Narrative of Undeath
Something that always interested me about undead creatures in certain systems is their XP-drain or level-drain. I enjoyed the concept because it made something as simple as a zombie unique mechanically. Other types of monsters didn’t have the same effect—a badger didn’t drain your levels, nor did a goblin. Among all the fodder available for adventures, it provided something unique mechanically that set undead apart and made them slightly more dangerous at the low level and extremely dangerous once you were dealing with vampires or liches.
I had a conversation awhile ago with a few others on the glog-ghetto discord channel about XP-draining undead and I recently remembered this conversation. The discussion included the mechanical side of things and its complexities, but what interested me more was the narrative side of things. How did losing experience from being damaged by an undead creature look in-world?
The Unbecoming-ining
Chances are you’ve read, watched, or played something that involves undead, probably zombies. Within popular media, they are an ever-present monster, though their popularity has waned somewhat in recent years. Usually, during the story involving undead, someone gets “bitten”. This is a problem because “undeath” is spread by undead-ness getting inside the body. This is usually done through being wounded, such as a bite or scratch, and the infection quickly overtaking the body, though there are occasions where it is spread through the air or water instead.
Once the infection happens, there is very rarely a chance to stop it. Few stories involving undead have a “cure” readily available, and if one does it exist, it exists too late for our dear secondary character. Instead, over time our beloved secondary character becomes worse and worse, to the point where they are no longer them but something else. Then they are dispatched and left behind. It is this “unbecoming” that is closest to the narrative progression of XP-drain.
You-ness and Experience Points
It isn’t that you are losing experience, per se; you are losing “you-ness”. When the zombie scratches you, narratively you slowly are becoming “not you”. You become an undead version of you or “you-adjacent”: like you, but not. Slowly or rapidly, the infection takes over and the same flesh sack is no longer inhabited by you, but an undead abomination.
I believe this narrative change of “you” to “you-adjacent” is best expressed through experience points. For those systems which use levels and experience points, experience points are a representation of your character’s past experiences. You only get experience points from battle you’ve won, not battles you will win. Thus, slowly, your character becomes better, stronger, wiser, smarter, whatever-er because they accrue more experiences and therefore more experience points.
In real-life, hopefully those who have more experiences under their belt are better than those who have less experiences. Hopefully they are wiser, smarter, stronger, whatever-er than someone with less experience. But as these experiences take place, the person changes as well. You are (hopefully) not the same you from 5 years ago, and (hopefully) the you of 2025 is different from the you of right now. Experience points then represent this life journey of growth, in a word. Just as in real-life we become someone different and hopefully better, so do our characters.
Not You, But Them
Your character grows into a better version of themselves, hopefully. More “whatever-er” than when you started. The growth is a positive change—something is being added to our characters to change them. Narratively, undeath is a negative change—something is being removed from our characters to change them. Mechanically, this is experience points; narratively this is you being converted to “not you”. And this is not a static process, but a slow bleed.
Undeath is converting living cells into undead cells, to the point where you die because of it. Except you don’t die as many think of it; you turn into the undead abomination. So when an undead creature drains your XP, they are taking “you” and converting it into “not you, but them”; they are taking your XP which is going to your levels and putting it into their levels which are now inside you. You are losing your “you-ness” and becoming “them”—same flesh sack, totally different entity. Those experience points become undead experience points, and once you hit the threshold to “level up” you “convert” into the undead abomination. Thus, you are not so much losing experience as you are converting experience into something else; in this case, undeath.
Be Afraid
Hopefully, everything I wrote above makes sense. It probably doesn’t in such an abstract form, but I tried. This narrative of slowly converting into something “not you, but them” is, to me, horrifying. It is a slow, nigh-unstoppable creep which will eventually claim you, like time! Having the narrative understanding alone makes even a zombie something any sensible adventurer, regardless of level, would avoid without proper protections or preparations, like holy water or a holy flamethrower.
That a single scratch, a single gulp of tainted water, or a single inhale of unfiltered air could begin the process of conversion is realistically terrifying. The closest analogy to the real-world I can think of would be radiation and cancer. Few would willingly go into a highly irradiated zone even with proper protections; fewer still without any protections. The radiation would produce something perhaps similar to undeath—cancer—which would slowly kill you if not treated. It isn’t body horror or jump-scare horror, both of which are lazy and uncreative derivations of horror. Rather it is something to be rightfully afraid of, for one does not want to become them.
Author’s emphases.
Alas, that blog is gone, and the Internet Archive does not have a copy of this blogpost. I have copied the entire text here for posterity.
