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The name's Davenport. I review games.
Bet you think that sounds like a nice, safe, cushy gig, huh? Shows how much you know. This ain't Candyland or Mousetrap we're talkin' here. Fact is, you're stickin' your neck out every time you take a job – there's no tellin' what kind of freak a game company's gonna send your way.
And that goes double for Eden Studios.
That's why I was checkin' the clip on the trusty .45 in my desk drawer before my appointment the other day. It was another All Flesh Must Be Eaten job, and you never know when a guy from that crew's gonna decide some nice, fresh noggin meat sounds better than a review.
Thing is, I learned the hard way that there're scarier things out there than zombies.
The Eden rep walks in decked out in this flashy cowboy outfit – all white denim and sequins. Sequins. And get this: He was carryin' a guitar.
"You don't look much like a zombie," I says, cuttin' to the chase.
"Why, shoot no, lil' buckaroo!" the guy says. "I'm Rex Manly, the Singin' Cowboy! And I'm just pleased as all get-out to present the latest rodeo playin' game from Eden Studios! YEE-HA!"
"Don't you mean 'role playin' game'?"
"That, too!"
"Okay, fine," I says, tryin' to decide if I should keep the .45 handy. "Let's hear what you've gotta say."
"Well, heck, pardner!" he says. "Why just tell you about it, when I can sing about it!"
"I'd really rather you just-"
"Oooooooh,It's a Western, it's got zombies,
It's a combo that's sublime!
The book's Fistful o' Zombies,
And it's now reviewin' time!"*
[*Sung to the tune of "Clementine".]
"So, Eden's got a Western zombies supplement out now, eh?" I says. "Hmmm... Well, Enter the Zombie knocked my socks off. Pulp Zombies? Eh... so-so. Guess it's only fair to see how this one turned out. Who's the writer?"
"Ooooooh,The man's last name is 'Hensley'!
His first two, 'Shane Lac-y'!
Now the mind behind those Deadlands
Takes on A-F-M-B-E!"*
[*Sung to the tune of "Yellow Rose of Texas".]
Singing or no singing, that made me sit up and take notice. "Well, I gotta hand it to Eden: They picked the right guy for the job." I says. "Who better to combine Westerns and zombies than Mr. Deadlands himself?" I took the book from Rex with a smile and a handshake. "Thanks, Rex. I'll give it a look."
"Shoot, s'no trouble 'tall, lil' trailhand!
"'Cause I'm Rex Maaaaaan-ly,The Yodellin' Coooooow-boy!
YODELAHEEYODELAHEEYODEL-"*
[*Sung to the tune of "Jessie the Yodelling Cowgirl", from the Toy Story 2 soundtrack.]
You get the idea. Like I said, there're scarier things out there than zombies.
Yodellers, for example.
Anyway, here's the review.
CONTENT
Chapter One: Go West
Sandwiching the standard Unisystem introduction notes is this chapter's look at just what makes a Western. After dissecting the Western into its basic elements, the discussion covers the Hollywood view of the genre – from the days when actual cowboys and Indians had a hand in moviemaking all the way to the steampunk of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. and the Western-in-space motif of the late, lamented Firefly. A brief Western lexicon is also included.
Chapter Two: The Good, the Bad, and the Dead
The chapter begins by differentiating between three distinct Western eras – the Old West (1830-1865), the Wild West (1865-1900), and the New West (1900-1930) – with the Wild West being the default time period for the book.A brief history of the West follows, including the Gold Rush (with a sidebar linking the Donner party and zombies) and the Mexican-American, Civil, and Indian Wars.
Next is a discussion of certain key elements of the Wild West: the railroads, cattle and cattlemen (and their rivalry with sheepherders), the law and lawmen (including a sidebar of sample punishments), and the cavalry (including sidebars describing ranks and unit organization).
Then come the new Western-specific rules. There are no new Drawbacks, although certain Qualities and Drawbacks get "Westernized" – Delusions (Prejudice) can include hatred of those from the opposite side of the Mason-Dixon line during and after the Civil War, for example, and characters with +10 Status may be the subjects of dime novels. In addition, there are two new nifty gunslinging Qualities: Fast as Hell, which gives a hefty bonus to initiative when a quick-draw's involved, and Number One with a Bullet, which halves the penalties to called shots.
The chapter also includes new rules for fanning (the single-action revolver shooting trick, not cooling off from the hot Western sun), lassoing, horses, and hanging.
The game makes fanning either more or less formidable than it is in Deadlands, depending upon how you interpret the unclearly stated rule. It lets the gunslinger fire up to six rounds as a single attack with a separate penalized roll for each shot. If that's a flat penalty, fanning's pretty handy, but if it's cumulative and/or in addition to the standard multi-shot penalty, there's no real reason to choose fanning a single-action over firing multiple shots with a double-action.
The lassoing rules neatly cover the chance of the target to either squirm or bust loose and the attacker's chance to rope the target so well that he can't budge at all. The horse rules are comprehensive, covering how far and fast a cowpoke can ride a day, how hard it is to do other things while riding, and, for the unsporting, how to use your horse as cover in a gunfight. (Best of all, a sidebar provides stats for zombie horses.) And while rules for hanging seemed a little pointless to me at first, I suppose there's always the chance that a (hopefully) falsely accused PC might need to survive a terminal necktie.
Up next is a surprisingly extensive list of Western weaponry, including cannons, Gatling guns, tomahawks, muskets, nitroglycerine, sabers, and my personal favorite, the nine-shot-plus-a-shotgun-round LeMat revolver. Descriptions of many of these weapons follow, as does a table of era-specific currency and a price list for supplies.
The chapter concludes with four Norm archetypes:
- Bandita
- Cowboy
- Gambler
- Saloon Girl
The text suggests that most Fistful o' Zombies (hereafter "FoZ") PCs should be Survivors, intending these four for NPC use. However, it would be easy enough to bump them up to Survivor level in a pinch.
The Deadworlds
FoZ includes four full Deadworlds inspired by classic Western movie styles and three smaller Deadworlds – in page count, not necessarily in scope – set in different Wild West periods and settings.
Each of the full Deadworlds include two Survivor Archetypes, and all seven Deadworlds offer either campaign or adventure frameworks of sufficient detail to make the settings easy to use.
WARNING: Adventure spoilers follow.
Chapter Three: Singing Cowboys
As the chapter says, this is probably the weirdest story of zombie survival horror ever written. (And that's saying something.) The setting pits zombies against pure-as-snow singing cowboys of the Roy Rogers/Gene Autry sort.
All of the tropes of singing cowboys are here, codified into both game mechanics and setting. Heroes can hit inanimate objects – particularly the guns in their foes' hands – with uncanny accuracy. Heroes never die (with a few notable exceptions, such as zombie attacks). Water troughs and barrels make great cover. Heroes fight Indians hand-to-hand in single combat and only shoot at them when they're chasing the heroes en masse. (And then, the Indians just fall off their horses, get up, and run off.) Goons attack one at a time in brawls, hired guns taunt the heroes in multiple encounters before a showdown, and the big bosses always choose death traps over a bullet.
The new and adapted rules in this section just add to the fun atmospherics. The Law of the West Drawback ensures that the characters remain true to the singing cowboy's code of conduct, and the Wonder Horse and Sidekick Qualities give them the super-intelligent steeds and faithful companions every singing cowboy needs. The Fast as Hell Quality becomes Fast as Heck for this chapter – a "real" cowboy never swears, don't you know. And the zombies must be killed by a shot to the heart, not the head. Mustn't be gory in Singing Cowboy Land.
The best of the bunch, though, is the Balladeer Quality. This gives the songs of the singing cowboy a nigh-magical quality that can inspire heroes and their allies, making them braver, tougher, luckier, calmer, or faster. It can even be used to divvy up the experience points of a fallen comrade through a ballad written in his honor – and might even result in the "deceased" having miraculously survived after all! (This Quality can be used only twice per session, and players get a bonus to its use if they actually perform an appropriate song.)
The four adventures for the setting are based around classic singing cowboy plots: ranchers tormenting sheep farmers, crooked bankers engaging in claim jumping, rail barons trying to run folks out of town, and Indians going on the warpath due to the machinations of evil businessmen. The zombies are weak, mindless shamblers who pop up a time or two for no apparent reason in each story.
There is a reason, however, and it's a doozy: The PCs are not real. They're the heroes of a 1950s Saturday morning singing cowboy serial that's losing its audience to the growing sci-fi monster craze. So, the writer decides to throw in some non sequitur zombie attacks to spice things up. The result is a series of true-to-genre singing cowboy adventures in which zombies play no more of a central role than would a pack of wolves or a cattle stampede – a fact that is sure to befuddle experienced AFMBE players used to zombies being the central focus.
The book suggests hitting the players with minor variations on the same four plots over and over again until they catch on to the setting's secret. At that point, the writer will raise all the fallen villains from every episode as intelligent zombies with hordes of mindless zombie minions and throw the lot of them at the heroes in a grand finale that's do-or-die for both the heroes and the series. The whole thing is like a twisted Rustler's Rhapsody by way of Tim Burton, and I love it so much there oughta be a law. (Of the West, of course.)
* * * * *
Playtest: Unless you count the zombie aspect of my WitchCraft game, this was my first true AFMBE game. A weird initiation, I know… but as I said, I love the concept.
Actually, I ended up running two "Singing Cowboy" adventures, both with small groups – one with three players, one with two. Due to time constraints, I just gave the players the Singing Cowboy/girl archetypes. Given the setting, any other character type would have been playing second fiddle anyway. I gave them the option to tweak the archetypes if they liked, but they did not.
I chose to tweak them anyway, however, and for a very good reason: the archetypes lack the Balladeer Quality that makes them Singing Cowpersons in the first place. Shock at this rather glaring oversight aside, it was no big deal to fix – just a little tweak to the Qualities. In the course of actual play, I wondered whether the Nerves of Steel Quality wasn't an oversight as well, but that was before I realized that I was misreading the fear rules in such a way to make them far too harsh (e.g., characters running scared and wetting themselves rather than just being taken aback for a round). Nevertheless, an open-ending fear table roll could result in a really embarrassing and out-of-character reaction from a singing cowboy – or from any of the other tough-as-nails Western archetypes in the book, most of whom also lack Nerves of Steel. Just something to keep in mind.
I didn't play long enough to see whether the players would catch on to the setting's bizarre twist. I did, however, see danger signs that they were going to focus on the source of the zombies in lieu of pursuing the conventional plots – a perfectly understandable reaction, but an ultimately fruitless one. The only solution I see is hammering home the fact that the NPCs see the zombies as a "natural" part of the setting.
We definitely enjoyed the game, however. It was great fun being able to ham it up with such campy archetypal characters and play around with the genre tropes. I will say this, though: If you want to stage a bar brawl, you'd better separate a singing cowboy from his guitar or else catch him by surprise. Just when my goons were about to start a fight, the singing cowboy calmed everyone down with an incredible singing roll – accompanied by impromptu lyrics, no less. Too bad this was an mIRC game...
* * * * *
Chapter Four: True Grit
A salute to the Duke himself, John Wayne, and his 1970s Westerns that emphasized rugged determination over quick draws and trick shooting. Accordingly, the chapter's only Quality is the eponymous True Grit, which basically makes the character too damned stubborn to die until he accomplishes a given task.
The adventure isn't so true to the source material, unfortunately. Granted, nothing with zombies could be completely faithful to the Duke's legacy, but an inside-out bloody-mouthed-zombie-raising Lovecraftian alien horror responsible for the downfall of the Anasazi breaking loose into the Wild West just doesn't scream "John Wayne" to me. It's a cool premise, don’t get me wrong – it just seems more appropriate for Call of Cthulhu or Deadlands. If there had been a John Wayne zombie Western, I think it would have been less… baroque. More like Dawn of the Dead with a frontier town in place of a mall.
Anyway, I do like the zombies in this Deadworld. The standard variety are stupid, strong blood-drinkers, although some remember their past lives enough to use tools – including traps and guns. But there are zombie animals as well, with stats for zombie bison and wolves included. And then there are the powerful mummy-like zombies of the Anasazi.
The included archetypes are the Duke-inspired Grizzled Veteran and the Tough Gal. The latter seems to spring not so much from the source material as she does from a perceived need for an action-oriented female Duke ("Duchess"?) counterpart.
Chapter Five: Spaghetti with Meat
(Now where have I seen that title before...)
Based on the Spaghetti Westerns of Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leoné, this section focuses on the subgenre's distinctive style rather than on new Qualities, of which it offers none. I was mildly surprised by that. While I don't think it necessary for each setting to follow a fill-in-the-blanks format, some kind of intimidation-related Quality seems appropriate.
The Deadworld is a Civil War-era adventure pitting the heroes against a ruthless gang of bandits transformed into zombies thanks to a snake-oil salesman's Satanic elixir. Perhaps because the zombies are completely human in their intelligence and motivations – including an aversion to dying (again) – the plot of this adventure manages to be the truest to the source material out of the four main Deadworlds. The antagonists just happen to be tougher to kill. Indeed, depending upon the PCs' actions, the final fight to defend the town from the undead bandits might well resemble the climax of High Plains Drifter. (This is not to say that a Spaghetti Western with zombies will feel like a "real" Spaghetti Western, however.)
The included archetypes are the Drifter and the Bad Girl – again, a movie-inspired archetype and a somewhat contrived female counterpart. In fact, she seems very much like a grittier version of the Tough Gal, right down to their personality descriptions. (Tough Gal: "That Injun wasn't rabid – he was dead!" Bad Girl: "That dirty bandito we just filled full o' lead wasn't cranked up on peyote – he was dead.") I'm not against tough female PCs, mind you, and I can see why the author found them necessary to include. I just think other character types might have been more appropriate for this and the previous Deadworld.
Chapter Six: Dances with Zombies
In a plot strongly reminiscent of Deadlands, a treacherous manitou inspires Sitting Bull, fresh from his victory over Custer at Little Bighorn, to perform a ceremony designed to eliminate the White Man altogether. The ceremony raises Custer and his men and horses as flesh-hungry zombies, spreading their plague Romero-style among their former frontier countrymen. But Sitting Bull discovers to his dismay that while the Indians cannot be turned into zombies, they can be eaten just like anyone else. And the undead soldiers of the 7th Cavalry, first and cleverest of the otherwise dimwitted zombies, have a serious grudge against the Sioux.
The PCs, Sioux warriors by default, must face a number of daunting tasks. Aside from combating the zombies themselves, they must find a way to convince the tribes of the threat and unite them for mutual defense – possibly even along with otherwise hostile tribes – which, in turn, will require finding a food source for many of those tribes, now that the handouts from the Great White Father have dried up. And then there's the small matter of discovering the source of the plague, and deciding what to do about it once it's found to be the Great Chief himself!
As is true of Deadlands, FoZ presents Indians in a completely dispassionate manner – not as wild savages nor as noble savages, but rather as a diverse people with their own qualities, good and bad, personal and cultural. This unflinching take on the matter may well make players uncomfortable – the chapter points out, for example, that one reason for the bitterness of the Indian Wars was the whites' inability to comprehend the Indians' very real practice of using rape and infanticide as weapons of war. This puts players in the position of having to play characters who either approve of or rebel against such practices. And if they're iconoclasts within their own tribe, how could they be expected to unite all the tribes?
Disturbing or not, the chapter squeezes an impressive amount of information about the Sioux into a limited space in order to make them playable as PCs, including politics, religion, culture, food, clothing, and weapons.
In addition, because this Deadworld doesn't adhere to its cinematic inspiration beyond the general subject matter, it also isn't saddled (pardon the pun) with a presumptive "star" PC to whom the others will play second fiddle. Indeed, there's room for a broader range of character types here than I've seen in most AFMBE Deadworlds – warriors, hunters, thieves, diplomats, and shamans will all have chances to shine.
And speaking of shamans, this chapter includes rules for their powers. These are not completely new shamanism mechanics (which will have to wait until The Book of Hod for WitchCraft), but neither are they light, NPC-only mechanics like the magic rules in Enter the Zombie. Instead, they're a tweak to the standard Miracle rules. No new Miracles appear – although Visions gets an Indian-appropriate revamp – but the chapter imports and inverts the concept of Rituals from Deadlands. In the latter game, shamans perform rituals like dances, paintings, and self-mutilation to "pay" for favors from the spirits. In FoZ, the process is reversed: shamans first get the favors (a.k.a. Miracles), then must perform rituals to earn back the Essence spent, which will not regenerate normally. I'd say this is a pretty workable and efficient solution, lacking the space for a completely new Metaphysic.
The archetypes are the Sioux Brave and the Medicine Man. The former, with his pride in a history of killing women and children, is a perfect example of how uncomfortable this setting can get.
Chapter Seven: Other Settings
Bloody Old MuddyOf all the Deadworlds in the book, this one creeps me out the most. I've had nightmares like this...
In the antebellum South, a wealthy former Confederate industrialist decides to spend the remainder of his days gambling on a luxury Mississippi riverboat of his very own. But while the boat plays host to a high stakes poker tournament, a Confederate bioweapon is inadvertently released from its forgotten Louisiana lab – a bioweapon discovered in the Caribbean that turns its victims into infectious zombies. As a result, the guests and crew of the riverboat find themselves stranded on the Mississippi while the zombie plague spreads on either shore.
An interesting little twist – also used in "Dances with Zombies" – is the fact that the zombies mindlessly go through the motions of their former lives. Among other things, this means that zombie soldiers in forts along the river still man their anti-ship artillery…
This is easily the most apocalyptic of the FoZ Deadworlds – with the possible exception of "Dances with Zombies" – but a potential solution offers the PCs the chance to save the world.
Here Comes the Calvary
If the previous Deadworld is the most apocalyptic in the book, this one is the most limited – and hence, the most suitable for a one-shot.
The PCs are "buffalo soldiers" in the 3rd United States Colored Regiment of Cavalry – and, perhaps, their white commanding officer – sent to stop what turns out to be a vengeful tribe of undead Comanches. Because the Comanches can neither Spread the Love nor move seven miles away from their burial ground, the GM will have to find some way to isolate the PCs. If the PCs can "call in the cavalry" – which would be a little ironic, since they are the cavalry – the zombies won't stand much of a chance. The zombies do have a neat trick in the form of bone arrows made from their own bones that do that Nazgul heart-seeking Morgul-knife thing when they hit. Very nasty.
North to Alaska
The PCs are prospectors in line for passage to the Yukon when a mysterious green gas from the first of many meteor strikes turns people into frigid, heat-draining zombies.
The great strength of this Deadworld is its use of the setting itself as an antagonist, combining survival horror with wilderness survival. If the zombies of "Singing Cowboys" are incidental to an otherwise mundane (for that setting) threat, here they are a MacGuffin to drive the PCs into a mundane threat – the natural dangers of the Great White North. The zombies force the heroes to flee into the frozen wilderness and keep them from finding safe haven in any of the boomtowns along the way, all of which are overrun. Accordingly, the adventure includes rules for avalanches, whitewater rapids, grizzlies, blizzards, snowblindness, and mountain climbing. There's even a copy of the suggested list of a year's worth of supplies that the Canadian Mounties required each prospector to have. All of this makes this section useful for any arctic adventure, zombies or no zombies.
Deadlands Conversion Notes
Given the subject matter and author of this book, it's only natural that it include a Unisystem/Deadlands conversion.STYLE
Unfortunately, the attribute and skill conversion is a mess. To go from Deadlands to Unisystem, the book uses a formula that works fairly well on the high end but translates below-average Deadlands scores into average Unisystem scores.
* * * * *
Playtest: For example, let's say I have a Deadlands Trait of 4d12, the maximum for a normal human character. The conversion has me add the number of dice to the die type and divide by three, using true rounding on the result for a total of 5. Not bad, even if it's a point shy of the Unisystem human maximum of 6. But doing the same for a feeble Deadlands Trait of 2d4 results in a Unisystem Attribute of 2, the human average.
* * * * *
Going from Unisystem to Deadlands is worse: the conversion uses a table rather than a formula, with a clearly superhuman Unisystem score translating into a human-scale Deadlands score.
* * * * *
Playtest: For example, a superhuman Unisystem score of 8 becomes a respectable-but-human score of 4d12.
* * * * *
What's more, beyond 8, the table simply says "and so on..." without giving any indication of how the progression should continue.
And because the table is used for both Attribute/Trait and Skill/Aptitude conversions, the result can be a Deadlands character that is simply impossible by that game's rules. The big problem with this (or any other) Deadlands conversion is that the number of dice matters when using the Trait by itself, but not when using it with an Aptitude. So, while a Unisystem Attribute of 3 is always a 3, Deadlands Traits of 1d12, 2d12, or 3d12 all become just d12 when applied to Aptitudes.
* * * * *
Playtest: Let's use the Drifter archetype as a test case. His Dexterity is 5 and his Throwing skill is 2. Using the conversion table, the Dexterity Attribute becomes a Deftness Trait of 3d10, and the Throwing Skill becomes a Throwin' Aptitude of 3d6. But that's incoherent – in Deadlands, the die type of the Aptitude depends upon the die type of the related Trait. Since Throwin' falls under Deftness, it must have a d10 die type.
* * * * *
Even if the converted scores don't make much sense, the cross-system skill relationships are made very clear with a skill equivalency table that covers Deadlands in its Weird, Wasted, and Way-Out West incarnations.
Naturally, powers are going to be another tricky issue, but the chapter handles them very efficiently. If an ability in one game has an obvious equivalent in the other – Miracles, for example – the chapter suggests using that game's version of the power. Alternately – and for powers without cross-game equivalents, like Hexes – the chapter includes conversions that retain the flavor of the original rules. In the case of Hexes and Mad Science, for example, the Unisystem conversion retains the card-based mechanic from Deadlands, simply using Unisystem success levels to determine the size of the draw. Logically enough, the chapter uses an AFMBE zombie template to use as the basis for Deadlands Harrowed characters.
Starting with a cover that looks eerily like a period photograph of an undead rifleman, the art in this 7.25" x 9.25" softcover is some of the best I've seen in the AFMBE line so far – much of it very reminiscent of the comic book style used in Deadlands. The layout is the Unisystem standard, clean and readable.CONCLUSION
Shane's love of the genre that brought him so much success shines through in every word, including in the fiction pieces. Aside from that fanning issue, the writing is also clear and easy to follow.
As far as typos and errors go, I saw very few. However, as a native Texan, I have a hard time forgiving the assertion that Sam Bowie and Sam Houston died at the Alamo… And then there's that Balladeer omission from the Singing Cowboy archetypes.
The book includes both general and table/chart indices.
In a way, Fistful o' Zombies had less ground to cover than did either Enter the Zombie or Pulp Zombies, insofar as FoZ didn't have to incorporate rules for fancy powers like martial arts and gadgets. From that perspective, I was impressed with the generosity of the books' contents, from the extensive equipment lists and historical details to the singing cowboy genre rules.SUBSTANCE:
On the other hand, FoZ had a more difficult task than EtZ and PZ in that the Western genre lacks the weirdness angle intrinsic in much of Hong Kong action and pulp adventure. For that reason, I found that FoZ was most successful in mixing zombies with Western subgenres offering some "window for weirdness" – singing cowboy campiness or Amerindian mysticism – or else in introducing them into completely original Western settings in the manner of Deadlands. Mixing zombies into John Wayne or Clint Eastwood Westerns, by contrast, significantly camps up the source material and waters down the original themes and tones. (Which isn't to say that the result can't be fun, mind you.)
But overall, FoZ succeeds as did Enter the Zombie before it, serving as both a genre supplement and a genre+zombies supplement. The comparative lack of new rules required for the genre may make it less generally useful than EtZ to Unisystem fans as a whole, but it's just as strong of an addition to the AFMBE line. So, if you love Westerns and zombies, and if you're looking for an alternative to Deadlands, by all means give Fistful o' Zombies a look.
- Setting
- Quality = 4.5
- Quantity = 4.5
- Rules
- Quality = 4.0
- Quantity = 4.5
STYLE:
- Artwork = 4.5
- Layout/Readability = 4.5
- Organization = 4.5
- Writing = 4.5
- Proofreading = -0.5
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