Speaking

An action costing 1 Action Point (AP).

A survivor character may enter whatever is to be said into the "speak" box, and it will be readable to all other players inside the building or on the same block on their next turn. The speaking box has space for 250 characters. Should the building contain 50+ people, your speech will then only be heard by the nearest 50 in order of last action. Speaking does not remove HP when the player is Infected. Other players will see your message in the form

• Survivor said "Lots of zombies about tonight" (1 hour ago)

Note that the "speak" box only appears when there are other players, living or undead, inside the same building or on the same block as the player character. If you speak when there are no players, such as if the last player left while you were typing your message, the message will take the form

• You say "Don't leave me." to yourself.

A zombie has only a limited number of options: normally they are given a drop-down menu of zombie noises, including the ever-popular "Graagh!" however, zombies that have purchased the Death Rattle skill get a box like humans, most of which is sufficiently garbled when actually spoken; zombies can use only the letters z, h, r, g, b, m, n, a and some punctuation, and any other characters will be translated into these characters. Zombie death rattles can form legible words (such as 'harman' or 'zambah') and communicating in this fashion is known as Zamgrh. Systems to communicate with this characters via cipher include Zomban, Zombese and Zombish, although they are somewhat less popular.

Zombies have another vocal skill option, the Feeding Groan, which may only be used in the presence of survivors, and alerts other zombies to their location (much like the flare gun, although the latter was likely not intended for this purpose).