Search
Review of Fear the Living (Beta version)
I thought it would be interesting to review a game in beta form, not only to potentially help out an indie designer with his Kickstarter, but to see the development of a game from beta form to finished product.
Style and Structure
Jessop's writing style is light and friendly, talking to the reader as if conducting an informal lecture. This approach hits a sweet spot for me; I have grown to prefer a conversational tone as opposed to the more studied style of the games I grew up with in the 1980s. The tone fits the game's mechanics and emphasis; as I will explain, Fear the Living is what might be termed a narrativist game. Its informal language emphasizes the game's improvisational air.
Structurally, Fear the Living is a bit of a mess. One problem I encountered several times is a personal bugaboo of mine: the referencing of game rules that haven't yet been explained. Fear the Living's character generation chapter makes several mentions of 'entropy' and 'risk,' for example. Neither of these terms had, to that point, been defined. This is difficult to avoid in RPGs in general, and could be excused if they didn't seem so critical. As it is, I immediately felt like I would need to read the rules at least twice before I had a strong handle on them. This is a problem that I hope Jessop addresses in the game's finished version. A big step toward solving the issue would be to explain the game's basic rules before jumping into character generation, or at least offer a glossary to begin the game with.
Game Mechanics
Fear the Living uses a d6 for all its dice mechanics. When making an attempt to do something that carries with it the chance of interesting failure or success, the player assembles a pool of dice. The pool is usually made up of dice from attributes, equipment, talents, and relationships. Dice pools can grow quite large; if you've got an attribute of 3, a relationship of 2, a relevant piece if equipment rated at 4, and a talent at 3, you're going to be rolling 12 dice. That said, you won't always be rolling with dice from four different components. Relationships, in particular, are only going to contribute to a dice pool once in a while. As with many dice pool systems, your goal is to roll a 4,5, or 6 with each die (a 'success'). A roll of 1 is called a harbinger, each result of which gives the GM some leverage to make life difficult for you (see below). The concept behind harbingers means that players with larger dice pools will succeed more often but will also face more complications. Using The Walking Dead as an example, the characters who find themselves surrounded by the most zombies tend to be the 'big guns' like Rick, Daryl, Michonne, and Andrea. It's a fictional conceit that works well here. It also levels the playing field between more overtly skilled characters and less powerful ones.
The goal of most test rolls is to beat what is effectively a target number, called 'risk', determined by the GM. Players do not have to roll dice; they may elect to pay a price outlined by the GM. Paying a price is effectively gaining a desired result with a caveat.
The GM has her own arsenal of tricks at her disposal, a pool of points called entropy. Like any good zombie flick, things get worse, not better. This is where entropy comes in. Spending entropy allows the GM to throw unexpected complications the players way. The entropy pool is replenished by one point every time a survivor rolls a 1. It also replenishes for every day a survivor goes without food, and when a survivor dies or is turned into a zombie. The entropy mechanic has a number of interesting effects. First, it gives the GM a finite amount of fiat, which will appeal to players worried about the GM being unfair. Second, it allows for an interesting back & forth dynamic between players and GM, with each party competing with the other to take ahold of the ongoing scene. The rules don't specify whether the players are allowed to know how much entropy the GM has at any given moment, but I think the game becomes more interesting when they are informed. Players can develop differing strategies based on the GM's current tally.
When engaging in an opposed conflict, you roll your pool and count successes. Each success allows you to 'buy' an advantage. You also attempt to cancel your opposition's successes by offering up more of your own. In many ways it's a wagering system and is a lot of fun to play. It also allows for some good creative description and narration.
Defining the Campaign
Any Fear the Living's initial gaming session will likely not begin with any 'adventuring.' The first time your group sits down begins with what I've always called 'pre-game.' You collectively create the zombie-infested world your campaign will revolve around. You will determine the cause of the apocalypse (such as a virus, demons or a curse), the tone of the story (grim, action-oriented, satirical, comedic), the type of zombies that inhabit it (fast/slow, smart/dumb, iiving/dead, etc), the best way to kill them (such as decapitation, burning, or magic), how humanity has dealt with the apocalypse (fighting back, failing, rebuilding, and so on), and when the story takes place (modern day, ancient times, the future, etc).
Players write their various preferences down and make a pitch to the group for each aspect. The group takes a vote and moves in to the next aspect. When a decision is made, the person whose preference was chosen cannot vote in the next round. It's a great way to invest each player in the milieu and allow each one to have a voice. It's also a lot of fun!
Character Generation
Accepting the structural issues, Fear the Living's chargen system is quick and simple. There are four attributes: Authority, Humanity, Ruthlessness, and Will to Live. Immediately you know you're in indie territory. Rather than relying on traditional stuff like strength, intelligence, and agility, Fear the Living posits that the heart of the genre lies with motivations and instincts. It's a wise choice. If you asked me to rank the strength, intelligence, and agility of The Walking Dead's lead characters, nothing really stands out. I couldn' t tell you whether Rick is stronger than Daryl. What defines that program's characters is their personal traits. Rick is authoritative. The Governor is ruthless. Herschel has great humanity. Glenn has a powerful will to live (well, at least after he falls in love). Attributes are thus a guide to how your survivor reacts to situations rather than a measure of any inherent capabilities.
Attributes are rated on a scale of 1 to 5. Your score is used as a basis for test rolls and can even be used against you. Being ruthless can be beneficial in staying alive, but it isn't going to win you any friends. Similarly, your high humanity score is great for your companions but might get you into trouble if you save the wrong survivor. In other words, a high score isn't always better than a low score. I like that. The player is guided to think of his survivor from an organic standpoint rather than a competitive one. You won't be irked that your college professor's intelligence score is lower than your friend's janitor.
Whenever you use an Attribute's value to augment a test roll, the value of that attribute decreases by one. This is effectively a law of demising returns, encouraging the player to find different means of dealing with problems rather than relying on the same attribute. Interestingly, you can replenish the value of an attribute when your fellow gamers nominate you for a refresh. If they feel your character has acted in, for example, an impressively humane way, they can vote to give you back a point of humanity. This not only fosters a more communal approach to character development, but encourages players to take risks when they may not have enough points available in an attribute. This is one of several things in Fear the Living that I want to steal for my own game!
After allocating your attribute points, you develop two Modus Operandi. An MO is somewhat like instincts and beliefs in Burning Wheel in that they indicate the character's general philosophy and knee-jerk reactions to the events around him. Examples of MOs are unfortunately given in an appendix at the back of the rules rather than with the MO rules. While I understand not including full write-ups of MOs in the character generation chapter, I would at least like to have their names give so I had an idea as to what they actually are. Some sample MOs form the appendix include "I Don't Kill the Living", "Bloodthirsty," and "Paranoid." Each MO has a trigger that sets it off as well as a benefit for roleplaying it. There is also a guide for losing the MO, such as losing 'Paranoid" by relying on another person for an extended period of time. I prefer this system to Burning Wheel's instincts and beliefs in that the rules here have a more tangible effect on how you play your character.
Next, you select a number of relationships that define your character and his/her feelings about members in the group. Relationships are rated in a 1-3 scale, with the numbers indicating the intensity of your feelings for that person, place, or thing (yes, you can have a relationship with your gun). The rating of your relationship counts as successes (not extra dice), added to your tally after your dice have been rolled, when attempting a test related to that relationship. If you're trying to save your little sister from a zombie and have a relationship of 3 with her, you can use 3 successes to augment your dice roll to kill that zombie. Likewise, the GM can use your relationships against you. If a bad guy captures your baby sister and threatens to kill her unless you steal your group's food supply, your love for her is going to push you in a direction you might not want to go.
You next generate four talents, which are much like FATE's aspects or HeroQuest's abilities; a collection of free-form descriptors that can cover themes, skills, backgrounds, and traits. Each talent is considered as either Broad, Narrow, or Specialized. Broad talents cover a generalized area, such as 'Healer.' Broad talents add one die to an appropriate pool but may be used more often than narrow and specialized ones. Narrow talents ('emergency room nurse') are more specific and add two dice. Specialized talents ('Urologist from St Catherine's hospital in Baltimore') add three dice. This three-tiered method of describing talents strikes me as a better system than HeroQuest's somewhat milquetoast method of dealing with differences in ability specification. Thinking of stealing this, too.
Choose your gear after your talents. Gear is ranked on a 1-5 scale and is fairly self explanatory. A rank 5 machine gun is badass, while a rank 1 knife… isn't. You add your gear's ranking to the number of successes you rolled from your pool. Why not rate all of your gear at rank 5? Because the higher the rank, the more problems the piece of gear can cause you. Your rank 5 machine gun is going to also make rank 5 noise. Zombies love noise. When you finish your gear list, you have to let the group decide if it is acceptable within the parameters of the campaign you outlined. Bottom line: you aren't going to get away with a rank 5 portable missile launcher with unlimited missiles. One of my favorite touches to selecting gear is that you don't actually have to decide on anything. You can invent gear on the spot, suiting your needs. Before you call 'game breaker!', there's always a catch. That can of pepper spray you pulled out of your pocket? Yeah, well the sprayer doesn't spray. That roll of toilet paper you just found? It's been lying in poison ivy. You know that fire extinguisher that can put out the fire now burning up your shelter? Sorry mate, but you left it in the truck a half mile down the road. I'm stealing this idea for every game I ever GM from now on. It's priceless.
The final step in character generation is creating liabilities. These are problems your character has that make his life difficult (besides living an a apocalypse crawling with brain eating living dead). Liabilities are your opportunity to express the type of trouble you want to be challenged by. Ranked again on a 1-5 scale, liabilities can be invoked (to steal a word from FATE) to cause you trouble and gain you experience.
Overall, character generation is fast and satisfying. There is mercifully no calculation involved and no referencing of charts. It is really a creative process, akin to writing a character outline for a script or novel. It could really use some reorganization and desperately needs an example of the process. Let's hope the finished version adds those.
Advancement
The character advancement system in Fear the Living is unique, so far as I know. As you play, your character gains experience. When you have accrued 10 experience points, you gain an advancement. Experience can be gained in many ways. The one I like the most has to do with gaining refreshes. When you refresh an attribute to a level that would exceed its maximum value, you use the excess as experience points. In other words, if your humanity is normally ranked at 3 and a refresh would push it to 5, you gain two experience (your humanity stays at 3).
You also gain experience whenever you face risk. The amount of experience gained is equal to the risk's ranking. Without playing the game, it seems to me that this rule makes gaining experience very common. Depending on how quickly the GM wants characters to gain advancements, she may want to house rule the risk/experience ratio.
Advancements in Fear the Living can be quite unique. In addition to expected advancements like gaining new talents or removing liabilities, there are cool options such as finding the exact piece of gear you want, deleting 5 points of entropy from the GM's cache, and finding a new NPC ally of your making.
Zombies!
Of course, the real reason you're here is for the zombies, right? Fear the Living tackles zombies like it handles everything else: with simple, evocative mechanics. Zombies aren't provided with traditional stats like hit points or defense. They are each given a threat rating, derived from subtracting their weaknesses from their strengths. Rabble zombies can have a threat rating of zero. In order to kill a zombie, you need to use it's Vulnerability instead of (or in addition to) dealing damage to it in excess of it's Threat. Threat rating is also used to inform the GM of how much entropy it will cost her to bring the zombie(s) into play. I may have missed something, but 'm not certain if this means the GM cannot preplan a zombie encounter. I assume she can, but the rules only address zombie presence if the GM has enough entropy to do so. If this is the case, I must assume GMs begin play with only a rough outline of what the adventure is about. Either way, Fear the Living encourages games with a strong improvisational element.
Zombie hoards are handled in a similar way to individual zombies, with basic rules tweaked a bit. With hordes you have a way of explaining how you're headshotting/burning/exorcising 100 walking corpses simultaneously.
You can, of course, become infected by zombies. The incubation speed of the infection varies depending on the strain of zombie. You are always given a chance to avoid infection by accepting a cost offered by the GM (cutting off your arm, etc). Sometimes you will simply accept the infection. A long incubating infection allows the survivor to play out his remaining days in whatever manner he deems interesting. Slowly succumbing to zombie-ness can be a really interesting experience. Imagine trying to find and kill your nemesis before you turn or get your family to a haven before you try to eat them. That's good drama.
Optional Rules
Jessop provides a handful of optional rules, my favorite of which he calls 'The Meatgrinder.' In meat grinder play, characters are basically zombie fodder. They're largely unskilled mooks trying to survive with minimal tools or knowledge. They're not even called survivors, but rather (delightfully) labelled with the 'victim' moniker. It sort of reminds me of Paranoia. Playing a victim can be both tense and hilarious, as you bumble across the apocalypse trying to stay alive despite your incompetence. If you can last long enough, you will develop into a fully-fledged survivor, sort of like a more developed version of Dungeon Crawl Classic's funnel system.
Graphic Presentation
Judging this game on its graphic presentation isn't really fair at this point. The file currently available for viewing does not indicate the finished look it will bear if the Kickstarter is successful. In its current form, it is clean and contains well-chosen fonts. Formatting is generally good, with only occasional lapses.
Last words
Fear the Living is currently in beta form, but don't let that fool you. It is a complete and well-tested RPG that uses consistently inventive mechanics while not overwhelming you with subsystems. It can easily handle my favorite zombie films (28 Days Later, Shawn of the Dead), as well as the Romero films and , of course, The Walking Dead. It does need some reorganizing and an example of character generation, as well as more examples in general. An extended illustration of zombie combat would be a welcome addition as well, and a sample adventure would be really helpful.
If you have any interest in zombie roleplaying or just appreciate clean game design, Fear the Living deserves your attention. The Kickstarter ends on August 1st.
