The Booklet

Coffee Break of the Living Dead

One thing I've noticed about horror adventures is that even the best of them seldom feel to me like the horror stories that inspire them. Rather, they end up feeling like different sorts of stories that just happen to share the same elements as the source material. (Masks of Nyarlathotep being one good example.) Well, such is not the case with this adventure. On the contrary, it reads very much like a zombie horror movie script -- and a damn fine one, at that.

Of course, "script" implies "scripted", and that is something this adventure is not. However, PC choices are somewhat limited by the very nature of the premise, making the adventure a good choice for new GMs.

That premise involves just another mind-numbing day at the high-rise office for the PCs. Well, except for the disgruntled former employee -- also a PC -- arriving armed to the teeth to kill them all. And except for the accident at the military research facility nearby that's causing the dead to rise from the grave and devour the living.

After some optional roleplaying of humdrum morning activities, the action really gets started when the PCs -- including the disgruntled loony, who's been having last-minute second thoughts -- end up stuck in an elevator. This proves to be a stroke of luck, because unbeknownst to our heroes, the zombie plague sweeps through the building shortly thereafter. The PCs must escape first from the elevator, then from a building overrun by classic Romero flesh-eating zombies.

Now, as I mentioned, the choices here aren't unlimited. In fact, there are only two basic choices for the PCs to make regarding what they will do. The first involves how to get out of the elevator. If they climb out, they can make it to an open elevator door in the shaft above them and fight their way through the zombie-infested office of a jewelry store chain. If they wait, the elevator cable will break and they'll wind up having to fight their way through the security offices in the basement. Both routes will take them to the emergency stairwell, where their next big choice awaits them: Do they go for the ground floor entrance or the roof? Either holds the possibility for rescue by National Guardsmen or a particularly gruesome death.

My only complaint about the scenario -- and it's a pretty minor one -- is that the setup rewards timidity and indecisiveness and punishes initiative. If the PCs sit tight in the elevator and crash into the basement, they'll end up with guns a-plenty and other useful equipment from the fallen security guards. If they climb to the jewelry office, they'll have to rely on whatever weapons with which they started the game or that they can improvise from a typical office environment. (On the other hand, nobody ever said a zombie plague would be fair…)

This brings up another point: Whether the players use the pregen PCs or create new characters of their own, pay close attention to what sorts of items the PCs have on them before play begins. For example, only two of the six pregens start with guns -- the disgruntled ex-employee and the jeweler. (And that's pretty generous for a group of office workers.) And only three of the six pregens have flashlights of various sizes, which could mean the difference between life and death given the power failure in the building.

Overall, the adventure resembles Night of the Living Dead crossed with Die Hard, and the resolution could lead into the equivalent of either Dawn or Day of the Dead, depending upon how successful the GM wants the zombies to have been so far.

These are just the basic facts of the adventure, however, none of which really do it justice. For what really makes this adventure special, see "STYLE" below.

New Rules

The rules section starts out with two mechanics that first appeared in WitchCraft. The first is the concept of campaign power levels -- Pre-Heroic, Heroic, and Legendary -- and how to adjust the character creation process for them. (The main differences here are that the Mythical campaign level isn't included and that a Pre-Heroic campaign featuring all Norms requires no adjustment at all.) The second is the optional rule for factoring PC intelligence, age, social standing, resources, and campaign level into beginning skill point allotments.

Next up are rules for creating zombie PCs. These are more advanced versions of the rules found in the main rulebook and are identical to those found in Enter the Zombie. Please refer to my review of the latter for my thoughts on the specifics. My only comment here would be that so far, I've only seen one published Deadworld outside of Enter the Zombie for which zombie PCs are appropriate, so applying these rules may require you to either modify an existing Deadworld or else create your own.

Two new Qualities follow, also imported from WitchCraft: Age and Essence Channeling. The former makes a lot of sense for ancient zombie PCs. The latter, however, seems rather pointless, given the fact that no PC powers in either this product or the main rulebook require the use of channeled Essence. (Again, Enter the Zombie includes such powers, but then, it also includes rules for Essence Channeling.)

Finally, the section introduces nine new Zombie Aspects: Vulnerability, Flying, Wall Crawling, Essence Sense, Nobody Loves Me (for zombies unable to make more of their kind), Bound (for zombies enslaved to a master of some sort), Dr. Doolitle (for zombies who can feed on animals), Spit and Bubblegum (for zombies held together by will alone), and Vomit (acid). All of these contribute nicely to the flexibility of the zombie creation system.

Zombie Survival Horror

This insightful two-page essay examines the term "survival horror", looking first at the "survival" and "horror" aspects separately and then together and concluding that the term applies both to the horror of surviving the collapse of society as well as to the zombie plague that causes the collapse.