All the Action—Everywhere

Inspired by the classic action films of the past sixty years—Die Hard, Goldfinger, Kingsman, Ocean’s Eleven, Hot Fuzz, Lethal Weapon, and John Wick, the cinematic action roleplaying game Outgunned is designed to do three things. One is to handle a variety of different action films, from chases and heists to Spy-Fi and hostage situations. The second is to help deliver short action-packed sessions, tending towards one-shots or ‘Shots’, and in keeping with the genre, sequels. The third is to play fast and easy, and definitely encourage the action. Originally published by Two Little Mice following a successful Kickstarter campaign, but now published by Free League Publishing, the award-winning Outgunned fills what would appear to cover a relatively limited niche in roleplaying. Which is not a bad thing. However, Action Flicks begs to differ, shucking off its leather jacket, peering over the top of its sunglasses, and giving a million dollar grin in a hundred thousand dollar direct-to-video movie before taking you round the universe—or is that multiverse? This is a supplement which takes you to ten different genres which you knew that Outgunned should and could do, lets you play in them for a bit, or at least for a long as the film lasts, leaving you waiting for the sequel.

Action Flicks is a book of mini-settings for Outgunned. Or rather sub-genres, because it does Space Opera, martial arts or Wuxia, swashbuckling, superpowers, kids in danger (bicycles optional), magical kids, hunting aliens, hunting ghosts New York-style, hunting vampires and/or werewolves, and cyberpunk. Which is a lot for a small, two-hundred page book. Each sub-genre is given a similar treatment. This includes an introduction to the specific sub-genre, a list of what it contains; ‘Action Homework’—a lengthy list of the touchstone films and television series which inspires the particular sub-genre treatment in Action Flicks that both the Director and her players should watch; an examination of its core themes and some hooks for the Director to develop into full missions; new rules and roles; new enemies and enemy feats; new genre-specific mechanics; and both a Hero ready for action and a dedicated Hero Sheet.

Or rather sub-genres, because it does Space Opera, martial arts or Wuxia, swashbuckling, superpowers, kids in danger (bicycles optional), magical kids, hunting aliens, hunting ghosts New York-style, hunting vampires and/or werewolves, and cyberpunk. Which is a lot for a small, two-hundred page book. Each sub-genre is given a similar treatment. This includes an introduction to the specific sub-genre, a list of what it contains; ‘Action Homework’—a lengthy list of the touchstone films and television series which inspires the particular sub-genre treatment in Action Flicks that both the Director and her players should watch; an examination of its core themes and some hooks for the Director to develop into full missions; new rules and roles; new enemies and enemy feats; new genre-specific mechanics; and both a Hero ready for action and a dedicated Hero Sheet.

The selection of sub-genres opens with ‘Star Raiders’ whose ‘Action Homework’ lists Firefly, The Fifth Element, The Mandalorian, Star Trek, and John Carter, but the touchstone for this first treatment is very obviously Star Wars. Which is no bad thing, since every treatment in Action Flicks is intended to be obvious in its inspiration just as with much the action films which inspire the core rules of Outgunned and thus its visual look and story beats are meant to be easy to grasp and run with. The core themes of ‘Star Raiders’ is ‘Know the Other’, that everyone in the galaxy is alien is each other and that a Hero should learn to navigate the differences in physiology and culture and work with others, whilst ‘For Freedom’ states that a Hero will always yearn to look to the sky and fly free despite what the authorities or the alien invaders or robot revolutionaries want.

In terms of new rules and gear, ‘Star Raiders’ replaces bullets with lasers, which are always loaded, so instead of running out of rounds, overheat. The weapons also include the Laster Crossbow as well as the Laser Blade. Star Pilots get to replace the Proven Driver Feat with the Star Pilot Feat, whilst the ‘Alien Diplomacy’ feat grants free rerolls on interactions with alien species and negates the standard penalty when doing so, ‘Hyperlight Evasion’ lets a starship crew jump to hyperlight to avoid a chase, and ‘Shoot First’ does exactly what you think it should. New roles include ‘Logical Thinker’, ‘Lonely Stranger’, and ‘Lovable Scoundrel’, whilst the ready-to-play Hero is the eponymous ‘Star Raider’, who could be Han Solo, Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds, or Korben Dallas. Alien Feats ‘Amphibian’, ‘Big Guy’, ‘Little Guy’, ‘Brainiac’, and more enable player and Director alike to create alien Heroes and NPCs, whilst the rules for Starships adapt the vehicle rules to outer space by adding the need for a ‘Copilot’ and giving special actions such as ‘Raised Shields’ and ‘Asteroid Field’, the latter turning every action into a Gamble when passing through them.

There are notes too on how to add the ‘Power’ to ‘Star Raiders’. This combines the ‘Samurai’ Role from World of Killers with the Mental Powers of ‘Great Powers’, the superhero treatment later in the book. It is a pity that the Director needs to refer to another supplement, because this neatly distils the essence the archetype with just about enough a nod to the source, yet leaving room for Director and player to develop it as they want. Lastly, the ready-to-play Hero sheet is for very cute ‘Young Alien Nobody’.

‘Star Raiders’ packs a lot into its sixteen pages, enabling the Director to pick it up and start developing a galaxy her own and missions to fit, or taking the obvious inspiration from the ‘Action Homework’ and then running missions in their galaxies using Outgunned (rather than any licensed roleplaying games). Which is the point of Action Flicks. Yet ‘Star Raiders’ also does not quite pack enough, which an issue with a lot of the sub-genre treatments in Action Flicks. In the case of ‘Star Raiders’, there could have been more options for Alien Feats and the rules for robots are underwhelming, simply treating them as aliens and letting them take more Feats later on. As a sub-genre, ‘Star Raiders’ leans very much into space opera which does not feel right for one of its inspirations, Star Trek, which in most of its incarnations, is not as cinematic as Outgunned. Similarly, John Carter is a great choice for Outgunned, but deserves its own ‘Swords & Planet’ Action Flick entry rather than being lumped in with everything else here.

‘Rising Dragon’ is inspired by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers and brings Wuxia to Outgunned giving the option of Heroes learning Ancient Martial Arts such as Dragon Style, Drunken Style, or Monkey Style as they and everyone already knows martial arts, replacing with Plan B: Bullet with Plan B: Blade (again from World of Killers), and swapping Adrenaline with Qi. Daring Noble and Vengeful Ghost are fitting new roles and along with a range of new Feats, this is a solid little genre set that does not just have to remain fixed in some mythical past. It is easily mixed with sub-genres if the Director wants to run more Hong Kong-style films. The Pirates of the Caribbean, The Three Musketeers, and The Princess Bride are the inspiration for ‘Cloak & Dagger’, which does swashbuckling action. There are rules for horses, carriages, and flintlock weapons, and Plan B: Bullet is again replaced with Plan B: Blade, whilst the new Friendly Brute and Witty Casanova roles fit both the sub-genre and the humour that often runs through it. Depending upon the type of film, the Director and her players may need to engage with the humour more than in others.

Fundamental to the sub-genre is duelling and for this ‘Cloak & Dagger’ adapts the duelling rules from Household, also from Two Little Mice. With admonition not to repeat an action twice because it is boring, it suggests mixing skills to make duels exciting and dynamic, and optionally, adding Challenge Feats so the Director can customise a challenger to make him a capable duellist. It notes that the rules could apply to Heroes too should their ardours and tempers fly enough for them to want to settle matters of honour with each other. These Duelling rules enable a Director to set up some great scenes and confrontations and they could be used with ‘Rising Dragon’ too for confrontations with weapons rather than martial arts.

‘Great Powers’ is the superhero treatment for Outgunned in Action Flicks. It draws from Kick-Ass, Watchmen, and Daredevil amongst others. It gives rules for what happens to vigilantes whose identities are exposed, Plan B: Blast to go alongside Plan B: Bullet and Plan B: Blade, and ‘Powerless’, a new condition when a Superhero suffers the effects of his weakness. There are numerous new roles, like Billionaire Philanthropist and Chatty Mercenary, and specific to the genre, Super Feats rather than Feats. Every Superhero gets one at character creation and can swap a standard Feat for another one. Super Feats include ‘Flight’, ‘Gadget’ (which can cover retractable claws, spiderwebs, returning weapons, and so on), ‘Mind Powers’, ‘Regeneration’, ‘Super-Speed’, and more. The silliest is ‘Ruler of the Sea’, which lets the Superhero talk to fish! ‘Great Powers’ manages to cover a lot, but it has three problems. One, obviously, is that it has been superseded by Outgunned Superheroes. Two, the superhero genre encompasses a lot of subgenres itself and sixteen pages cannot cover everything. Three, ‘Great Powers’ has to work hard to get up to the Four Colour sub-genre and being for Outgunned is a better fit for the street level style.

As its title suggests, ‘Weirder Things’ covers inspirations such as The Goonies, Karate Kid, and most obviously, Stranger Things. Which again is quite a lot. First, it makes everyone young and removes the ‘Too Young to Die’ Feat and very much inspired by Stranger Things replaces a young Hero’s catchphrase with his favourite song and then backs it up with Plan B: Beat which comes into play when a Hero listens to that favourite song. The Director and her players need to decide quite how dangerous and deadly a ‘Weirder Things’ should be. Several Feats get replaced like ‘Better Than Walking’ for ‘Proven Driver’ and ‘Popular’ for ‘Heartbreaker’. The Hero ready for action is ‘The Loser’, very much inspired by Kevin McCallister from Home Alone along with many others.

‘A Kind of Magic’ is mostly obviously inspired by the Harry Potter books and films, but again it wants to cover a whole lot more like Doctor Strange, Big Trouble in Little China, and The Dresden Files. With rules for incantations and wands, magical culture, flying cars and broomsticks, and roles such as ‘Charming Bookworm’ and ‘Chosen One’ it really wants to stick to modelling the Harry Potter books and films rather than trying cover everything under its ‘Action Homework’. It does not help those aims by needing the Director and players to adapt the ‘Dog Trainer’ role from World of Killers and switch out the dog for an owl (or another suitable creature) to have a magical familiar. There is a short list of spells, each of which is effectively treated as a piece of Gear. The more obvious companion to ‘A Kind of Magic’ is ‘Weirder Things’, but ultimately, it would be a stretch for ‘A Kind of Magic’ to cover all of the inspirations it lists and perhaps there should be an Urban Fantasy treatment for Outgunned?

‘Killing Aliens’ is again more obvious in its inspirations—Aliens, Predator, Starship Troopers, and so on—but switches the role of the Heroes around to be the hunted in ‘You Are The Prey’. ‘Whatever It Takes’ gives the Hero an edge, but typically at a cost as the situation gets ever more desperate. Despite switching the Hero from hunter to hunted, this is a straightforward adaptation backed up with lots of alien enemies for the Director to build and several that come on-demand ready to play. ‘Ghost Hunters’ does the same with its ghosts and ghoulies on-demand or waiting to be built in a sub-genre adaptation that might include Caspar and Beetlejuice amongst its inspirations, but really is Ghostbusters writ large, especially with the new conditions of ‘Possessed’ and ‘Smeared’ (in sticky green ectoplasmic discharge!?).

Hunting takes place at night in the penultimate sub-genre treatment with ‘Midnight Wars’. Underworld and Blade are the primary inspirations, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer is another touchstone. It introduces three modes—‘Humans versus Monsters’, ‘Monsters versus Humans’, and ‘Monsters versus Monsters’—as the wars between vampires, werewolves, and humans continue. Plan B: Bullet and Plan B: Blade are joined by Plan B: Blood & Beast and Monstrous Feats such as ‘Lycanthrope’ and ‘Nosferatu’ enable a Hero to be a Monster Hero! The new gear is designed for anti-vampire and anti-vampire action and the new Role is the Slayer, looking exactly like Blade. This works well with the earlier ‘A Kind of Magic’ too.

The last sub-genre treatment is ‘Neon Noir’ which does cyberpunk for Outgunned. If the Director wants to add androids to this future, then the Synth Alien Feat option from ‘Star Raiders’ is the suggested option, whilst psychic powers can come from the ‘Great Powers’ sub-genre. The primary is that of cyberware, which is treated as gear. Every Hero in ‘Neon Noir’ has one piece, whilst the given Role of Solo can have another item. A Hero can also give up Feats to have more. Some of the items could easily added to the ‘Great Powers’ sub-genre to give an extra source of powers.

What is apparent with all ten of the sub-genres explored in Action Flicks for Outgunned is that how many will work with each other. For example, ‘Midnight Wars’, ‘A Kind of Magic’, and ‘Weirder Things’ to really do Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but Action Flicks runs with the mix and match options and throws them all into the mixing bowl with ‘Everything at Once’. This allows Heroes to jump from one universe to another and even learn the Feats of one universe to take it to another and presents a new Role, ‘The Master of the Multiverse’, who can jump from universe to universe and channel the power of the Multiverse. It is a special Role, combining Role, Trope, and Job in one that uses a Multiverse Roulette instead of a Death Roulette. When ‘The Master of the Multiverse’ uses his Plan B: Break to create a crack in reality to the advantage of his allies, is Left for Dead, or taps into power of the Multiverse to Go to another universe, Grab an object from another universe, Send a target to another universe, or Pass to someone else in this universe, there is a chance that an Anomaly is created and that can really miss with the universe! ‘The Master of the Multiverse’ has a lot of power, but there is a price.

Physically, Action Flicks is a good looking book. The artwork is excellent and the layout clean and tidy, and easy to read.

Action Flicks is fantastically, genre-encompassing ambitious covering ten genres and over one hundred films and television series. However, Action Flicks cannot encompass everything about all of its genres. It just does not have the space. It also means that that none of the genres it explores are quite ready to play and in all too many cases, like ‘Great Powers’ and Outgunned Superheroes, the Director is going to wish that there was more, especially where genre descriptions really have to work hard to handle some of the given inspirational suggestions. However, the core essentials of its cinematic settings and sub-genres, ably supported with rule changes and additions, are all here in Action Flicks to help get the Director with every movie and mission the Director wants to write for Outgunned. The good news is that there are now sequels too—Action Flicks Vol. 2 and Action Flicks Vol. 3.

The Tools of FATE

The FATE System Toolkit is part of the sextet of books funded via Kickstarter for FATE Core, the newest version of Evil Hat Games’ ENNIE award winning light and cinematic generic RPG first seen in Spirit of the Century back in 2006. It began life as the guide to magic for FATE Core, but as the Kickstarter grew and grew, things kept getting added to it, many of which have nothing to do with magic. In each and every case, the FATE System Toolkit asks what the GM wants the new rule or approach to the rules to do and how it fits into the game. It never mandates that its solutions are how something should be done, but rather how the mechanics can be ‘hacked’ to get it done. As it states up front, the FATE System Toolkit is not ‘the’ toolkit for FATE Core, but ‘a’ toolkit for FATE Core. In other words, “Here is how you could do it” rather than “Here is how you should do it”.

In keeping with the Bronze Rule in FATE Core—that anything can be treated as a character—the first things that the FATE System Toolkit looks at are Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Aspects underpin FATE Core and here we get a range of suggestions as what else they can do in addition to the options given in the main rulebook. This includes invoking them for effect rather than a bonus to a roll, such as a dwarf where he is underground and knows which way is North; detonating situation Aspects, that is going from ‘Weak Structural Integrity’ to ‘Collapsing Bridge’; representing quests as Aspects, for example, ‘Sabotage the Imperial Annihilation Station’; and making gear important by giving it Aspects, such as ‘Brutal Orc Cleaver’.  Skills are given a similar range of options, ranging from Professions as Skills or replacing Skills completely with adjectives that describe how a character does something, like Forceful, Graceful, Clever, or Resolute, to working into modes or bundles and even replacing them totally with Aspects. Modes package the skills into bundles for easy character generation and give bonuses to skills that duplicated between bundles. This is one of the options to replace FATE Core’s Skill Pyramid and enables a GM to design modes to fit particular genres or campaigns. Stunts receive a similar if much shorter treatment, including tying them to Aspects or gear rather than Skills, having pre-requisites—much like there was in Spirit of the Century, and so on.

The original way in which the hobby categorised characters is looked at in ‘The Big Game’ rather than campaigns as a whole. So we are shown a way to do Class and Race with Professions such as Fighter or Thief and Races like Elf or Orc. Both are packages that emulate an older style of game as much as FATE Core can. These come with an interesting side note that explains what we mean by Race in game terms. The new Origin Story method of character creation uses flashbacks rather than necessarily forging connections between the characters as per the FATE Core book whilst the Bronze Rule is applied to a scenario structure to use Aspects as the framework, a list of events leading to a crescendo that if reached means that the bad guys are winning! Special Circumstances covers particular situations, for chases which can be designed as challenges or contests and handling motivations and instincts in social interaction, whilst the section of Customized Tools is more a collection of odds and sods, from getting into the nitty gritty of Stress, Consequences,  Zones, and Refresh to creating your own FATE dice.

Given its original purpose, it is surprising that the FATE System Toolkit devotes less than half of its pages to its original purpose—magic. Even then it devotes more of those pages to examples than it does to discussing how to build magic systems for FATE Core. This starts out with what the magic system is designed to do and what its aims are before specifically looking at its tone, source, availability, cost, and limits. Once their ramifications are discussed, it looks at how magic can be modelled through the use of Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Over all, it does not amount to more than a few pages, but they are a thoughtful few pages, prompting the GM to think about his intended design.

So where the section is lengthy is in its examples—and really good examples they prove to be. Stormcallers power their ambitions by tapping into the five Great Storms raging at the heart of creation—Earthquake, Flood, Glacier, Inferno, and Thunder, whilst Storm Summoners conjure the elementals of these storms to do their bidding. Each example can be used independently, but they nicely go together with the Stormcallers being a development of the magic system in Evil Hat Games’ The Dresden Files RPG. Thematically, The Six Viziers is a ‘Great Steppes of Russia’ inspired system where the characters are marked with a tattoo of one of the great constellations—or Viziers—in the sky and are thus capable of great actions with their skills. In comparison, The Subtle Art opts for the understated effect, that is, the placing of temporary blessings and curses—or Aspects—upon a target. It has a much grittier feel than the other example systems. All of these magic systems are great, but the highlight is Voidcallers, essentially the black, black magic version of the Stormcallers. Instead of tapping into an elemental storm, a Voidcaller draws on the Void for aid and ‘great power’, but this comes with consequences—consequences of the GM’s choosing. This begs to be used as the basis for ‘things mankind is not meant to know’ campaign and as written does not necessarily come with tentacular trappings, but there is nothing to stop a GM from adding these if so desired. Accompanying each of the worked examples is a ‘30-Second Version’ that summarises the system in easy to digest thumbnail fashion. Very useful—and that is before you get to the full details which beg to developed into a fuller setting.

Rounding out the FATE System Toolkit is a set of subsystems, ones that enable the GM to take his game into different directions and enable him to do different things in his game. These include Kung Fu, Cyberware, Gadgets, Monsters, military Squads and Mass Battles, Swashbuckling Duels, Vehicles, Superheroics, and Horror games. Of these, Kung Fu has been more recently done for the Wuxia genre with the alternate takes given in Tianxia: Blood, Silk, & Jade and Jadepunk: Tales of Kausao City. Military Squads and Mass Battles are handled as characters and character-versus-character—as per the Bronze Rule that turns everything into characters—just as you would expect, whilst the Monster rules  do a good job of handling Very Large Monsters across multiple zones. So good for fighting truly big dragons, kaijū, or monsters like those of the computer game, Shadow of the Colossus. The Duelling subsystem works in a similar fashion, enabling characters to swashbuckle back and forth across zones as well as giving advantage to the duellist who makes the best use of the terrain in each of the zones in addition to their opponent’s psychology. Both the Cyberware and Gadgets subsystems enable characters to build great devices, that is with advantages and weaknesses, whilst the Vehicles subsystem calls for the characters to emotionally invest in their joint-owned Mystery Van/Firefly class spaceship/Babylon 5.

Lastly, the FATE System Toolkit suggests ways in which FATE Core can do horror, a genre that it admits that it is ill equipped to handle. By turning up the Compels for an Oppressive Atmosphere, turning up the difficulty of any obstacles for Impossible Circumstances, and turning down player character resources—fate points, stress, and consequences—for Stark Desperation, the FATE System Toolkit shows how FATE Core could do horror, especially the more cosmic horror of Lovecraft’s works. These suggestions would also work nicely with the Voidcaller magic system given as an example earlier in the book.

Physically, the FATE System Toolkit is a sturdy hardback. It is well written, cleanly presented, and illustrated with some excellent artwork. This though, does not mean that it is without issue. Most RPGs involve one or more elements of the technical. Indeed the roleplaying game can be best described as ‘technical fiction’, their requiring technical information—or rules—to help the GM and his players participate in the fiction or setting. The FATE System Toolkit is more technical than fiction, which means that it is probably drier than most RPG supplements. Which does mean that FATE System Toolkit is not always the most engaging of reads and it explains why it took this reviewer more than one attempt to read through it, but to be fair, that is as much an issue with this reviewer as it is the book. In fact, it is probably more the former than the latter given that ideas in the FATE System Toolkit gives are imaginative and fun. There are, undeniably, great ideas in the FATE System Toolkit for adding this or that to a FATE Core game as well as, of course, for tinkering with different elements of said FATE Core game.

The rules and mechanics to almost every roleplaying game are written in stone. Their designers will doubtless note in the forward to said game that the game and thus the rules you have are now yours and can tinkered with or played the way that you want. Then they leave all of the effort making and implementing those changes up to you. Not so the designers of FATE Core. They give you a book that is entirely devoted to thinking about and implementing those changes to make FATE Core your game. Then they give you examples. Really good examples.

You never need anything more than FATE Core to run or create a FATE game, but the FATE System Toolkit may well be ever so useful when the GM and his players come to do so. The FATE System Toolkit is a thoughtful tinkerer’s guide to getting under the hood of FATE Core.

Aargh! Thar be brains!

The fact is, I have been waiting for years to write that title. I have always liked All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Eden Studios, Inc.’s RPG of horror and surviving the zombie apocalypse—and in particular, its many supplements. From Enter the Zombies and Pulp Zombies to Fistful O’ Zombies and One of the Living, each offered interesting zombified twists upon classic genres—even Zombie Smackdown, a supplement that actually managed to make the subject of wrestling not only interesting, but also palatable and fun. So the news that the publisher would be releasing a pirates and zombies supplement was most welcome indeed—and not only because I could use this particular title.

Unfortunately, by the time Aargh! Thar be Zombies! was published in 2010, it felt as if the premier zombie roleplaying game had missed the boat. After all, the mini-craze of piratically-themed roleplaying games, arguably initiated after the release of the film, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003, had sailed by 2010, no doubt spurred by that film’s decidedly dull sequels. And whilst Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl certainly had a dead hand in raising zombies to the mainstream, it was followed by dull sequels that added nothing to the genre whilst other media has had a stronger, more recent hand in making zombies popular. This is not say that Aargh! Thar be Zombies! is a bad supplement as there are some good ideas within its pages, but the truth of the matter it is not good one either. Which to be honest, is disappointing given the quality of the publisher’s previous support for All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

The main problem with Aargh! Thar be Zombies! A Pirate Sourcebook is the writing. Or rather, not with the writing, but with the editing. In terms of its actual writing, it is overwritten; in terms of if its ideas, it is often underdeveloped; and if anachronisms do not quite abound, they are certainly present. This supplement could have been a solid, if not a stand-out addition to the All Flesh Must Be Eaten line, but fundamentally it never got the edit it deserved or needed. The result is somewhat frustrating book, knowing it could have been just that little bit better.

Roughly half of the book is devoted to the subject of piracy. The history of piracy— including its Golden Age that lasted from 1680s to the 1720s; a discussion of why someone might go on Account—that is, become a pirate; life in the Age of Piracy, including death, disease (nasty they are too!), women pirates, the Pirate Articles, pirate punishments (the latter noting that being made to ‘walk the plank’ was a myth, though a good one), and more. Perhaps the most interesting section here is that devoted to Asian Piracy, which revolved the dynastic wars in Vietnam and the wars between Vietnam and China. This is interesting of course because it is unfamiliar, but it nicely dovetails into the supplement Enter the Zombie. At two pages long it feels a little short and perhaps deserves a chapter of its own, especially as it feels out of place amidst the traditional pirate history.

Mechanically,  Aargh! Thar be Zombies! works around three character types—the Norm, the Survivor, and the Inspired. This of course determines how much a player has to spend on his character’s stats, skills, and Qualities. Most player characters are expected to be Survivors, but the Zombie Master can allow the Inspired if he wants his game to include Vodou. In addition, the Silver Screen Swashbuckler is available if the Zombie Master is running a pulpier, more action orientated game. The supplement gives an array of Qualities and Drawbacks—advantages and disadvantages—to help create all four character types. For example, the ‘Born for the Sea’ and ‘Sea Legs’ Qualities and the ‘Landlubber’ Drawback are there as you would expect, as is the discussion of using the Physical Disability Drawback from the All Flesh Must Be Eaten for doing peg-legs and hooks for hands. Also included are rules for fighting Florentine style, that is with two weapons in true classical style. What is odd here, is that the history of duelling feels out of place in what is otherwise a very mechanical section and it does not help that the history is very Anglo-centric in that it does not present options for learning the art outside of London. 

Rules are included for the creation of ‘Zombie Swashbucklers’ player characters or NPCs. Essentially, these are a cut down version from those given in full detail in Enter the Zombie, though with a piratical slant. Thus the ‘Billy Bones’ Aspect allows for the creation of a fleshless zombie (or skeleton)whilst the ‘Ghostly Form’ Aspect allows for the creation of zombies that can walk through the bulkheads of ships or even a sword blow. As well as full equipment lists, the supplement of course handles ships and their crews in detail, including sample ships such as the galleon, the junk, and the viking longship! The equipment chapter also covers both experienced and cursed ships—plus ghostships, gives Qualities and Drawbacks to  individualise both ships and crews, and of course,  ship-to-ship combat, the latter a solid set of rules.

Aargh! Thar be Zombies! mixes both authenticity and Hollywood in its treatment of the magic and religion of the period. Not ‘Voodoo’, but ‘Vodou’, in which practitioners can invoke and entreat the Loa to gain the benefit of various miracles and rituals. These are powerful without being flashy and go all the way up rituals involving zombies. There is plenty of opportunity here for roleplay by any character who is practitioner, and similarly, for the GM to portray the Loa whom the character may need to do favours for.

Aargh! Thar be Zombies! includes several campaign settings or Deadworlds, just as you would expect with any supplement for All Flesh Must Be Eaten. There are three fully described ones, plus two shorter ones, followed by some scenario ideas. The five begin in somewhat mundane fashion, with ‘Voodoo Queen of the Shrouded Isles’ in which a Vodou Mambo calls for vengeance after she has been wronged and so unleashes a zombie plague from the Caribbean upon the rest of the world. ‘The Black Fleet’ is equally as mundane, having an Aztec curse unleash a plague of black ships upon the world. Both of these Deadworlds feel as if the author was obliged to include because after all, you have to do something based upon a certain series of pirate films. Given just how ordinary they are, it is a pity that so much space was devoted to them.

Fortunately, both are followed by the third, fuller Deadworld, ‘Islands in a Dark Sky’. This is the absolute highlight of Aargh! Thar be Zombies! and describes a Deadworld in which Galileo uses Da Vinci’s flying machine to leave the Earth and sail ‘the Dark Sea’ between the worlds. By 1643 pirates, national navies, and merchantmen now sail ‘the Dark Sea’ in Essence-powered ships, whilst their crews know not to fall overboard lest their Essence is leached out… Another threat are the Necronian Corsairs, fearsome skeletoid humanoids that hover near death and who augment themselves with horns, spines, wings, and more to further instil fear in their continuing drive to drain Essence from other worlds and other species. It is also possible to create Essence-powered devices and weapons, such as flintlocks, lightning swords, and air masks. This is an engaging mix of the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres that transplants all of the piratical elements to between worlds, whilst adding the unknown and the chance to explore new ‘seas’ and ‘strange new worlds’ to the mix. This could almost have been a whole setting all on its own, and certainly more space could have been devoted to it in favour of some of the less interesting Deadworlds.

Of the lesser Deadworlds, ‘Tay Son Rebellion’ draws heavily on the section describing Asian Piracy to give something interesting, a big civil war that spreads beyond the borders of Vietnam to involve China and eventually armies of thinking zombie! There is potential here to mix in Enter the Zombie and thus add in Wuxia zombies, just as there is potential here for something exotic and more flavoursome than the first two Deadworlds. So it is a pity that this is as short as it is. Lastly, ‘The Aztec Lord’s Curse’ is as the title suggests another take upon the Aztecs and curses, and again is more interesting than ‘The Black Fleet’, though not by much. 

Physically, Aargh! Thar be Zombies! feels rushed and not quite up to the standard of previous supplements for All Flesh Must Be Eaten. As has already been mentioned, the editing is lacklustre at best, woeful at worst, whilst an actual feature of Eden Studios, Inc.’s house style actually leads to an annoying anachronism. The publisher alternates gender in terms of ‘he’, ‘she’, and so on, from one chapter to the next. The problem is that in a semi-historical book like Aargh! Thar be Zombies! this just looks anachronistic. Another annoyance is the use of the piratical vernacular. It works in the sections of colour fiction that precede each chapter, but not in the main text where it it is at odds with technical context of the book.

If you were looking to run a game set in the Age of Piracy using the UniSystem, then Aargh! Thar be Zombies! would be a good place to start—and if you wanted to add zombies and Vodou, then again Aargh! Thar be Zombies! would be a good place to start. Yet were you looking for inspiration, particularly from its Deadworlds, then whilst Aargh! Thar be Zombies! is not without its flavoursome and inspiring settings, the majority are uninspiring and uninteresting at worst, at best, just flat—or is that becalmed? The overall effect is to undermine the solid content to be found within the pages Aargh! Thar be Zombies! whose parts are better than the sum of its whole.

Zombies? None Today.

Since 1999, when it comes to zombies and RPGs, All Flesh Must Be Eaten from Eden Studios has been the holder of the corpse crown. Yes, there have been contenders, such as the unimpressive Dead Reign from Palladium Games and Goblinoid Games’ interesting and charming Rotworld, but All Flesh Must Be Eaten remains the cadaver king. Much of that is due to the Origins Award winning RPG being supported with some excellent sourcebooks that explored variations upon the classic shambling undead and showed how they could easily be inserted into genres beyond the collapse of our society as the dead rise that we know and love from George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and more recently from The Walking Dead television series. Over the years, the RPG has received supplements that covered Martial Arts (Enter the Zombie), Fantasy (Dungeons & Zombies), and even Wrestling (Zombie Smackdown), amongst others, but never Science Fiction. Well, that latter claim is not really true, because All Flesh Must Be Eaten got its very own “Sci-Fi Sourcebook” with the release of All Tomorrow’s Zombies back in 2007. So I have had this book waiting to be reviewed for no little time, and in the meantime, I have picked up a copy of the next sourcebook, Argh! Thar Be Zombies! which is all about zombies and pirates. In order to review that, it behoves me to review All Tomorrow’s Zombies before I get to either Argh! Thar Be Zombies! or the forthcoming World War II supplement, Band of Zombies.

Anyway, All Tomorrow’s Zombies, the supplement that shoves zombies into outer space and into the future, shows the Zombie Master how to do the genre of Science Fiction in the UniSystem, the mechanics used in all of Eden Studios’ RPGs. It has a lot to deal with, primarily how technology works and how it affects both the player characters or members of the Cast, and members of the carcass carnival. Primarily, these technologies are Bioware, Cyberware, and Nanotech, the purchase of the associated Qualities (or Advantages) enables a Cast member to select Enhancements such as Bio Filter, Dermal Armour, and Infravision. Some Enhancements are also available to Cast members who are Robots – similarly available to select for player characters, and also to zombies, which are not available as player characters. Another option for Cast members is Psionics, the rules in All Tomorrow’s Zombies being a streamlined version of those previously outlined in Pulp Zombies.

As well as augmenting themselves with advanced technology, with All Tomorrow’s Zombies, the Cast members get to play with it. The equipment list is not extensive, but it covers all of the genre’s staples, from Motion Sensors and Teleport Anchors to Energy Swords and Pulse Rifles. If the Cast members want spaceships, then they can buy and design them with the Spacecraft Quality, which in effect works like the Bioware, Cyberware, and Nanotech Qualities, but allows the Cast to design a spaceship that is their personal property, fitting it out with Qualities and Enhancements of its own, including an intelligent ship’s computer and a teleporter. Some the supplement’s settings, or Deadworlds, come with their pre-costed starship designs. To accompany the starship creation rules, the vehicle rules for All Flesh Must Be Eaten are expanded to cover space travel and starship combat, whilst other rules handle cyberspace and hacking as well as the hazards of the various different environments that the Cast members might encounter. Over all these rules should handle most situations, but they are not all that hard in terms of the science in “Science Fiction,” tending towards the fiction rather than the science.

Similarly, the discussion for the Zombie Master about how to game the genre of Science Fiction tends to take a broad overview rather than delve into exacting detail. This is primarily because the type of Science Fiction that the supplement draws from, mostly film and television Science Fiction, should be familiar to most of its readers. One interesting aspect of the genre is that for most part, zombies cannot be created through magic, the supplement instead offering some contemporary alternatives, such as Tetrodotoxin or “Zombie Powder,” Scopolamine, and variant-Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease. This is in addition to the new zombie Aspects that have a more modern bent like being Solar Powered or needing to feed on Radiation.

As with other genre books for All Flesh Must Be Eaten, this supplement comes with its own share of settings or “Deadworlds” as they are known, that makes use of genre support presented earlier in the supplement. There are seven in All Tomorrow’s Zombies, which take up just over half of the book. The first of these is “The Cybered Dead,” which essentially takes the entirety of the genre elements discussed in the previous pages and dumps them wholesale into a Cyberpunk style future. Naturally, national governments have weakened as the corporations have risen to power and in many cases, sovereignty. As the rights of the individual has dwindled, some have either sought protection as indentured employees of the corporations, or slipped into the shadows to survive as cybered up street samurai and Cyberweb riding cowboys, working for principles if they can, or the highest bid if they cannot. Where the zombies enter the picture is originally as the victims of a biochemical act of terrorism, but these were then co-opted by various corporations as cybered up undead security and shock troops. Since outlawed, these combat zombies still turn up and they are still created, so finding out is just one aim of those that run the shadows like the Cast. The problem with “The Cybered Dead” is its “kitchen sink” approach to the genre. What this means is that it is all too familiar and too obvious. The only really interesting aspect of this Deadworld is the addition the undead and that is just not quite enough to make the Deadworld stand out.

If “The Cybered Dead” is all too familiar, the second Deadworld, “The Cycle of Death” probably suffers from the opposite. It depicts a future in which near barbarism following a radical decline in oil supplies has been avoided by genetic engineering enhanced by nanotechnology. Originally developed by engineers from India, the spread and application of this new technology has also been accompanied by the spread and widespread acceptance of Indian culture and Hinduism as a faith. Where it has not completely broken down, society has settled down into a pattern of city states that due to nanotechnology are mostly self-sufficient. Most people have been modified for the better by this technology, and that includes the Cast, each of whom have the ability to modify themselves to a limited extent. The Cast, whether security for a city state or a nanotech engineer, will face bigger problems than the gangs that roam the wilderness in the form of two types of tough zombies derived from the prevailing technology. Beyond facing these new types of zombie – and they are interesting in themselves – “The Cycle of Death” does leave you Zombie Master wondering what quite else to do with this Deadworld because it is never really discussed.

“Cyber Marines and Death Machines” is an even more obvious Deadworld in terms of its inspiration. The “Cyber Marines” part of the title gives it away. This is a Deadworld of pure Survival Horror inspired primarily by the film Aliens, but also by Predator and Resident Evil. When contact is lost with the remote colony of MR-372, a recon unit of colonial marines, along with the usual corporate advisors, is sent in to investigate. As the world reveals its secrets, the team is forced to confront their worst fears, desperate isolation, a hostile environment, and monsters that are every bit as yucky as those from the Alien series. Plus zombies, of course. There is room in this Deadworld for expansion beyond a simple one-shot, both backwards and forwards. The authors suggest that it could be run as a sequel to the “They Came from Beyond” Deadworld to be found in the All Flesh Must Be Eaten corebook, and then use the supplement, One of the Living, for advice and resources on handling the Cast’s survival in the long term. If “The Cybered Dead” is all too familiar, so is “Cyber Marines and Death Machines.” Yet “Cyber Marines and Death Machines” is a more effective piece because its treatment of its genre is more focused and not as broad.

For its inspiration, the Deadworld “Virtual Armageddon” draws from the Matrix series of films as well as the MMORPGs of today. It depicts a future in which the solution to a society riven by disease is upload everyone’s consciousness into a global virtual world known as Neutopia. There some people continue to live an ordinary existence, whilst others see their new existence to play in virtual worlds of the imagination, able to adventure, but never truly die. This is, of course, the perfect excuse for the Zombie Master to get out his other All Flesh Must Be Eaten genre books and run adventures in these genres within Neutopia. Fistful o’ Zombies (Wild West and zombies), Dungeons and Zombies, and Pulp Zombies will all be useful for that, but Enter the Zombie (zombies and martial arts) will be the most useful if the Zombie Master wants to let the Cast employ Matrix-style moves in his games. The introduction of the zombie into this Deadworld is particularly fitting, drawing from the MMORPG playing experience, and the zombie is introduced not just in the virtual world, but the real one too. Overall, this Deadworld offers the most flexibility because it can draw upon many genres, and the Cast get to play some quite powerful characters.

Although its title is not quite as telling, of all of the Deadworlds in All Tomorrow’s Zombies, “The Death of the Alliance” is actually the most obvious in terms of its inspiration. For millennia, the twin empires of Thaxia and Zothia co-existed peacefully; the Thraxian Empire, governed by its Mystic Knights, providing foodstuffs and spiritual guidance whilst the Zothian Empire provided technology in return. Yet an ambitious advisor to the Zothian Emperor and a fallen Mystic Knight subverted the teachings of the Mystic Knights to usurp the throne and declare war on the Thraxian Empire. The latter managed to hold out until Emperor Krauss and Dark Lord Garth used necromancy to turn the inhabitants of Thraxia into zombies and so raise an unstoppable army of the undead. This then, is a Space Opera setting that should essentially be retitled “Star Wars and Zombies!” This could be huge fun and this shows in the well-executed efforts to work the undead into a familiar setting. It is also perhaps the easiest of the Deadworlds to run in All Tomorrow’s Zombies because it is so familiar and so light in feel. Bar of course, the existence of the zombies.

Rounding out the supplement in “Future Shock,” is a pair of Deadworlds that the Zombie Master will have to develop himself. The first of these, “Dead Contact,” is a variation upon “Cyber Marines and Death Machines,” but has the Cast as the inhabitants of a colony that discovers a secret, whilst “I, Zombie” reveals the dangers of a new form of near instantaneous travel.

Physically, All Tomorrow’s Zombies is well presented and well written. The artwork nicely depicts the grim nature of the various settings, and if the book needs a little editing here and there, it is only minor.

In all honesty, one of the reasons that I did not review this book when I first bought it was because I did not enjoy it. There was something about the supplement that was dissatisfying. On reading it for a second time, All Tomorrow’s Zombies is still dissatisfying, but not to the same degree. The source of the dissatisfaction is twofold. First, there is the breadth of the genre that the supplement has to encompass. In terms of rules and mechanics, All Tomorrow’s Zombies does encompass the genre successfully, but in terms of the Deadworlds, less so. Which leads to the second issue, that of uneven Deadworlds. The least interesting and most dissatisfying Deadworlds are too broad and leave the Zombie Master as to what to do beyond facing the members of recently risen retinue, which in some cases are not themselves all that interesting. The better Deadworlds, specifically “Cyber Marines and Death Machines” and “The Death of the Alliance” are better written, and more effort is made to work the undead into both.

Over all, All Tomorrow’s Zombies is still a good sourcebook for All Flesh Must Be Eaten. It does a good job of handling the Science Fiction genre for both the RPG and the UniSystem in general, such that in using its rules you could run a Science Fiction campaign in the setting of your choice or of your own creation. Plus you do get some really creepy, often nasty Deadworlds that bring zombie horror to the genre.