Alex
Arcane
I mentioned it before in the Kickstart thread, but now it is live, I thought I would create its own thread. The I Am Zombie RPG kickstarter is live.
I am Zombie is a new game by Mark Rein·Hagen. Mr. Hagen is mostly known for being the creator of Vampire: The Masquerade, as well as contributing to almost all other World of Darkness games (that is, the old world of Darkness, as far as I know, he didn't work in the new lines). He is also responsible, together with Jonathan Tweet for the Ars Magica RPG.
Unfortunately, Mark stopped working with RPGs, and moved to Georgia with his family where he tried his hand at several different things, including board gaming. I Am Zombie then is the first RPG by him in years. In it, the players take the role of, not surprisingly, zombies. Alternatively, the players may start as humans in a zombie breakout, and should they die, they become zombies. The players, however, are part of a minority among zombies. Instead of mindless shambling abominations, the players managed to keep their intelligence and sense of self. In fact, given that zombies may keep a human-like appearance a little bit of the time, it isn't that unfair to think of this game as a bit "Vampire like".
Different from Vampire, however, the Zombies don't manipulate the mortal world from behind the scenes. They are hunted creatures, who must keep to their "Hospices" to avoid being hunted by humans. While this game does seem to have a lot of the social aspects of Vampire, there isn't a huge, world spanning order to keep the zombies in line. Instead, there are lots of small hospices dotting the landscape and practically all else is enemy territory.
The game itself seems to actually be quite small. The book, as the kickstart describes, has only 1/5th of it dedicated to rules. The rest is all about the gameworld being described from inside (that is, from the point of view of the zombies themselves). This isn't that far from old White Wolf books, I think, as a lot of those books were about "fluff" anyway. And although a lot of those books were also about describing skills, advantages and what not, I m Zombie seems to be taking a more open approach, leaving the skills stats and what not more as keywords for players to use as they think they should instead of well defined game parts.
The game also boasts a card based character creation system, where the players basically choose 7 human cards that describe their character, and that is their sheet. Each card has 3 skills or attributes at the top, and one's ability with a skill is the sum of cards that have that skill. The cards also have several advantages and disadvantages associated with that walk of life, although players my remove some of those in order to customize their character. Mr. Hagen also claims in the kicstarter that people who don't like the idea of cards can use normal sheets instead. The cards aren't collectible, in that they are available on-line for printing, nor is character creation random, unless the player decides to play that way.
Another differentiation are the chips, prizes given for roleplaying well one's character, playing out one's disadvantages, etc. These allow the players to affect the result of dice. The chips are another optional element, and it would be easy enough to use a small bit of paper with the effect written on it instead. So, much like the cards, they are more of a prop, instead of a necessary game component. Finally, the game uses 6 sided dice pools, where 5s and 6s are successes and 1s remove a success. If you end up with negative successes, then it is a botch.
The kickstarter has just been launched. It is going a bit slow, but hopefully will pick up steam. If you are interested, I recommend you go there to see what it is like, or go here for more details on the setting, as well as some videos of it being played.
I am Zombie is a new game by Mark Rein·Hagen. Mr. Hagen is mostly known for being the creator of Vampire: The Masquerade, as well as contributing to almost all other World of Darkness games (that is, the old world of Darkness, as far as I know, he didn't work in the new lines). He is also responsible, together with Jonathan Tweet for the Ars Magica RPG.
Unfortunately, Mark stopped working with RPGs, and moved to Georgia with his family where he tried his hand at several different things, including board gaming. I Am Zombie then is the first RPG by him in years. In it, the players take the role of, not surprisingly, zombies. Alternatively, the players may start as humans in a zombie breakout, and should they die, they become zombies. The players, however, are part of a minority among zombies. Instead of mindless shambling abominations, the players managed to keep their intelligence and sense of self. In fact, given that zombies may keep a human-like appearance a little bit of the time, it isn't that unfair to think of this game as a bit "Vampire like".
Different from Vampire, however, the Zombies don't manipulate the mortal world from behind the scenes. They are hunted creatures, who must keep to their "Hospices" to avoid being hunted by humans. While this game does seem to have a lot of the social aspects of Vampire, there isn't a huge, world spanning order to keep the zombies in line. Instead, there are lots of small hospices dotting the landscape and practically all else is enemy territory.
The game itself seems to actually be quite small. The book, as the kickstart describes, has only 1/5th of it dedicated to rules. The rest is all about the gameworld being described from inside (that is, from the point of view of the zombies themselves). This isn't that far from old White Wolf books, I think, as a lot of those books were about "fluff" anyway. And although a lot of those books were also about describing skills, advantages and what not, I m Zombie seems to be taking a more open approach, leaving the skills stats and what not more as keywords for players to use as they think they should instead of well defined game parts.
The game also boasts a card based character creation system, where the players basically choose 7 human cards that describe their character, and that is their sheet. Each card has 3 skills or attributes at the top, and one's ability with a skill is the sum of cards that have that skill. The cards also have several advantages and disadvantages associated with that walk of life, although players my remove some of those in order to customize their character. Mr. Hagen also claims in the kicstarter that people who don't like the idea of cards can use normal sheets instead. The cards aren't collectible, in that they are available on-line for printing, nor is character creation random, unless the player decides to play that way.
Another differentiation are the chips, prizes given for roleplaying well one's character, playing out one's disadvantages, etc. These allow the players to affect the result of dice. The chips are another optional element, and it would be easy enough to use a small bit of paper with the effect written on it instead. So, much like the cards, they are more of a prop, instead of a necessary game component. Finally, the game uses 6 sided dice pools, where 5s and 6s are successes and 1s remove a success. If you end up with negative successes, then it is a botch.
The kickstarter has just been launched. It is going a bit slow, but hopefully will pick up steam. If you are interested, I recommend you go there to see what it is like, or go here for more details on the setting, as well as some videos of it being played.
