Michael's RPG Shelf: All Flesh Must Be Eaten (1999+, Eden Studios)
As big an RPG fan as I am, my first love will always be Dungeons and Dragons. My collection fills two six-foot book cases, and I'm nowhere near finished adding new goodies. But despite what your first glance at my shelves may imply, there's room for more than one RPG in this aging geek's heart. Over the years I've dabbled with many: Rifts, Vampire: The Masquerade, Hunter: The Reckoning, Palladium, Call of Cthulhu, and Paranoia are among the better-known. Then there's the truly off-the-wall stuff: Aliens: The Roleplaying Game, It Came From The Late, Late Show, Macho Women With Guns, Maschine Zeit, and The Void have all earned spots in my collection. But if there's one pen-and-paper excuse for slinging dice that got everything about its subject matter right, that distinction falls to Eden Studios' All Flesh Must Be Eaten: The Zombie Survival Horror Roleplaying Game.
NOTE: All images are scanned from my own sources.
When There's No More Room In Hell, The Dead Will Walk The Game Table
That's the actual cover of my original edition hardcover serving as the thumbnail there. I never bothered to take off the price sticker. I thought it amusing some poor Comic Carnival employee had to block print the word 'Mature' in small, red letters across it on the off chance some brain-addled parent might confuse it with a My Little Pony graphic novel. Seriously, if you can't tell the difference between "The Zombie Survival Horror Roleplaying Game" and Archie, you're probably not frequenting the comic book shop or friendly local game store.
One of the reasons I love AFMBE is that it allows so many different ways to play. The rule book is a solid 230 pages, but you don't need to know anywhere near all of it to play, or even to serve as Zombie Master. Contained between the covers is a complete system allowing you to tailor an undead apocalypse to your specifications: how powerful the characters will be, how powerful the zombies will be, the method of disease transmission, how the problem started, what (if any) cures may be available, how far into ruin the world has fallen, and a laundry list of skills, abilities, perks, disadvantages, and equipment players may own, buy, steal, or scavenge to increase their odds of survival. Interspersed with all this information are short pieces of fiction meant to showcase all these possibilities and put the reader into the right frame of mind. And of course, what's an RPG of zombie survival horror without a healthy dose of black-and-white artwork to enhance (or perhaps 'deaden') the mood?
AFMBE can be many things, but for my money the best way to both run it and enjoy it as a player is to have the ZM hand out character sheets for Norms to everyone at the table with the instruction, "Create yourself." If your intent as ZM is to horrify your players, this is a great way to start. You don't know how to shoot a gun? Sorry--no firearms skill for you. You wear glasses or a hearing aid? That's negatives on some Perception checks, so make sure you've always got backup. Nursing a broken leg or sprained ankle? Yeah, that'll be a penalty on Dexterity checks for a while, bub. Don't keep up on your cardio? Enjoy that low constitution score. You're a habitual heavy smoker? Hope you enjoy those withdrawal penalties when you can't light up for fear of drawing attention to yourself.
The random makeup of your group should serve as a cautionary tale of what really happens when a cross-section of ordinary folks are thrown together in a disaster. Could a small group of your co-workers pool their skills and resources to survive the zombie apocalypse, or would you wind up a buffet of Human-Flavored Ghoul Chow within the first twenty-four hours. Hey, if nothing else, it might inspire you to hit the gym or lay off the sugary drinks, since self-improvement equals character improvement. Believe me, twenty minutes on the treadmill three times a week looks pretty darn good when it means a bonus on your chance to outrun a bunch of shambling corpses!
Playing the game with a bunch of Norms around the table emphasizes the personal horror--opening up the rules so players can create Survivor and Inspired types makes it a little more akin to Hunter: The Reckoning Lite, where the characters can draw on extra skill points, bonus advantages, and even divine power, to take the fight to the zombies themselves. Naturally more powerful players call for more powerful enemies, and the guide's got plenty to say on this front with rules for making zombies faster, tougher, harder to kill, more intelligent, more feral, more contageous, or even under the influence of a more powerful undead who can pit their wits and hordes against the best-laid plans of your Cast Members.
Eden Studios doesn't disappoint. AFMBE products are classified into two different groups. Core Books are meant for use with any campaign regardless of setting, technology level, or time period--any campaign can benefit from a product like the Zombie Master's Screen (a fold-out screen with important information ready for quick-reference along with a short introductory adventure entitled Coffee Break of the Damned), The Atlas of the Walking Dead (a sort of 'Monster Manual' for the mentally-deficient) or One of the Living (a Player's Guide for the game which expands the game's equipment, archetypes, skills, drawbacks and advantages lists, and also provides tips and suggestions for survival in the aftermath of a complete apocalypse, setting up a base of operations, and getting along with fellow survivors).
Sourcebooks, on the other hand, are sort of like those classic campaign settings from D&D. They add new rules specific to given scenarios, be they space-themed (All Tomorrow's Zombies), high fantasy (Dungeons & Zombies), or World War II (Band of Zombies). Pulp action, martial arts mayhem, high-seas adventure, spaghetti westerns, and yes, even professional wrestling are options open to players and Zombie Masters seeking that certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to facing the brain-devouring hordes.
There's a third group of products released by Eden that are related to the standard lines, albeit tangentially: a trilogy of short story compilations entitled, respectively, The Book of All Flesh, The Book of More Flesh, and The Book of Final Flesh. These don't include any rules updates or setting changes for the game, they're simply collections of fiction by some well-known and not-yet-well-known authors. If you enjoy your stories with a decidedly undead bent, these are some fantastic reads to add to your library. Even if you can't stand roleplaying games, I'll bet you can really sink your teeth into the Books of All Flesh.
Perhaps the best thing about All Flesh Must Be Eaten is that you can get started playing for absolutely nothing down. The writers of the game released a 32-page introductory kit for 2011's "Free RPG Day" that includes a stripped-down rule set, six quick character archetypes, and a small campaign suitable for single-session or as the jump-off point for a multi-session campaign. If you didn't get your copy, not to worry: the developers put it up on their website as a free PDF download. It's only one megabyte, so you've got literally nothing to lose by downloading and reading through it.
They've also got a second free PDF that does much the same thing, meant as a demo kit to get the game up and running in a convention setting, offering a different set of archetypes, a different location, and different equipment. You have to poke around a bit on their website to find it, or you can just save it from here. It's 125k, but between it and the Free RPG Day PDF, there's enough information to get a game going for zero down. Then, if you decide you too would like to face down the undead hordes (or pit them against your simpering friends), the core rulebook, sourcebooks, and fiction collection will all be waiting in convenient (and discounted) digital format via DriveThruRPG.
Unfortunately this is currently the best way to acquire the books and their supplements. The physical editions are all out of print and can command truly ridiculous prices on the secondhand market. A Revised Edition core rulebook will, as of this writing, set you back nearly $50 plus shipping, for example. While in most cases I'd argue for owning a physical copy over one you need a computer or tablet to read, this is one time I'll sing the praises of the digital releases...at least until Eden Studios manages to get this one back into print somehow, filling up your online shopping cart at DriveThruRPG is the only way most readers will be able to enjoy this enormously entertaining tabletop game.
So, what are you waiting for? If the real-life zombie uprising happens, it'll be too late to get your hands on these important artifacts. Why not act now so that you'll be prepared when the hordes come banging down your door. While you're at it, make a character out of yourself, note the problem areas, and start working on them. If you wait until you hear the groans outside your house and the scrape of dead nails across your window panes, you may not live to see the dawning of a new day, and that would be a shame--whether it's in the real world or the made-up shared fantasies of a bunch of friends around the gaming table. So aim for the head, be prepared to bug out at a moment's notice, and never assume a fallen shambler is down for good, because all it takes is one little nip out of your ankle and within a few hours, you too will come to believe that All Flesh Must Be Eaten!
I was getting a very strong vibe that this was like that. To to point that for the first few paragraphs, I think I was actually remembering reading a Hunter sourcebook.
I love Hunter: The Reckoning. It's my favorite of the World of Darkness settings produced by White Wolf, just edging out Vampire. I think that's part of the reason I glomped on to All Flesh so hard: it's a light-weight, bare-bones equivalent that (mostly) removes the super powers and such inherent to the various Hunter archetypes, although you can re-create them using 'Inspired' character types if you so desire.
Mostly it's fun to just play out your own 'Walking Dead' scenarios though. Long-running campaigns of All Flesh are sort of like long-running campaigns in Paranoia: if they happen, you're probably doing something wrong. :)
Haven't had the opportunity to play this one yet, but I've thought about it! So you play as yourself? That's a fun and potentially terrifying twist!
You don't have to play as yourself, but I find it's the best way to get the players truly invested in their characters. If you're doing a long-term campaign, it's best to introduce some Survivors or Inspired into the group--Survivors are ordinary folks but more apt to survive: bikers, military, law enforcement, athletes, that sort. Think Rick, Daryl, or Negan from The Walking Dead: guys who are tougher, luckier, or just plain harder to kill than the next guy. Inspired are the ones touched by a divine power they can use to manifest miracles: circles of protection, blasts of energy, laying of hands, that sort of stuff. :)
But I've found people always connect to themselves best, so letting people put themselves into the game makes them less apt to take risks or sacrifice themselves for the group unless the situation is truly dire. That's where the fun comes in. :)
At times I miss playing video games. I still hold a fondness in my heart for the RPG format, and as a horror fan, this one sees like a great late night play. Although to be honest I am growing tired of Zombies as a whole. It seems like the majority of monster based horror flicks as of late all feature flesh eating former humans.
that being said, I think this still looks like an interesting game. If time allowed I might even download the free striped own copy. It might be a good release after a long work day... and if I happen to see my bosses face as a zombie... all the better :-)
Remember this game originally came out almost twenty years ago though, so at the time it was leading the zombie pop culture vanguard. That's reason enough to love it, in my opinion: something so early did everything so right.
No matter what, I hope you enjoy it! :)
you have a good point there, I forgot about the age of the game. I stand, or zombie trudge, corrected.