The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Before I begin I'd best confess as to my biases; I am a zombie fan. I've played the Resident Evil games, I know the difference between Return of the Living Dead and Night of the Living Dead, I'm familiar with the old Dawn of the Dead boardgame, and I've even got a small collection of zombie comics. So when I heard that Eden studios was releasing a zombie game I was excited. Granted, I'd had friends propose such a thing, and I remember posts on the Usenet years ago, but that was all vapor. This was going to be something solid and useful. At least I hoped.

So when I got my copy, I tore into it and immediately noticed that it was a small hardback (around the size of White Wolf's Trinity or Aberrant) and that in terms of art and layout it was one of the best looking products I'd seen in a while. While there were several pieces of fiction text printed on odd gray backgrounds, they were short and spread apart, avoiding the eyestrain that other books typically cause. Art varied from surreal computer-modified photographs to comic book style drawings; overall, the art was very good and creepy. One of the more stimulating parts for me was the setting fiction at the start of each chapter. While the pieces were all well done, a few were downright scary and really drove home the feel of good zombie stories. Despite typos roughly every other page, the only major mistake was a missing sentance(already posted on the errata page of the website).

So, I got some friends to agree to a game or two and sat down to read the thing. It started with a forward by Shane Lacy Hensley of Deadlands fame exploring the popularity of zombies and went into definition and history of zombies in the media, as well as an overview of the book itself. Mostly standard stuff, but the history and definition sections were pretty good.

And then, for the next 120 pages or so, we get the Unisystem, which felt to me more like the premature offspring of the Storyteller System and GURPS than a new system: it tried to be simple and comprehensive, but didn't seem quite ready.

The mechanics were all fairly straightforward enough at first glance. You take an attribute plus a skill, roll a d10, and if the total (after penalties and bonuses) is 9 or more you succeed. Damage (and a few other rolls) uses either a d6, a d4, or a d8 depending on the source involved. The Unisystem presented covered vehicles, air combat, disease, and so forth; nothing in great detail, but enough to cover almost any situation you'd need. Players may spend various amounts of points of Qualities to buy things like heightened reflexes and take Drawbacks like weak eyesight or humorless to get points to spend elsewhere. And of course it has the mandatory section of powers PCs may call upon, in this case blessings and miracles. There are also some neat ideas on using playing cards in lieu of dice or going without random numbers altogether.

The Unisystem felt functional, but clunky; it would take the playtest to determine how true my feelings were.

So, next up in reading was Anatomy of a Zombie, the chapter on how to make zombies. While one of the better chapters, this one's true strength lay in its versatility. You could use these rules to make everything from indestructible souleaters, to Romero's ghoul plagues, to intelligent alien infiltrators.

Especially fun though was the potential for using the ideas and creation methods in other games like Deadlands, Kult, Hunter, and so on; I'm thinking of using it to make new husks in Fading Suns. If a game has the possibility of living dead, this chapter can help make them more than just moving corpses.

Then came Worlds in Hell, the settings chapter. If the last chapter was the most versatile, this was easily the most stimulating. We have one world where AIDS was altered into a delayed Zombie plague, and the infected are re-located while the wait for the disease or the zombies to kill them off. Another is set in 10th century Europe, where a French necromancer wars with the rest of the continent.

And a third set in a post-apocalyptic future where zombies and the lords have claimed chunks of the world (and human survivors) as their own kingdoms. Besides these are 8 other worlds, each one either unique or covering another subset of the genre, be it chemical zombies, mutant zombies, theological undead, or whatever.

A good chapter, my only complaint being that it didn't give much detail on any world, limiting them to a single gimmick zombie-type. I really wish more had been done to help Zombie Masters (the game's name for Game Masters) to make a long-term campaign with one of these worlds. While some worlds seemed limited to a one-shot game or short campaign, others had potential for several campaigns and variants

(I'd love to do a Dawn of the Zombie Lords wargame with my players). After this, we have a very comprehensive appendix of zombies in the media, skill lists, zombie power lists, glossary, index and so on.

The playtest was a bit of a surprise. I used a simple scenario: the players were all soldiers protecting a skyscraper filled with infected humans (from the PHADE to Black setting). Naturally, the zombies attack en masse, forcing the humans to retreat to the top of the building where a military chopper waits. Unfortunately, the infected humans, sensing their imminent death as the soldiers abandon them, refuse to let anyone escape the onslaught. With crazed zombies below, and weak (but more intelligent) humans above, the soldiers were in a pinch. A simple enough idea, and a few twists and surprises were added along the way for a pretty fun evening. What really surprised me though was that the Unisystem wasn't as clunky as I initially thought. Granted, I ignored a lot of the rules to keep a fast pace on the game, but the most basic aspects worked fairly well. The Rules of 1 and 10 were kind of odd at first, but they worked well enough. That said, there was no real reason I could see to stick with the Unisystem over another that my group and I were more familiar with.

In the end, I have to ask "was it worth it"? I wasn't interested in this game for its mechanics but its subject matter, so having half the book devoted to the Unisystem wasn't a lot of fun. However, the overall mood, the fiction, and the settings were all good and should make any zombie (or horror) fan very happy. The potential for using this game in conjunction with other horror games is also good. As it is, it strikes me as being pricey at $30, but ultimately worth it.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

All Flesh Must Be Eaten
Author: Bruno, Carella, Dakan, Emmert, Jurkat, and Vasialkos Category: game Company/Publisher: Eden Studios Line: All Flesh Must Be Eaten Cost: $30 Page count: 232 ISBN: 1-891153-80-3 SKU: EDN 8000 Playtest Review by D.J. Babb on 02/16/00. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Modern_day Horror Post-apocalypse	Before I begin I'd best confess as to my biases; I am a zombie fan. I've played the Resident Evil games, I know the difference between Return of the Living Dead and Night of the Living Dead, I'm familiar with the old Dawn of the Dead boardgame, and I've even got a small collection of zombie comics. So when I heard that Eden studios was releasing a zombie game I was excited. Granted, I'd had friends propose such a thing, and I remember posts on the Usenet years ago, but that was all vapor. This was going to be something solid and useful. At least I hoped. So when I got my copy, I tore into it and immediately noticed that it was a small hardback (around the size of White Wolf's Trinity or Aberrant) and that in terms of art and layout it was one of the best looking products I'd seen in a while. While there were several pieces of fiction text printed on odd gray backgrounds, they were short and spread apart, avoiding the eyestrain that other books typically cause. Art varied from surreal computer-modified photographs to comic book style drawings; overall, the art was very good and creepy. One of the more stimulating parts for me was the setting fiction at the start of each chapter. While the pieces were all well done, a few were downright scary and really drove home the feel of good zombie stories. Despite typos roughly every other page, the only major mistake was a missing sentance(already posted on the errata page of the website). So, I got some friends to agree to a game or two and sat down to read the thing. It started with a forward by Shane Lacy Hensley of Deadlands fame exploring the popularity of zombies and went into definition and history of zombies in the media, as well as an overview of the book itself. Mostly standard stuff, but the history and definition sections were pretty good. And then, for the next 120 pages or so, we get the Unisystem, which felt to me more like the premature offspring of the Storyteller System and GURPS than a new system: it tried to be simple and comprehensive, but didn't seem quite ready. The mechanics were all fairly straightforward enough at first glance. You take an attribute plus a skill, roll a d10, and if the total (after penalties and bonuses) is 9 or more you succeed. Damage (and a few other rolls) uses either a d6, a d4, or a d8 depending on the source involved. The Unisystem presented covered vehicles, air combat, disease, and so forth; nothing in great detail, but enough to cover almost any situation you'd need. Players may spend various amounts of points of Qualities to buy things like heightened reflexes and take Drawbacks like weak eyesight or humorless to get points to spend elsewhere. And of course it has the mandatory section of powers PCs may call upon, in this case blessings and miracles. There are also some neat ideas on using playing cards in lieu of dice or going without random numbers altogether. The Unisystem felt functional, but clunky; it would take the playtest to determine how true my feelings were. So, next up in reading was Anatomy of a Zombie, the chapter on how to make zombies. While one of the better chapters, this one's true strength lay in its versatility. You could use these rules to make everything from indestructible souleaters, to Romero's ghoul plagues, to intelligent alien infiltrators. Especially fun though was the potential for using the ideas and creation methods in other games like Deadlands, Kult, Hunter, and so on; I'm thinking of using it to make new husks in Fading Suns. If a game has the possibility of living dead, this chapter can help make them more than just moving corpses. Then came Worlds in Hell, the settings chapter. If the last chapter was the most versatile, this was easily the most stimulating. We have one world where AIDS was altered into a delayed Zombie plague, and the infected are re-located while the wait for the disease or the zombies to kill them off. Another is set in 10th century Europe, where a French necromancer wars with the rest of the continent. And a third set in a post-apocalyptic future where zombies and the lords have claimed chunks of the world (and human survivors) as their own kingdoms. Besides these are 8 other worlds, each one either unique or covering another subset of the genre, be it chemical zombies, mutant zombies, theological undead, or whatever. A good chapter, my only complaint being that it didn't give much detail on any world, limiting them to a single gimmick zombie-type. I really wish more had been done to help Zombie Masters (the game's name for Game Masters) to make a long-term campaign with one of these worlds. While some worlds seemed limited to a one-shot game or short campaign, others had potential for several campaigns and variants (I'd love to do a Dawn of the Zombie Lords wargame with my players). After this, we have a very comprehensive appendix of zombies in the media, skill lists, zombie power lists, glossary, index and so on. The playtest was a bit of a surprise. I used a simple scenario: the players were all soldiers protecting a skyscraper filled with infected humans (from the PHADE to Black setting). Naturally, the zombies attack en masse, forcing the humans to retreat to the top of the building where a military chopper waits. Unfortunately, the infected humans, sensing their imminent death as the soldiers abandon them, refuse to let anyone escape the onslaught. With crazed zombies below, and weak (but more intelligent) humans above, the soldiers were in a pinch. A simple enough idea, and a few twists and surprises were added along the way for a pretty fun evening. What really surprised me though was that the Unisystem wasn't as clunky as I initially thought. Granted, I ignored a lot of the rules to keep a fast pace on the game, but the most basic aspects worked fairly well. The Rules of 1 and 10 were kind of odd at first, but they worked well enough. That said, there was no real reason I could see to stick with the Unisystem over another that my group and I were more familiar with. In the end, I have to ask "was it worth it"? I wasn't interested in this game for its mechanics but its subject matter, so having half the book devoted to the Unisystem wasn't a lot of fun. However, the overall mood, the fiction, and the settings were all good and should make any zombie (or horror) fan very happy. The potential for using this game in conjunction with other horror games is also good. As it is, it strikes me as being pricey at $30, but ultimately worth it. Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

All Flesh Must Be Eaten