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Dungeons and Zombies is the fantasy genre supplement for All Flesh Must Be Eaten (AFMBE), the Unisystem game of survival horror. This review assumes familiarity with both AFMBE and Unisystem. This book provides rules for a fantasy Unisystem game, several Deadworlds (settings), and a short adventure.
Presentation
The book is 160 pages and is black and white throughout. It is a soft cover book that is in the distinctive smaller size of the AFMBE line. The cover has the AFMBE raw meat background with a cover image that is a zombification of a classic D&D book.
The art is rather good with no particularly cringe-worthy pieces. I have to say that the archetypes are especially good, with bonus points for the Eastern Dead archetypes. The layout also maintains the quality. The font is easy to read black-on-white with sidebars either using black-on-light gray or white-on-black. The maps in the adventure are nothing to write home about, but are very functional.
Style Rating
5 (Excellent art and easy to read.)
Content
Chapter 1 – Delving Down
The book begins with a short chapter containing a fiction piece followed by an introduction including summary, text conventions, inspirational material and about the author.
Chapter 2 – Swords, Sorcery, and Shambling
This is the meat of the book (pun intended). We start with two new characters types, Adept Hero and Talented Hero. The Adept Hero is intended to cover all those eldritch character types. The Talented Hero covers everything else from fighter to thief. Both are rather powerful as befits a fantasy game (about equal with a Survivor) with a focus on quality points over skills. This is followed by a sidebar explaining how to tone down the lethality of the system.
Next comes the part I was looking forward to, a large selection of new qualities. Three major types of qualities introduced are racial, profession and spellcasting qualities. Racial qualities are (obviously) used to assign your character a particular race. We get the whole fantasy selection with Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Goblin, Minotaur and Orc. The nice thing about races as a quality is you don’t have to worry about balancing the races relative to each other. A stronger race just costs more points, none of the races are handicapped in the name of balance. The races normally provide an attribute bonus, a skill bonus, some powers and some drawbacks. The professional qualities replace the classes of other systems. The selection includes Holy Order of Light Priest, Paladin, Ranger and Swashbuckler. We don’t get some standards like Fighter and Thief, however the sidebar that details how to create these package qualities explains that generic types that could be built without a quality should not have a quality. The sidebar also hides the Mystic Entertainer profession. These profession packages resemble the racial qualities in their content (bonuses, powers, drawbacks, etc.) Then there is a group of qualities that are needed for the magic system like Essence Channeling. There are also some miscellaneous qualities and drawbacks. Finally we have Powers which are qualities that can be bought by nonhumans and zombies. Overall, the qualities are very useful for a fantasy game. We even get the D&D classic Ambidextrous (do not make a dual scimitar wielding dark elf without it.)
After that comes the description of some new skills. We get Craft (Type Rune Craving), Language, Magic Bolt, Science (Alchemy), Science (Animals), Shield (Type) and Smooth Talk (Taunt). Nothing too unusual here but the Science (Alchemy) does give a good barebones magic potion brewing system. Magic Bolt is also nice because it facilitates the creation of everyone’s favorite, the artillery mage.
Then we get a whole load of combat rules, starting with shield use. Shields were a big hole in Unisystem that is filled here. I’m of a mixed opinion on the shield rules. They are slightly complex but they cover it in a way often overlooked by other games. In other games, the shield is sometimes lumped in with, and just becomes, more armor. However, the shield rules here involve their own skill and even include the ability to actually have your shield broken by a strong attack. In the end I think I like the shield system, it gives the shield a flavor that is lost in others games. The choice of a shield is no longer “Do I just want more armor or more damage output?” The next big combat rule included is pole arms and mounted combat. This provides a quick and functional system for mounted combat and points you to Army of Darkness for a more complex system. I feel these rules are good enough for me, but your mileage may vary if you enjoy detailed mounted battles. Functionally fighting mounted gives some bonuses and some drawbacks and is then resolved like combat on foot.
Next comes an economy overview covering both barter and coin. This includes a short chart of coin prices for common items. This section is useful because it gives an easy conversion for dollars to gold and because the suggestion of a barter system could make for an interesting game. Maybe the PCs are centered around a “merchant” in a society with a barter economy. Wealth collection becomes more than a means to an end and becomes a central function in the game.
Now we get to a big point of the chapter, Metaphysics. What you get is a simplified magic system lifted from Armageddon/Witchcraft. You get both Lesser Invocations (typical mage-type spells) and Necromancy. Priest-type magic is already included in the AFMBE core book. The magic system is a skilled based mana point (Essence) system and includes 30 invocations under 14 skills and 4 necromantic powers of 5 levels each. I was very glad to see that Necromancy was expanded to include both the creation and control of zombies. How can you call yourself a Necromancer without undead legions? Now a big weakness here is it is suggested you can come up with your own invocations but there is no guidance on how do this. Even a short set of guidelines to aid in giving spells Essence costs would have been very useful. However, all your fantasy standards from fireballs to illusions are covered by the pre-existing invocations.
Magic item creation is covered next. The item creation section is rather short but covers everything from enhanced weapons and armor to charged items. The item creation ties directly into the magic, you put spells into items. You do not get lists of abilities and costs here. Instead the item creation system involves permanently draining Essence to allow an item to “cast” a spell.
Finally, the chapter ends with advice on creating a setting and more archetypes. The world creation talks about both the Bottom Up and Top Down methods and gives an example with the Dawn of the Dead Age. This is a nice section that provides a lot of questions that if you can answer, your world will be better for. However, I would have preferred this section be cut in place of some spell creation guidelines. Finally we get the four general archetypes, Gnome Lovable Rogue, Human Psychic Tagalong, Human Woodland Scout, and Orc Tribal Outcast. These are all nice archetypes that I could see being used in play. I was glad the section did not fall into the trap of showing how flexible the system could be by putting out a weird archetype like a Minotaur Paladin-Samurai or Gnome Ninja-Necromancer.
In summary we already have what we came for, a complete Unisystem fantasy rule system with magic and fantasy races. The next chapters are the settings and an adventure, so I won’t cover them in such gory detail.
Chapter 3 – Dead Gods and Demon Lands
This setting is, in its own words, a pulp fantasy in the style of Fritz Leiber and Robert Howard. The general plot is several outside gods have decided to make the world their battleground. This has the unintended consequences of having the dead rise. It starts with a short history and cosmology. You get stats for Saurian Lizard Men, three different types of zombies and some Big Bads in the form of a Zombie Lord and a Saurian High Priest. You also get the Saurian racial quality. Finally, you have two archetypes, an Elf Elemental Sorcerer and a Dwarf Priest of Mitra. The high point of this setting is a detailed pantheon of gods and infernals. A game run in this campaign would probably involve a lot of conflict based on religion with a large dash of pulpy goodness.
Chapter 4 – Dawn of a Dead Age
This is a High fantasy setting with a Dark Lord bent on world domination, think Tolkien. A dark lord has risen to threaten humans, dwarves and sidhe. Only a powerful artifact, that has just resurfaced, can counter him. Two more zombie types, werewolves and both Dragon and Dracozombie stats are included. Interestingly a racial quality for the Sidhe is given. These are Tolkienequse elves in the style of the Noldor but with more of a Wood Elf tilt. It seems to me where the last setting had a more developed cosmology, this setting gives you more detail on the world itself. The two archetypes for this setting are Sidhe Woodland Protector and Minotaur Ex-Gladiator. The high point of this setting is a more detailed world to play in and a strong villain that gives a definite adversary.
Chapter 5- Death of the Round Table
This is a straight out Arthurian Knights vs. the Zombies setting. Morgan and Modred have seized the grail and have raised an undead legion. The zombies for this setting are Arthurian zombies and Knights of the Dead Table (be afraid). You are even given stats for the Holy Grail in this section. Unlike the other settings a rather straightforward campaign arc is laid out for you. This setting includes such stats as Lady Guinevere, Sir Lancelot du Lac, Morgan Le Fay and Sir Mordred. A sidebar details more powerful blessed swords, including Excalibur. The two archetypes are Knight Errant (a personal favorite) and Young Druid. The high point of this setting is the fact you have a campaign laid out for you.
Chapter 6 – The Eastern Dead
Finally, comes the most unusual selection of the settings, an Eastern fantasy. Included in this section are three professions (Ninja, Samurai, and Sohei Monk), a Kitsune (fox shapeshifter) race and a Chi metaphysics system (though the book points to Enter the Zombie for a fuller treatment). Also you get another zombie type and four Oni type stats. The archetypes are Human Samurai Warrior and Kitsune Geisha Ninja. The highpoint of this setting is the illustration of a non-Western fantasy using Dungeon and Zombies. Also you get ninjas, you can not forget the ninjas.
Chapter 7 – The Tomb of Doom
The last “setting” is in fact a good ol’ dungeon crawl complete with maps. Monsters in this section include another zombie type (you getting the theme yet?), animated skeletons, ghosts, goblin warriors, wolves, rats and some NPCs. The high point here is a good short adventure to get people introduced to the system and a decent amount of stats for some stock dungeon monsters.
Settings Conclusion
The settings are all nice additions that show how to use the system well. There is also a lot of extra stuff (enemies, qualities, and archetypes) hidden away in the settings. Even if you have no interest in any of the settings they are worth a read just for illustration of how the system lends itself to different flavors of the fantasy genre.
Substance Rating
5 (This was a close call between a 4 and 5. However, what swayed me is the fact that this book crams an entire fantasy system (including the races and magic), four good settings and a short adventure into 160 pages for $24. As far as AFMBE supplements go, this now ties for first place, in my opinion, along side Enter the Zombie (in fact those two books together could make a mean Eastern fantasy). If you are looking for a rules-medium skills based system, that includes magic, point-based character creation and a custom monster creation kit, you can’t go wrong with AFMBE + Dungeons and Zombies.)
Further Information
A web enhancement is available on the Eden Studios site. This includes how to use D&Z with cinematic Unisystem and some alternate takes on the racial qualities.
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