roleplay I enjoy doing is the "last minute" survivor. Ill stay in my starter house and collect food from the neighbors' houses and board up my home. Only when power and/or water goes off do I go and look for a generator and ways to get water. Pretty much I try to play as someone that would go "oh shit I did not think of that" until it happens, like water and power going off, canned food running low, etc

If i play burglars,my thing is taking any possible jewelery or other valuables, bunkering in the starting house, which by the end essentially becomes a dragons den.

Lol, the suggestion is just to roleplay.

We are slowly getting insane I see.

I once did a playthrough as a Vietnam Veteran named Vernon von Graff, and I journaled each day as the game went on (I play on 2 hr days and tended to pause while I typed, so it was manageable time-wise). I'd stop multiple times throughout the day, make a note of the time in military time, write what my character is thinking, their reactions to the news and events in the game (like that time I nearly died to the fatigue spiral while driving through West Point because I stopped to get out and try to grab a hat 😂) what their goals are for the coming day/days, etc. He tried to hoof it to the Event Boundary by Louisville, but by the time he had managed to work his way over there the TV's were all silent. It was kind of a profound moment to reach the event boundary and find out that it was all really over.

I have a year old playthrough and keep a diary on my day-to-day adventures. What I find, near deaths. My thoughts on strategy, future plans, some philosophy - things like that. Every other playthrough got boring after about a month into the game, but this - this adds a lot to the game. Makes you more invested in both your survivor and their survival, as well as the world you've crafted

As a car guy i always enjoy collecting cars and fixing them using tons of cars mods I just wish a game same as PZ but in normal world and you can build a garage to collect, fix, build and drive cars 😂

"You can have more fun by not try harding every run" is applicable to every game

i've always done something similar creating characters, picking attributes that would make sense for that build, for example, a burglar with sneaky/movement skills or a park ranger with nature related skills. but actually applying it into the gameplay is a whole another level, very interesting stuff

I have found that playing with random zombies and extremely rare loot prolongs the game, even with the same goals you’ve already been doing. however, those goals now take extremely more time and more risk because you’re having to search more places, even places you may normally have skipped on a normal Settings play through. you may go months without the generator magazine or other items so it keeps you constantly on the move rather than being completely Stored up in your safe house within the first two months and then getting bored.

I’ve started to play blindfolded

I remember my first plays, when I gave burials to ex-survivors, who got infected inside barricaded buildings. I can imagine how horrific it was to see your mate turns into a zombie and you can't get away from the base.

Thats how i've always played PZ and other games like Fallout and stuff😂

I remember a youtuber talking exactly about this for PZ and how taking it slow clicked when he started doing things as simple as takiny off his metal welding mask when he ate.

My favorite quest ive yet to complete is securing the art museum, start in any town but Louisville, get to Louisville, then do everything to protect the museum and its art,

One I've had a lot of fun with is a randomizer (not the random traits, as I didn't know it existed before this lol) I made spin wheels for all negative and positive traits and occupations and start locations. Spun a wheel to figure out how many if each negative and positive I got. And after it was set, tried to come up with a reason why this character had what they did, to make sense of jt, and proceeded to do something like this. Had some wild ones, some great. Some didn't last but a few hours.

Things i go for, for the “just cuze” reason: Collect a garbage of jewelry until maxed out. This is for the reminder that the trinkets hold no value now in the apocalypse. Then it switches to one garbage bag of gold and one for silver. Trying to collect all the VHS tapes like a collector. Chopped down 100 tiles worth of trees to build a walkway from base to where I put my traps. Gives me a little of a safe zone between the forest line the pathway to see Zeds coming. Can use the Moat mod to build a small pond and fish automatically spawn there now too. Collect paintings.

That’s a good role-playing idea

My go-to character build is a character who has a little bit of everything but also a lot of negative traits. I call it "Retired Southern Dad" and he starts off with a little bit of everything, but he is also overweight, hard-of-hearing and other old-man traits. The most important part is you have to dress the part. Dress shoes, polo, maybe a flatcap

That's is actually how I play. When I first played it I was playing as if it was me. I would dig graves for one reason. I wanted to be 100% sure a zombie was dead dead. So I dug a spot so just in case near my base point none would get back up and come at my place while I was in game sleeping. Next I loaded up on melee weapons. I kill everything because I know one left undead and walking is one that can get you later. I see it it dies. Only hordes above 50 do I question killing them all. If I was in these kinds of situations I play like it. 7 days to die I been reaching 0 deaths. This game is the challenge that I was hoping for.

I do like the idea, as I play normally to learn a few times. Play as myself some, even having a frw saves that are personal coming back to when I want to. While I have like 20 to 30 starting saves and continue onward saves with labels of the name of who I am playing as to remember how they would make choices. Something I do even for Fallout and TES/ESO. Keeping in character of choices, actions, and what they pick up, keep, store, sell/buy, etcetera etcetera. Its very interesting, especially adjusting the same character into another game world or setting and the likes.

There is a channel called, two whelled gamer, he has like 4 or 3 series that take this aproach, is very entertaining to watch, his editing and storytelling are amazing.

I have given this advice to everyone. Im glad its being said on you're channel. The RP is endless

I usually play just an average joe, but I still try to bury the zeds cuz 'They were nice neighbours before this.'

i do this n try to find friends along the way in superb survivors that often die in dramatic fashion it’s awesome

I think one of the best self set goals for a run is ‘escape’. Pick a point on the map, pretend there is an escape vehicle there waiting for you, start on the other end of the map, and try to get there within a set time limit. Best if you make the settings with either dense population or sprinters, and disable cars (or just don’t use them).

Being used to play RP, this is something I tend to do on every playthrough.

I always love doing the sandbox option and have a couple saved presets, mainly a realistic one like this: Very high population, urban centered, 2-6 months water/electricity (Since the rest of the world outside the zone dies out AFTER the start of your playthrough) 2 hour long days to actually give you time to do something, Fertile land (Ohio River Valley), Helicopter to "sometimes" (once in the first week is too easy to be realistic), Normal loot population (since its the epicenter of the outbreak it probably took over the population too fast for people to start hoarding goods and use up supplies), high gas station level (not max or infinite but same reasoning as before), all clothing available so I can make a character with gear better than default I have on me in real life, gear I would grab in a moments notice in a real scenario, 100 extra starting trait points (so I can make my character exactly as I would see myself as right this moment (yes I still have like 6 or 7 negative traits but more good traits than normal)), fast shamblers with poor sight and vision and more active daytime than night(decomposing bodies are not going to have good hearing or eyesight), etc etc... Edit: Not everything I changed but I call this and some more changes my "Forgiving Realism" preset lol, makes the game more enjoyable for me personally and makes a good basic multiplayer preset as well!

If you're like me you've already used the cheat menu to create a custom start of yourself. Complete with all the stuff available to you in your home, your vehicles, your clothes, tools, weapons and skills. It's nice to start as me.

Started playing with zero viral transmission in custom sandbox with high zombie pop, no respawning zombies and somewhat frequent helicopter events. Give First Aid a lot more use and its really fun to blast through zombies. Feels like Resident Evil now, like im an umbrella agent clearing out zones while a support heli flies by.

When i play, i set up a main base in a rosewood house. Everytime i die, i go find my last character and bring them back to the base and bury them in the front yard with a cross. Im on 3rd life now. Gonna head to military checkpoint towards Louisville to find some 5.56

You fool I have been doing this for thousands of hours

I enjoy asking chatgpt short plots. For example, once me and my friend played the brother and sister who live far away and now they're trying to find each other, we played a couple of old man trying to survive, with all of the disadvantages of being old, that one got insanely great at the end we managed to survive even more than we thought.

I like writing about my day in the notebooks. Fun to read after not playing a while.

Roleplaying is incredibly fun in almost every game. I highly recommend this approach to most games you play if you're feeling kinda bored of them and want something new

Sometimes my main goal is to make links between buildings in Louiville or sometimes in ravencreek with the 10 years later mod, it is some kinds of an obsession, like a goal to achieve by all means necessaries, so me with 4/5 friends are trying to to make a big mall like building near Ravencreek but we plays like death is permanent (a lot because we decided to always spawn at Rosewood) and it is the 4th server we open because we all dies before finishing the "doomsday plaza". The last server we closed was probably the best because we almost finished (we where also at our all times higest players count (10) because some friends could finally afford a pc) but semeone forget to turn off an oven and so burned all our wood and then the admin (me) suddently allowed friendly fire and the whole city became a slaughterhouse so me and my closest friend becames the griefers of the server, putting mines everywhere, killing on sight, emptying every cars except our and drawing a gigantic horde to the last 3 survivors, wait a little to be sure they where deads, proceed to shoot my budy who admited forgeting the oven and then jump of a building. In short, chase your dreams but be careful because your friend and a oven can ruin everythings.

I love having my house barricaded and stocked with food so that I may stay up to date with he news stations.. builds up the feeling of being alone in a very, very awful situation

I like starting in one town and playing like I have a family in another town. I'm desperately trying to gather supplies so I can go find them. I get to the new town with a car full of supplies only to find the house empty and then spend the rest of the time slowly clearing out the town to try and find theme, dead or alive.

PZ is an incredible survival game that uses the simple “do what you want” to generate all the fun

For me it was revisiting my old house I spawned in at the start of the game seeing it all wrecked and stuff. I took it upon myself to rebuild it and fix it up. Considering moving back to my old neighborhood now that all my neighbors are dead

This is how I initially started to play, but I didn’t know the mechanics of the game, so I started googling and that just lead me down the path of “optimizing”. RPing is so much more fun.

I usually enable superb survivors and make my own little ricktatorship and always make sure to have one random survivor with a crossbow. There is just something about being Rick grimes that’s so much fun especially with the mod that adds his python and machete

I aways do this. That's why I'm always cautious and never die in my playthrough every time I join my friends' server.

I do like the role playing in this game. I wanted to try something like that game into the Dead so I made my character like a paratrooper,I dropped off in a random area and try to run to Louisville to join military checkpoint. I just gave my character an M16 ammo in a military uniform improve my fitness stats and sprinting with the debug mode, and had the zombie population higher. It was basically a whole nomad adventure looting town to town and keep running.

Our coops we always go back to give our friends proper burials. Our rules are we play until one man is left standing, that, the last man standing has to finish burying anyone left unburied or dye trying before we start again =D

A simple mod to help with role playing or giving a new goal, is the cure mod. Customizable to a point and can bring you places you wouldn’t go before, and gives you a goal if you’re playing with regular transmission

I love project zomboid in a similar way that I love Rimworld. Here's the world, create your own story out of it

Yeah this game really is so immersive if you roleplay your character

TwoWheeledGaming creates whole randomized character series playthrus based on this. He makes phenomenal content

It's roleplaying and it is quite common. Actually a good alternative to minmaxxing skills and endless grinding.

I use a mod that adds more military checkpoints to the map. My favorite play through I’ve done “realistically” is being a National Guard soldier, leaving a checkpoint after it overrun

I think what has me bored is that I've explored all over the map countless times, with mods that have given me new goals like collecting solar panels, whiling having the difficulty ramped up with mods like the darkness is coming, blackouts, sprinters, blizzards, horde nights. What would bring me back is new mods that give us goals that ultimately increase convenience. Something like a random power station across the map has a switch that brings global power back on for a month or two. Or the secret military base having damaged auto turrets that can be repaired with a high electrician skill, and used to gun down zeds approaching from the direction the turrets are facing. Or hydroponics equipment such as high-powered lamps for growing crops indoors twice as fast as outside, and which also serve as interior decoration. These things should be spread out around the map so players have a reason to venture out. I've thought about getting into modding myself, maybe when B42 is out.

Roleplay styled playthroughs are so fun I did a run that was inspired off of 1 of my fallout characters 😂

its always more fun when you roleplay with the game, even when its a sandbox game in single player

Also good idea to ask AI to generate a story for your character with backstory, goals, stats etc. and then roleplaying according to it

Roleplay & light AI integration(for NPCs & a real Sadistic AI Director&Meta Events) are the future of Zomboid. If the devs don't realize this, it is a massively missed opportunity. Your suggestion to roleplay is good but the game needs to get better at being roleplay friendly.

As a book worms i always Collect full collection of all books skills and organized it according their level and every type cloths in game in my large wardrobes and my area end up full will naked Zombies... Always put a smile when i actually did it😊

I really like the random sprinters mod it spices up the game a lot

It would be cool if things like map locations and items in the house were affected by job Like you'd be able to see the nearest or all the police stations were on the map and you had a gun cabinet with a police uniform and gun in it

If you can get a group of friends together, I've found that a fun situation to try is setting the population to high and turning off zombie respawns. Playing the game this way gives a sense of purpose to zombie kills, because you know that they're gone when you put them down.

Thats what i've been doing in role playing survival games specially games as detailed as project zomboid.

My favorite thing. Is to set up a no zombie respawn and play a full exterminator run

Been doing this with my friend and some of our viewers, instead of hyper optimized gameplays, we try to RP what we'd actually do if we were in the actual zombie apocalypse. Lot harder and a lot more fun tbh

Police and morale compass being used in the same sentence is wild

I played a fire fighter in Rosewood recently. Went to the fire station immediately and buried all my coworkers

Me playing the game: “Food water weapons medical tools geny” Me irl if it happened irl: the exact same thing

YES i did this as a vet and i had to go from rosewood to louisville to check on my family cause i was sent to rosewood

For me I got 2, I camp in my car and road trip around the state, or try to set up bases in each city and and try to form a micro state

lol I only play as myself when I play, it really does make things fun but also heartbreaking when I die, very humbling.

If they ever get NPC's working good enough, I think a fun endgame could be to sort of restart civilization. A house, then a town, a city, and eventually most of the county. You'd have to deal with restoring power and water, assigning jobs, procuring food, etc. all while still maintaining a defense against hords and other not so civilized survivors.

This is how i play all my games. No questions their morals in game. The only one who can is you. Makes decisions lean one way more than others

Playing a police officer and holding down the Rosewood police station as a shelter for potential survivors is a great play style.

1. People don't always play this way? 2. Make it a life goal on annotated maps. I found one for a lady who wanted to preserve art in Westpoint. Of course the art gallery in Louisville. I've managed to secure a very solid bass in west point, and have finally geared up a truck with guns, ammo, food/water, and a generator for gas to go fight my way to there and bring it back to my base.

I've done few playthroughs where I give myself 24 hours to gather items and supplies and then I fugg off in to the woods (near lake or a river) and try to survive there foraging and using my gathered supplies.

I kinda do this passivly in my runs, like if I see a couple in a house that died before the end, I bury them since I feel its what I would do

doing "luckiest" man alive build rn. and man he has been hit so many times with scratches and deep wounds and didnt show any single signs of infection, and surprisingly hasnt been bit with like only 10% defense on bites he managed to survive impossible scenarios just with pure luck in his pocket

Well doing the greedy thief playthrough or bigwig ceo would be tortures and fun

I like to avoid killing as long as possible or until the character learns about the real danger from a broadcast

But I already mapped out what I'd do in a zombie apocalypse: take over a nearby apartment complex. Destroy the stairs to the ground floor, disable the elevator (probably not permanently, in case we need to ferry heavier things). Loot the apartments for supplies and survivors, clear any undead. Get guns. Get truck. Loot nearby gas station. Get to hardware store, load up generators and construction supplies. Solar panels if available. Find a spot a mile away from base that I can shoot down on zombies while they can't reach me. Catch and cage a cat. Hang cage from light post. Make huge amounts of noise to draw zombies. Use cat to keep them there. Snipe zombies or throw molotov. Slowly clear all the zombies that can be found, because respawns are off.

I used to be so scared that I would play on debug mode just for some semblance of assurance that I won't die immediately after spawning but lately, I've been playing with 0 cheats and while I do die a lot, it feels a lot more fun and rewarding when everything I do is done through the usual grind, not just handed to me on a silver platter.

Lol that's exactly what I did a year ago when i was almost 24/7ing on one server, i had almost strongest faction under my wing and we were living in that nice apartment building just below horse racing stadium in Louisville! Dam that was good time 😂 LVRB was the abbreviation for LouisVille Road Bandits but we were more than just a raider/survivor group, we cleared out places for people to feel safer, helped newbies and once had a clan war against guys from West Point cuz they scrapped/salvaged almost all cars in city and nearby leaving no transport for newbies so we stole all their shit and burned the place down while also summoning horde with a police car 😂😂😂😂

That'd be great if normal spawn conditions actually gave us shovels frequently enough.

playing as myself:

this is how i played from the start this is just how you’re supposed to play

I already do this but instead I'd like to have a cemetery that's where I would base irl

Check on the neighbors *plays a clip of him bashing a zombie's head with a hammer*

So basically just start roleplaying ahaha

Woah was that actual real moving animals :D

I have finally started playing and I just made myself in the game. Same negative traits and positive ones. Very underweight, unlucky, keen hearing, and organized. Those are just a few. Makes you feel like you are there. I also made it where new zombies won’t spawn after you’ve slain them. Thus making it feel like you are actually doing something to change the world around you. There are only so many in the world and in the United States.

I actually did a playthrough where I buried every zombie I killed. It was fun so I did it again.

I am playing as myself, stay indoor all day.. Except that my character excercise LOL

If i were in a zombie apocalypse i'd 100% pile up bodies in a corner lmao

thats called 'roleplaying' and I find it a lote more interesting that playing the loot-goblin character.

Rusty Rifle. Always to the Rusty Rifle. There could be a million different timelines, in each and every one, I am in that bar. With curtains over the window, an absurd stockpile of weapons and booze, and I recently raided a video store and am watching every single movie in the county while getting blitzed off my fucking rocker like its the opening days of prohibition and I'm tryna drink myself to death. Every. Fucking. Time.

My very first character I did my best to make myself, died after 3 days because I raided the police station for guns and a cruiser. Idk what my thought process was, but i got distracted, crashed, broke my leg and fought till i was out of ammo

i kinda do that I nearly always make the house i spawned in as my base and the car in the driveway as my car

Best way to play for me is to have a server, invite a few friends and turn on PvP, offline raid protection, turn down item and resources respawn and decrease zombie respawn. It will truly spice up your playthrough

Got 4 or 5 rows of 5 graves on the front right patch of grass full of graves on my most recent run in the rosewood firehouse been a bit time consuming but gonna go for a year long run with this character so any way to pass the time helps with that main goal