When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.
― George A. Romero, Dawn of the Dead
Zombies are pretty big business these days and their place in the modern zeitgeist can not be understated From movies and comic books to Halloween costumes and more, zombies seem to be everywhere. Of course, they are not just limited to such mediums and one of the most successful programs of the new millennium is The Walking Dead, spanning 11 seasons, and spawning several spin-off shows and more.
Based upon the sensational hit comic book by creators Robert Kirkman, Tom Moore and Charlie Adlard, The Walking Dead sees the plunged deep into chaos as the dead come back to life following the leaking of a virus in France. It’s not so much being scratched or bitten by the undead that makes you one of their masses, the virus has affected every single person on the planet and when you die by whatever cause, you will pretty soon rise again.
Of course, that’s the very simplified version of events of the comics and even the television show, but it does offer a really intense and interesting setting to run a roleplaying game within. Enter Free League Publishing and their recently released The Walking Dead Universe roleplaying game.
Free League is no stranger to licensed roleplaying games, having already proven their track record with games based on Alien, Lord of the Rings, and Blade Runner, all genre legends and award winners in their own rights.
The Walking Dead Universe roleplaying game is just the latest game to join the ranks of other licensed games that use the Year Zero games engine, a system that is both simplistic yet can be complex at the same time.
So what do we get? As is usual in games from Free League Publishing we get a well-rounded and fully immersed universe that draws on the lore created by Kirkman and laid out in the comic books’ long and detailed run.
With the entire planet gone to hell and the majority of those who have survived have to contend with a whole plethora of things that are out to get them, the least of which are the dead themselves. Things are dark and very, very bleak as one would imagine with a post-apocalypse setting and if your heroes are to survive in this hellscape they need to rely on sharp wits, strategic thinking, and a lot of luck.
The thing with Kirkman’s Walking Dead isn’t the zombies (only a couple of times referred to by that title and more often simply called Walkers or Bitters) but moreover, the others who survived and are now trying to get by using whatever they deemed to be necessary even if it means killing in cold.
Roving hordes of Walkers can pretty easily be avoided, but a small group of armed and determined humans, especially ones who are desperate can be far more cunning and deadly.
The Walkers are slow and shambles around, only being a real threat if you have no place to run too. They can’t open doors or climb up after you, just the sheer weight of numbers makes them a real threat.
Of course, if your party is sleeping by the fire in your makeshift camp and the person on guard duty should doze off, well it is pretty much game over.
Like many other games from Free League Publishing, The Walking Dead Universe uses more than one form of gameplay style, allowing for traditional roleplaying that suits a prolonged campaign arc, where characters can learn and grow, or a more cinematic style of adventure that very closely mirrors the tension found both in the comic books and television series.
No matter what style you choose however player characters are made up from preexisting templates or archetypes that follow somewhat characters from the source material, but allow some scope for personalised persona to reflect your style of play.
All player characters regardless of their chosen archetype, will have a few things in common. Each character will have something they hold dear, this could be a photograph or a toy or another thing from the old world that brings them comfort and balance.
The archetypes that the players can choose from, represent a wide range of types from military or professional careers, to simply being a child in the hellscape that remains. Each of the archetypes can be customised to add personal touches and really make the characters the player’s own. Once they are equipped well they are pretty much ready to play and character creation is very fast and easy on the players and GM alike.
The walkers in the game are very much like their counterparts in the show and comics. They roam the world looking for the living to eat, anything living. Due to the nature of the Wildfire virus, all humans carry the disease at some genetic level, so it’s not really just a case of being bitten or scratched that will cause the dearly departed to rise. Unless the brain is destroyed anyone who has died will turn and rise in short order, adding another element to play as players may have to finish off deceased friends to stop them rising again.
Naturally, this can lead to dramatic trauma and cause more and more stress to the characters, curtailing their actions as they fight the urge to run and hide.
Threat plays a very important part within The Walking Dead Universe, and the more it builds up, the more dangerous things become. Sure dealing with one or two walkers may be scary at first, but facing off against a swarm, often in their thousands can be a whole new world of hurt for the characters.
The Threat level is a running meter of how dangerous the situation is and will place the characters under more stress as it rises. The more stress that a character has the harder it is to do simple things. Nerves fray, people panic, and even combat veterans may miss easy targets!
There are ways to lower stress that are pretty obvious such as being in a safe and secure location or being surrounded by friends or family.
As mentioned above. the main cause of concern for the players isn’t really the dead, but the living. The world has been devastated by the virus and there are less than two million people living as best as they can in North America. That’s not ver many people, but with food, ammo, and supplies in very short supply, it’s little wonder that groups of survivors will attack others to get their hands on precious resources. And then again there are those among the living who see the apocalypse as one big party and will gladly kill a stranger or worse, often just for being there.
The Game
The Walking Dead Universe roleplaying game comes in two distinct flavors. There is the introductory Starter Set and the full Rulebook. In the starter, you get a slimmed-down version of the core rules which allows you to gey to grips with the basics such as combat, character creation and other stripped-down mechanics from the core game. It also includes a large double-sided map that depicts Atlanta, several pre-generated characters for the players to chose from, as well as some characters from the show. Add too all this 10 dice for the players and 10 Stress dice, player maps and cards for equipment, and a full adventure to get your group started.
The Walking Dead Universe roleplaying game core rules however is a much more immersed look at the lore from the comic books and to a lesser extent the television show itself.
Character creation is expanded dramatically and the hardbound rules go into great depth and detail covering most aspects that a GM would ever need to run a cinematic approach adventure and get the best out of the game.
Both versions are lavishly illustrated with the high-concept artwork that always makes games from Free League Publishing stand out from the rest of the industry.
As mentioned above the players chose from a number of pre-existing archetypes that represent their character in the game, detailing what they did before the world went to hell, their goals and motivations, and the things that irk or even scare them. Many games use an archetype system and you are given the choice of twelve unique archetypes to build your character from
- The Criminal
- The Doctor
- The Farmer
- The Homemaker
- The Kid
- The Law Enforcer
- The Nobody
- The Outcast
- The Politician
- The Preacher
- The Scientist
- The Solider
Each archetype has its own key attributes such as the Farmer being strong and the Kid being fast, a key skill and their own sets of talents, all tailored to suit that type of play. Each character has Issues that come into play with a great example being the Kid being afraid of the dark and people treating them as a child. These Issues help round out the character and can also be a great tool for the GM to use to further any narrative. As well as Issues, each character archetype has its own Drives which are ideals that motivate them such as using our example of the Kid, one of the drives for this archetype is I will protect my friends. A wise GM can also get a lot from the drives that each character has.
Rounding out the character archetypes are the gear that each character starts play with. Each character starts with three items that can be chosen or rolled randomly by the player and could be anything from a weapon, to a pet such as a dog.
All characters will need somewhere to put their gear and try to rest up and have a relative degree of safety, this comes in the form of a Haven. Havens are those places that the players have managed to secure from old high schools, jails, hospitals or even a field that is fenced off to keep the walkers out. The Haven plays quite a role within the game and much like in the television show, places like Alexandria or Woodvale can be cleared out and fortified and offer protection and to a degree a sense of normality.
Of course when you have the only safe place for miles around, its very likely to attract those who, well want that safe area for themselves and will stop at nothing to take over your sweet digs and make them their own! This can lead to a lot of great narrative gameplay with both players and the GM working to build up a sanctuary for the players, from clearing it out, planting crops, and restoring power, to defending it from those who would take it away from the players, walkers or otherwise!
The main bulk of the game fleshes out equipment, weapons, and other gear you need to survive, though there is always an emphasis on six core principles of the game itself.
- Do Whatever it takes to Survive! This reinforces to the players that sometimes they must do the difficult or horrendous to survive to live another day.
- Death is Inescapable: Due to the virus being airborne and every single human left alive being a carrier of it, you die and then you rise again as a walker. Players will at some point have to show mercy on their friends or family often in the form of a knife through the temple or base of the skull.
- You are never safe: You may have guns aplenty, food and water to last for years, and a fortified location that would make Fort Knox look like a doll house, but there is always some element that will want what you have and be willing to take it away from you.
- You are not alone: While you may be able to last for a while wandering the desolate landscape of the Walking Dead Universe, the game is about a group of people and tells their stories. Survival is often only possible when you band with others to make a small or large community.
- You are telling a story: Like many of the other games from Free League Publishing, the game is broken down into a series of scenes, which act out much like a television show. This allows for the skipping of mundane passages of time and concentrates on the more interesting, lending to the cinematic nature of story-driven roleplaying.
- Fiction comes first: Perhaps the most important principle of the game and one that I have tried to implement in my decades of running roleplaying games! The rules should always play second place to the story and its narrative, if it’s something that would break the game’s rule mechanics then by all means go ahead and break it as long as the story remains paramount.
The majority of the game after character creation trends too help flesh out the system for both players and the GM to get the best out of the game and have the most rewarding time. There are comprehensive details on setting up your games and adventures from one-off adventures to full-on campaigns and each brings with it a wealth of information from fleshing out characters and turning their havens into a living and breathing community, to allowing your players to push themselves to achieve great feats and the repercussions that may have.
Of course, a game about the dead walking the earth would not be complete without the addition of, well the dead themselves and the game goes into great detail on how to deal with the walkers. Sure a walker or two may be very easy work for the players and they can deal with them in very short order, but if you increase the factor by say ten then things start to get difficult. Do the players use the precious ammunition that they have managed to scrounge up and run the risk of attracting more walkers to the area, or do they flee and live to fight another day? Walkers are the slow and dumb animated meat suits that we see in the series. Doors cause problems for them as they can’t work out how to open them, they can’t use simple tools and even the most mobile of walkers can’t move faster than a brisk walk and the more they decay, the slower they become.
However as noted above if you get enough of the walkers together and they do naturally band together for some reason, then it can be almost impossible to defeat them all. Fighting off a small horde of thirty or so will be not much of a challenge to most players, but facing a swarm of several thousand walkers is like trying to damn the ocean and players will have to reassess the situation.
The later part of the 160-plus page book is given over to an introductory adventure The Golden Ambulance which will help set the scene for the players and can quite easily be expanded upon and turned into a full-on campaign setting, but it is the appendix at the close of the book that most GM’s will find of use, with table of encounters, locations and even random walker generation, making them an ideal tool for the GM. And as a bonus, there is even a section on playing the game solo which I know a lot of people will find really handy!
When you add the contents of the starter set to the core rulebook you have the basis of an impressive and immersive game that offers lots of scope of play the starter set although it repeats a more slimmed-down and simplified version of the core rules, offers a lot in its own right including a full adventure. The starter set also contains several characters from the series for you to play as, much like The One Ring core set gives famous hobbits, here you get the likes of Michonne and Gabriel to add to your games.
The Walking Dead Universe Roleplaying game is a fantastic addition to the already excellent stable of games from Free League, packed with some pretty awesome illustrations that bring the game to life, pun intended. Free League has an excellent track record when it comes to licensed products and Walking Dead Universe is no exception and sits up there with Alien and Blade Runner as among the best roleplaying games in the hobby.
The Walking Dead Universe Roleplaying Game Core book and Starter Set are both now available from Free League Publishing at the links below. My many thanks go to Boel from Free League Publishing for all her help and support with this review!
Free League Publishing
https://freeleaguepublishing.com/
Bad Lip Reading segment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR4lLJu_-wE&t=40s
The Walking Dead Theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5ISBJc1wFk
GAMERS WEB 