Year of the Zombie

[ukgpublishing]

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UKG Publishing are pleased to bring you The Year of the Zombie by Tim Willard.

"...are not the bodies of the dead returning to life, as rumor and public hysteria have claimed. These are victims of a bioterrorism attack, and any sort of vigilante killing of these victims are prosecutable as premeditated murder. In other stories, military atrocities in major urban areas continue as troops fire on unarmed crowds of demonstrators and panicked citizens. The President of the United States has asked for calm in this time of crisis, and assures the populace that the situation is well in hand. To recap the top stories..." - United News Broadcasting

"It was stories like these that killed more people than even the six or so nuclear detonations around the world combined. People had no idea what they were really facing, no concern on protecting themselves, and lacked the degree of paranioa it took to survive those gruesome early days. Official denial, new coverups, blatant misreporting, and a lack of information killed tens of thousands, and those tens of thousands got up and killed. During all the initial savagery, you had to be savage to survive."-From the Diaries of Becka

The Chinese Zodiac contains many animals that years are named for. These animals have special signifigance for each year, each animal having a difference influence upon the events of the year. The Year of the Dragon, the Year of the Ram, the Year of the Rat, all of these have been repeated throughout history, and during each of them, the namesake of the year has had profound effect upon the year itself.

This year, however, is the year of something not mentioned on any zodiac. Something that will have a special signifigance, something that will have a direct influence upon not only events, but every living person in the entire world. Something that will bring about more than just a change in seasons, more than a change in the political climate. Something that did not care about religion, race, political leanings or personal philosophy.

This year, is the Year of the Zombie.

Year of the Zombie is a campaign template for d20 games set in current times or the near future, that can have slight effects that are quietly silenced and hidden from the general public, or world changing events that will forever change the lives of those who survive depending on the wishes of those participating in the campaign. Starting at initial infection and covering changes all the way through to fifty years later, and includes data on the human threat as well as environmental threats that spawn from the carcass of a dead civilization.

Year of the Zombie is recommended for Mature Audiences only, due to horror, brutality and profanity.

Includes:
The different types of Zombies in Year of the Zombie
Specific classes.
Military weaponry and equipment, as well as handling military equipment within Year of the Zombie
Hazards other than zombies
Changes to the world in general
Rules on bartering in this dangerous new world.
Optional rules for mutilating damage and horrific rules
Adaptation of Bad Axe Games insanity rules to Year of the Zombie

Priced at $12.00 this 151 page pdf, will be followed shortly by a PoD option. However for those of you anxious to get your hands on the product, we will be offering all our pdf customers the opportunity to obtain the PoD version for print cost only.

To view this product at RPGNow go to:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=5009&SRC=ENWorld

Get freebies, advice and answers to Q&A here at the UKG Year of the Zombie forums.

 

[Anio]

Year of the Zombie - a generous mouthful of horror and survival goodness

This is the product that made me want to run D20 Modern.


Year of the Zombie (YotZ) has 8 chapters spread over it's 152 pages (including 1 cover page, 1 advertisement page and 2 pages for the OGL) that cover the world as it would be if George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead movies had come to "life". YotZ is the first in a series to be released by UKG Publishing.

One important note is that this product is meant for a mature and adult audience and should be considered in that light. The chapters in this product cover grim, terrifying and brutal “realities” of a post-apocalyptic world and are not for the easily offended or faint hearted. Slavery, rape and cannibalism are some of the topics that are handled maturely and in no way glorified or shrugged off by the author. They are simply a fact of the YotZ world.

That said, the chapters are as follows:

Chapter 1 - Campaign Types: what kind of zombie game are you running?
Chapter 2 - Time of Death: beginning the zombie campaign
Chapter 3 - The Dead Walk: zombie templates
Chapter 4 - Those Left Alive: new player classes
Chapter 5 - Cause of Death: additional threats and hazards
Chapter 6 - Lands of the Dead: locations of interest
Chapter 7 - We’re Jacked Up & Good to Go, Sarge!: equipment
Chapter 8 - Alternate Rules

Beginning with Chapter One, the author addresses the type of zombie game that a GM intends to run. While these may seem obvious, the 4 different types of zombie campaign give a clear direction as to where the author envisions this product being usable. Ranging from one-shot "Nobody Walks Away" games to long-term "End of Civilization" campaigns, the author ensures that each form of zombie involvement in your campaign is well covered and seeds several ideas for a GM as they read through. This chapter also covers variations to the style, including Heroic, Mysteries After Death (an Arcana focussed style) and Dark and Gritty.

Chapter Two covers the timing of the zombie contamination threat. Advice is featured for meshing YotZ into pre-existing campaigns and starting off with YotZ as the basis for a campaign. Detailed examinations of beginning a campaign, ranging from a few days before the outbreak to a post-apocalyptic vision of the world overrun by zombies, fill out the rest of this chapter while continuing to help a GM get into the mindset needed to run a successful zombie game.

These first two chapters are pure gold for a GM intending on running a zombie contamination game and are well worth reading more than once. It is clear that the author spent a lot of time considering the available options and managed to home in on several key ideas while remaining relatively free of cliché and repetition.

Chapters Three and Four begin the "crunch". Various zombie templates are covered, comprising everything from the slow shambling zombies of Night of the Living Dead to the energised sprinting zombies of the most recent Dawn of the Dead movie. The author made a conscious decision here to avoid the Return of the Living Dead zombies, principally because a game involving them would be short and ugly for the players. This chapter also provides specific information concerning how a person goes from breathing to flesh eating. Disease vectors, cellular regeneration and reanimation are all detailed along with complete mechanics and a table to chart the progress of the infection.

The classes included in Chapter Four are, with one exception, designed for a YotZ game. The 10 level Feral Child basic class is for children who’ve been abandoned at an early age and regressed into barbarism to survive. These children and teenagers have copied the survival techniques of those they see succeeding, which for the most part are the zombies and slavers that now populate the world around them. Far from being small and weak, these kids run in wolf packs and are one of the major terrors of the post-apocalyptic zombie world. This class focuses upon stealth and viciousness. Next is the 10 level Den Mother advanced class, a logical progression for a female child who has come from the Feral Child basic class. These are the leaders of the wolf packs that include both children and feral dogs. Their stealth and viciousness continues along with new abilities to make short work of enemies and “introduce” children to the Feral Child Basic Class.

I consider these two classes to be NPC classes given how anti-social they are, though it would certainly make for an interesting character arc for a child character to have come from savage beginnings to grow into a hardened but more civilized adult.

I will again note that this product is meant for a mature and adult audience and should be considered in that light. The Feral Child basic class and Den Mother advanced class are meant to be the products of fairly horrific circumstances and their outlooks are suitably grim and terrifying.

The final class is the 10 level Lawman prestige class and likely the only class in YotZ that could reasonably see use outside of a YotZ or post-apocalyptic game. The name of the class says it all: while reading the class I had images of a mirrorshade-wearing, shotgun-toting sheriff making his way through a lawless and deadly new world. Features of this class range from social skill bonuses to means of identifying and punishing the guilty.

While new classes and feats are seen by some as almost obligatory in D20 products, these classes are solid and flavourful and seem well balanced without leaving the feeling that they’ve been “tacked on” as an afterthought or as an unnecessary variation of pre-existing classes.

Chapter Five continues the flavour mixed with "crunch" and is focussed upon other hazards and threats in a YotZ world. Biological, chemical and nuclear warfare, foreign troops on US soil, rogue military units, police, army, navy and air force troops are featured and post-apocalyptic favourites such as slavers and raiders are included. Sample statistics are provided for every type of NPC threat. Disease, food/water and radiation are also covered and include detailed tables of their effects. Reference is also made to the Blood and Guts series of PDFs from RPGObjects as useful additions to a campaign that may be focussed on militarily inclined PCs (another good set of PDFs, if not narrowly focussed). Rather than leaving this chapter as a list of threats and hazards, the author has fleshed out each threat and given detailed descriptions of how they’ve been affected by the change from a world of the living to a world of the dead.

Chapter Six covers locations of interest. Everything from mortuaries to airports to various types of military installations are detailed here. Almost every likely (and even unlikely) destination for a group of survivors is included and advice is given on how defendable and useful each location is likely to be to a group of survivors. Information is also provided for possible resources that can be obtained from each location. The only notable absence from the list of locations is the ubiquitous shopping mall. In total, 18 locations are covered.

Chapter Seven covers new military equipment, including weapons, vehicles and other survival equipment. This chapter is solid and gives a good jump-off point for anyone looking to increase the military flavour within a YotZ campaign.

Chapter Eight provides a series of alternate rules, including systems for bartering, improvised armour, specific hit locations, horror and insanity. This is another good chapter of crunch targeted squarely at the zombie campaign flavour.

Throughout YotZ, sidebars provide good, specific and useful advice for other areas that a GM may intend to include. Advice for robots, cybernetics, Arcana and Shadow-based D20 Modern games is given, along with brief discussions on how they may be implemented and affect the YotZ campaign. These sidebars are one more indication of how seriously the author has approached this product and how much thought has been given to the structure of a modern YotZ game.

One touch that I particularly liked throughout YotZ was a running story written as diary entries for a character named Becka. Through these diary entries, we gain a clear picture of how Becka (and the other characters) are affected by the crunch and flavour being described in the main text. The effects of radiation, the jubilation and trepidation of finding a military bunker and the disgust we should feel for slavers is all described in an engaging manner by Becka. These diary entries also help break up the intensity of taking in the abundance of information we're given in YotZ.

There are very few editing errors for a product of this size and certainly none that made any descriptions unclear or unusable. One pet peeve that I had was the poor bookmarking. With PDF technology being very customisable, I'd expected better bookmarking in this product. With only a listing of "Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3...", I found it a pain in the rear end to go back to the table of contents, and then use the bookmarks to jump to the page. The bookmarks should really have been a copy of the table of contents. Of course, if you intend on printing it, this won't be a problem.

Unfortunately, printing is it’s own problem. Year of the Zombie comes with only one PDF. It is neither printer nor screen friendly and has coloured borders that are likely to suck up a lot of ink. UKG Publishing has since announced on its message board that it will be updating and revising Year of the Zombie with printer and screen friendly versions as well as improving the bookmarking.

The artwork is flavourful, well spaced and generally simple, though there are a couple of choice pieces, including a depiction of a group of survivors surrounded by a zombie horde in an urban setting. Photographs of equipment and locations are used, while other pieces are simple black and white drawings. Though the artwork is not the focus of this product and most of the 152 pages is given over to descriptions, advice and crunch, the artwork provides a good page balance while reading and gives a clear impression of the author's intentions on any particular page. There are also a handful of high quality colour maps in the style of other UKG map products. Unfortunately, the pages that the maps are on have the same borders as the rest of the product. The maps aren’t given their own space so that they can be printed and used for a game using miniatures.

While reading through, it was easy for me to envision running a game similar in nature to the Of The Dead movies by George A Romero or to the plague ridden 28 Days Later. Strong imagery is used throughout YotZ and a potential GM is left with few doubts about what will and won’t work. It is a gritty product for a gritty topic and seeds countless ideas for scenarios in a zombie infested world.

Summary

In short, I liked it. The concept is engaging, the crunch is flavourful and virtually all of the non-crunch information is directly applicable to games of this style, even those not using the D20 Modern system. The only issues that I have with this product relate to the usability of the PDF rather than the exceptional information within. The Diaries of Becka, the game-ready NPC stats and the focus-specific sidebars are all nice touches that mesh well into the whole rather than being addendums. While I rarely buy PDFs that cost more than $10, I really feel that this was money well spent that I'd certainly spend again in the blink of an eye. The content, layout and flavour are worth a 5 star rating, but as it is, the rating drops to 4 stars because of the various PDF issues mentioned above.

Year of the Zombie is a solid product and I’m really looking forward to seeing more from this range for D20 Modern.


Review by Jason Lund (Anio)