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“The Dead” is available as a free to download, thirty-six page black and white 5.5” X 7.5” PDF. The body copy is legible and the consistent use of bold and italic type to indicate topics and examples allows readers to quickly look for clarifying information in adjacent text. Tables are used sparingly and there are few side bars.
Nearly half of the page count is devoted to artwork and tone setting fiction (mostly excerpts from emergency broadcasts or survivor’s diaries) with the remainder used for the mechanics and examples. The artwork is very dark and each page has a background image resembling wrinkled and bloodied paper. While visually appealing and thematically appropriate “The Dead” rules are not inkjet friendly, but when printed on a laser printer as a booklet the result is a polished, near, pocket sized set of rules good for quick zombie fun.
The basic task resolution mechanic is called an “Attribute Check” and involves rolling a handful of six sided dice and counting each one that comes up a five or six as a “success”. The total number of successes is then used to determine if and how well an action succeeded. In situations where there is no opposition to an action a target number of successes must equaled or exceeded. Target numbers increase with the difficultly of the action (e.g. one success might be required to climb a rough rock wall on a warm sunny day with plenty of time, while three success might be necessary to get over the same wall at night in freezing rain with a hoard of the undead nipping at your heels). If there is active opposition to an action all involved parties roll and the one with the highest number of successes achieves their goal. For combat the number of success (beyond what a defender rolls) equals the amount of damage inflicted.
Characters are created by splitting six “points” among the three attributes of: Fight, Evade and Think. Each attribute must have a value of at least one and not more than four. These attribute points directly equal the base number of dice used to roll “Attribute Checks”. Values for the secondary attributes of GUTS (an indicator of the amount of damage a PC can take) and Initiative (an indicator of who gets to act first in conflicts) are calculated from combinations of the primary attributes. Additionally characters receive one “Perk” for each point assigned to the “Think” attribute they have.
Perks represent skills or talents characters possessed before the Undead uprising and increase the number of dice a player rolls for applicable Attribute Checks. The sample Perks listed in the rules range from professions (e.g. Law Enforcement) to personality traits (e.g. Persuasive). The Law Enforcement Perk adds one die to FIGHT rolls and the Persuasive Perk adds to Think checks when a character attempts to influence others opinions. Because Attributes are few and have a narrow range of values possible Perks are mechanically the only way to really differentiate between what characters are capable of.
Supporting the game's tagline “A game of relationships and death” is the inclusion of “Relationships” as part of the character design and task resolution. Relationships provide bonus dice which can be added to a die pool whenever a character is attempting an action on behalf of another character (player or NPC) whom they have a Relationship with (e.g. if the PC has a casual relationship with their Landlady the player could add 1d to a FIGHT check while attempting to haul her up through a window and out of harm's way). The downside to Relationships is that the loss of a loved one causes characters to gain another attribute called “Cold”.
Because few people are prepared to face reanimated corpse whenever a character witnesses a particularly visceral scene they must make a Think Attribute Check or become “frozen” for one round and gain a point of Fear. For each point of Fear that a character already has an additional success must be rolled in order to avoid “freezing in terror”. Accumulated Fear points can be reduced by one for each successful Think check against Fear that a character passes.
Cold represents the lose of humanity and compassion as one experiences horror and suffering. Watching loved ones perish (and reanimate), committing atrocities or failing to aid those in need increase the number of Cold points a character has. These points act as penalty dice for Attribute Checks involving interpersonal actions (e.g. a character with a Cold of two who is trying to pursued others to change their opinions will lose two dice from their Think + Perk pool for that Attribute Check). While Cold makes dealing with the living more difficult, it makes coping with horror and suffering much easier. Each point of Cold a character has is used as a bonus die when making Fear checks. Cold can be decreased, over time, by on going contact with other characters.
I found The Dead to be quite playable as it is (with no overt tweaking or house ruling). The artwork, layout and writing make for an engaging and fun read and the rules work easily with the generic zombie knowledge most people. Though small (in size and page count) it has an index, a "Bestiary" to provide samples of how typical adversaries might be stated, rules for infection, recovering (from injuries, Cold and Fear), suffocation, dehydration, starvation and exposure. It even has the obligatory statement about not having a statement about what a role-playing game is. For folks who enjoy tweaking the author has provided some optional rules and acknowledged that that people are likely to mess with the rules anyways (so go for it).
My greatest dislike of the system is that some of the rules add an unexpected crunch or feel out of place. An example of sudden crunchiness is that weapons have a “value” which a PC’s Fight Attribute must equal (or exceed) in order to use. Because the majority of weapons listed require a Fight of one (the minimum value for any character) and none of the weapons have a “weapon value” greater than two this rule would see little use in actual play and its absence would not have a drastic effect on the story (why not let Granny use a Stinger against an army of flesh eaters?). The Cold and Relationship rules are cool ideas, but they require a longer running game and the over all feel of The Dead is that it rocks for quick pick up one-shots rather than on going sessions.
All in all a great game at a great price.
