Review of I Am Zombie Play Kit

Blurb from the publisher: 'Warning: This game contains scenes of explicit gore and existential truth.

Enter the toxic world of I Am Zombie with the Play Kit, a dramatic new kind of storytelling RPG for 2+ players. This box is packed with all the gear and tools you need: scores of ID Cards, Brainz Dice, and Bump Chips to thell thrilling stories with visceral impact in the hidden world of the Toxic!

With sleek streamlined rules, simple character creation ('just pick five cards') and boardgame style play, this deluxe boxed set has everything you need to get started with one of the most innovative, yet effortless to learn-n-play, RPGs ever.

Inside, you will find:

- 32-page Axioms book (Axiom Null), detailing character creation, dice rolling, mooks and bosses, and everything else you’ll need to play the game (includes both tabletop and LARP rules).

- A complete collectors set of eight (8) large (14mm) custom, high-impact “BRAINZ DICE”.

- Two decks (108 cards total) of full color, double-sided (‘Warm’ vs. ’Cold’) ID Cards to create your characters. “Just Pick Five Cards™.”

- A super-deluxe, hardback, embossed Character Journal, which includes two card pockets, hundreds of entries for character and chronicle details, and many pages of reference materials.

- 48 poker chip-sized Bump Chips to add a whole new dimension to roleplaying. Not just used as Chaw and Brainz tokens, they also let players add twists to a story!'

What you get: Your USD 37,95 will buy you the I Am Zombie Play Kit, a boxed set that allows you to immerse yourself in the world of I Am Zombie. The present product contains nothing but rules and accessories, while the I Am Zombie Field Manual contains all the information about the world. It might be easier to read the other review first; it contains terminology and elements that form part of the world and I do not touch again here.

The boxed set contains the items already mentioned in the blurb:

-a softcover 32-page I Am Zombie RPG Instruction Manual. It contains the game's system, called Axiom. For those wishing to try before they buy, this softcover can be downloaded in pdf form free of charge, additionally containing one fifth of the I Am Zombie rulebook, the cards in pdf format, and an adventure for novice Narrators.

-Eight 14-mm black and yellow dice. Sides one to four are numbered, while the remaining two depict crossbones ('Chaw') and brains ('Brainz').

-108 ID cards, at the standard M:tG size of 63 x 89 mm. Each card depicts a human or Toxic with an alias and trope (e.g. Understudy Actor, Hatha Yogi Yoga Teacher etc). It has a 'cold' and a 'warm' side, and belongs to one of five traits: Mental, Social, Physical, Mayhem and Scourge. It also belongs to a different faction (there are seven of them), describes an Asset and a Vice, as well as a Twist (a special rule-related ability that can be used once per turn). The cards, which are indispensable to the game, can be also purchased separately in two different packages (Human and Toxic), or printed from the free of charge RPG Instruction Manual as described above.

- a hardcover character journal, called The Toxic Journal. The journal is something between a campaign record book and reference material. It contains 77 printed pages, the first 27 of which are devoted in book-keeping for the current campaign. As an example, it contains pages where the Scribe's character is depicted (the character that keeps the journal updated), as well as the other characters, persons of interest, crew members, what transpired in different sessions etc. The other 50 printed pages include all sorts of references starting from Twelve Rules Of Roleplaying, Game Terms, Vectors, Tox-Speak Lexicon, Scourge Indicators, CDC Outbreak scale and many, many more. There are as many pages left blank, to be filled with notes, stickers, drawings, clippings and whatever have you, along with an envelope attached on the last hardcover page.

- 48 Bump Chips. One side depicts the emblems for either Chaw or Brainz. The chips themselves come in four groups of ten chips (one each of Mental, Social, Physical and Mayhem), and a group of right chips that belong to neither category. Each chip contains an adjective and a question, e.g. 'Bored: Life is so dull & tedious. But is this the sudden interruption you wanted?' or 'Hate: animosity taints & corrupts. Secret or open? What happened, anyway?'.

Contents: The basic premise of Axiom is that its rules (called Axioms, if you didn't expect it), can be modularly used in order to create the gaming experience the group wants. Its goal is to create a game that does not need any charts or page-flipping during the game. There are twenty six axioms in the I Am Zombie RPG, starting from the obvious: The Golden Axiom is about how you own the game and how you can play it as you wish.

The second is about character creation, namely picking up five ID cards from the ones provided. It is suggested that this is done in a collaborative way, be it a way of the Narrator's design, or one of the three suggested ones: just pick up the cards of each player's liking, breaking up the deck in smaller ones where players choose their cards from with or without trades, or dealing nine cards to each player with everybody keeping one and passing the remaining ones to the player on the left. Once each player has the five cards he wishes, he will make a pitch of his character to the others, including a unique relationship with at least another character. The results of this process can be recorded in The Toxic Journal.

Dialogue is the third Axiom. There is a Narrator, there are as many players as wished, and there are scenes. They always end with a question and are either Action or Narrative. The former are organised into turns, something serious is at stake and violence is highly probable. The latter are more freeform, revolving around no rolls, or a maximum of one or two. The characters will use the Assets and Vices on their cards. Assets may allow a character to do something, while Vices reward characters with Brainz.

Storytelling is the fourth Axiom. It revolves around the cards, not dice, namely the number of ID cards in a certain colour that a player has. There are five traits: Mental, Social, Physical, Mayhem and Scourge. Zero cards in the trait at hand mean that the character is weak or untrained, while with 5 cards he is simply amazing. Those with more cards on a trait trump those with less, even though a player can convince the Narrator about using a different Trait. If the demand is accepted, the player spends one Brainz. Again, Assets and Vices can be used for the player to explain why he is doing something. If a Vice is brought up to thwart a potential success, the player gets rewarded with Brainz.

Mindset is the fifth Axiom, and it is about creating three stacks of cards. The booklet suggests an initial allocation of 3/2/1 cards per stack, an impossibility seeing how the cards are five at the beginning. The first stack is about focus, what the character is paying most attention to. It resolves situations when the character is not surprised. The second is about instinct, how the character reacts intuitively to situations, and resolves those where a character is surprised. The third is denial, what the character avoids or represses, but cannot ultimately deny. The stacks can be reorganised between scenes, however cards cannot change owner. The three front cards on each stack are called Face Cards and represent the image that the character projects to the world. In the current situation, the player can only use Assets and Vices from these cards. The remaining two cards that are on the back are the character's nature. The player also chooses the True Self, who the character believes he really is, and keep it in the character's Mindset.

Sixth Axiom: Rolling Dice. One roll per turn only, with as many dice rolled as the number of cards of the Trait at hand. Dice are all rolled simultaneously. The target number is called Rigor and depending on the roll it is either 5, 10, or ranges from 2 to 12. If the sum of one to three dice (which only go up to four, as stated earlier) exceeds the set Rigor, the character gets a Boost. In cases of more than one Boost, the magnitude of success increases. There are skills that allow rerolls, always simultaneously, and only up to three times. Brainz results are good; they can be kept to cancel hazard rolls and Chaw results, or to activate Bump Chips. Brainz is lost at the end of a session. Chaw results are bad; they take Boosts away and when they add up they lead to additional Hazard (in a ratio of 5 to 1). Chaw is usually lost at the end of the scene.

The seventh Axiom is the Standard Roll, and amounts to Trait cards plus three dice in order to reach a Rigor of 10 with 0 Hazard at hand. Depending on the Trait used and the category it belongs to, perception checks will fall under Mental, interaction under Social, activity under Physical, intimidation under Mayhem and Tox-Intuition under Scourge.

Other rolls are Complex, and this is the eighth Axiom. It breaks down to dice equal to the number of Trait cards plus Tool bonus in order to reach a Rigor of 2-12 (usual: 5) with 1-4 Hazard at hand. Hazard is a set number, usually 1. If the dice rolled show this number or lower, the story goes kind of south. If more than one Boosts are gained, they can be used for narrative Descriptors. Onsets allow rerolls according to skills at and.

Axiom 9 is about Brainz & Chaw that boosts your roll. Each player begins the game with one Brainz and no Chaw. Brainz can be accumulated within a session. Either characteristic can never exceed the character's level. Brainz is earned by dice-rolling, bringing up Vices or good roleplaying. It can be used to block Hazards or Chaw, add Movement or create plot twists through good Bump Chips. Chaw on the other hand is earned through dice-rolling, a disaster falling upon all players or pushing an Asset to the edge. It can be used to add hazard, use bad Bump Chips, or create Miasma.

The Tools And Intel Axiom is about modifiers to the dice rolls through the use of tools. Needless to say, good tools are hard to find.

Twists, the eleventh Axiom, are found in the cards. Each twist indicates whether it can be played before or after a roll, or anytime. Only one twist can be used on a roll, never the same twist two turns in the row, and only one twist per turn unless Odium is kept. This is achieved by snapping (see: tapping) the cards.

Initiative is the twelfth Axiom. The player with the highest Velox goes first in a roll; in ties, Physical + Sense is used. When he ends his turn, that player gets to pick who goes next, be it another player or an antagonist. The last player to take a turn plays first in the next scene, if he was successful.

The thirteenth Axiom is Action, and describes things like Armor, Infection and Range in a very simple and abstract way. Ammunition and gun clips are mostly ignored.

Movement, the fourteenth Axiom, is about ranges. There are only three in the game: close, nearby and far. Moving from a range to another eats away your action, unless you use Brainz.

Damage (Axiom fifteen) is gained when Hazard dice are not countered by Brainz. Mayhem Boosts in attacks also cause damage, as do attacks with three or more Boosts irrespective of Brains used to counter them. Each damage causes an ID card to flip from Warm to Cold, signifying physical injury. If the character is already Toxic, this is both physical injury and Odium, meaning that the character starts looking like a decaying corpse. Characters without Odium don't just look healthy, they are perfect. When all cards become Cold, the character can no longer take actions and becomes Toxic. Toxic characters need to go to Purgis, even though there is an exceptional rule that may bring them back to active status while gaining a Syndrome.

Axiom sixteen is about Healing. Once or twice a month Purgis takes place and all characters are healed of all Odium. A couple of other methods like extremely expensive potions exist, but they are nowhere near obvious or available.

Syndrome Cards (Axiom seventeen) are a faction of ID cards that depict permanent wounds. They are inflicted on characters when all their ID cards turn cold. There is a test which, upon failure, loses a character an ID card and adds a new random syndrome that comes in as Cold. Syndromes can be swapped out for other Syndromes or get eliminated at Purgis for an outrageous cost. Syndromes can be removed from a session to another, through payments, favours and other donations to Dox Experts.

Experience will be slowly accumulated. This comes in the form of new ID cards that come into play in a rhythm that the Narrator sees fit (usually after each session or after every second session). Each stack can never have more than five cards, while a player has to explain in a storytelling way how their new ID card fits them.

Troupe Style Of Play (Axiom nineteen) assigns different jobs to different characters: the Scribe keeps the Toxic Journal (even though every player can keep his own), the Arbiter looks a up rules and information and makes sure that people follow them, while the Wrangler ensures that the game flows. Players may even switch characters from session to session.

Axiom twenty is about the bad guys, the Mooks & Bosses. Mooks use a different number of dice depending on how strong they are, while a Boss gets played like a character with ID cards: six for a minor, nine for a major and twelve for a terror boss. Bosses also have a skill and a weakness, which the characters should try to exploit before facing them.

Ichor (Axiom twenty one) is made from distilled Odium, usually collected during Purgis, and is, all things considered, the most valuable thing in the world of Toxic. There are eight types of Ichor, each producing different effects, from becoming faster to healing wounds. These are Scry, Biofix, Velox, Leprox, Necro, Toxo Dox and Gizmo. In any event, each dose adds one Chaw (more if more doses are used on the same scene), while boosting the magnitude of the Vector by one for the scene.

Bump Chips (Axiom twenty two) are not necessary strictly speaking, yet they do round off the characters. When a player gains them, he flips them over and roleplays what they are about with approval from the Narrator. Effects should be minor and potentially ambiguous, making a story more intriguing. They are not supposed to be used as straight-forward solutions or take-backs that eliminate poor decision-making. Chaw Bumps are always bad, while Brainz Bumps are something good.

Contacts, or Axiom twenty three, is about the people each character knows. Simply put, the characters depicted in the ID cards each pc has are the characters he knows. Players can describe at the beginning of a session what is going on between themselves and that character, and do a standard roll to receive favours or information. Failed rolls also produce results, with the player describing what these might be. Contacts can be consulted at any point in the game, through spending Brainz.

Berzerk is what happens when a Toxic is high on Odium (one or two Warm cards left or 5 or more Chaw). The trigger can be anything from a strong emotion to adrenaline to exhaustion and so on and so forth. This is a Mental roll against 5 + Mayhem without any rerolls. The character loses all control and is likely to start an outbreak, gaining dice on Physical and Mayhem and being unable to use Mental, Social or Scourge skills. Basically, the character will attack anything in sight, gaining Chaw if they try to hold themselves back. Suppressors like positive mood, a lucky charm or assets can take the character out of Berzerk if one Brainz is spent.

Skills (Axiom twenty five) are the abilities, inner talents, acquired knowledge and learned proficiencies that a character has. They are based on four categories based on trait, Scourge being excluded. Examples include Inside Information which allows you to see whether a person tells the truth, know the news, or find out who started a rumour, or Battle Frenzy with which you can charge madly, ignore wounds, bull rush people, add dice when you draw blood and make an indecisive target run away in fear. There are 20 skills all in all, each allowing a number of effects.

Axiom twenty six deals with Vectors, the near-supernatural powers that Toxics have access to. Vector rolls benefit from Chaw, while a Vector can generally be used only up to its magnitude. Each Vector bestows a bonus feature to its user, like speeding up the body's muscular, endocrine and nervous systems, or commanding other infected by manipulating the Scourge within them. There are three magnitudes per Vector and may get very impressive when completed. For example, a character can sound like somebody else, ignore Chaws when climbing or even cause a complex electromechanical system to crash and break within moments.

The last, twenty seventh Axiom is the Easy LARP axiom. In it, characters can bet ID Cards against each other and the Narrator when resolving conflicts. More LARP rules involve challenges, escalations, how to play vectors with predetermined hand signals etc.

The book ends with a promise for more extensive and involved LARP rules, as well as future products like an alien abduction, a special forces, a secret society, a twisted fantasy and an epic space RPG, all of them functioning with Axiom.

The strong points: Having all the rules succinctly presented in 32 pages only is a gamer's dream come true. When it comes to presentation and layout, this beats pretty much every other system out there, with the exception of Heroes Against Darkness and the excellent visuals and boxed texts it had used for its rules presentations. There are only twenty seven rules after all, none of them longer than a few paragraphs, and they can be used at will: this is the sort of writing that every single RPG rules system needs. Practically all of them are intuitive; you will not need to read them more than once (or maybe one time and a half) to understand what you need to do.

I totally recommend downloading the free pdf version before you decide to buy the present Play Kit. Inexplicably enough, the free pdf contains as additional attachments almost 20% of I Am Zombie, half of the cards for you to print and play, as well as an introductory adventure for the setting and the system. In other words the system, plus almost all the material you need, plus a part of the world, plus a ready to run adventure, come free of charge. Woah. This Play Kit here is mostly about bragging rights. Mostly.

The system plays fast, very fast, and falls squarely within the collaborative storytelling category with boardgame elements to it. Within less than an hour players can not only understand how the system works, but have a full character going on, a reason for being together and the basic premise of what they are trying to achieve, helping the Narrator in the process. Players have a certain degree of control over a story, while they can complicate their lives on purpose, if it feels that the plot twists are worth it. Until you will actually play the game and visualise it as it happens, you are very likely to underestimate how many things the cards do in one go: from Odium counters or wounds, to skills to contacts to number of dice rolled to rules exceptions to whatever have you. One word: ingenious. In this inclusive system of everything affects everything else, the choices you make often take a life of their own, affecting other, seemingly irrelevant choices. Positioning between scenes allows for tactics, or, the way I see it, for a semblance of it. Frankly, my experience was not about positioning or about playing to win. It was about creating an interesting and entertaining story with organic character evolution, where characters can willingly make their lives more difficult for the sheer fun of it. Not many RPGs do that.

Needless to say, the cards are at the absolute core of the game. They are vivid, depressing and disturbing at the same time. It's one thing to talk about zombies and another to visualise everything the way these cards help you to. I have no reason to believe that the cards sold separately are of a different quality, so whatever you buy you will get to enjoy Axiom through these beauties. If either option is out of your reach, you can still print the free of charge cards contained in the free pdf.

Axiom fits I Am Zombie like a glove. The imagery, the vocabulary, the sum of its contents are conceived around its brother. It is not just the art and iconography which in some cases can rattle you cage: it is everything. All the adjectives used, all the terminology and crunch are linked strongly to the zombie theme. This doesn't make the Axiom system unsuitable to use in other genres, it does make however this Play Kit as it stands a rather poor choice if you wish to run normal cowboy or space exploration adventures. Clearly, the decks and material that will accompany future Axiom RPGs will take the subject matter of those games into account.

The Toxic Journal is outright luxurious, with messages here and there that you might simply miss ('Welcome to the shit storm' is one of my favourites). Thankfully, it is in non-glossy paper, for it to be actually used as a journal. Do you have any clue how many publishers fail to take such a simple thing into account?

The weak points: Seeing how there are only twenty seven rules in the game, would it have been that much to provide an index? They are not hard to find mind you (again, 32 pages only), yet it would have made life simpler. I do get the idea behind not needing to use the rules and trying to avoid them whenever they feel superfluous, but there are times they are needed. Denying it is simply not good enough. Inexplicably enough, this is also the case for the pdf version of the rulebook which has only thumbnails and no bookmarks. No bookmarks on a pdf, when only 27 of them are needed?

There are a couple of typos that I wouldn't care about and one that I would, namely the 3/2/1 distribution when one has five cards in his hands only. I presume this to be 2/2/1 or 3/1/1/, as the player wishes. There are a couple of other things that could have been better explained, but in the end I feel that this is done on purpose to give more control to the Narrator.

If you are looking for a dedicated simulationist experience, search elsewhere. There is a lot of hand-waving involved in Axiom; the system simply doesn't care about mundane details. I like either approach, depending on the game and what it tries to achieve, so no complaints from me.

There is no advice for the Narrators about scene, story or Chronicle creation. Experienced ones will not face problems, aspiring ones however might find things rather confusing. I do dig the idea of building the world book as a real life book, I feel however that more ideas and adventuring material should have been provided here. The world is big, complex, and hard to swallow from the get-go. An indicative step by step process would have helped a lot. The counter argument involves the free pdf containing an adventure and how things can be extrapolated from there. True, that. But then…

…why not include the adventure in this boxed set? I would have loved to have it in the quality of a commercially printed product, along with the other materials. Everybody is a conscious consumer and all, but it almost feels as if penalizing the impulse buyers when the pdf version of the rules contains some extras that the boxed set does not. I feel this shouldn't have happened.

I wish the game had dispensed with 'kewl' spellings like 'Brainz', 'Berzerk' and their ilk. Something on the back of my mind tells me that this has to do with copyright law and what presentation consists of. Still, I wish something different was used.

For a game with such an incredible imagery, the dice are rather average and almost cartoon-like. What a pity. Dice making is a lot more advanced than this.

Many might complain about The Toxic Journal and the fact that it is half-empty, while reprinting (via paraphrasing) some of the material from I Am Zombie. I can see where they are coming from. What I am more concerned about, and a couple of playtest sessions cannot answer the question, is whether the information provided therein ruins it for the players, or presents itself in ways that are simply not valid in this Narrator's game. Handle with care, I presume, and do not read things that might impede your entertainment.

My first thought upon receiving the items was to throw the box's cardboard insert so that the box could house not only its initial contents, but also the I Am Zombie Field Manual. Alas, it is not to be. It fits perfectly on the length of the box, but fails for a couple of millimeters on its width. That is incredible lack of foresight. What good is such a nicely-themed, sturdy box, if you can't use it to store everything that has been published up to now?

Conclusion: Axiom is a very entertaining and thoroughly promising system. Axiom however is one thing, and purchasing the present Play Kit is another. Depending on how deep your wallet is, you already have almost everything free of charge as a pdf, and more, in a sense. Seen that way, the Play Kit is about luxury and finesse, even though it sort of fumbles by not including the free adventure or the box not fitting the accursed world book. These two things alone would have turned it from the luxury purchase it is now to a no-brainer.

For more info on the I Am Zombie Play Kit and Make Believe Games visit their website at http://www.makebelievegames.com/.

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