This review is for the 67-page PDF of the D20 Modern splatbook Blood and Brains. Blood and Brains was written by Michael Tresca and published by RPG Objects. It is currently available from RPGnow or directly from RPGObjects for $6.95.

Rating: A mildly mature 9 out of 10 golden apples.

Initial impressions are everything and, you just know, that any splatbook that offers Occupations such as Boy Scout, Cheerleader, and Mental Patient isn’t your typical D20 supplement. Oh, yeah, and you can play a Nerd and a Jock too! Can’t you just picture your GM mulling this over and announcing to prepare for tonight’s session of “Revenge of the Nerds vs. the Atomic Nazi Zombies” or “Cheerleader Grrl Squad at Camp Zombie Lake”? Now I am not saying anything like that is about to happen, but man I have to admit there’s a train wreck of B-movie ideas swirling around the old noggin as I write these words. Did I mention that those are but a few of the occupations? Well they are and, now that I have these strange visions of playing a shot-gun wielding Y-Mart Employee running through my head, I think it’s time to move on to the summary.

Summary

Astounding. Truth be told I wasn’t expecting to find half of what the diabolically devious authors of Blood and Brains had the foresight to include. Perhaps it began as a simple idea to pad out the supplement but one look at the myriad type of zombies in the Field Guide section (Chapter 4) or a headcount of the cast of characters is proof of the snowball effect in action. Yes there are minor quibbles, like no cover (despite credits for a cover artist), lack of either contents page or index or bookmarks, and sure the font size might be a bit annoying for onscreen reading. But horror aficionados wont notice any of that. I mean how could they when faced with potential character Occupations such as the Scream Queen, Mad Scientist, Y-Mart Employee, or NCRPC Employee? (An original gem I’ll leave a surprise for you to discover.) Word of bias warning: I not only got the Templar and Nazi zombie references but I happen to have a few of those movies on VHS/DVD. Be afraid, be very afraid!

Game Setting: Technically none. However the style and tone is pure slipstream cinematic modern horror. Which stands to reason as this is intended for use with the D20 Modern role-playing game. The dart flies forth and. . . Bull’s-eye?

System: Requires D20 Modern role-playing game.

Character Creation: Assume standard D20 Modern character creation rules apply.

Now this is how to do a D20 splatbook! Every Occupation is unique, yet when you read it you can see how they grew organically out of standard character types. These aren’t just suggestions for adapting stock character types or barebones templates with suggestions for how to flesh them out these are fully complete, functional, and ready to generate and play character class- sorry- occupations. For instance the Mad Scientist is explained as the modern equivalent of Necromancers, which is a nice way to introduce a Necromancer type character into D20 Modern. Ah, but the authors didn’t stop there they actually included a modernized Necromancer! Sweet. Nor is that the only spellcaster. For those who might want a more fantasy oriented game there are the Bokor, who are more or less an update of the cinematic White Zombie controlling Voodoo Priest stereotype. But the best part is how the authors pulled in a wide variety of character stereotypes from horror movies. For instance you may not expect to find a Firestarter or Carrie young female archetype with strange mental powers in a game about Zombies, yet that is precisely what the Psychokinetic is. Sure there’s a Zombie Hunter, a very Ash inspired Zombie Hunter, but this splatbook could have been released as an self contained game, and considering that some of the OGL material I have seen that claims to be self-contained and to provide everything you need to play, yet doesn’t, this says a lot for the authors and editors of Blood and Brains. Now I’m not going to gush to the point of saying it’s a masterpiece, but damned if the section on Occupations alone doesn’t come close to sending the ball out of the ballpark in and off itself. I mean, c’mon, you can even play a Stoner. A Stoner! Like, dude, that‘s just too much.

Negatives: I don’t have D20 Modern. I have no plans to buy D20 Modern. But if anything could make me change my mind, this product might be it. However I would much rather of seen this released as an independent standalone game. Color me green and call me a Martian, but when you have an idea this damn good, executed for the target genre this well, it seems a shame to release it solely as a plug in for another game system.

Positives: See above. That said this supplement totally raises the bar for D20 splatbooks published as PDFs. No joke. Which technically is a negative for everyone else as this product could potentially establish a quality benchmark that might leave many gamers hungry for more. Seriously. In addition to the 15 character Occupations, 15 Feats (like Suck on This and Virgin), and some 24 odd stock zombie monsters there’s even a short story that manages to make use of quite a few of the characters and what not mentioned above. But what makes this really work is the humor. Granted if you haven’t at least heard of movies like Army of Darkness, Zombie Lake, Shock Waves, Night of the Living Dead, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Tomb of the Blind Dead, Virgin Among the Living Dead, Night of the Creeps, or even rarified camp schlock like Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town then this is probably not for you.

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