maza's Full Review: Eden Studios - All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Revised Ed...
I am a zombie fan. I love zombie movies. I also love role playing games, so what's not to love about a zombie themed rpg (role playing game).
All Flesh Must Be Eaten has it all.
Plenty of different zombie archetypes. Lots of blood and guts. Simple and clever rules. Colorful campaigns (not just one, but eleven of them), great atmosphere and artwork.
When there is no more room in the movies, the dead will flood the RPG industry.
In short ALL FLESH MUST BE EATEN, is a role playing game which allows players to role-play in a world like that of your favorite living dead horror movies. Players can choose out of three categories. Norms, Survivors or Inspired. Norms are normal people, just like you and me, survivors are a bit more heroic and powerful, such as Ash from the Evil Dead series. Inspired characters possess superhuman or magical abilities. Usually, if you want to run a horror themed campaigned, you would chose to play with norm characters. They tend to die easily and thus are more appropriate. On the other hand Survivors are suited for action-themed gameplay, and Inspired characters are suited for supernatural gameplay.
Before a game session begins, players have to ‘create’ their characters, using a very quick and easy to learn process in order to chose abilities, skills and equipments. Additionaly, players chose a qualities and a drawback. This gives an extra flavour during roleplay. If all this seem to complicate to beginner rpgers, there are pre-constructed characters, or templates, that players can use, and quickstart their session.
In every RPG there is a Game Master, a player that directs the whole session. In AFMBE he is called Zombie Master, and a whole chapter in the rule book is dedicated to the role of Zombie Mastering. Extra rules and hints are included for the ZM in order to edit the zombie templates (you want Romemo-type slow moving zombies, you go it. You want fire-breathing space shapeshifting zombies, no problem), create his own adventures or even campaigns and such. I haven’t had time to actually play the game yet (I just read the rule book and I am waiting for my players to finish reading theirs), but I am already thinking about many possible campaigns. Pretty much all of my favourite zombie movies can be adapted, Evil Dead, Braindead, Re-Animator, Lifeforce, any Romero zombie movie… the list can go on indefinitely.
A good RPG can be successful just by having a great setting. A zombie setting might not be for everyone, but it works great for me. However it has to be supported by a solid system, the mechanics of the game if you’d like. This is where AFMBE shine. Also, have in mind that this is the revised version of the rule book, having not read the first one, I am not really sure what is revised. I suppose the D20 modern conversion is added here in order to become compatible with WotC’s D20. AFMBE’s system is call Unisystem, where basically a D10 (ten sided dice) is used in order to resolve the success or failure of a task, after certain modifiers are taken under consideration. If you think that is sounds like WhiteWolf’s Story-Telling system you are not far from the truth, but there are some welcome variations.
There are a couple of flaws that I keep hearing from other players about AFMBE. Killing zombies can get pretty boring, however I beg to differ. It can get as boring as killing orcs or dragons. Moreover, there doesn't seem to be a point in the campaign. The dead are walking amongst as, and there is nothing we can do except survive. But then again, that's up to the ZM and the group to decide and change the focus of the campaign. I believe that if you are into that sort of theme, you will not get bored. If you are not, then it would be a nice one-off campaign that will not last for more than a couple of session.
AFMBE stands out for me as the most detailed and thoughtful survival horror RPG in the industry (however the designer is greek and so some may say that the review is biased, but you should not believe them, this rpg has sold out his second printing and is now running the third one).
RPG definition for the uninitiated
When I review RPGs I assume that most readers know what an RPG is. In any case, I have included in my reviews a short definition of RPGs for the uninitiated.
Generally a typical Role Play Game would be an activity satisfying most of the following:
1. It involves persons consciously playing fiction roles (either medieval, contemporary or sci-fi roles)
2. It involves the collective creation of a story
3. Usually one of the participants is responsible for guiding the activity
4. There is no audience besides the participants themselves (unless there is a demonstration of course).
5. The main purpose of the activity is to entertain the participants.
There are published books, often referred to as Rulebooks, containing unique rules regarding how to create a character (role) or how to resolve specific actions. Generally the success of an action is determined with by rolling one or more dice (dice can be funny in RPGs since they tend to have more than 6 surfaces).
Besides the rulebooks, there are books describing settings in which characters can role play. Settings are very diverse and include high or low fantasy worlds, dystopian worlds, contemporary worlds, or alternate reality worlds.
Welcome to the World of Survival Horror! All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a complete roleplaying game. In it, you will find: Eleven different Deadworld sett...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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