Free League always delivers these quality boxed games. Licensed games like the AMC Walking Dead Universe RPG are solid. This is a well-built game with a tuned and custom set of rules to handle zombie hordes in a smooth, uncomplicated, and accessible style built into the mechanics.
New players will be fine with this set of rules; combats will not take hours, and this is not 5E.
Some Zombie RPGs give statistics for every strange type of zombie, from spitters, irradiated crawlers, toxic sludge zombies, impersonators, wall crawlers, and other crazy sci-fi types. This game sticks to the TV series: zombie hordes are all the same, and the drama and battle between the living give you the heavy dramatic punch.
These games remind me of the classic Gangbusters, Star Frontiers, and Gamma World boxed sets of the early 1980s - one box and a lifetime of fun. Of course, this game is split into a starter set, a GM screen, and a hardcover, which is fine. Like Twilight: 2000 and the Alien RPG, a straightforward set of rules does it all and leans heavily on the theme and source material.
One book and done is how you do it.
The title is strange, but who cares? AMC is trying to push new shows and expanding their shared universe to be more than just the original. I like it better as the shared universe game than the original series since it puts PCs in a position of importance and puts the iconic characters in the backseat. I have had licensed games devolve into "the characters from the movie" and that constant Hollywood "every character in the original series is important and has a backstory" crap that Star Wars pulls all the time.
I don't care! You can do a movie in New York City full of random people on the street, and not all of them are important and pivotal to the character arcs of the main characters. Even Pathfinder was slightly tarnished by the ever-present iconic characters - I love them, but enough is enough. Still, they are overused in the game, and the game sometimes feels like the Pathfinder: The Iconic Character RPG.
No more iconic characters in RPGs; I see them as a negative these days.
Also, what good are they? Sure, they highlight builds and concepts, but at the cost of being ever-present 'superheroes' that you can never kill, or worse, designer self-inserts, and if something terrible happens to them in your storyline, people will see your world as 'less' or 'problematic' or 'breaking lore.' Worse yet, casually mention something terrible happened to a self-insert designer character in your world, and you may be targeted on social media. They are as bad as the Forgotten Realms novel characters were in the 1990s, maybe worse these days, and they drag the game down with designer hubris.
The characters and ideas players imagine should always come first.
I know the art in The Walking Dead RPG has all the TV show characters. Some groups and characters in the show make cameos in the adventures. The game even has a section on 'playing Rick' that says you could or could meet them, but the game encourages you to be you. None of them are elevated to a position of godhood.
I like this a lot.
Let the players be their own people first and foremost. Even the factions are generic and left for you to create. Thank you for giving my imagination room to explore and not hacking out a cash-in that makes players unimportant compared to the iconic superhero NPCs that no one will ever live up to.
It's best to say everyone in the TV show in this world never made it.
This is your story.
But...If people just want to play their own version of Rick or Daryl, okay, let them. If they want to replay a part of the series with those characters, fine. Some people have no clue about an RPG (and this reminds me of my mother) but would love to play a character in the TV show for a while - just like a video game. That is all that matters as long as they play and have fun.
They can tell their own stories later if they want. Or not. They have a mode of the game that plays through TV show situations. Okay, great, it is there if you are a mega fan. I like the comics more, honestly, and to each their own.
Myself? I like my own stories. And iconic characters suck the life out of the game.
They could do a Breaking Bad or Sons of Anarchy game in much the same way, and I would play those since the designers are more focused on gameplay and mechanics, with a new player-friendly experience. I would love to see a Planet of the Apes or Bruce Lee martial arts game from this team. Or Sergio Leone westerns! Heck, even a Free League Barbie RPG would be a riot. Because I trust them to do it well, make it compelling, and focus on what makes playing the game fun.
Or a Mad Max game...
What I would do for a Free League Mad Max game.
This team can take source material tightly tied to a set of iconic characters and turn that around to make it more about the players and their stories. That is not easy, and you rarely see this done. Open up any Marvel or DC roleplaying game, and you will get the feeling your characters are second-rate superheroes and will never compare to the legends.
I want my players to be the legends.
It is not too much to ask.
I like this game being tied to a media property, but it is also a fantastic generic zombie game in its own right. Come to think of it, any monster movie with a horde of whatever could be simulated with these rules. The Killer Rats, The Bat Swarms, The Cockroach Horde, The Killer Bees, The Giant Ants, Carnivore Cats, The Birds, The Blob, The Anger Virus, The Deadly Roombas, or anything else could be dropped in and played as the zombies here. Play it in a flooded world and use piranhas, crocodiles, sharks, or fishmen! Play it in a sci-fi world and make them clouds of nano-bots that disassemble and disintegrate people into base chemicals.
Any 'killer horde' monster movie works fine with these rules.
They include solo-play rules! Very nice. I swear solo play rules and modifications are something I look for in new games as an accessibility feature. The game still has standalone value even if you have nobody to play with. The game also has tons of random tables and scenario-creation tools, something I wish the old Aftermath game had. Post-apocalypse is a tricky genre to GM and play in, and this game makes it accessible and easy for newcomers.
The story and lore? Up to you. Play at any point in the epidemic. Use any origin story you want. Make the world end or not. Write the end of the story yourself. Or just watch the characters fall and start new ones. Again, the game is tied more to the genre than the lore, making it approachable to fans and non-fans alike. There are books on the official narrative and characters; if you want to use those as sourcebooks - go right ahead. If you want to ignore everything and just play a 'generic zombie game like the show,' - it works that way, too.
You could play this as George Romero's Zombies and have as much fun.
You can watch all seasons of every show, one or even zero episodes, and you can play. Roughly understand zombies from any movie, and you can play.
This is a solid game, and like the Alien RPG, it is something most everyone is familiar with and can drop into without too much explanation. This concept is the future of RPGs: give people a game that can let them quickly drop into a fantasy based on something they know and give them that instant experience in a familiar world.
What would you do?
Play the game and find out.
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