Recommend A Zombie Apocalypse Game System?

[SiderisAnon]

I am looking for a game system to run a zombie apocalypse type game in. This game is going to be fast paced, short lived, and will lean toward a style similar to a number of zombie movies.

We need something fairly easy to learn as this won't be a long running game, though it's a game type we may dust off in the future again and again between campaigns or for short lived "take a break" games. So, nothing like HERO system.

Combat needs to be quick and simple. There's going to be lots of zombies around and I don't want an individual fight to take a long period of time, like fights tend to do in games like D&D.

Relatively cheap entry cost. I don't want to have to buy $60 worth of books to play the game. (Nor would I want to read that many for such a game.)

I don't care about setting. We'll happily create our own settings. I need a decent character system with fast based combat that lends itself decently well to a modern setting.

Any suggestions?


For an idea of what we already know, here are some of the games our group does play now or has played in the past couple of years: D&D, HERO, Exalted, Battletech, Star Wars (d6), Shadowrun.

 

[jdrakeh]

All Flesh Must Be Eaten by Eden Studios. You can pick up the core book from Noble Knight Games (the Eden web store hasn't been updated for years now, so I'd not go that route).

 

[Nikosandros]

All Flesh Must Be Eaten by Eden Studios.

Yep, the OP pretty much described AFMBE...

 

[jdrakeh]

Oh, you might also want to consider Dead Meat (attached) if you want to keep your costs low (it's a free game, but a much lauded one).

 

[relmskye]

"All Flesh Must Be Eaten" is an obvious choice, and a very good one at that. Unisystem provides one of the most robust, accurate, and unobtrusive rulesets for modern day settings I've seen.

If you want something a little more cinematic, you might want to consider Eden Studios' "Army of Darkness," based on the film of same name. It utilizes a unisystem variant, designed to be very accessible and cinematic.

The new World of Darkness Corebook, of course, is designed for a modern day setting. It's hard to call nWoD anything other than accessible and easy to use.

 

[DaveyJones]

AFMBE


or you could do a Kobolds Ate My Baby version.
changing the Kobolds to Zombies
and King Torg "All Hail King Torg" to the new zombie master/creator.

 

[Vorput]

Another vote for All Flesh Must be Easten. Our campaign never really got off the ground, but I fondly remember the few sessions of it we played.

 

[Erywin]

My vote would be for Dread!

About Dread the Game « Dread

Simple, fun and all you need is the book and a Jenga tower. I have run a few games with it and found it to be a really easy system to learn and teach. Basically once your characters have filled out their character sheet, a list of questions about who they are, they pull from a Jenga tower if they want to do anything beyond what their character sheet says they are good at. If they knock over the tower, they end up dying in some fashion. Great for tension and scariness! Piratecat wrote up a review on it somewhere around these boards, give me a second. Here it is:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...t-up-my-dice-my-results-indie-horror-rpg.html

Enjoy,
E

 

[maddman75]

Another vote for AFMBE. Really a great game, and its set up like a toolbox. You create the zombies. They could be Romero zombies that are slow, dumb, super strong, and need a shot to the head to take down. They could be newer zombies that are fast and able to use simple tools. They can be crazy zombies that crawl up walls and spit acid. They could be a supernatural curse, an alien worm that infects dead bodies, or no explaination at all.

The book comes with six 'Dead Worlds' in the box, ready to go with background, zombies, and adventure ideas. If you get into the game there are a ton of good suppliments. One of the Living has rules for scrounging, trying to restart civilization, and other long term goals. There are books full of dead worlds, and genre books. Fistful of Zombies is old west, All Tomorrow's Zombies is science fiction, Enter the Zombie is kung-fu, etc. But none of them are needed beyond the core book for your basic zombie game.

Dread is a good suggestion as well, a great game for one-shots in general.

 

[Khur]

ENnie nominated 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars with Left 4:16 Dead. Admittedly, 3:16 was nominated for cover art, but the game itself is cool.

Simple, quick, and fun. Great for a one-shot, such as the one I'm running in September . . .