Professional Documents
Culture Documents
aimless and sad. Five years ago the worlds governments declared the undead anathema; blasphemies, health hazards, eyesores. Four years ago the factory crematoriums started up, the morticrews began sweeping the streets of 1st world nations with pickaxes and flame throwers to clean up unsightly zombies, and the menace that had claimed not a single life started to recede from the places that mattered to those in power. 3 years ago, the dead as one began to fight back. No one knows why, but they did with overwhelming force, viciousness and cunning for which there were no preparations and no antidotes. Now, the world is a necropolis, ruled in silence by the vengeful and hungry dead. You are a survivor of the mindless war that they have wrought, and you and your fellow humans constitute a glimmer of hope for a species on the brink of extinction. It is your decisions that decide whether you live or die, thrive or merely survive and whether or not youll recognize who youve become in the process. More than just monsters stand in your way as you try to make a life for yourself in the chaos. Youll face the foolish decisions, flaws, and outright bastardry of your fellow man, and the challenge of living in a world which has forgotten humanity. Stay together, keep sharp, keep a tight hold upon your humanity, and fear the living as much as you fear the dead. What is Fear the Living? Fear the Living is a role-playing game where you and your friends sit around a table and work together to make a story about a small and likely desperate band of survivors trying to make a life for themselves in the midst of a world overrun by zombies. All but one of you takes responsibility for portraying one particular survivor, a man or woman with more than just staying off of some zombies menu on their mind. Someone who has decided for whatever reason to join with other survivors to make something better for themselves (and maybe for others). You decide what your character thinks and feels, how they act, and why. People can always suggest things about your character but they arent able to change them; at least not without giving you as the characters player a chance to do something about it. One person out of your group of friends is the GM, and that means that he or she is responsible for portraying everything else. They portray all of the supporting characters and antagonists, and describe the scenes and environments that the characters find themselves in to the people playing them. The GM is also responsible for pushing everyone elses characters into conflict; with zombies, with survivors controlled by her, with the environment, and especially with other player-controlled survivors in the group. As everyone plays, the conflicts the GM generates will force your characters to make tough decisions that will end up showing to everyone (other characters, the people at the table, yourself) exactly what your character is all about. What they value, what theyre
willing to toss aside, what theyre willing to suffer and sacrifice and even die for. And each characters actions, their preemptive strikes and foolish mistakes and masterstrokes will generate consequences that reverberate throughout the story, and will change the survivors little corner of the world, and the survivors themselves forever. Whats It Like? You know the end of every great zombie movie out there (that doesnt end with everyone getting ripped to shreds or blown into their component molecules), where it fades to black and some tiny part of your brain is asking itself What happens next?. How do they cope? Do they rebuild civilization? How many Twinkies are left?. Fear the living answers those questions not right away, but as you play all of those questions will end up answered one way or another (except for maybe that one about the snack cakes). Its based off of miniseries and shows like The Walking Dead and The Stand where each new episode (or session, in gaming parlance) presents new and different pressures and crises while amping up and feeding off of whats come before. The creepy eyed loner your characters traded salted meat and 10 year old energy drinks with in session one might end up sneaking into your camp in order to get a closer look at the handsome young survivor that reminds him of his son from before the apocalypse. By session 5, the few remaining members of your party are huddled up in a shack hiding from the freak whos killed several of you so that he and Johnny can be a family again. Meanwhile zombies swarm all around and a bitter rivalry thats been festering for years between the groups leaders erupts into violence. This horrible spiral of death and doom might be how things often end up in the movies, but rest assured that your character (and his or her fellow survivors) can keep things from getting that bad if theyre lucky and they work at it. Above all else, the consequences of the survivors actions (or inaction) are what drive the story. The GMs place in all of this is to avoid planning to make anything in particular happen, focusing instead on playing his characters to the hilt and describing the world that the characters live and die in. GM should develop their characters desires, plans, flaws, and fuckups and do everything in that characters power to see their desires and plans realized (even if its as simple as rampage, eat brains, repeat), but not be afraid to see them change or die and to let the dice fall where they may. Fear the Living assumes some basic points about the world that the survivors exist in, and the setting in general. Zombies exist, theyve overrun the world and demolished nearly all organized government (and certainly any nearby the survivors), supplies are running short etc. If youve seen even one or two zombie apocalypse movies youll get the gist of what the game assumes out of the box. The rest (what caused the zombies to appear in the first place, why they suddenly started attacking and consuming everyone, how people have coped, what the world looks like now that most of humanity is dead) thats all up to the people around the table. It might sound weird, but youll figure it out as you play. When someone says their character came from a group of cultic survivors who believe the undead are the product of the rapture gone bad, and who occupy the western half of what was once Iowa then everyone listen to that player, its part of the game. Trust your friends not to
come up with anything really ridiculous (green rhinos from the moon started the apocalypse!), unless of course everyone is on board with that sort of thing. Whats important is for the group to respect what each characters personality and backstory says about the world, even if it hasnt already been established. If someone talks about how their character was stationed with the national guard when Chicago fell to the dead, listen because that means that Chicago fell at that point in time. If different characters perspectives and stories contradict one another, all the better. Maybe someone insists that Chicago didnt fall, that they grew up in a protected suburb that harkened back to the days before the zombie plague. In cases like this, its up to the GM to determine whats what, with the preference being that both are true to some degree (maybe there are safe zones outside of Chicago, but the city itself has fallen, maybe portions of it have been reclaimed under military junta, maybe the zombies just leave certain areas alone for some reason, but stand outside the gates watching with cold dead eyes) the possibilities are endless. Play Prep 1. Get people on board with the game. If someone in your group hates zombies and zombie related media then either find something else to play or see if theyre cool with gaming with everyone else some other time. 2. Get someone to be the GM, everyone else is a player. 3. Have everyone read through the rules. This wont take as much time as you think it will, the rules are simple. No one needs to be an expert, but the GM in particular should have a firm handle on how the rules of the game function and how the dice are used. 4. Run everyone through creating a character by the book. Include the read-aloud parts and the conversations. Theyre important even if they make you feel a bit silly. 5. The GM should have an idea from these conversations what initial situations to throw at the group. More information on how to make situations and NPCs that will spark with your players survivors is contained in the GM advice section. 6. Get as many six sided dice together as you all can, pooling them together in the center of the table if you need to. When someone needs to roll dice, take them from this pile. Geek Dice Speak For Normal Folks When your character tries to do something and theres someone or someone trying to stop them, or when something important is on the line then the dice come out. Fear the Living uses six sided dice (called d6s), to determine if a character succeeds or fails at what theyre trying to do, how well, and whether or not they suffer in the process. During the game, youll likely roll more than one d6 at a time-instances like that are noted as a number followed by d6, where the number is the number of six sided dice you roll. This means for example, that rolling 3d6 means rolling 3 six sided dice. Sometimes the game will call for your to add bonus dice to your characters roll, this is listed as +(however many) d6. So a rule that adds 2 dice to your characters roll is listed as a +2 bonus or as +2d6. Sometimes the rules will inflict a penalty to someones dice roll, representing challenges or interference that make things more difficult. Such penalties are represented as a minus sign followed by a number of d6s, denoting how many are subtracted from a roll. No penalty
can ever remove a survivors base die though-so you can always make some manner of effort, even if the deck is really stacked against you.
Setting
This is a rough outline, a way to get you into the frame of mind of a survivor. Most of this is probably true in your Fear the Living game, but some of it might not be. Look at the stories of each survivor for inspiration, and ask the GM if everyone has different ideas. The world is desolate. Everywhere you see the slowly decaying remnants of human civilization, both beautiful and garish. A classic 67 Chevy convertible sits abandoned on a winding country road, fuzzy dice soaked with blood, the white leather seats are ripped and torn but the body still gleams with just a few flecks of rust. Times Square is dark, and no ball has been dropped there for nearly 10 years. The only cheering heard twisting through city streets clogged with derelict cars is the tired moaning of the dead that rises to a fever pitch as they seize a hold of new prey. Nature is beginning to reclaim the areas that humanity has cut and burned for itself-grass growing through the cracks in sidewalks, deer and cougars prowling once sterile suburbs watching with wary eyes for roaming survivors or packs of the undead. Every now and then, in the big cities youll see a lucky escapee from a zoo, a tiger or gazelle or chimp moving idly through a concrete jungle, trying desperately to make its way. Maybe even crying out plaintively for a mate. In most places though, the only sounds are those of what living animals are fast or smart enough to avoid being devoured, and the dull noise of zombies. Early on, when humanity still had a real chance there was widespread looting-they took guns, bottled water, as well as ephemera like porn magazines, televisions, candy bars. Later on, people started going after gas stations, military surplus stores, and hospitals in earnest, some dead-set on stripping them bare others looking for someone to blame. Protest signs litter the streets where once were housed the most powerful men and women of the world. Supplies can still be found, a corner shop barred and locked in the first days of the struggle where one can still find painkillers and dried meat that might not kill you, but even in the first world such things are rare and precious. Few people have guns, and the ones who do are usually the ones who have everything else-or who are out in force looking for it. The gasoline was used up quick, or else expired sitting in derelict vehicles, but every now and then survivors hear rumors of folks who have commandeered oil refineries and are restarting production. A lot of them are tall talesand most of them dont end well. At this point, humanity hasnt gotten itself back off the ground yet-its still at the point where its struggling to survive and cope. Most people out there (barring those that were infants when it first hit) havent spent their entire lives living in fear, are used to the comparatively soft ways of life that their parents enjoyed. Government is a joke, an improvised thing thrown together by small groups of survivors to add a semblance of normalcy to things, or a pretense used to legitimize the use of force. Some people say they still see choppers in the sky now and again, or old army trucks riding by. Most of those
people are at least halfway to crazy town. People, by and large are on their own or must trust the ragged souls theyve managed to gather together. Speaking of which
Character Creation
Your character is a survivor of the zombie apocalypse. Maybe theyre blessed by god (or the gods), maybe theyre uniquely suited to a world where might makes right and what you have is what you take, maybe someone else looked out for them and protected them, maybe theyre just that good, or maybe theyre just damn lucky. As you define the capabilities and limitations of your survivor, youll figure out exactly what they are made of, how they survived, and how theyll deal with the challenges before them. First and foremost besides being a survivor, your character knows every other players character. They might all be friends from before the plague, they might have banded together sometime later for safety in numbers, they might be family, lovers, rivals, or members of the same religious group struggling to hold onto their faith. Whats important is that they know each other, and are connected in some way. They may not trust one another 100%, and not everyone has to be best friends but its assumed at the beginning of the game that they can (for now) at least stand each other (and trust each other) enough that they wont immediately go to ripping each others throats out. Trust me, starting from that point isnt a whole lot of fun. Start from at least a point of wary respect or an understanding of mutual benefit. The throat ripping can come later. Copy a character sheet from this book (or take one of the spares from the back), and create a character during the first session. Dont have a character planned out in advance, and dont get stuck on any particular idea until you talk things out with the group. Talk with everyone and get a read on what sort of game they want to play like Oh we want to be the members of a biker gang roaming across the Midwest in search of a promised sanctuary. Talk it out, be open and honest about what you want from the game and from the story and let your characters flow from there. If anyone has a funky idea for a character, try to work it in as best you can. Then have each person go through each step of the character creation process, filling out the sheet as they go. By the end, youll have a fully realized survivor with strengths, weaknesses, hopes, dreams, and a complicated tangle of relationships with your fellow survivors (both player characters and GM controlled survivors). Step 1: Archetype A lot of horror movies have characters that are little more than clichd archetypes. The grounded everyman that becomes a great leader in the face of horror, the dumb kid who survives when no one else does by luck and purity, the stone-cold badass with no friends no regrets and a hell of a lot of weapons, the professional who thinks they can control, categorize, or quantify whats happened whether to save the world or remake it on their terms. Theres a reason for that. Archetypes might not be all that realistic, but they each make a statement about human nature, or show us as we wish we could be or as were
afraid we might be. Theyre far enough from real people to keep us grounded from the horror, but close enough to us to suck us in and keep us entertained. True to form, Fear the Living draws on those same archetypes but with the distinction that theyre just starting points. Youre character might be a Badass, but he or she is so much more than that. Every character is the product of their relationships and past as much as the mechanical choices you make during character creation. One badass might be an ex-leg breaker for the mob that got out of the racket when the getting was good and the family wasnt getting wise to the growing zombie problem, but his own family was in danger. Another might be a kindly reverend whose kind words and quick hands with his walking stick mask a troubled soul thats questioning his god in the midst of the tragedy. What a characters archetype does is define what role theyll play in the story by defining where their strengths lie when things begin. It determines how many points you get to put into Reserves, how many Talents you get, what Liabilities you bring to the group, what sort of Gear you have, and what your Relationships are like with the other survivors. Each archetype also gives you a one-time bonus that no other Archetype has access to called a Signature that lets your characters break the rules of the game in certain specific situations that epitomize their particular role. But dont worry too much, theyll change and theyll change quickly. Dont agonize over your profile choice, as its just a starting point a statement of what your character is at the beginning of their journey-not an indication of how itll end. Thats for you, and the dice to decide. Choose one of the following archetypes for your character and write the name of the Archetype you selected in the Archetype section of your character sheet.
The Badass
Choose this archetype if you want your character to be larger than life, uniquely suited to life in an undead wasteland and ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum. Also prepare to be a little bit dysfunctional, and to run out of bubblegum pretty quickly. Reserve: 12 Talents: 4 Liabilities: 3-4 (Choose) Gear: 2 Pieces of Mundane Gear, 1 Piece of Customized Gear, 2 Supply Relationships: Somebody of your choice the group envies, hates, or is obsessed with you (their choice of which) in addition to whatever they wrote down for their feelings towards your character. Someone is curious about your character, and someone feels sorry for them. Only one person trusts you, and youve got to trust them too (one of the hazards of the calling). After everything is said and done, choose one word or a short phrase for each other survivor that describes your survivors other feelings towards them. Signature Kick Ass and Take Names: Whenever you roll dice to accomplish something, always treat one die that you roll as a success so long as you can describe your characters action in an over-the-top badass fashion. They dont just kick a zombie back,
they flip into the air and hit the undead fucker with a spinning roundhouse to the neck that sends the undead flying as they land with a smile and a quip. Once per session when faced with a conflict you can elect to kick ass and take names. Every die you get by spending from your reserves, taking risks, and talents is maximized, being treated as 6 (meaning a success) so long as you describe in true action-movie, splatter punk style how your character waltzes through the challenges before them. The more outlandishly badass the better. There is a catch though-your character is too badass to care much about collateral damage or the side effects of his badassery. When using Kick Ass and Take Names he cant use any of the maximized to eliminate risks; when you go balls to the wall, you just dont care about that shit. Additionally, the GM is under no obligation to inflict the risks on the Badass or his friends immediately, but can save them for later conflicts (such saved risks dont count towards the maximum of 4 risks that the GM can apply) or change them to represent the long-term consequences of his reckless behavior. Stuff like that always catches up to the badass The Would-Be Savior Choose this archetype if you want your character to be representative of the old worlds way of doing things as well as competent, skilled, and particularly focused on a goal of immeasurable importance. Also prepare to be in for a struggle-the world doesnt always fit into the box that youll strive to fit it in, and you cant always save what (or who) you want to save. Reserve: 11 Talents: 3 Liabilities: 2-3 (Choose) Gear: 3 Pieces of Mundane Gear, 2 Pieces of Specialized Gear, 3 Supply Relationships: Three people of your choice in the group trust you (its a heavy burden), if there are fewer than three people in the group, then all of them trust you. Two people in the group love you, are rivals to you, or are envious of you (alternatively you can choose that one person be two of the three). At your option, someone might also hate you-this can be someone that youve already chosen. After everything is said and done, choose one word or a short phrase for each other survivor that describes your survivors other feelings towards them. Signature Everythings On Me: At will, when youre acting alongside someone (if not necessarily cooperating), you can elect to take all of the risks on yourself before or after the dice have fallen. Doing so requires your character in some way acknowledge the risks before them and go forward anyway, shouldering the burden (or the cross if you prefer) so that others have chance to succeed. They mark experience equal to the number or risks you took on, and you mark 1 experience. In addition, when you cooperate with someone you roll an additional die. Additionally, once per session when you take responsibility for a mistake made by yourself or someone else, a failure, or other significant misfortune everyone in the group can
completely refresh one reserve of their choice. Your character taking responsibility for things must have consequences in the game in order for this ability to work.
Gear: 10 Pieces of Mundane Gear, 3 pieces of specialized gear, 1 piece of customized gear and 10 Supply. Relationships: Someone thinks youre crazy, someone thinks youre dangerous, someone thinks youre misunderstood (these can all be the same person if youd like), someone envies what you have. No one trusts you. You however trust one person of your choice, and are suspicious of someone else. After everything is said and done, choose one word or a short phrase for each other survivor that describes your survivors other feelings towards them. Signature Crazy Prepared: Whenever anyone needs a mundane item, you have it regardless of whether or not its written down on your character sheet. Its just assumed that your character has one squirreled away in his or her bunker or manages to scrounge one up just in time. Its not all sunshine and rainbows though-each time you acquire a mundane item through this signature choose one of the following to be true about it. It was stolen from somebody whos still looking for it. Theyre either alive, or your zombies are capable of holding grudges, and are guaranteed to come looking for it. It has the Stolen From Someone Who Cares Drawback in addition to any others that it has. Its held together with duct-tape, super glue, or goodwill and wont perform consistently. It has the Unreliable Drawback in addition to any others that it has. Its not exactly what you needed, but its close enough (a crowbar instead of a hammer, a bottle of vodka and a sewing kit instead of a first aid kit). The GM will tell you what its features and drawbacks are. Its finicky, and requires regular maintenance or else itll break. It has the High Maintenance Drawback. You have it, but not here and now. Its been loaned out to someone else, lost in a dangerous or inconvenient location, or is missing an important part that youll need to get if you want the thing to work. Once per session you can produce a mundane item that doesnt have anything wrong with it, a specialized item that has one of the above wrong with it, or a customized item with 2 of the following wrong with it. Alternatively, you can use this ability to declare one bigpicture thing about the apocalypse, zombies, the state of society, etc and have it be true (at least in broad strokes). Stuff like theres a functioning society 20 miles south of here, along the freeway thats cleared out the zombies. The GM is welcome to use such revelations on the part of the Crazy-Prepared individual in order to create future craziness, but can only elaborate on such revelations, he or she cant contradict them.
The Professional
Choose this archetype if you want your character to be the go to guy or gal for something, the one they call when they need a problem solved in a particular way. Or if you want to be competent and skilled without being outrageously flashy, nuts, or possessed of a messiah complex. Expect to be a valued member of the team, but prepare to have your skills used and abused by the people around you-perhaps for reasons that you wont agree with. Abilities: 11 Talents: 5 Liabilities: 2-3 (Choose)
Gear: 3 Pieces of Mundane Gear, 4 Pieces of Specialized Gear, 5 Supply Relationships: You can trust as many people as you like, but they choose whether or not they trust you-if they dont, then theyve got to distrust you. Two people respect you, one person either fears you or thinks they can use you. You feel like you owe someone, and you think someone in the group is dangerous. After everything is said and done, choose one word or a short phrase for each other survivor that describes your survivors other feelings towards them. Signature Cool Under Fire: Describe your area of expertise whether thats a profession, an inclination, or a hobby that your professional excels at. The professional ignores up to 2 risks declared by the GM from any roll so long as those risks relate to their area of expertise. So a professional whos area of expertise is defined as SWAT team member might be able to ignore the He might decide to start shooting captives and the You might shoot your friends risks inherent in taking back a fortified apartment complex from a stir-crazy survivalist and her cultist followers. Once per session you can add the maximum value of an Ability that applies to the roll youre making as a dice bonus to any roll that relates to your characters specialty. Your character is very good at what they do (although you choose if what your character does isnt very nice). Step 1 Assign Abilities and Determine Reserves Take a look at the number next to the Ability entry for the archetype that you picked. Split that number of points amongst your characters 4 categories of Ability writing each number down next to the corresponding ability line on your character sheet. The maximum amount you can put in any Ability is 5 and the minimum is 0 (you cant have a negative Ability). There are four different abilities for Survivors in Fear the Living Ruthlessness: Ruthlessness determines just how far your survivor can go, how brutal and pragmatic they can be in pursuit of their own goals. Humanity: Humanity is how selfless, idealistic, and nave your character is. How willing and able they are to put themselves on the line for others, and live up to higher principles. Will To Live: Will to Live measures how dedicated and determined your survivor is scratch out a life for themselves in this post-zompocalyptic world. Authority: Authority shows how much influence and weight the character has to throw around in social situations with other survivors. Each ability also has a Reserve associated with it that starts out equal to the ability itself. So if you have a Will to Live of 3, you start out with a Will to Live Reserve of 3. You spend your characters Reserves in order to roll additional dice in order to accomplish your characters goals. Indeed spending from your Reserves is the easiest and most common way to get beyond your starting 1d6 or base die.
You can only spend from an abilitys reserve if that ability relates to the goal or method of your survivors action. You can spend multiple types of Reserve at once to help your survivor accomplish what theyve set out to do, but only so long as all of the Reserves used apply. Heres a list of when you can spend from each abilitys reserves: Ruthlessness: When youre characters putting their own welfare above that of others, when theyre acting viciously, savagely, or wrathfully, or when theyre doing what needs to be done without any acknowledgement of the moral issues involved. Humanity: When your characters acting to help others, is acting according to preapocalypse moral codes, when they sacrifice something for the good of another, when they do something for someone they love or care about, or when theyre making a moral statement. Will To Live: When your characters health, life, or limb is at risk. You can also spend Will to Live whenever your character is defending their essential resources: their food, water, land, or sexual partner(s). If its something that your survivors animal brain would give a crap about, then Will to Live can be spent on it. Authority: When your characters action involves organizing or leading other survivors, when they attempt something controversial that the groups leadership sanctions, or when the character is socially interacting with (browbeating, chatting up, seducing etc.) other survivors. Once you spend points from an Abilitys Reserve in order to roll addition dice those points are gone until they refresh (the ability stays the same though). A survivor can only push on for so long before they become worn down, tired, and doubtful about where to go and what to do next. Fortunately for your survivor, they can refresh their reserves in various ways depending on the ability associated with it. Ruthlessness: Whenever you see someone living die or irreparably harmed, something beautiful destroyed, a harsh decision succeed at protecting the group, or someones selflessness or idealism threaten the groups safety refresh 1 Ruthlessness. Humanity: Whenever you see something beautiful created or preserved, a principled or idealistic decision succeed at protecting the group, evidence of life returning to normal, or someones selfishness or brutality threaten the groups safety refresh 1 Humanity. Will To Live: Whenever you get a full nights uninterrupted sleep, you go an entire day without fighting or fleeing for your life, you spend or destroy 1 supply just to have fun or blow off steam, or you achieve a definitive goal set by your survivor refresh 1 Will to Live. Authority: Whenever you do something thats a benefit to the entire group (or convincingly take credit for it), put someone moving against you in their place, take the
lead in a crisis situation, or take and maintain a position of leadership for at least 1 day refresh 1 Authority. Some Signatures allow certain archetypes to refresh one or more of their abilities, or allow other survivors in the group to do it. Some Perks allow the survivor that possesses them to refresh one or more abilities in certain situations, and any survivor that affirms their feelings (positive or negative) towards another survivor in play Refreshes 1 in a Reserve of their choice. If your survivor would refresh a Reserve above its maximum, erase any extra and mark 1 experience. Step 2: Choose Your Survivors Talents People with nothing going for them just flat out dont survive the zombie apocalypse. If you want to play a character whos a complete loser with no abilities beyond being wicked good at first person shooters then pick up a different game. In Fear the Living its assumed that even those survivors least well suited to survive hordes of ravening undead (such as any Unlikely Survivors) have at least a couple of hidden strengths that have gotten them this far. Look at your archetypal Unlikely Survivor like Shaun (from Shaun of the Dead) or Columbus (from Zombieland). Both are characters who wouldnt be on most lists of the top 50 (or even top 1000) people who would survive the zombie apocalypse, but both have a few admirable and useful qualities. Shaun is a natural leader (and pretty handy with a cricket bat besides), while Columbuss endless list of zombie-survival rules and obsessivecompulsive personality serve him in good stead. And thats exactly what talents are-skills, inclinations, personality traits, and gifts that give your survivor a leg up every now and then and provide a reason why they havent joined the rotting hordes that cover the world. Each talent is a succinct word or short phrase that describes what your survivor is good at. They can be summations of professional experience like I served in the US army, description of your survivors innate capabilities such as Absolutely Drop-Dead Gorgeous, individual skills that your survivors good at like Horsemanship, or even seeming liabilities that nonetheless aid your survivor in unforeseen ways like I have a horrible temper. Choose a number of talents for your character equal to the number listed next to the Talent entry for his or her Archetype. Write these down, along with whether each is Broad, Narrow, or Specialized on your Talents are defined as either Broad, Narrow, or Specialized depending on how widely applicable they are and add bonus dice to any roll including an action that relates to that talent. Broad talents are those that are useful in a huge variety of diverse situations like I served in the U.S army and gives you 1 extra die whenever it applies, Narrow talents are those that are useful in a few different situations like Absolutely Drop-Dead Gorgeous and gives you 2 extra dice when it applies, while Specialized talents are those that are useful in only very specific situations like Horsemanship and gives you 3 extra dice whenever it applies.
When you choose a talent for your character, declare whether you want it to be Broad, Narrow, or Specialized and describe in what sort of situations it will benefit your survivor. So long as the number of situations fits with the category youve declared for it, then you can make any talent Broad, Narrow, or Specialized as you prefer. Maybe you want to have a character who served in the U.S army but who didnt really pay all that much attention to anything other than the firearms and hand-to-hand portions of his training. Just declare it a Narrow talent, and explain to the GM that itll come up whenever your character fights unarmed or with a gun but not say when scouting ahead in dangerous territory, maintaining discipline in a chaotic battle, or any other situation that army training could conceivably help with. Its also important to note that Talents cant be used against your character, even if theyre seeming liabilities. You might want a character whose innocence and naivet helps them see through lies and deception, even though most people would count being nave as a problem rather than an asset. If you want a talent thats both a blessing and a curse to your survivor (like the aforementioned characters anger problems), then take it as a Liability also. Step 3: Choose Your Survivors Liabilities Everyone who survives the zombie apocalypse is a little bit fucked up. Its just a natural result of living in a world where the dead are trying to kill (and perhaps consume) the living and civilization has collapsed. It might be a tendency towards rash action, a bad ankle, being pregnant, or PTSD, but every survivor has some sort of baggage that simultaneously drags them down and also makes them human. Zombies dont doubt themselves, dont care about injuries, and dont have neuroses. People do, and thus so does your survivor. Choose a number of Liabilities for your survivor within the range listed in the Liability entry for your Archetype. Write a description of each Liability in the Liability section of your character sheet. Liabilities are anything about your survivor (physical, mental, emotional, social) that makes their life harder and defines them as a person. Even seeming strengths like having a good heart or having served in the US army can be Liabilities if theyre chosen as such. If you want a Liability to benefit your survivor as well as hurt them, choose it (or something like it) as a Talent as well. Whenever your character acts in a situation where the GM judges one or more of their liabilities could complicate things, he or she adds a new risk to the roll for each liability that applies that doesnt count against the GMs limit of 4 risks that they can apply. Risks added because of Liabilities must only be applied to your roll (not the actions of any allies or enemies). Risks, and how they impact your survivor are described in the section Resolution Rules. As a player, choose Liabilities for your character that you think are interesting and that you think will put your character in cool situations rather than based strictly on what would make sense if your character were a real person. In real life, most people would consider
a missing foot to be a Liability, but if you want your one-footed survivor to worry more about her drinking problem and role in the fall of Chicago than her injury then take the last two as Liabilities and leave the missing foot in the realm of description. The GM can still choose to force your character to deal with her missing foot, but they have to use up one of their four risks in order to do it. Liabilities are obviously a pain in the ass for your survivor but theyre not all bad for you as a player. They count as GM-declared risks for the purpose of gaining experience, meaning that if 3 of your characters liabilities come into play on a roll, and your characters already dealing with 4 risks they gain 7 experience after everything is said and done. Step 4: Choose Your Survivors Gear and Supplies. A sturdy cricket bat crusted with the blood of a thousand zombies, dried meat and stale snack cakes carried in a deerskin bag, an ATV that runs off of high-proof alcohol and filtered fry-oil with bright red racing lines freshly painted, or a painstakingly fortified single-family home with enough booby traps to make that kid from those stupid movies put his hands to his face and scream all over again. Gear is the stuff that your survivor (and everyone else with a pulse) relies on help them survive in this new world of the walking dead. Supplies on the other hand are the expendable crap that your character needs to keep themselves and their stuff well-maintained (food, water, ammo, repair materials etc.) Gear is divided up into 3 categories: Mundane, Specialized, and Customized. Select pieces of gear from each category based on the Gear entry for your survivors archetype. Thats what your character starts the game with, no more, no less. Gear is defined by a number of Features, that define things you can use it for (bashing in skulls for instance) and gives you a +1 bonus to rolls to do that when you use that piece of gear. Alternatively, a feature can give a piece of gear a capability not definable by a simple die bonus, like a radios ability to communicate with others or a shelters ability to keep you and your trusted friends (you have friends, right?) from freezing to death come winter. Gear sometimes also has one or more drawbacks associated with it, things like a vehicle requiring regular maintenance and/or fuel, or a homemade-shotguns tendency to hit everyone and everything in the area you point it at. These drawbacks take effect under the circumstances described in their entries, and can only be alleviated by your survivors actions. Unlike risks, the effects of drawbacks cant be negated by spending successes Supplies dont have categories, but are spent whenever your character needs extra ammo, food/water, the parts to repair something, or when theyre using those things to barter with someone. You as a player can define what your characters supplies consist of, or leave them ill-defined until an occasion comes up where they need to spend them. Generally speaking, 1 Supply is enough to reload a weapon, repair something relatively simple thats been broken, or feed and water a single adult for a day without the need for foraging.
Mundane gear is anything pretty much any schmuck could have gotten before the dead started rising, and thats still pretty plentiful even ten years down the road. Stuff like a Baseball Bat, a cleared-out suburban home for you and your friends to hole up in, a working bicycle, or a Saturday night special. Mundane Gear is simple and pretty limited as far as what it can do, but is the easiest of all gear to find or make. Specialized Gear covers items that got snatched up pretty quickly by looters and would-be survivors early in the crisis, or that would have been hard to get a hold of even before the zombies came. Stuff like a working Colt .45, a flak-vest, a functioning (hand-cranked) radio, or a semi-fortified building like a well-built pub with big heavy doors and deadbolts. Specialized gear is more potent than Mundane gear, but is much harder to come by. Customized Gear covers items that have been rebuilt or retrofitted by your survivor (or someone who wasnt as lucky as theyve been), that are either really hard to come by, or something that your survivors twisted little imagination is responsible for. The unholy (and very functional) combination of a shotgun and a pruning hook, military-issue body armor, an ATV that runs off of kerosene and high-proof alcohol, or an extremely desirable home base like an empty prison or a home-made bunker in the side of a hill. Customized gear is rare to come by, but is top of the line stuff that knocks mundane and specialized gear out of the water. While the types of features available varies based on type of gear being considered, all gear falls into one of the following categories: Simple and Reliable: 1 Feature No Drawbacks Nice But With A Few Fiddly Bits: 2 Features 1 Drawback Powerful But Complex: 3 Features 2 Drawbacks Awesome But Probably More Trouble Than Its Worth: 4 Features 3 Drawbacks Devastating But Definitely More Trouble Than Its Worth: 5 Features 4 Drawbacks These categories dont necessarily map to particular types of gear one can have a nicked up machete stolen from their ex-husband with 3 features and 2 drawbacks. Perhaps Tool (Brush Cutter) +1 and Weapon (Hack and Slash) +2 with Stolen From Someone Who Cares and High Maintenance as Drawbacks, while another survivor might have a similar machete with just Weapon (Hack and Slash) +1 and no drawbacks. The only restrictions on such combinations are what you as a group can believe and what sort of items fit into your shared vision of the zombie apocalypse. Combine Features and Drawbacks to make your each piece of your survivors gear, or else select gear from the list of pre-made examples in the Gear chapter of this book. Once youve selected your characters Gear write down each piece of Gears Features and Drawbacks, whether its Mundane, Specialized, or Customized, and what it represents in the game world in the Gear section of your character sheet. In the same space, write down how many points of Supply your character begins the game with. Step 5: Determine Your Survivors Relationships
No survivor is an island, and the myth of the invincible rugged individualist who can overcome anything by themselves with grit and spittle was torn apart long ago with the rest of civilizations lies and clichs. People are social animals, and thats especially true now that any given persons survival (and by extension the survival of humanity in general) is dependent on whatever schmucks they happen to be crouching around a fire with. Now that doesnt mean that in the wake of the zombie apocalypse everyones decided to throw off all of their prejudices, hatreds, grudges, and other bullshit and just play nice with each other. Fuck no, thatd be too easy (and not all that interesting a setting to play in besides). People, (at least those that havent changed into flesh-craving freaks) are still people with all the good and bad that brings. Love, Lust, Envy, Obsession, Hate, Trust-all of the emotions someone can feel towards another both noble and base are what Relationships in Fear The Living are all about. They define how your character feels about others in the group and how others feel about them. When you create your character, look at your Archetypes Relationship entry. Its going to come right out and tell you that your character feels certain things towards people in the group (and sometimes what someone else in the group thinks of you). If youre not used to having the rules tell you what sort of things your character feels keep in mind that these are just a starting point. As you play, and as your character grows, develops, and is exposed to Risks their relationships will change. This process is covered in the Advancement section of this book, along with the Risk section of the Resolution Rules. Whenever it asks you to choose one or more people that your character feels a certain way about, choose survivors in your group-either characters being portrayed by other players, or some of the GMs characters. Talk with the people playing those characters before you choose them, and discuss possible reasons in the groups imagined history why your survivor feels that way. Also make sure that the person who your survivor has strong feelings towards is cool with the entire thing. Love (or hatred, or trust, or whatever) between characters is way more interesting when both of their players are invested in making the entire thing work. Example: Bob(Playing a stone-cold Badass named Clarissa): Hmm it says here that someone in the group Envies, Hates, or is Obsessed with me. Hey Amanda, your character Jeff is a scrawny little geek right? Amanda (Playing a socially-inept Unlikely Survivor named Jeff): *Laughs* Yeah thats one way to put it. Hed say he just never got his growth spurt. Bob: So what do you say that Jeffs obsessed with Clarissa? Amanda: No offense, but your characters kind of stuck up. Why would Jeff be obsessed with her?
Bob: Well what if she felt sorry for the scrawny little spitfire one night over a bottle of scavenged wine, and they hooked up. She wants to forget it ever happened, but he thinks he has a chanceand thats where the obsession comes in. Amanda: Thats awesome-I can just see him following her around like a lost puppy. (Bob writes Jeff is obsessed with me because of our drunken one night stand on Clarissas character sheet under the Relationship section. While Amanda rights Im obsessed with Clarissa because of our drunken one-night stand on Jeffs character sheet under the Relationship section. When the rules tell you how your character feels about someone, write it down in the Relationship section of your character sheet, including how they feel, who they feel it towards, and some short description of why. When someone writes down a relationship that discusses how they feel about your character, put it down on your sheet in the Relationship section: who feels it, what they feel, and why. Feel free also to invent characters for the GM to play that your character has a relationship with, or who have particular feelings towards your survivor. This is an especially good move if youre in a group of players whose characters arent hitting all of your characters buttons, and you need a foil, ally, or enemy that really makes your guy or gal pop in comparison. So if you need someone to trust, and you dont like the options amongst the players survivors, then make someone up. Give em a name, a personality, and a role or responsibility in the group and then give them to the GM for approval. Unless your request is patently ridiculous (Hes a super-intelligent mutant zombie with psychic powers, no craving for flesh, and a grafted-on machine gun arm comes to mind), the GM should approve it. Remember guys and gals in the GM seat your job is to make the survivors lives interesting, and putting NPCs in your game that your players will find interesting is a surefire way to do that. Once youve chosen the relationships specific to your archetype, the rules ask you to select one additional feeling (or 2 in the case of Unlikely Survivors) that your character has towards each other member of the group. This can be anything you like, but keep in mind the guidelines described above (getting approval and such) and make it punchy. No one is going to be entertained by someone who Kinda sorta likes __________. Relationships strengthen your survivor in many ways, giving them a reason to carry on, motivation when hope is hard to come by, and helping your survivor grow: When your survivor enters into a conflict because of his or her feelings for someone, gain 1 experience. This includes entering into a conflict to protect someone you care about, or even going out of your way to screw over a hated rival. Whenever your survivor makes a significant overture to a person that he or she has a relationship with, and that overture gels with the feelings involved, Refresh 1 in any reserve of your choice. In order to qualify, this overture must be meaningful, and must be relevant to the situation. Pecking someone on the cheek when your Relationship
with them says that your character loves them isnt enough to get the refresh. Tearfully embracing them after a supply raid where not everyone came back is. Likewise, grumbling about the actions of someone your character hates isnt enough to get the Refresh, but loudly denouncing them in front of the rest of the group is. Whenever you take an action that directly involves a person you have a relationship with, and the action fits the emotion(s) involved, gain a +1 die bonus. If your character has many different feelings about someone, this bonus is +1 per emotion that applies. But as anyone whose dealt with a messy breakup, a bad boss, or hell even high school will tell you, relationships of any sort arent just fun and games. They can be used as leverage against you by opportunists, and in the case of positive relationships can be betrayed: If someones action against you plays on one or more of your relationships, they gain a +1 bonus to their roll for each relationship that they use as leverage. Something like a survivor who knows that your character hates Greg suggesting to your character that things would be a lot easier if he were in charge-hed even make sure Greg has an accident. If a character you have positive feelings towards uses them to fuck you over or betray you they gain an additional +2 dice bonus to their pool in addition to whatever bonus they gain for using your feelings for them against you. If and when your survivor finds out, you can elect to change your feelings towards the bastard or bitch that put your heart through the wringer, or you can keep them the same. If you elect to change them, gain 1 experience. If you keep the same feelings towards them, Refresh 1 in any Reserve of your choice.
When a new survivor comes onto the scene (whether a new NPC or a new player character), and your survivor has a chance to size them up, talk to them, etc you may freely determine what your character thinks of them for now. Mark it down on your character sheet under the relationship section, and dont think you can get away with leaving it blank. If your character interacts with the new guy or gal, or even observes them for an extended period of time, they cant help but come to some sort of conclusion. Step 6 Copy Down Your Survivors Signature: Each survivor brings something different to the table-a new way of looking at, and dealing with life in an undead world. More than that though, as the protagonists of the story being created together at the table, your survivors are all badasses (small bunless theyre also the Badass Archetype). They have something special about them, some indefinable something that saved them from an eternity of cold hunger, or a bullet in the head and a trip to the crematorium. In Fear The Living, thats your characters signature-the one thing that each archetype can lay complete and total claim to. An Unlikely Survivor for example, can never pick up Kick Ass and Take Names (although they can certainly still kick ass, without using the mechanics described in the Badass archetype listing), just because its not in their nature. Even using an advancement to switch archetypes and taking on the mantle of a Badass only swaps the Unlikely Survivors I Shouldnt Have Survived this But for
Kick Ass and Take Names. Theyve left their old life behind-put away their cricket bat and picked up their homemade flamethrower and riot shield. Each archetypes signature provides two abilities, one of which can be used whenever the circumstances listed next to it arise, and one of which can be used once per gaming session, irrespective of how much time has passed in game. Mark your once per session signature ability with a check on your character sheet whenever you use it, and erase that check at the beginning of next session. While at-will signature abilities represent concrete capabilities and knacks in the game-world, the once-per-session ability represents something more akin to a plot twist in a zombie movie, something related to the characters prowess that they only pull off once per episode. Write down your survivors Signature (and its effects if you want to) in the space marked Signature on your character sheet. Step 7 Put it All Together: By now you have the skeleton of a Fear the Living character, but the game is still waiting for your cackling mad-scientist ass to flip the switch and bring down the lighting to bring your survivor to life. Look at the choices youve made. Likely some of them where just because you think they sounded cool, some because you had some mental conception of what you wanted your survivor to be like, and some based off of what youve heard about other peoples characters. Once youve looked over them, try to figure out exactly what sort of person might have the capabilities, problems, and relationships that youve given your survivor. Lets say you started character generation wanting to play a ruthless bastard with a lot of big guns (a simple and admirable ambition). You pick out the Guy Who Saw It All Coming archetype for the access to said guns, and pump your Ruthlessness and Will to Live up to 4, leaving your other 2 abilities (Authority and Humanity) at 1. So now youre looking at someone without much pull in the group, whose very well adapted to the zombie apocalypse and is likely more than a little bit jaded. When it comes time to pick your three talents you decide to go for breadth rather than depth (to balance out the heavily skewed abilities). So two nice broad talents and a narrow one.in a couple of minutes, things just fly into your head: Im a fucking comedian, Neat to the point of anal-retentiveness, and Im really good with animals. So 2 Broad, and 1 Narrow, after writing down whatever came into your head at the spur of the moment. So now a picture is beginning to take shape: maybe your character is a bit of a loner or a curmudgeon (low humanity and authority), but hes managed to charm a few folks based on his gallows humor (Im a fucking comedian), and his love of animals (Im really good with animals). You picture his bunker, its meticulously arranged, not a speck of dust on any of the booby traps, ammo, weapons, and supplies alphabetized and sealed in individual plastic baggies. On that note, you pick up a ton of weapons, a bunker, and a few booby traps as gear. Hes even got a faithful dog (bought as gear), a mutt of indeterminate origin thathell lets say it warned him to a zombie attack at the last moment.
Now time for Relationships. Another player is portraying a goody-two-shoes Would-BeSavior that wants to cure the infected, so you figure that him thinking youre off your rocker is a gimme. You pick him to think youre dangerous as well, and off the cuff create a young kid NPC for the GM by the name of Robert who thinks that youre just a misunderstood old man. The other Gal Who Saw This All Coming is a natural fit for envying what you have, but you think its more interesting if you have the groups Badass envy your possessions. More specifically your dog Rufus (picking a name out of a phone book) because she never was allowed to have a dog (or close friends) as a kid). You specifically let everyone know that no one outright trusts your character. But you trust that kid Robert hes not half bad, and dont like the way Clarissa (the Badass) looks at ol Rufus. When it comes time to choose one last feeling your character has towards each survivor you decide to tar everyone with the same brush. You decide on Im going to look out for you for your own good-defining your character as well meaning even with his extreme methods, but perhaps a little bit proud and condescending. Hes beginning to take shape, now all he needs is a name and a story as to how he got this way! In this way, creating a character for Fear The Living is much like a free-association game. You pick your characters archetype, abilities, talents, gear, and relationships, and once the dust settles, figure out how to make sense of the entire crazy mess. You can do it the other way around, making each decision after a long period of reflection on whether or not its realistic for your soccer mom unlikely survivor to have Crack Shot as one of her talents. Its not recommended though; youll find that most people in real life are a bundle of seeming contradictions and impossibilities, and that facet of real life is no better simulated than by choosing each part of your character based on your gut instinct and whim and then rushing to make sense of it all once youre done. When To Use The Resolution Rules Whenever a character or creature in Fear the Living wants to accomplish something, and theres either something at stake, or someone doesnt want to them to accomplish that thing, you pull out the dice and roll em. The GM can also prompt your character to roll when they feel that somethings at stake for your character. When theres no opposition, and theres nothing significant at risk dont bother rolling. You can determine if theres something at risk by asking yourself: 1. Does any survivor or player care about the outcome? 2. Is there any opposition, whether from another survivor, a zombie, an animal, the survivors own mind etc? 3. Is there anything on the line that will be meaningfully impacted by the attempted action? Getting injured, jeopardizing a relationship, losing your way, all of these things and more can be at stake. On the other hand, is there any chance of making progress, or gaining something new? New allies, an upper hand over your opponent, new resources etc. If you answered no to any of these three questions stop there and dont roll. Just describe what your character is doing and have the GM describe what happens in response. Once the answer to all three questions is yes though, the dice come out.
A Note To GMs That means, if the characters want to go somewhere, and theres no one who wants to stop them and nothing important at stake (like whether they get to their location ahead of another group, or whether they avoid a massive horde of zombies), theyre there no questions asked (just let them know how long it took). This isnt a game where you ask the players for a roll to see if they can cook a nice meal or stand on one leg for 15 minutes. Once again, unless someone or somethings in their way, or there is something at stake dont bother. Resolution Rules Step 1 Declare Intent and Task: When a character wants to accomplish something, and youve determined that using the Resolution rules is a good idea (otherwise the GM should just give it to them or say no if its truly ridiculous like trying to set someone on fire with their mind) then they first declare what they want to accomplish and how theyre going to go about it. This should be firm and limited in scope, like I want to hurt Jacobs pride and give him a wicked scar, so Im going to cut him up with my steak knife. Step 2 Declare Risks: At this point the GM declares anywhere between 1 (for really easy goals) and 4 (for complex, sensitive, or just ridiculously hard goals) risks. No more, no less. If theres no risk involved, then why are you rolling? Each risk should be phrased as Okay.but if your character doesnt (Something thatll cost them) or spend 1 success, then (something worse) will happen. The GM can also choose to add an additional Risk for every Liability possessed by the Survivor that they feel applies to the declared action. Risks caused by Liabilities dont count towards the maximum of 4 Risks that the GM can declare. These risks should flow naturally from the situation, and represent the most interesting facets of what could go wrong with a survivors handiwork. At this point the character can still choose to back down or change their declared intent and task (and see if the GM is willing to change the risks), or can choose to act despite the risks. Zombies dont suffer Risks unless a survivor goes out of their way to give them one by spending a success, or else if they suffer from damage that gives them a Liability. Theres just not a whole lot to screw up when youre already a ravenous undead fiend. Youll notice also that in the movies, zombies never shoot (or eat) their friends, never stumble, or notice when a house is burning down around them. When a zombie is suffering from a Liability it automatically suffers it unless it has a Mutation that specifies that it can spend successes to negate risks. See the Zombie Creation section for more on Zombie rules and Mutations. A survivor, whether PC or NPC gets one experience point at the end of the conflict per risk that they incurred (both GM/Player declared Risks and Liabilities Count). Drawbacks from gear, Risks inflicted on them by other players by spending successes, and self-imposed risks dont grant this boon.
Step 3 Add the Base Die and Dice for Reserves: No matter what, anyone trying to accomplish something gets to roll 1d6 just for trying. Its not much, but its a blessing when your back is up against a wall. This is called the base die, because its a single die that everyone gets to roll no matter what. If its a survivor acting, they can spend points from any Reserve that applies to add a +1 die bonus to their roll per point spent. The person in control of the survivor has to describe how their character is drawing on their reserves to aid them in their attempt. If its a zombie acting, they just get successes equal to their Threat rating +1 for every positive mutation that applies, -1 for every negative mutation that applies (see the Zombie Creation section for more info). Zombies dont get worn down, dont doubt themselves, and never ever stop. If its another living creature acting, just roll 1d6 if its something the animal is alright at (a dog running away, a deer fending off attack), 3d6 if its something the creature is good at (a wolf tracking prey, an trained bird spotting a group of survivors), and 5d6 if its something the creature is unparalleled at (a panther creeping through a forest, a mother bear defending its cubs). More detailed rules for the actions of other living creations are covered in the NPC generation section. Step 4 Add Talents and Gear: Add the rating of any mechanical features that are part of the gear your survivor is using to aid their attempt (and that obviously apply) as a dice bonus to your roll. If your character uses gear to aid them, the GM should feel free to invoke some or all of your gears drawbacks. Drawbacks are not Risks, and do not count against the GMs limit of 4 Risks. Add a +1 die bonus for each broad talent, +2 for each narrow talent, and/or +3 for each specialized talent that your survivor has and which directly applies to the situation. Step 5 Account For Relationships: If the character entered conflict because of a relationship, have them mark 1 experience for the character. If the character is using an opponents relationship against them, add a +1 die bonus and an additional +2 die bonus if theyre betraying a positive relationship. Finally, if the characters action deeply affirms a relationship that they have with someone, they immediately Refresh 1 in any Reserve of their Choice. Step 6 Choose Whether to Take Risky Action Sometimes all of the above steps just dont give you the dice you need. Your survivor is on the ropes, and they need any edge that they can get. At this point a player or GM controlled survivor can choose to make their actions Risky, putting themselves in danger in order to reap possible rewards. The person controlling the survivor decides how many additional Risks to take on, and describes what high-risk high-reward shenanigans theyre pulling. If its a GM controlled survivor doing this, they choose a player with a stake in the conflict to
declare the Risks involved. If the survivor is controlled by a player, the GM declares the risks. For each additional risks that you take on in this way, you gain an additional +1 die bonus. Step 7 Roll Dem Bones and Spend Successes: If the character rolling is closely cooperating with another character, have them roll their dice together. Cooperating characters must be able to help each other out in some way, and share both their successes and their Risks. Otherwise everyone rolls their dice alone and counts every die that comes up 4 or higher. This is counted as a success, something good that has happened because of the survivors effort. Each character involved in the conflict can spend successes as follows: -Inflict a risk on someone that your character can interact with. Describe how your character is putting the another survivor, a zombie, a piece of gear, or a creature in a difficult or dangerous situation. -Inflict 1 point of damage to a creature per success spent, of a type based on the weapon being used. Describe how your survivor stabs, smashes, slices, shoots, or otherwise hurts their opponent. -Avoid 1 point of damage that would otherwise be inflicted on your survivor. Describe how your character dodges, parries, finds cover, or shrugs off a blow. -Find something useful, like a piece of gear or some supplies in an area that you havent found supplies or gear in before (or in an area that hasnt been picked over in a while). Spend 1 success to find a piece of mundane Gear or 1 Supply at the end of the conflict, 2 Successes to find it immediately. Add 2 to the successes required to find a piece of Specialized Gear, and add 4 to the successes required to find a piece of Customized Gear. So long as you have the successes to spend, you can find more than one piece of Gear or point of Supply in a given area. Once someones gone over an area though no one is able to find additional Gear or Supply in it until the GM declares that something has changed that makes such an effort possible again. Describe how your survivor finds, makes, scavenges, or stumbles onto the desired piece of gear. -Uncover hidden information. Ask the GM one question per success about a situation like Whats the best way to get the hell out of here? or Are the zombies attracted by the scent of the slaughterhouse nearby? or about a NPCs thoughts, feelings, or planned actions. Alternatively you can ask similar questions about another the feelings, thoughts, motivations, or plans of another survivor controlled by another player (one per success). These questions must be direct and to the point, but so long as you spend the success they must answer you truthfully. Explain how your character is analyzing the situation, taking a moment to listen to their gut, watching for tells, or looking wildly around for a way out. -Eliminate a risk that youre exposed to, or that an ally youre cooperating with is exposed to. Describe how your character manages to press on despite the risk assailing them, or how they watch another characters back and help them avoid getting blindsided. -Give another survivor a +1 die bonus per success spent to a roll of their choice thats not made against you or your interests within the session if they do what you want. Describe
how your character manipulates someone else, making them an offer they cant refuse. -Give another survivor a -1 die penalty per success spent to a roll of your choice within the same session if they dont do what you want. This can never reduce a character down to fewer than 1 die. Describe how your character makes someone doubt themselves, puts someone between a rock and a hard place, or pushes someone else around in order to get them to do what they want. -Put forward successes towards a goal not covered in the options above, like I want to get the fuck away from the zombie horde. These should be clearly defined and limited-like getting the upper hand in an argument, instead of turning your hated rival into your best friend in the entire world. Describe how your character makes an attempt to achieve a goal, like detailing how your survivor is running like hell away from a horde of zombies without looking back. -Oppose someones goal, putting up successes to block it No you dont, we surround you in a rotting swarm of questing hands and gnashing teeth. If you block less than half of it, theyve got to make a small concession to you. If you block half of it, the GM will declare a compromise where each party gets part of what they wanted. If you block all of it, you keep them from getting what they wanted and you get what you wanted. This option can also be used to prevent someone from manipulating you, reading your survivor or a situation theyre involved in, or pushing them around. Describe how your character mucks up or interferes with someone elses attempt to achieve a goal. Everyone involved in a given conflict can spend successes back and forth until everyones happy, or everyone runs out of successes to spend. If someone didnt get any successes, then theyve really screwed the pooch-they cant avoid any of their risks, and are at the mercy of their opponent(s) if any unless someone decides at that moment to cooperate with them (and describes their Survivor coming to the persons aid), giving them access to their successes. Rolls without Opposition Rarely, a character will be rolling dice to accomplish something where no one (and nothing) are opposing her, but there are still measurable risks. A character might be dragging his bruised and bloody form up a cliff back to her campsite after a run-in with a savage gang of survivors who didnt take kindly to trespassers on their turf, or might be attempting to jury-rig a temperamental car engine back into working order while fighting with her lover. In this case, just have the GM declare risks, invoke liabilities, and use drawbacks to give the character a hard time and the character just spends successes to accomplish their goal (one success should do it) and to eliminate risks. Step 7 Narrate Results and Rinse, Wash, Eat Brains: Once everyones described their survivors actions (the flailing blows that lay a zombie low, the whispered declarations of love that seal a secret alliance) resolve the effects of their spent successes and any unmitigated Risks and Drawbacks. The GM and the players both have a hand in the description of success and failure, but the GM should allow the players to lead so long as their description fits with how successes were allocated.
If one party is clearly the victor, or theres nothing left to resolve, cease the dice rolling and carry on with the game. Otherwise have everyone declare their character intends to achieve now and how theyre going to go about doing it, starting from Step 1 and continuing on from there. The entire shebang is called an exchange. Risks Up until now, youve heard a lot about Risks but havent gotten a lot of hard answers as to what limits the GM from declaring 4 identical risks that all say Unless you do what the GM tells you, your character will drop dead every single time your survivor tries something? Hell, whats to keep you from doing that when youre facing down another survivor in combat? Well, there are limits to what effect a risk can have on someone. Risks with slashes in their effect can have more severe effects (other than the obvious) if theyre chosen more than once. -A risk can threaten 2 points of damage to a Survivors Beaten Up Track/Fucked Up Track/Maimed or Killed Track. -A risk can threaten the zombie infection if the situation warrants it. -A risk can separate someone from a group, put someone in a difficult spot, give someone a hard split-second choice, or otherwise inconvenience them in a way that will require another roll to extricate themselves from. -A risk can force someone to spend 1 Supply -A risk can add a new drawback to a piece of gear/take it away temporarily/destroy it. -A risk can put someone at a disadvantage, taking a -3 dice penalty a single roll of your choice within the same scene, a -2 dice penalty to rolls for a certain course of action (like running or attacking someone) for an entire scene, or a -1 die penalty to all rolls during a scene. -A risk can announce something worse is about to happen. During the next exchange, they have to deal with 2 different risks or one risk with two selections from this list. -A risk can change how someone feels about the character exposed to the risk for a scene/session/permanently. -A risk can drain 1 from a survivors Reserve. These might seem like boring consequences, but its the job of the GM to make them exciting through their countermeasures (other than spending a success), and by describing how the risk takes its price out of a survivors hide. The GM and players should come up with countermeasures that are almost as bad as the risks associated with them-things like cutting off your leg (and getting a liability in the bargain) in order to survive infection. What you should never do is just straightforwardly describe the mechanical effects of the risk and countermeasures. Eric looks at you, his face a mask of surprise and outrage. He never thought youd put the safety of strangers above that of your own, and throughout the group meeting hes scowling at you and muttering to himself. Unless you budge on your dedication to feeding those refugees, hes going to carry a long-term grudge. is way better than Ohyeah, Eric hates you permanently, unless you agree to toss the refugees out on their asses. Risks cant undo a characters successful attempt to accomplish a goal, but they can certainly make them wish they hadnt tried. When coming up with risks, dont think of
ultimatums or horrible snafus, but rather snags and monkey wrenches that put the survivor dealing with them in a bad situation. Risks whether successfully dealt with or suffered, should also build off of one another. A survivor who avoids being surrounded by a horde of zombies and takes flight might find that they now risk leading the rotting tide to the doorstep of their groups hideout. The principle job of the GM is to create exciting risks that hit the survivors where it hurts, and to figure out how a survivor dealing with a Risk is creating the possibility of future Risks. Advancement The living change where the dead stay the same. If your survivor manages to cope with the challenges of living in a zombie-infested world, theyll change right before your eyes. Your relationships with other survivors grow and change as new friendships and quarrels emerge and old ones are buried. Your character might learn how to shoot a gun, ride a horse, take a night watch position, or even just how to stand up for themselves. They might find a remnant of pre-plague technology-a working AK-47 that gives them the means to seize power amongst the group (if for a short time), or a hidey-hole well away from any noticeable hordes that you and your friends can hole up in. All of these and more; experiences, scars, trusts, hatreds, and even the supplies and gear your character relies on, will change as the game is played. And your survivors experience is a measure of that change, and of their capability to survive (and more than that, to live) in a post-zombie world. Each time youre prompted to mark experience for your Survivor, mark a tic or a check mark on your character sheet in the experience section. Once you have 10 tic marks, erase them all at the end of that session and make a check mark in the Advancement section of your character sheet. Then choose one of the following benefits for your survivor:
Learn something new : Get a new talent of your choice that relates in some way to the events of the session that you marked the 10th tick in. The talent can be broad, narrow, or specialized at your option-the only proviso is that it must in some way relate to the events of the session in which your character learned that new thing. Nut Up: Increase one of your survivors abilities by 1, to a maximum of 5. Stumble Upon Something Useful: Pick a piece of mundane or specialized gear and your survivor stumbles across it, is given it, makes it, or manages to snatch it no questions asked. You define what the Gear or Supplies are, how you find them, and what Features and Drawbacks the Gear has. Alternatively, you can elect for your survivor to find a cache of supplies worth 5 supply. Instead of selecting a Mundane or Specialized piece of Gear you can choose to have your survivor find, build, steal, or be given a customized item but the GM is free to inflict one drawback or catch on the item in addition to those that you give it. Change Your Stripes: Change your characters archetype, changing your signature ability, with the attendant explanation on why your character has changed their attitude and approach towards survival. Get Over Your Crap: Erase one of your characters Liabilities, describing how theyve gotten over, recovered from it, or why they no longer have to deal with it.
Get a Lucky Break: Write down is owed one on the top of your character sheet, next to your survivors name. You can erase that note in order to have your survivor evade certain death with no questions asked-just describe how they got themselves out of the pickle they were in, or how they actually didnt get horribly murdered. Add a Friendly Face: Write up a brief personality description, past, and name for an Non-Player character. This character will join the group at the earliest believable moment, and have some manner of connection to the survivor. You and this new survivor have a relationship from the get-go. Define how your character feels about them, and how they feel about you.
Relationship Development What sort of world would it be if the only sort of character development your survivor ever goes through is learning how to do something new? Simpler sure, but also really boring. Now that the dead have risen nothing stays the same for long and that applies to your characters relationships as well. Look at your survivors relationships and consider the events of the session. Who affirmed your characters trust in them, who let them down, who are they looking at with new eyes, who do they now resent? Think about it, and chose any or all of the following to happen (youve got to choose at least one, and can only pick any given option once per session): Change any or all of your survivors feelings towards another member of the group in the relationship section of your character sheet as blatantly or subtly as you like. Maybe youre trust in Amanda is gradually turning into love and you dont want her friend Mike to find out. Maybe youre disappointed in someone that you thought had your back. Maybe youve been betrayed, and youre ready to give into hate. Strengthen an existing relationship (to a maximum of 3 times) per relationship. Make a check mark next to the relationship youre strengthening, and say aloud why you think your survivors feelings have deepened. Each time you strengthen a relationship, increase the experience reward for going into conflict because of your feelings for another character by 1, and increase the dice bonus by 1 for using the Relationship to your advantage. Unfortunately, you also grant that same bonus to someone who uses your Relationship against you in a conflict. Strengthening a relationship doesnt necessarily mean things have gotten better between your survivor and another-just that theyve gotten more intense. With things like hatred or obsession in particular, the consequences can be ugly for your survivor (and entertaining for the group). Add a new feeling to a relationship-a new way that your character sees another survivor. This is for when you get to know someone better (or when your survivor thinks they know someone better) and their relationship is evolving and growing, if not necessarily for the better. When you pick this option, explain aloud why your character now feels this way about the person he or she has the relationship with. Like Sami was disgusted by your callous disregard for those survivors who came to our camp asking for food and water Pauland now hes disgusted with you in general. Add a new relationship with another survivor that you dont already have a relationship with. This is an excellent pick for when a new character has been introduced into the group, or when your character is just now getting to interact with someone whos been on the margins of the group. When you select this, explain aloud how your survivor
came to the conclusion that they have about this newcomer, and ask what they think about your character. Clarissa likes your style Maria-you kinda remind her of what she was like when she was younger, and the way you took out that hidden zombie just reinforced that. She respects you. How do you feel about Clarissa? After youve declared this, the other survivors controller may elect to write down a relationship with your character if they havent already. Perks Every survivor, no matter their experience has a story to tell, scars to show, and plans for the future (be they ever so simple or short term). Every action, every success, plan and failure shapes them in ways both obvious and subtle. Perks are a measure of this gradual change that occurs as sessions go on and you and your friends characters become more defined by the events of the game and their actions in it. Unlike Talents or Abilities, perks are never gained through experience points. Theyre only gained through action during play, and specific types of action at that. Each Perk is made up of two parts, a Trigger describing what your survivor has to do, or what must happen to them in order to earn the perk, and a benefits entry that describes what the Perk does for them (and for others in the group, Perks always have ripple effects amongst the other survivors). This might be a new way to refresh points in a Reserve, a new at-will or 1/session capability, a new way to gain experience, or bonus dice in certain situations. When a character earns a Perk, write it down in the Perk section of your character sheet. Beyond a Perks mechanical benefits, they also tell a story of how the zombie apocalypse has shaped (and perhaps broken) your survivor. No one is going to confuse the ex-nun professional with the Lawgiver and I Dont Kill the Living Perks from the foreign exchange student unlikely survivor with Necrologist and Cold-Blooded. Players are encouraged to direct their characters actions in order to get perks that they feel will define their characters better. If you want to be Cold-Blooded, then have your survivor act it out! If there is ever any confusion about whether or not a character qualifies for a given Perk, take a vote around the table with ties favoring giving the character the Perk. New characters never start with Perks. No matter how many zombies your character supposedly studied in their back-story they wont start with the Necrologist perk. NPCs also never receive Perks, because Perks are a reward for playing the game and like it or not the GMs NPCs havent played in the same way that the players (and thus their characters) have. A short list of Perks follows along with a template if your group feels like designing more that fit their vision of the zombie apocalypse: Necrologist Trigger: Your survivor captures a living (ie. Still moving) zombie and over the course of several days studies it. This study can be anything from crude poking and prodding to see what the things reflexes are like to full-on dissection and behavioral analysis. The important thing is that its got to be a zombie thats mostly in one piece (you cant chop off
a zombies head and just study the still-moving biterwell you could, but you wouldnt qualify). Benefits: For Science!: Whenever you learn something new about zombies through study of a still living specimen or enter a conflict to protect your research mark 1 experience. Mr. Exposition: Once per session your character can assert some manner of fact about the zombie menace that from that point on is considered objectively true without any need for a roll. It can be something about what causes the zombie virus/possessing spirit/magic/radiation/parasite/whatever to work the way it does, information about zombie behavior or weaknesses, estimating average incubation time for the disease or anything else you can dream up so long as it directly deals with the walking (or sprinting) dead. This information can be as detailed or as vague as you the player desire, but it cant contradict anything already established by the GM or other players using rolls or this perk. Thats Just Wrong: Whenever another survivor enters into conflict with you in order to stop your research, or convince you that what youre doing is dangerous, immoral, or insane they mark 1 experience. Lawgiver Trigger: Your survivor creates some manner of serious rules or laws that they expect other survivors to abide by. Not everyone in the group has to be on board, but there have to be at least 2 rules or laws, and at least 2 other survivors have to agree to try and follow them. Benefits: Thou Shalt Not: Whenever you or a survivor who has agreed to follow your laws punishes someone who they feel broke one or more of them, enforces one of the laws, or convinces someone else to follow them the enforcer Refreshes 1 in either Authority or Ruthlessness. Rebel With A Cause: Whenever someone enters into a conflict and breaks a law in the process (or if they entered into the conflict to rebel against the law) they mark 1 experience. Hypocrisy: If you break one of your own laws and someone finds out about it lose this Perk and mark 2 experience (if other people who followed your laws still believe in them, one or more of them may gain the perk at their option). Desertion: If fewer than 2 people other than yourself follow the laws you put forward, you only gain the benefit of Thou Shalt Not until 2 or more other members of the group agree to follow your laws. I Dont Kill The Living Trigger: Your survivor spares the life of another survivor who grievously endangered the group without benefiting from that decision (so letting someone live because they agree to lead you to a cache of dry-goods doesnt apply).
Benefits: Mercys Gift: Whenever you spare the life of someone who was a danger to you and yours, refresh 1 Humanity or Will to Live. Guiding Compass: Once per session you may add your Humanity ability as a dice pool bonus to a roll meant to prevent the senseless death of another survivor. This bonus only applies when the person about to die is at someone elses mercy, like stopping an execution, or preventing your friends from leaving a captive in the middle of a zombieinfested wasteland with no supplies. Practical Necessity: Whenever someone enters into a conflict with you because of your mercy towards someone who might not deserve it, they Refresh 1 Authority or Ruthlessness. Getting Your Hands Dirty: If you kill a living person whos at your mercy, or let someone do it for you erase this perk from your survivors sheet and mark 3 experience. If you killed them for reasons other than survival (like out of jealousy, hatred, or because they looked at you funny) gain the Cold Blooded Perk to replace it. Cold Blooded Trigger: Your survivor kills a living person who wasnt an imminent threat to their life, limb, or to someone that they have a relationship with. Alternatively, killing someone whos life is completely in your survivors hands, helpless and at your mercy also qualifies your survivor for this perk. (Yes that means that your groups executioner will be getting this perk in short order. Yeah, thats kind of what it takes to kill a person begging for their life in front of you). Benefits: They Had It Coming: When your survivor enters into a conflict to conceal, downplay, or justify a murder theyve committed refresh 1 Ruthlessness or Will to Live. Murder Most Foul: Once per session, your survivor can add their Ruthlessness ability as a dice bonus to a roll made to kill another survivor, whether one affiliated with the group or not. Not kick the shit out of, not teach a lesson, not knock unconscious-the roll has to be made with the intent to kill the son of a bitch. If you change your mind and dont kill someone that you used Murder Most Foul on, then see Second Thoughts. Have Some Integrity: When another survivor enters into conflict to call you out on your actions, to prevent you from crossing the line again, or to reform you they refresh 1 Humanity. Second Thoughts: If your character makes a real and sincere effort to make amends for their murder (either to the people harmed by their victims death, or just by reforming themselves if theres no way amends can be made) you can erase this perk, mark 3 experience, and (if you desire) put I Dont Kill the Living in its place.
Zombie Infectee Trigger: Your survivor is afflicted by the zombie virus/curse/spell/whatever (pick whatever cause fits your game best). This perk doesnt exist if theres no means of spreading the zombie goodness (like if everyone who dies becomes a zombie). Benefits: Dont Worry Im Fine: Whenever your character enters conflict in order to conceal their affliction, or to prevent someone from taking aggressive action (read: a shotgun to the face) to rectify the problem mark 1 experience. Heartfelt Confession: When you reveal your condition to someone you have a positive relationship with in secret, Refresh 1 of your choice. If they keep your secret they Refresh 1 of their choice. If they reveal it to another, they mark 1 experience. Out With a Bang or a Whimper: If your survivor commits suicide, mark 1 experience for your new character. If your character dies valiantly in an attempt to protect the group from the zombie threat, erase this Perk and get Heroic Sacrifice instead. If your survivor turns into a zombie without anyone knowing about it mark 3 experience for your new character and tell the GM who amongst the members of the group your undead hunger will be slaked upon first. Its now the GMs obligation to try his damndest to make it happen. Heroic Sacrifice Trigger: Your survivor willingly and knowingly sacrifices their life in order to save the life (or lives) of other survivors. In order to qualify for this Perk your character must die in the process of trying to save the other character, but need not have succeeded. All thats required is trying valiantly and perishing in the attempt. Needless to say it is your new character as well as your fellow survivors that gain the benefit of this Perk. Benefits: Good Karma: Your next character starts with an additional 3 experience. Remember Me Always: Whenever another survivor in the group in the group enters into conflict because of your sacrifice they Refresh 1 in a Reserve of their choice. I cant go on without you: Whenever another member of the group does something stupid or self-destructive because of their grief over your characters passing they mark 1 experience. Opportunist Trigger: Your survivor betrays another survivor in order to save their own skin or for some manner of material gain without any genuine remorse. A survivor wont gain this Perk if the betrayal is rooted entirely in a personal grudge or feud. Screwing over the woman you loathe doesnt make you an Opportunist, it just makes you an asshole. Benefits:
Its Never Personal: When someone uses one of your relationships against you in a conflict, any die bonus they gain is reduced by 1. You gain an additional +1 die bonus when you take advantage of another survivors relationship. I Just Have to Outrun You: Once per session, you can add your Ruthlessness Ability as a die bonus to a roll when you betray someone for personal gain. This bonus stacks with that normally granted by betrayal. You Sicken Me: Whenever another survivor enters conflict to call you out on your behavior, to keep you from taking advantage of someone, or to solve the problem you pose permanently they Refresh 1 Humanity. Youve Got Good In You: Whenever another survivor enters conflict to keep you from being punished for your actions, to vouch for you, to make a real emotional connection with you, or to reform your behavior they mark 1 experience. Turning Over A New Leaf: If you pass up an opportunity to enhance your own position by taking advantage of or betraying someone erase this Perk and mark 3 experience. Making New Perks The Perks listed above are just a sampling of common tropes from zombie media. You and your friends will doubtless come up with more that fit your own particular version of the zombie apocalypse like a glove. Implementing them as interesting and balanced Perks can be a bit more difficult. That being said, following these tips will serve you and your fellow players well when you decide to delve into designing new Perks. Make sure it has a place in the fiction of your setting. In a grim and serious game of hardscrabble survival a Perk based around kicking ass with improbable weapons or killing zombies in outlandish ways is probably out of place. On the other hand, a Perk made to represent miraculous powers gained through faith might be perfect for a game in which zombies are the pawns of an evil god risen from the depths. Every Perk should speak to the tone, genre, and background of the world that you all are detailing together. Pick a specific subject or facet of zombie fiction that you feel needs to be enshrined in a Perk and put together a catchy-sounding name for it. Make The Trigger Something That You Do Every Perk needs a trigger, an action or set of circumstances that result in a survivor getting the Perk. All of the best Perks are those that result from the survivor actively doing something: making a hard decision, accomplishing something important, or doing something awesome. Perks that rely on outside circumstances (like getting bitten by a zombie) can work but only so long as those circumstances can be influenced by a survivors actions. Because Perks are rewards for good and interesting game play, they should be earned by important and decisive action. All of the example Perks listed above follow this pattern by including trigger events that are impossible for survivors in the group to ignore. If you share the trigger for your developing Perk with the rest of the group and they go ho hum then you know that you need to dig a little bit deeper. A Perks trigger should get a reaction out of survivors and their players both.
Design the Perk to Reward Behaviors Every Perk gives several benefits to the survivor that earns it. These can include a +1 die bonus in certain situations, a chance to mark experience when entering conflict for certain reasons, the ability to Refresh (or grant Refreshes) to a Reserve in particular situations the ability to add an abilitys rating to certain rolls once per session, or a once per session or at-will ability that grants a new ability rather than granting a bonus to rolls. Use the abilities listed with the example Perks above and you wont go wrong with the power of the abilities granted by your homebrewed Perk.
Whats just as important as making sure the abilities your Perk grants the survivor that gains it, is that these abilities encourage behavior that relates to the Perk and the Perks Trigger. Take Opportunist for example, it grants an additional die bonus to rolls when you take advantage of someones relationships, and a once-per-session ability that allows you to add your Ruthlessness Ability to a roll when you betray someone for personal gain. Both of these abilities make the survivor with the Opportunist Perk better at being an opportunist, and encourage them to manipulate and betray other survivors by giving them bonuses to die rolls when they do. You can provide the same sort of positive reinforcement by creating Perks that grant new abilities which beg to be used in a way that gels with the Perks nature. The Necrologist Perk for example, allows a survivors player to declare things about zombies that are thenceforth treated as true. This encourages the player to start thinking about what makes the zombies in the groups version of the zombie apocalypse tick and to get involved with contributing to the games zombie lore, which is exactly what a dedicated student of zombie biology should be doing. Keep the number of abilities and bonuses a Perk grants to the survivor that earned limited to no more than 2 or 3, and make sure that each encourages behavior in line with the Perk. Do this by asking yourself with these abilities, how is it most beneficial for a survivor to act? and keep tweaking things until you like the answer. Perks Should Cause Conflict Every Perk worth its salt should cause comment amongst the other survivors in the group when its Trigger condition is fulfilled, but the craziness shouldnt stop once a survivor has the Perk. Every Perk should say something big about the character that has it: what theyve done, what they value, what they dont give a shit about and as a result should beg for a response from other survivors in the group during play. To help this along, every Perk also possesses one or two facets to it that effect other survivors in the group, usually by giving them Refreshes or experience when they act in a certain way or enter into conflict for certain reasons. Design these abilities that impact other survivors with the question what sort of person might have a problem with what this Perk represents? Once youve answered that question, you can design an ability that rewards survivors for getting into conflict with the man or woman who has the Perk. Even Perks like Heroic Sacrifice that are triggered by your survivor dying in a certain way can cause conflict by encouraging unwise behavior amongst your fellow survivors. Heroic Sacrifice does this by giving experience to anyone who does something stupid because of
their grief over your death, in effect giving everyone part of the benefits of a relationship with you. The conflict generated by Perks doesnt necessarily need to be negative for the group (the bonus given to people who try to reform a Cold Blooded individual is an example of a positive form of conflict), but the abilities that a Perk grants other survivors should cause friction of one sort or another. When Perks cause conflict amongst the group, they allow every survivor involved to make a stand as to what sort of person they are, enriching the game for everyone
Perks Can Change Sometimes, particularly for Perks that relate to a code of behavior or status within the group its appropriate to provide a way out of the Perk. As a survivor changes and grows, their priorities and attitudes change as well. What might once have been an integral part of their personality might be tossed aside, or circumstances might conspire against them and relieve them of a position or privilege. Such a way out of a Perk functions much like a Trigger, relying on certain events to transpire in order for the Perk to fade.
When designing such a way out, keep in mind the same criteria you used for building the Perks trigger: make it dependent on the survivors actions, or at least on circumstances that they have some sort of say in. As a designer of Perks, you want to give people a motivation to have their characters change and lose Perks simply because characters that grow and evolve are far more interesting than those that dont. On that note, include one or more ways for a character to lose a Perk and provide an experience reward of between 1 and 3 points depending on how attractive you want each option to be. If any of the methods of losing a Perk relate to the Trigger condition for another Perk, also include the option of gaining that Perk to replace the one that was lost, allowing the player to further define their survivors development. Supplies So you know how many supply your survivor starts the game with based on their archetype, and that one supply is roughly equivalent to a days food and water, enough bullets to completely reload a gun, enough arrows to fill a quiver, or enough duct-tape and spare parts to fix something thats broken but salvageable. Supplies are intentionally left vague until theyre used, because counting bullets of various calibers and measuring how much water one has in their plastic jug isnt what Fear the Living is about. The GM will ask you to spend 1 supply every day that your survivor hasnt received food and water from someone else, and doesnt have ready access to a source of food and water, and may also elect to have you spend supply as the consequence of a Risk. Some pieces of gear require regular upkeep as well-parts that need to be replaced, tanks that need refilling etc. Such items will have a Drawback like High-Maintenance that specifically mentions how much Supply youll need to spend. Other than in those cases, its very much up to your survivor how they spend their supplies. They can be traded, blown in a wild orgy of consumption, hidden, destroyed, or lost just
like any particular piece of gear-so hold on tight to them. One Supply is also typically the going rate for most mundane pieces of gear in those ragged homesteads where theres been some sort of barter system institutionalized. Gear First things first, Gear doesnt cover the odds and ends that your survivor uses to patch their equipment up, feed themselves, or water their peace lily; thats covered under Supplies. Secondly, Gear doesnt cover crap that doesnt have any real purpose other than giving your character some character. If you want your Unlikely Survivor to still be wearing their cheesy restaurant vest bedecked with flair (and probably some zombie blood) then no one should stop you. Likewise if you want your Professional to have a votive candle and a statue of the Virgin Mary to go with it; if it doesnt have a game effect, youre golden. Gear is stuff that has some sort of use, whether thats saving your hide from a zombie attack, keeping a roof over your head, starting fires easily, or bashing in skulls. Features and Drawbacks All Gear is made up of a combination of Features (which sum up what a piece of gear can do for you) and Drawbacks (crap that you need to put up with from the gear, whether because its poorly made or just because thats how it works). Pieces of gear that your survivor starts off with can have up to 5 features, and always have a number of drawbacks equal to their number of features -1. Stuff your survivor finds during play as a result of scavenging though? That shit can have whatever features the GM sees fit to give it, along with whatever drawbacks he or she wants it to have. That being said, if a player makes a roll to find something in particular and avoids any risks the GM throws at them regarding the quality of the item, they should give the player what theyve earned (and what theyre looking for). This is a notice to your GM not to dick around. Features are separated into two types: mechanical and descriptive. A mechanical feature declares what a piece of gear can be used for, and gives a +1 bonus to a roll when a survivor uses it for that purpose (multiple iterations of the same mechanical feature create a bigger bonus). The maximum bonus any piece of gear can provide is +3 for really top of the line stuff, or else stuff thats just really well suited to doing something (like an axe for chopping wood or heads). Most mechanical features are self-explanatory, like Weapon (Smashing and Crushing) or Tool (brush cutter), but some are a little bit more involved as to when they apply. Descriptive features dont give a bonus to die rolls, they just flat out give the piece of gear a new capability thats not measured in die bonuses. Things like a silencers ability to muffle a gunshot, or a poisons ability to really ruin someones day if its slipped in their morning water. Descriptive features get a bit more detail, and can sometimes be taken multiple times to improve their benefit. Descriptive features that stack can only be taken a maximum of 3 times. Drawbacks are the downsides of a piece of Gear, like being high-maintenance, loud, bulky, or having been stolen from someone whos not on the best of terms with you (and whos
still kicking). Theyre kind of like Risks, except that characters cant negate them by spending successes, youve got to fulfill the prerequisite to avoid the drawback biting your survivor in the ass or else suck it up and deal with the consequences. Each Drawback specifies in what sort of situations it applies, or if its a constant problem-and its the GMs responsibility to apply Drawbacks as often as they come up (if theres an argument at the table about whether or not one applies, take a vote and stick to it). Some Drawbacks can also be taken multiple times to represent really big problems that plague a piece of Gear. Its been said before, but its worth saying again: two pieces of gear that are the same type of item dont have to have the same drawbacks and features. One shotgun might be accurate as all hell, but really high maintenance and slow to reload. Its Features and Drawbacks might be Weapon (Shooting Things) +2, Spread, Ranged, High Maintenance, Reload, Slow) while another might be a bare-bones weapon that does its job serviceably but with no bells or whistles. Its Features and Drawbacks might be Weapon (Shooting Things) +1, Ranged, Spread, Reload, Slow). Both are the same item, but both behave very differently when the proverbial machete hits the zombie skull. On a similar tack, its possible to combine features and drawbacks to make some really weird crap, like a radio with a machine gun attached to it. Its up to the GM and to the rest of the group if gonzo crap like that is alright or whether you need to restrict yourself to combinations of Features and Drawbacks that play well with reality. Features and Drawbacks can also be gained on equipment during play through spending successes from rolls in order to accomplish goals, or through risks that werent avoided by the survivor. If a survivor makes a roll to fortify their bikers jacket into honest-to-god, noshit armor with metal plates and extra padding, then just give them the +1 armor (and maybe the resistance to firearms too) that such an upgrade entails. But by the same token, if they get shot and the GM inflicts the risk Unless you elect to get knocked on your ass by that blow your armor is going to be weaker whenever youre attacked from the rear (adding the Restricted -1 drawback) and the player doesnt spend a success or wiggle out of it then feel free to inflict the Drawback. Fairs fair. The following is a list of the features and drawbacks that make up every piece of gear in Fear the Living: Features Weapon (Descriptive, Stacking): Describe the weapon, and how it hurts and kills people (and if a weapon cant kill someone, its not a weapon). When its used to hurt and/or kill someone in that way, inflict 1 extra damage in addition to whatever damage you inflict from spending successes. This extra damage is increased by 1 for each time that you take this feature. Mundane Weapons start by Beating people Up, Specialized Weapons start by fucking people up, and Customized weapons start by killing and maiming people. Everyones fists and feet count as mundane weapons by default. If you use a weapon outside of the parameters of this Feature, it starts by Beating people up.
Tool(Mechanical, Stacking): Describe the tool, and what its used for, like repairing cars or digging holes. When its used for its intended task add a +1 die bonus to the roll. Ranged(Descriptive, Requires Weapon, Stacking): The piece of gear is a missile or thrown weapon like a bow, gun, or javelin. Mundane ranged weapons can accurately hit anything within around 50 feet or so in normal combat conditions. Specialized ranged weapons can accurately hit anything within around 300 feet or so in normal combat conditions. Customized ranged weapons can accurately and reliably hit anything within 300 yards or so in normal combat conditions. Each time after the first you pick this feature, double the range your weapon can reliably hit something at. When you fire outside your range, the GM is free to impose any risks hed like up to 4(as normal), and inflict damage of one stage less than normal. If you only use a Ranged weapon once during a conflict congrats, you maintained fire discipline or were able to keep track of where your arrows went. If you attack someone with it more than once during a Conflict though youve got to spend 1 Supply in order to reload it. The GM can also feel free to make a Risk out of burning through ammunition. Thrown weapons dont have this problem, but once you throw them you cant use them again until you pick them back up. Armor (Mechanical, Stacking): While your survivor wears an item with this feature, subtract 1 for each time this feature is taken from any damage that they take which isnt from bleeding, poison, disease, guns, the environment, full-body trauma like falling, or fire. Mundane armor is obviously improvised stuff like hockey pads, a breastplate made out of mild-steel sheet metal, or a sturdy leather jacket. Specialized armor protects against attacks and against one of: full-body trauma, the environment, guns, or fire and is obviously designed as armor. It represents stuff like proofed chain mail armor, a bullet-proof vest, or a flak jacket. Customized armor protects against two of from that same list and is serious stuff like a SWAT team outfit, a suit of authentic full-plate, or the most expertly designed improvised armor. Armor Piercing (Descriptive, Stacking, Requires Weapon): A weapon with Armor Piercing punches through (or slips by) armor that would normally hold up to it. For each time that this Feature is taken reduce the effect of any armor gained from personal Gear like body armor and such (armor gained from cover is not effected). Specialized Armor Piercing weapons ignore up to 1 point of armor gained from cover and is for things like high-caliber guns and big fucking axes. Customized Armor piercing weapons ignore 2 points of armor gained from cover and represent things like high-powered rifles and explosives of the highest order. Shelter (Descriptive, Stacking): This Feature only applies to things like abandoned cabins, makeshift forts made of rocks and tree limbs, and others such home bases. A basic shelter gives characters 1 armor when they take advantage of its defenses, and can comfortably house the person who owns it along with 2 other people (more can squeeze in, but the GM should feel free to inflict risks). Each additional time its taken, the base can provide shelter
for 2 additional people. Shelter might not be glamorous, but it is guaranteed to provide protection against the elements so long as it stands, as well as a reasonably secure place to lay your head. Specialized shelter is one of the following: heavily fortified (+1 armor when holed up), well positioned (add the risk: unless you cause a shit-ton of chaos the residents of the place will get the drop on you to anyone trying to infiltrate or storm your shelter), in a safe area (you can eliminate one risk related to encroaching zombies while youre in the general area of the base), near abundant resources (you can acquire one supply from said resources once per session without a roll), or possessed of some sort of specialized facilities like a biology lab or a reloading station. Customized shelter involves 2 picks from the list. Transport (Descriptive, Stacking): Gear with this Feature can help move survivors from place to place, speeding up what would be a slog on foot or letting people cross an otherwise impassable body of water. It covers everything from a dependable burro to a rickety sailboat to a honest-to-god working car. Choose whether the transport is land based or something like a boat or raft. All transports can carry 1 survivor plus 1 for each time this Feature is taken. All Transports begin by carrying their passengers just a little bit faster than someone would be able to run or swim (depending on whether its a land or waterborn vehicle). Mundane transport is something like a donkey, a bicycle, or a primitive raft; means of transportation that move just a bit more quickly than someone jogging or swimming. Choose one of the following to be true about the transport: Its a Workhorse (It can carry really heavy loads without Risks), Its Quick (It gives anyone riding or piloting it 1 success that can be spent on any goal that involves getting somewhere quickly or to negate a Risk related travel delays), or It provides protection (It gives anyone piloting or riding it 1 armor). Specialized transportation is a cut above, something like a thoroughbred horse, an ATV, or a nice sailboat with a fiberglass hull. It gets two picks from the above list (you can choose each option multiple times and its effects stack). Customized transportation is the sort of stuff that was commonplace before the plague but that is now rare and priceless. A working car, a motorcycle, a cigarette boat, or a champion racehorse. It gets three picks from the above list but requires that you spend 1 supply after each session in which it is used to feed or refuel it. Pet (Descriptive): The piece of gear is a actually a living breathing animal that rolls +2d6 whenever it does something that an animal of its type is really good at, +1d6 whenever it does something an animal of its type is pretty good at, and a base die for everything else. The animal is loyal enough to you, but isnt trained beyond the very basics of sit and stay or the equivalent. It loves you, and you can write down how you feel about your pet (these feelings can obviously change). The GM controls your pet, unless you can convince it to follow your commands with successes spent to accomplish a goal. This feature isnt for animals kept solely for food like cattle, goats, or guinea pigs. For creatures like that, just describe them as part of your survivors supplies.
A specialized pet is trained and capable, something like a guard dog or a horse thats been broken in . It rolls +3d6 when it does anything its really good at, +2d6 when it does anything its good at, and +1d6 for everything else. You control your pet, but the GM may put forward Risks that reflect your pet freaking out in dangerous situations or otherwise running off on its own. A customized pet is a uniquely loyal and able animal. Think Dr. Nevilles Dog from the movie I Am Legend, Old Yeller, or Lassie (and yes, a customized pet can be something other than a dog-like a devoted riding animal or a creepily intelligent parrot). You always control your pets actions no matter what (the GM cannot inflict Risks on you that involve your pet disobeying you). The pet rolls +4d6 when it does something an animal of its type and training is really good at, +3d6 for anything an animal of its type is good at, and +2d6 for anything else. Impressive (Descriptive): A piece of gear with this Feature might not be any better than a run of the mill piece of equipment, but it looks absolutely awesome. If its a car, its in perfect condition with a cherry paintjob and a low rumbling growl of a motor, if its a weapon it practically screams Dont fuck with me!-a pistol with a pearl handle and a shining nickel finish, an authentic pattern-forged katana with a silk-wrapped hilt, a badass bowie knife from the 1800s with Live Free or Die inscribed on the wicked-looking blade. Whenever you use the piece of gear to intimidate, cow, or impress another survivor add one automatic success to your total that you can only use towards a goal along those lines. Specialized gear with this feature adds 2 successes and Customized gear with this feature adds 3. Communication (Descriptive): You can use the gear to communicate with other survivors at a distance. Mundane communication is astoundingly primitive-things like drums or semaphore flags that can be used to signal nearby survivors. Specialized communication is something like a hand-cranked shortwave radio or a pair of walkie-talkies. Customized communication is high-tech stuff, like a solar-powered satellite phone. Healing (Descriptive, Stacking): The healing feature represents something like a first aid kit, surgical tools, or antibiotics, stuff that you can use to patch someone up. You can use it 3 times for each time you select this feature, but can only replenish it through begging, making, borrowing, finding or stealing gear with this feature. Mundane healing is something like a basic, portable first aid kit like something youd find in a convenience store. It can heal 3 points of damage from a living creatures Beat Up track if you successfully achieve a goal to do so, 2 points of damage from a living creatures Fucked Up track if you successfully achieve a goal to do so, or 1 point of damage from a living creatures Maimed and Killed track if you successfully achieve a goal to do so. Specialized healing increases those numbers by 1 and is the sort of
equipment youd find professionals like EMPs using, and customized increases those numbers by 2 and is top of the line, state of the art stuff. Rapid-Fire (Descriptive, Requires Weapon and Ranged): This feature only really makes sense for projectile weapons like guns and such, although if your survivor is crazy enough to have something like a Chinese repeating crossbow then good for you-your gear can have this feature if you really want it. Rapid fire means your weapon can shoot quickly enough to hit multiple targets or lay down heavy covering fire in an area. Mundane rapid fire weapons are like your average machine pistol or a (sigh) chineses repeating crossbow you can apply any successes you spend in a conflict to do damage with a weapon with rapid fire to up to 3 creatures in the same general area, or a risk related to covering fire like Unless you take cover, youre going to get shot to up to 3 creatures in the same general area with only 1 success. Specialized rapid fire weapons are guns like AK-47s or Submachine guns-the sort of thing that SWAT teams, serious militants, and soldiers use on a regular basis and can do the above to up to 6 creatures in the same general area. Customized rapid fire weapons are the cream of the crop, and suitable for uniquely serious (or crazy) individuals. They represent things like full-scale machine guns-they can target up to 9 creatures, or apply that a risk to up to 9 creatures with a single success. Every time you use a weapons rapid fire feature, whether you hit or you miss, youve got to spend 1 supply to reload it. Spray and Pray gets pretty demanding bullet-wise. Area (Descriptive, Requires Weapon): Weapons with the area feature hit whatever the hell theyre shot or thrown at, along with everything else in the same general area like a shotgun with buckshot loaded in it, a grenade, or a stick of dynamite. Successes you apply towards damage with the weapon apply to whatever creatures and significant objects are in the area, and the GM is welcome to declare risks that relate to things catching on fire, structures collapsing, or shrapnel spraying everywhere when someone brings out a weapon with the area feature. Mundane area weapons hit a very small area (akin to improvised explosives and shotguns with buckshot) like those people bunched up together by the old oak tree. Specialized area weapons hit a large area-like a grenade a stick of TNT, or a honest-to-god flamethrower and can include a more general area like Everyone on that side of the military surplus store. Customized area weapons hit a fucking huge area (do make sure the weapon is ranged, or that your survivor can manage to throw it anyway and run like hell with a successful roll) and are things like C-4 and mortars. Reliable (Descriptive): Gear with this feature can really take a licking. Whenever the GM declares risks that relate to your gear failing you in any way (and for pets, this can include things like your pet freaking out and abandoning you), you can ignore one of them. And no, you cant take both this Feature and the Unreliable drawback (although why the hell
would you). Specialized gear with this feature allow you to ignore up to two risks, and customized gear with this feature allows you to ignore up to 3 of them. You dont get experience for risks that your character ignores in this way, but you dont have to spend successes to eliminate them. Powerful (Descriptive): Powerful Gear can deal with challenges that would overwhelm a lesser piece of equipment. If its a weapon, it deals damage one stage more severe than it normally would (so a Mundane Powerful weapon Fucks People up, and a Specialized Powerful Weapon Maims or Kills people). If Powerful is applied to a Customized weapon, it inflicts an additional point of damage on top of what it would already inflict. In addition when you try to use a piece of Powerful Gear to accomplish a goal, it costs 1 additional success for someone else to oppose your goal. So if you devote 3 successes to the goal Get a radio message out to my friends that lets them know about the approaching zombies with a Powerful radio, it would require 4 successes to completely prevent the goal from occurring. Specialized powerful gear adds 2 successes to those required to block a goal being accomplished with the item and is robust and high-performance. Customized Powerful Gear is cutting edge stuff that knocks everything else out of the water and adds 3 to the number of successes required to block a goal being accomplished with the item. Quick (Descriptive): The item is ready to use at the drop of a hat, easy to pull out of a pack, off of a belt, or to summon with a whistle or a snap of ones fingers or else has some sort of advantage that allows you to employ it before anyone gets a chance to do anything (like a long reach for a weapon). In a conflict, when you use an item with this feature to do something, your action takes effect before anyone else (if multiple people are using a piece of gear with this feature, then they go at the same time). So with a quick melee weapon, you get a swing in before the zombie youre fighting can even stagger forward, or with a quick radio you can send off a message to other survivors before a storm comes in and fucks with your reception. Specialized quick gear beats mundane quick gear to the draw, and Customized gear beats anything to the draw (except other quick customized gear). At your option, a quick piece of gear can instead eliminate 1 risk related to timing inflicted by the GM (2 for a specialized piece of gear, 3 for a customized piece of gear). You dont get experience for eliminated risks, but dont have to spend successes to eliminate them. Subtle (Descriptive): Subtle gear is easy to miss, either because its quiet when its used (like a pair of padded boots or a silenced pistol), small and easily concealed like a knife or a cell phone, or just unremarkable and easily missed. Add 1 success to any attempt to achieve a goal that involves hiding, concealing, or otherwise cloaking the concealed object from notice or comment. A subtle weapon might be something like a switchblade or a derringer thats easy to slip up a sleeve or into a boot, while a subtle pet might be something like a well-behaved mutt that stays in the background until hes needed. Even a car can be Subtle if its camouflaged or looks so much like a derelict that most people dont even consider the possibility that it might actually drive. Choose when you select the
Subtle Feature whether the benefit applies to when the item is used, or to attempts to keep the Gear hidden. Specialized gear adds 2 successes and is really hard to notice, and Customized gear adds 3 and might as well not be there at all. Once your character uses the gear in an obvious manner (shooting someone with a silenced pistol in front of a crowd, or driving a beat-up car into the midst of a zombie horde) you cant gain the benefit of this feature again until circumstances have changed. Hazardous (Descriptive, Stacking): Unless folks are careful around this piece of Gear, bad things happen. It might be that its poisonous (or just poison), rigged to blow up if you dont deactivate the tripwire, or a pet with standing orders to maul anyone who doesnt say Deficit Reduction and give it a treat. When someone other than you deals with the Gear, they chance being exposed to a single Risk that you choose when you select this Feature. The Risk associated with a hazardous item is described like any other: unless/if they do ____________(give your pet the command word, check the door for tripwires, when more than 50 lbs goes on top of the trapdoor) then (the effect of the Risk) happens. The effect of this Risk can be any chosen from the list of Risks in the Resolution Rules section and represents the nastiness that the Hazardous item can inflict on the unwary. Selecting this feature twice can either add a second risk, a second side-effect (keeping the same trigger as the first risk), or can make the rigged piece of gear go off again and again so long as you reset it in some way (reiterating the command to a pet, setting up another deadfall, reopening the bear trap). Selecting this feature three times can add a third risk or side effect, or make the rigged item reset itself automatically any number of times after its sprung. At the discretion of the GM, resetting a rigged item might require a roll to accomplish a goal, with risks linked to spending supply or wasting time. A specialized rigged item inflicts two risks (or one risk with 2 effects) per pick, while a customized item inflicts 3 per pick. No matter what, your character will not set off their own rigged item unless they fail to address a risk that the GM sends their way to that effect. Sentimental Value (Descriptive): Whatever it is, its more than just stuff to you. Your survivor really cares about it. It might bring back good memories of the time before the dead arose, might have been given to them by a lover or friend, or have been pried from the grasp of a hated enemy. Whatever the case theyre really attached to it, and it shows. Normally one cant have a Relationship with Gear (excepting pets), but a piece of gear with sentimental value is an exception. Your character has a one-sided relationship with the item, and gains all of the normal benefits and vulnerabilities from having such a relationship. This relationship can be changed, strengthened, or evolved using the guidelines for changing relationships. But the gun cant love you back, and cars do not dream of electric sheep. You cant apply this feature to a Pet. Its already assumed that any animal that your survivor is keeping around (and that he or she doesnt plan on eating) is one that you have
some sort of feelings for. Also, while the name of the feature might imply it, theres nothing stopping your survivor from drawing strength from a negative relationship with an item (just think of all of the people out in the real world with a pain-in-the-ass car, and realize just how true that is). Drawbacks Drawbacks are the downsides of your characters crap, that range from annoying inconveniences to life-threatening problems that can make one wonder why they put up with it. Unlike Features, Drawbacks arent changed by the quality of the Gear that theyre applied to. An Unreliable Customized item is just as unreliable as an Unreliable Mundane item. Also remember that an item can be unreliable with a little u without possessing Unreliable as a Drawback (this also goes for other Drawbacks as well). The GM can always invoke such description-only traits to muck with your characters attempt to use the item, but it uses up one of his 4 risks. Likewise, you can take on a risk that references the items unreliability, but thats your choice as a player rather than something mandated by the mechanics. Unreliable (Descriptive, Stacking): Unreliable stuff is just that: unreliable. It might work, it might not, and in the case of something like a horse might decide that your time of need is a perfect time to buck and throw you to the ground. Whenever you use the gear in a conflict, the GM rolls 1d6. If it comes up a 1, then the gear malfunctions, turns on you, runs away, whatever the GM believes best suits the situation. Treat it like a Risk that wasnt avoided and which cant be eliminated with a success. No you dont get experience for it. Deal with it. Taking this Drawback additional times increases the range under which you suffer the gears side effects: 1 pick brings it up to 1-2, 2 picks to 1-3, or three picks to 1-4. Alternatively, picks can increase the severity of the Drawback, adding the effects of an additional Risk per pick taken. Messy (Descriptive, Must be a Melee Weapon): Theres no avoiding getting splattered (and splattering anyone nearby) with blood, bone fragments, and other assorted nastiness when you use this weapon. When you hurt or kill someone with this weapon any Risks that the GM declares that relate in some way to bodily fluids (whether thats attracting zombie attention, risking zombie infection or something else similar) cost 2 successes rather than 1 to negate. Add 1 success to any goal another survivor tries to achieve that relates to finding out that you were responsible for the mess, or to track you down. Obvious (Descriptive): An obvious piece of gear is ridiculously loud when its used, or impossible to conceal (choose one when you select this Drawback). An obvious gun doesnt just make a loud noise (perhaps declared as a risk by the GM) everyone in the area recoils as their eardrums are assaulted by a huge BANG and its not a matter of whether zombies will be attracted to it, but when. An obvious melee weapon is impossible to conceal; either its so big that any attempt to do so would be ludicrous, or its so eye-
catching that youd have to be blind not to notice the sword/spear/knife/board with a nail in it that your survivor is carrying. Depending on which form of this Drawback you choose you cannot achieve goals relating to concealing the items use or to concealing the item (depending on whether its just loud or hard to conceal). This is a good Drawback to couple with Impressive, and cant be chosen with Subtle for obvious (ha!) reasons. High-Maintenance (Descriptive, Stacking): High maintenance equipment requires a lot of tender loving care in order to perform at its best. It might be a pet that eats ravenously, a gun that needs to be cleaned and disassembled after every battle, or a shelter thats always on the brink of falling apart. High Maintenance Gear requires either a few minutes or so of complete attention and pampering after each conflict in which it is used during which the survivor cant do anything else that would require a roll, or requires one supply to patch it up, repair it, or feed it at the end of any session in which it is used. This spent Supply is in addition to any Supply needed to repair it normally, or to feed it in the case of a Pet. An additional pick increases this to a couple of hours/2 Supply, and a third pick increases it to around 8 hours or so/3 Supply. Restricted (Mechanical, Stacking, Requires Weapon, Tool, or Pet): A weapon, tool, or pet with this drawback isnt well suited for use in particular type of situation. Maybe its a spear thats long length makes it really hard to use in a cramped corridor, a trained bird of prey that freaks out when there are zombies nearby, or a bike that slows down when its not ridden on concrete or asphalt. When the Restricted piece of Gear is used in that situation, you take a -1 penalty to your roll (subtracting from its dice bonus if any). When Restricted is applied to a piece of gear that gives bonus successes in certain situations, eliminates certain types of risks, or gives armor or bonus damage the penalty may instead apply to those if you choose when you select this Drawback. If you take this drawback twice, either apply a -2 penalty when the drawback applies, or declare another situation in which the -1 penalty applies. Taking it three times means a -3 penalty, 3 situations in which a -1 penalty applies, or 2 situations in which a -2 penalty applies. Dont think you can weasel out of taking punishing drawbacks by selecting a circumstance that wont occur at least occasionally. The GM is encouraged to veto such picks that he or she feels wont apply often and to suggest a more relevant alternative. Players are encouraged to heckle the offender playfully like so: Dudeyoure never going to use a machete in your underwear underneath the full moon until he or she gives up and picks something thatll actually have an effect on the Gears usefulness. Bulky (Descriptive): A bulky piece of Gear is awkward, cumbersome, or just plain big and heavy for its type. The longsword your character got off of eBay 1 year before the apocalypse might be a wall-hanger thats 5 pounds too heavy, your guard dog might be too large to run after someone who has slipped through a narrow gap in a fence, or your gun might require a cart (or at least a ridiculously strong individual) to move about.
A Bulky weapon or other handheld piece of Gear definitely requires 2 hands to carry, or else is so awkward to move around that the other hand is occupied with keeping your balance and definitely cant be used effectively in small corridors while a bulky vehicle or pet just flat-out cant fit into spaces designed for smaller transports or creatures. The only way to avoid this problem is to avoid taking the Bulky piece of gear into cramped conditions or else to open up the area (perhaps with some explosives). Stolen From Someone Who Cares (Descriptive): Your survivor (or perhaps someone else) stole the gear from someone who actually gave a crap about it. Someone who valued it, who needed it, or who just really wanted to keep their hands on it. Whatever the case, they miss it and they want it back sooner rather than later. The GM can freely involve this character (whos assumed to be alive, or else your zombies can hold some semblance of a grudge, and one is coming to wreak undead vengeance upon you) in the story without invoking any sort of risks and without any warning whatsoever. This also isnt your garden-variety I want my crap back sort of thing. This is more like the sort of situation youd get if you stole a twinkie from Tallahassee (the twinkie-loving badass from Zombieland). Whoevers looking for it will find you sooner or later, and wont settle for anything less than the titular piece of Gear without a fight. It might also be inconvenient (depending on what sort of friends you keep) for them to learn that your character stole from someone whos still kicking. One-Shot (Descriptive, Cant Be Applied to A Pet): A piece of gear with this drawback is a one-and-done sort of deal, like a grenade or other explosive. Once you use it, whether or not the attempt was successful, its gone. Feel free to try and find more, or to select it as multiple gear picks at character creation but do make sure to conserve it. Time Consuming (Descriptive, Cant Be Applied to A Pet, Stacking): Using this piece of gear (or setting it up to be used) takes a while whether thats calibrating settings and modifying a scope for a sniper rifle, tuning into the right frequency for a shortwave radio, or the amount of time it takes to use the ugly tools of a torturers trade. Using or setting up (pick one) time consuming gear takes a few minutes of complete attention and care during which the survivor cant do anything else (things like revving up a chainsaw come to mind). For two picks, it takes a couple of hours to set up or use properly, and for 3 picks it takes around 8 hours or so. Example Gear The list of Features and Drawbacks provided above can be a little bit daunting. You might not know where to start, you might not know how exactly to represent a particular piece of Gear that you have your mind set on, or you might not want to put in the effort of designing your survivors Gear yourself. With that in mind, a list of Gear follows that covers some of the most common items that you might want to kit your survivor out with, along with each pieces Features and Drawbacks and a brief description. Any piece of Gear from this list can be selected as a Mundane, Specialized, or Customized item at your option. Its just a matter of what your survivor is entitled to via Gear Picks, advancement, or successes as well as your description of the items quality.
Melee Weapons Knife: This covers everything from the slimmest daggers to pocket knives and switchblades. Features: Weapon (Stabbing) +1, Quick, Subtle Drawbacks: Restricted (against armor, against people with a longer reach -1). Big Knife: This is for your combat, hunting, or bowie knives. Features: Weapon (Stabbing and Slashing) +1, Tool (Carving and Cutting) +1, Quick Drawbacks: Restricted -1 (against armor, against people with a longer reach). Now Thats a Knife: Anything that Crocodile Dundee would be proud of, as well as smallish swords and machetes fall into this category. Features: Weapon (Stabbing and Slashing) +2 Quick Drawbacks: Obvious, Restricted -1 (Against Armor). An Honest To God Sword: This covers any large bladed weapon with a hilt that wouldnt look out of place at a Renn faire. Features: Weapon (Stabbing, Slashing or Both) +3, Powerful Drawbacks: Obvious. Select one of: Two Handed Sword Bulky, Messy Rapier or Smallsword Restricted -2 (Against Armor) One handed Sword Restricted -1 (Against Armor), Messy Bats and Hammers Cricket bats, sledgehammers, baseball bats, cudgels, and heavy walking sticks all fall into this category. Features: Weapon (Bashing) +2 Drawbacks: Bulky. Unpowered Tools For all of you wannabe handy-folks, this category covers things like carpenters hammers, screwdrivers, and unpowered saws that one might use as a weapon. Features: Weapon (Bashing, Stabbing or Slashing) +1, Tool (Describe the tools use) +2 Drawbacks: Restricted (Short Reach -1) and one of either Messy, Unreliable, or Time Consuming. Chainsaw Its loud, its powerful, its completely impractical as a weapon but Im sure that someone will try to use it as one anyway. This entry also covers things like hedge trimmers and weed-whackers. Features: Weapon (Slashing) +1 Tool (Brush Cutting) +2, Powerful, Impressive Features: Obvious, Bulky, Messy and one of: Time Consuming (start up) or Unreliable. Spear The most popular weapon amongst the human race since weve been able to call ourselves human. Now that the dead have risen, its been making a comeback. Features: Weapon (Stabbing) +2, Quick (Long Reach) and/or Ranged (Thrown), Tool (Hunting) +1 Drawbacks: Pick 3 or 4 of the following (based on how many Features you selected) Restricted (Narrow corridors -1), Bulky, Obvious (for two handed spears), Restricted (When someones up in your face -1). Ranged Weapons Bow Everything from modern fiberglass sports models to the most primitive self-bows. Bows are silent and deadly, but more awkward to use in melee than guns. Features:
Weapon +2 (Shooting Things), Ranged x2, Subtle (When Fired) Drawbacks: Restricted -2 (When Used In Melee), High Maintenance, Restricted -1 (When Wet). Crossbow For those with a flair for the dramatic and a need for a silent ranged weapon. Features: Weapon +1 (Shooting Things), Ranged x2, Powerful, Subtle (When Fired) Drawbacks: Time Consuming (Reload), Restricted -2 (When Used In Melee), Restricted -1 (When Wet). Saturday Night Special This entry is for the piddly little mass-produced guns like derringers and their derivatives. Features: Weapon +1 (Shooting Things), Ranged, Subtle (Easily Concealed) Drawbacks: Unreliable, Restricted -1 (When used against a target that youre not right next to). Pistol or Revolver Everything from a 9mm, to a .38 snub-nose to a Walther PPK can be represented with these stats. Features: Weapon +1 (Shooting Things), Ranged and one of: Powerful (For high-caliber pistols and revolvers), Rapid Fire (For machine pistols), Subtle (Easily Concealed), or Reliable (For most revolvers) Drawbacks: Restricted -1 (Against Armor), and one of: Unreliable, High Maintenance, or Obvious (Loud). Shotgun A good-old fashioned pump-action or semi-automatic boomstick. Excellent for sending up a wall of buckshot to cover an escape or just blowing a zombies head clean off its shoulders. Features: Weapon +2 (Shooting Things), Ranged, and one of: Powerful (For Slugs), or Area (For Buckshot).Drawbacks: Bulky, Obvious (Hard To Conceal and Loud), and one of: Time Consuming (Reload) or High Maintenance. Rifle Civilian hunting rifles, as well as old-school weapons still in use like the M1 Garand. Useful for huntin wabbits (as well as zombies). Features: Weapon +1 (Shooting Things), Weapon +1 (Hitting Things With The Stock), Ranged x2. Drawbacks: Obvious (When Fired), Restricted -2 (Shooting in Melee). Assault Rifle This covers uniquely serious guns like the M16, AK-47, or Kalashnikovs enjoyed by militaries, militias, and crazy survivalists alike. Features: Weapon (Shooting Things) +1, Weapon (Hitting Things With The Stock) +1, Powerful, Ranged x2, Rapid Fire Drawbacks: Obvious (Loud and Hard to Conceal), Bulky, and two of: Unreliable, High Maintenance, Restricted -1 (When Using Rapid Fire), Restricted -1 (When Using Rapid Fire). Sniper Rifle Military-grade rifles with sophisticated and finely calibrated sights to ensure proper targeting. The best of these can hit a zombie (or a man) between the eyes at over a mile away. Hard to find in a post-zombie world, and even harder to find in good condition. Features: Weapon (Shooting Things) +1, Ranged x2 and two of: Powerful, Ranged, Subtle (Silenced). Drawbacks: Bulky, Time Consuming (Set Up), High Maintenance, and one of: Restricted -1 (Close Range), Obvious (Loud), Unreliable. Things that go boom
Molotov Cocktail High-proof alcohol or other accelerants stuffed into a container with a rag for a fuse. Simple, scary as hell to face, and really effective when you absolutely need to burn something or someone to ashes. Features: Weapon (Setting Things On Fire) +2, Area, Hazardous (Unless people in the area put out the fire, itll deal 2 additional points of damage to them each round). Drawbacks: Unreliable, One-Shot, Restricted (When its Raining) -2. Pipe Bomb What was once the province of dumbass kids looking for a good time and crazy-ass kids looking for payback is now a easy and effective way to scatter some zombies. This entry covers most improvised explosives and grenades that survivors will be able to come up with (barring specific Talents related to explosives). Features: Hazardous x2 (Unless you get the fuck out of the way before the fuse burns down you take 2 damage to your Fucked Up Track), Area Drawbacks: Unreliable, Time Consuming (Set Up) Armor Canvas/Leather The most common sort of improvised armor worn by survivors, a lot of times its nothing more than layered sweatshirts or a sturdy leather jacket. Itll stop a knife, but not a whole lot more. Features: Armor Improvised Metal Armor What happens when a survivor gets it into their heads to play blacksmith without some sort of dedicated training. A lot of this armor is simply thin sheet metal layered between cloth, while other times its pre-made vanity armor like what youd see at a Rennassiance faire. Features: Armor x2 Drawbacks: Restricted -1 (While Moving Quickly). Bullet Proof Vest This is professional armor-everything from Vietnam-era flak vests to modern Kevlar body-armor. Features: Armor x2 Drawbacks: Restricted -1 (While doing something requiring flexibility). Transportation Donkey (Mundane) A dependable, (hopefully) smart ass or similar creature such as a mule. Features: Transport (Workhorse), Pet. Drawbacks: Bulky ATV (Specialized) Covers any high-performance, small, all-terrain vehicle. Features: Transport (Workhorse, Quick), Reliable Drawbacks: High Maintenance (Refuel) Holy Shit A Working Car (Customized) I dont know how youll find one that isnt dead, or how youll manage to find fuel for it but good luck to you if you do! This entry covers those sorts of vehicles that cunning survivors have reinforced with sheet-metal to make into cut-rate tanks. Features: Transport (Workhorse, Quick x2), Armor x2 (Bullets, Fire). Drawbacks: Stolen From Someone Who Cares (Cmon, its a working car!), HighMaintenance (Refuel). Survival Gear
Walky-Talky Or any other similar short-range radio communication. Unless you feel like scavenging batteries every week, most of these will be hand-cranked or solar powered. Features: Communication First Aid Kit It wont save you from the zombie affliction, but it just might save you from losing your arm or bleeding out from a gunshot wound. Using this requires allocating successes to a goal related to healing someone. Features: Healing Memento A lost childs doll, a picture of your family, a signed Michael Jordan rookie card; any treasured possession your survivor might have with little practical use but significant sentimental value falls under this category. Features: Sentimental Value Toolbox With all of the requisite tools for fixing and building things. What a given toolbox will let you fix or build depends on whats inside. Features: Tool (Fixing/Building _________) +3 Drawbacks: Time Consuming and one of: Time Consuming or High Maintenance. Damage, Death, and Healing One thing thats universal in zombie media, perhaps even more universal than the presence of the zombies themselves is that people get hurt and die, often by the dozens. You can even make the case that zombies are so popular because they put our fear of dying right out in the open in a form typically killable by a 9mm or a cricket-bat to the skull. In zombie media people regularly get stabbed in the back by ruthless friends who think that theyre a threat to the group, tensions erupt into violence, predators strike at the only prey that still smells right, and everywhere zombies lurk ready to sink their clawlike fingers and worminfested mouths into living flesh. Fear the Living is no different, so when you create your survivor love them, support them, but be aware that there is a very real chance that they might bite it. The rules of the game give your survivor a little bit of breathing room on that front though, a measure of protection given to the protagonists of the story being created around the table to make sure that your survivors death isnt a certainty. Taking Damage As a result of other characters spending successes to inflict harm, or because of risks that your survivor hasnt avoided which threatened harm theyll take Damage. Damage is a measure of physical harm; bruised ribs, slashed-open arms, fractured skulls, or your garden-variety zombie bite wound. You mark damage that your character receives on a Wound Track thats included with your survivors character sheet. There are three levels of wound track, divided on the basis of how serious the wounds contained in them are which are called the Beaten Up Track, the Fucked Up Track, and the Killed or Maimed Track. Each has a number of boxes on it that track how close the survivor is to being Beaten Up, Fucked Up, or Killed/Maimed. Each point of damage that a character takes is logged on one of these three tracks goes into a box, from left to right, and when a track is filled and cant take anymore damage, any overflow goes onto the next track down. In this way, you can even beat someone to death with your fists (if youre crazy or angry enough).
Mundane weapons like ones fists and feet, .22 caliber firearms, baseball bats, kitchen knives, fire-hardened wood spears, target arrows, and wall-hanger swords inflict damage on someones Beaten Up track. Specialized Weapons like a honest-to-god combat knife, a 9mm pistol, a real sword, or a nail-studded club inflict damage on their targets Fucked up track. Customized Weapons like high-caliber firearms, heavy explosives, and the biggest and best melee weapons inflict damage on their targets Killed or Maimed track. The Beaten Up track measures relatively minor, but painful injuries that your survivor suffers such as bruises, shallow cuts, and minor puncture wounds. An adults Beaten Up Track has 8 boxes to it. Once youve marked your 4th box in the beaten-up track the person controlling the person or thing that did it to you gets to choose a Liability that sticks with you until the damage is healed. Once your Beaten Up track is filled all the way, the person who controls the person or thing that did it to you can elect for you to suffer another liability that lasts until you are no longer Beaten Up. Alternatively, you can elect to be knocked unconscious or semi-conscious (able to speak but not to act) until the end of the scene. The Fucked Up track measures serious injuries like broken bones, cuts that bite through fat and skin, most puncture wounds to non-vital areas, and things like 2nd degree burns. An adults Fucked Up track has 5 boxes to it. Once youve marked your survivors 3rd box with damage, the person or thing that inflicted it on you gets to choose to inflict 2 Liabilities on your survivor that last until the damage is healed, or 1 Liability that sticks around permanently. Once youve filled up your Fucked Up track, you choose one of the following to happen: Youre conscious and able to act, but you have the risk: Unless you get medical attention from someone else, at the end of the scene you take 2 damage. (For the savvy amongst you, this means that unless you get medical attention, your character will die in 2 scenes). Youre unconscious and unable to act, but youre not getting any worse. Unfortunately this means youre also probably at the mercy of whoever fucked you up.
The Killed/Maimed track is for the huge stuff like severed limbs, heavy bleeding, and other serious nastiness that in the real world would get you sent to the ER in a heartbeat. It has only 3 boxes, and when the 2nd is marked your survivor gets a permanent liability like PTSD, brain damage, or a missing limb. When the 3rd box is marked your survivor is dying and unless they get medical treatment before the end of the next exchange (or a few minutes out of conflict) they are dead (or perhaps undead if they were infected). That being said, you as a player have a couple of options when this happens.
If you have Im Owed One marked on your characters sheet, you can erase it and avoid certain death with no questions asked-they leave you for dead, the zombies get distracted by a shiny object and dont eat your brains, you fall to your death but no one can find your body when they get to the foot of the cliffthe possibilities are only limited to what your friends sitting around the table will believe. Instead of being dead,
your character has clear Killed and Maimed Track and a Fucked Up track that is one box away from being completely filled. Using up your Im Owed One note also protects you from the zombie infection (even if it was already determined that your survivor had been infected). If your character is an Unlikely Survivor and you havent used it already this session, you can use your I Shouldnt Have Survived This But Signature ability to evade certain death in the same way as if you were owed one. The GM though can inflict a consequence on you that creates future problems for your survivor-like being left for dead in the middle of a cold wilderness, or waking up on an exam table surrounded by strange survivors asking pointed questions with very big guns. Using this ability also prevents your character from being afflicted with the zombie infection. If the player of the survivor that killed you is in a negotiating mood, you can offer up something else that your character has other than their life that you think might satisfy them. This option cant be pursued if a GM-controlled character or a cold and unfeeling hazard ends up killing you. You can offer them any of the following: To change any or all of your survivors Relationships, to give up a Perk, or to give their character the promise that your character will act in a certain way (youre under no obligation to follow through, but if you do both you and them refresh 1 of their choice). These offers are handled as an out-of-game negotiation between players, and the person who killed you is under no obligation to accept your offer. If Your Survivor Is Really Dead If none of the above options is possible (or if you just feel like letting your survivor die) make a new character with the same number of advancements as your previous one. Your new character doesnt have any of your previous characters Perks, extra Relationships, or any Gear that they had acquired. Go through the same character creation steps that you did for your first character, and then discuss with the GM how to believably introduce your new survivor into the game. Other survivors in the group who had feelings for your old character may elect to keep them, change them (perhaps to represent grief or anger towards them for dying), or remove them. Keeping or changing the relationship enables them to continue to benefit from the opportunity to gain bonus dice, experience, and Refreshes but it makes the Relationship one-sided. Stepping Up and Stepping Down Damage By these rules, its pretty hard to kill someone by pummeling them with your fists, and really fucking easy to kill someone with a shotgun or a spear. This is by design, the world of Fear The Living is dangerous and brutal, and once weapons come out odds are is someone is going to be fucked up, killed, or maimed. But sometimes survivors dont want things to come to that and sometimes circumstances are such that things just dont come to that. A long-abused wife might decide that now is the time to shoot her scumbag partners leg out from under them, but doesnt want to kill the bastard (at least not right away). A normally stoic survivor might go crazy with rage pummeling their hated rival with their fists until hes reduced to a bloody pulp. Or maybe the zombie gnawing on your survivors
leg had its teeth knocked out with a bludgeon earlier in the fight. In these instances, stepping up or stepping down damage is called for. You can step up damage that your survivor deals by one stage when: You catch someone completely unaware by spending successes to achieve a goal to that effect, or when the GM independently decides that an NPC is completely oblivious. You have someone at your mercy, whether thats on their knees with you standing above them with sledgehammer raised high, a person whos bound and blindfolded waiting for an execution, or just pressing a gun to someones unarmored head and pulling the trigger. You elect to reduce your survivors Humanity ability by 1 and describe how they go absolutely and completely ape shit on a living creature whether survivor or creature. Were not talking a little bit pissed off here, but more like full-on berserk rage where the only thing that will satisfy them is their opponents head on a plate. This is savagery with a capital S, and bound to draw some comment from ones fellows (unless the person youre doing it to was a complete bastard). This coincidentally also provides an opportunity to refresh Ruthlessness. You step down the damage that your survivor deals by one stage when: You elect to reduce your survivors Ruthlessness ability by 1 and describe how at the last minute they stay their hand. This is a significant indication of self-control and moral clarityand coincidentally also a great opportunity to Refresh humanity. It is also not a good idea to use when facing down a zombie-theyre likely not to appreciate the gesture. With a melee weapon you can elect to ignore any bonus it gives you to hurt or kill someone and take a -2 dice penalty to your roll in order to include a less than lethal attack as part of your action in a conflict. Describe how youre pistol-whipping your opponent, using the hilt of a bladed weapon as a club, or otherwise compromising the effectiveness of the weapon to reduce the amount of injury youre inflicting. If someone is at your mercy or unaware, you can elect to strike them with a melee weapon (or a ranged weapon being used as a melee weapon) in order to subdue them rather than seriously injure them. Attacking someone whos tied up, asleep, or surprised reduces the awkwardness that usually comes from trying to use a lethal weapon nonlethally. You can step down damage dealt to your survivor by one stage when: Youre hit by a ranged attack thats firing outside its maximum range. Bullets (particularly the shoddy sort that might be manufactured by todays survivors) lose their velocity rather quickly, and an arrow loses a lot of its force when its arc-fired. Youre hit by an attack when circumstance drastically reduce the weapons effectiveness, like being clubbed by someone underwater or being bitten by someone whose teeth youve knocked out. Zombies and How Theyre Made First things first. Fear The Living is not about the zombies. I know that might seem disappointing to all of you devoted fans of zombie chaos and bloodshed, but its true. And
noot in a college literature or film criticism course sense where one spends ages dissecting whether other not zombies are being used as an allegory for mindless consumerism, the human fear of death, or the threat of extremist ideologies. Fear The Living is about the survivors being portrayed by the players at the table, simply because they are the protagonists and the focus of the story being told. Not the favorite gms favorite npc, not the zombie horde approaching their camp, not some sort of theme to be shoved down peoples throats. Just like in all good zombie stories, the zombies themselves are just there to put the survivors in a spot, to amp up the tension during scenes, and to force them to make hard choices. The stars of the show in any Fear the Living game should be the players characters, not some random walking corpse no matter how cool. So love your zombies, love their mutations and their virulence and their endless craving for blood or souls or sweet sweet brains. As a GM, love unleashing them on your players to complicate their characters lives (and the lives of the NPCs they love) but dont focus on them, and dont be afraid to kill your darlings or have your players survivors do it for you. Deciding What To Make Before you get to putting rules and numbers to whatever zombie badness youve got brewing in your head, first consider what sort of zombies make the most sense for the game that you and your friends will be participating in. Media from White Zombie, to Night of the Living Dead, to The Walking Dead, to Resident Evil, to 28 Days Later provide plenty of different versions of the classic zombie myth, so it can be a bit hard to choose at first. Think back to the life stories of your player characters survivors, where they come from, where they say is overrun, who theyve lost and how and base your zombies off of what they tell you. If people keep feeding you hints of the uncanny or supernatural in their descriptions, then perhaps its a good idea to pull out demonically or magically animated zombies like those from the movie White Zombie, or the Evil Dead trilogy. If the group is composed of hardened badasses (little b or big B) who describe epic action-movie shenanigans in their back stories then perhaps a wide variety of constantly-mutating zombies ala Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil are more appropriate. Maybe your players come up with characters that are all pretty much normal folks struggling to survive in an undead world. In that case your classic flesh-chomping shamblers are likely to provide just the right air of menace. If all else fails, then just flat out ask them what theyd like to see. You cant go wrong with tailoring the game to fit your players desires. Just make sure to put your own spin on things, throwing in twists here and there just so your players (much like their survivors) wont know quite what to expect. Perhaps everyone around the table wants classic legdragging flesh-eaters spawned by mysterious radiation, and thats what you give them. But perhaps this radiation is more than just energy; its a signal orchestrating the efforts of the hungry dead, who shamble back to a central location and vomit up their grim meals all in the same location. Its almost like theyre building something a tower, or perhaps a beacon So long as you keep to the basic premise of what the group decides upon you
cant (easily) go wrong, so alter things here and there in order to make the zombies in your Fear The Living game your own. Bringing The Dead To Life Zombies dont have to be faceless cannon-fodder with no personality or individuality. Remember that each zombie your players survivors see or hear was once a living person with hopes, dreams, and insecurities. While most of that is likely gone by now, feel free to use small details to drive home what or who a zombie was in life. Maybe the survivors see a morbidly obese male zombie rummaging throw a garbage can, desperately seeking a rotting cheeseburger at the bottom. A zombie who was a CEO in life before being transformed by an ancient curse might still be wearing his power suit (now slightly the worse for wear) and have a smart-ass grin plastered on his rotting face. A pair of zombies that were a couple in life wearing matching Im with stupid t-shirts, shamble along together, only a foot apart but completely incognizant of each others presence. Little things like that will drive home to your players (and their characters) that there is very little separating their survivor from any particular zombie. Steps of Reanimation The process of designing a zombie (or a horde of zombies) in Fear the Living is made up of several steps, similar to but far simpler than those used in generating a survivor. Whats even better is that barring a game where you have multiple breeds of zombie roaming around, the game statistics for one zombie will (with perhaps some small amount of finagling) serve for any other. Step 1 Determine How Much of a Threat the Zombie Is Instead of a Survivors 4 abilities, zombies only have one-their Threat rating which measures just how capable overall a zombie is at getting what it craves. A zombies threat rating starts at anywhere from 1 (for fairly pitiful specimens that are only really dangerous to the unprepared or in large groups) to 5 (for scary mother eaters that you wouldnt want to see alone let alone in a horde with 30 of its friends) and goes up or down with the use of mutations, suffering damage, or fulfilling their cravings. Individual zombies (even those that are broadly of the same type) might have a higher or lower threat rating than the average at the GMs whim due to things like rot, starvation, weakening magical fields, or whatever explanation you want to give. But an individual zombies base threat rating can start as lower than 1 or higher than 5. Mutations can increase or decrease a zombies effective threat rating in certain circumstances, while damage dealt to a zombie that doesnt bring it down can weaken it and reduce its threat rating. Think of your players characters, think of everything youve learned from them about your zombie apocalypse, and think about your ruminations and speculations about the nature of the setting. How much of civilization is left? How many people die from zombie attacks, and how many from predators (both human and animal), starvation, exposure, or mundane diseases that 20 years ago you could have just gotten an antibiotic for? Use that
information, as well as your personal preference to determine the threat that an average zombie poses in your Fear The Living game. Zombies Dont Roll Instead of rolling for individual zombies during conflicts, each one earns a number of successes automatically equal to its Threat rating that it can spend subject to the limitations inflicted on it by its craving and any negative mutations (see Zombie Behavior for more information on this. Zombie Hordes Instead of counting up dozens or even hundreds of successes for groups of zombies pursuing the same goal, simply take the highest threat rating of the bunch and add +1 to it for each additional zombie in the horde to a maximum of 10. So long as the horde isnt divided into smaller groups and is trying to accomplish approximately the same thing (like eat your survivors brains), treat them as one individual for the purposes of Risks and conflicts and use the hordes Threat rating to determine how many successes it gets to spend in conflicts. Every time a zombie hordes Threat rating would be reduced by 1, instead eliminate a zombie in the horde of your choice (or the survivors choice if they spend successes to achieve that as a goal). If this would reduce the Threat rating of the zombie horde, do so if not the death of that individual zombie was a mere inconvenience to the horde-dont change its threat rating at all. Thus, a horde of 1,000 Threat 1 zombies should be a very, very scary thing to your survivors. Make sure that your players understand this aspect of Fear the Living. Large groups of zombies are best confronted at a time and place of the groups choosing (with the deck heavily stacked in their favor) or not at all. The highest a hordes Threat rating can get is 10. Extra zombies just provide more insurance against the hordes threat rating being reduced (as well as contributing the benefits of any mutations that they might have). Step 2 Determine What The Zombie Craves Every zombie wants something. Not in the way that you or I might want a car or a raise or a date with an attractive coworker, but with every fiber of their being. Everything they do is dedicated towards that one goal, and depending on the intellect of the zombie in question they might not even be capable of understanding anything else. Thats a zombies craving, and its what will drive the zombie (and its fellows) into conflict with the characters. Choose one or more things that your zombie craves from this list: Flesh (Human, Any, Uninfected) Blood (or a particular type of blood) Souls Brains (Human, Animal, Any) To Spread Its Plague To Kill
Vengeance A craving is a prompt for you as the GM to direct the behavior of your zombies according to its dictates, as simply and directly as possible. No bullshit, no holding back, whenever youre controlling a zombie ask yourself how you would fulfill its craving were you in its shoes and take your first gut response from deep in your brainstem. Thats the right one. Even the rare zombie with something passing for intelligent thought is going to think only of its craving and of ways in which it can fulfill its craving. The difference between a smart zombie and a dumb one is that the smart one can get creative in how it goes about fulfilling it. Satisfaction A zombie is never satisfied. One that eats brains to stave off the pain of death might get a short rush of bliss from the steaming sweetmeats of a survivor, but before long the dull ache of decomposition returns and the zombie is once again on the hunt. But when satisfied (if just for a little while) a zombie is at its most dangerous. When a zombie fulfills its craving: gorging on its food of choice, spreading the zombie sickness, or killing someone, it gets +1 to its Threat for the entirety of the next conflict its involved in. A zombie horde that does so gets the same bonus as a group (not as individuals). Leverage A survivor who uses a zombies craving against it (dangling meat on a fishing line outside of a window to distract zombies who crave flesh) gets 1 automatic success to spend as they wish, but with the proviso that it must involve the zombie somehow. Zombie Behavior A craving drastically limits what a zombie can and cant do, or even what its capable of considering. Without possessing a mutation that says otherwise, zombies cannot spend successes in conflict to: avoid damage (when was the last time you saw a zombie dodging attacks?), manipulate other people or zombies, or to accomplish any goal that does not directly concern addressing their craving. Failing to abide by these rules as GM is cheating, and is punishable by players throwing dice at your head. Just dont do it. Zombies and Damage Zombies dont have a wound track like survivors or other living creatures do, instead compare any damage that a dead zombie takes to its threat rating (adding 1 for every applicable positive mutation such as undead strength, and subtracting 1 for every applicable negative mutation such as withered or small). If the damage is under the zombies threat rating and doesnt involve its weakness, decrease its threat rating by 1 for the next roll that it makes. The zombie wasnt seriously damaged by the attack, but was slowed down, knocked back or otherwise temporarily stunned by the blow. If the damage is under the zombies threat rating (after mutations and frailties have been added and subtracted) and the survivor exploits the zombies weakness (whether thats
shooting a classic romeroesque zombie in the head or dousing a parasitically animated zombie in insecticide) then reduce its threat rating by 1. You may not have dropped the zombie, but youve significantly weakened it. Your bullet might have missed the brain stem, but carved a swath through less essential gray matter that slows the undead down. If the damage is over the zombies threat rating (after mutations and frailties have been considered) but doesnt involve its weakness then inflict a Liability of your choice upon the zombie and reduce its threat rating by 1. The Liability can be of any sort, although things like severed limbs, crippled muscles, and broken teeth (try to bite me now!) are obviously popular. This is for really punishing stuff like taking a tripod-mounted machine gun to the walking dead and saturating them with bullets, shoving a primed grenade in a zombies mouth, or just cutting off an arm with a well placed hack from a machete. If the damage is double the zombies threat rating, reduce its threat rating by 2 and inflict two Liabilities and so on and so forth. When you cant (or wont for some strange reason) use a zombies weakness against it, overwhelming force is the way to go. If the damage is over the zombies Threat rating and it involves its weakness, then the zombie is done for. Youve hit with a headshot, exorcised the demon, undid the curse, or killed the parasite controlling that particular undead freak. Step 3 Determine If Its Living Or Dead It might at first glance seem like a stupid question. Everyone knows zombies are supposed to be rotting corpses! Yeahabout that. Nowadays creatures exhibiting most if not all of the conventional zombie behaviors, but still remaining technically alive are all the rage (pardon the pun 28 days later fans). Still-living creatures with most (if not all) of the characteristics commonly associated with being a zombie go all the way back to the 60s, when George Romeros The Crazies told a tale of a town turned into homicidal maniacs by a sinister yellow mist. While there might be some debate on exactly what is a zombie and what isnt, being a zombie is not something that the dead could ever call exclusively their own. Whatever your preference, youll need to decide whether the zombies in your game are still kicking, and if so to what degree, for a couple of reasons. For one, your players survivors might get it into their heads to attempt to find or produce some sort of cure for the zombie sickness, and barring supernatural influence its difficult to heal someone whos already dead. Secondly, whether your zombies are living or dead says a lot about the nature of the zombie plague in your game. Dead Zombies The classic slowly rotting zombie is a classic for a reason-it shoves ones own mortality right up in their face. Consider including dead zombies in your game if the apocalypse had a supernatural or vague explanation, or if you want the threat of zombies to be pervasive. It takes a much longer time for a zombie to rot away to nothing than for a living zombie to starve to death. Living Zombies
For a more modern and morally nuanced (if perhaps not quite as visceral) option, consider making your zombies living, breathing beings. Perhaps controlled by a parasitic hive mind, possessed by demonic super-germs, contaminated by noxious gene-altering nerve gas, or afflicted with horrible gnawing hunger courtesy of a nasty brain tumor. Living zombies bring the issue of whether or not its moral to eliminate them (and how feasible finding or developing a cure might be) to the forefront, even if survivors dont acknowledge it. It also brings up more than a few more practical questions. How do the infected/possessed/etc avoid starvation, dehydration, and exposure? Do they sleep? Do they realize whats happened to them (even if only subconsciously)? Develop answers to most of these questions (and use those answers to develop further questions to ask yourself as GM), but leave a few to be discovered during play through successful rolls to establish facts about the world, the Guy Who Saw All This Comings ability to spout lore about the apocalypse, or the expertise of your groups Necrologist. It might seem strange at first not knowing all of the answers at the outset, but trust me its worth it when your survivors freak at the sight of some hideous new zombie while their players are smiling ear-to-ear knowing that it was there input that helped put the razorsharp claws and acidic blisters on the thing. Step 4 Determine Whats Different About Your Zombies There have been countless variations on the modern zombie myth. Zombies who can think clearly enough to lure their victims into traps or to pretend to be living. Zombies with hideous claws for ripping and tearing living flesh, a captivating gaze that leaves their target shuddering in terror as they wait for their soul to be devoured, or noxious gasses built up to explosive pressure in their disease-ravaged forms that will shoot forth at the slightest provocation. Such abilities serve as a way for you to distinguish the zombies in your Fear The Living game from stock B-movie shamblers, and to focus in on the cause of the zombie plague and its consequences. Maybe the existence of the soul-suckers with magnetic eyes has led to the widespread adoption of mirrored glasses or heavy goggles. Perhaps small colonies of survivors keep the intelligent and hungry dead at bay with a yearly sacrifice of their least desirable individuals. Whatever mutations you choose for your undead should be more than just kewl powers, they should help you bring your groups vision of the zombie apocalypse to life. Mutations can be problems suffered by the dead as well. Utter stupidity that would make a flatworm proud of its intellect, moving with a stiff and awkward gait, actually needing its craving as a form of sustenance without which itll wither and die, or even individual frailties like the zombie having been a child or morbidly obese person before it turned. These to should serve to tell the story of the zombie plague in your world. Are there a lot of fat zombies stumbling through the streets, the first to fall to the ravenous (and surprisingly quick) undead? Do functioning societies eke out an existence in decadent little enclaves, their paid scavengers and soldiers distracting the brain-dead undead with fireworks or air horns whilst they go about their business? Do the intelligent, demon-possessed zombies in your world cooperate to ensure everyone gets their proper fill of souls, or is their ruthless competition for the tasty ethereal morsels?
Just like with answering the questions that will arise from declaring that your zombies are living or dead, make sure to give some thought to at least some of the questions that come to mind as you kit your undead out with creepy and cool abilities. Save others for later though. Your players will often make connections and come up with theories about the degradation of society and its remnants interactions with the dead that you would have never imagined. The Effects of Mutations A zombies mutation (and it doesnt have to be a mutation in the literal sense-it could be an aspect of a curse, a parasitic growth, or even a vestige of the person the zombie was before he or she turned), is classified as positive or negative. Positive mutations either increase a zombies Threat rating by 1 (with no maximum limit) when the mutation would help the zombie out, or let the zombie attempt something that it otherwise wouldnt be able to do such as glide on wings made from fibrous tissue or hide in spaces far too small for a creature of its size to fit in. Negative mutations reduce a zombies threat rating by 1 when they hamper the undead, like a zombie thats as dumb as a rock losing 1 Threat Rating when a survivor tries to trick it into running into an ambush. For mutations that grant new abilities, they allow zombies to accomplish goals they otherwise wouldnt be able to achieve if theyre not opposed by successes spent by one or more survivors. So a zombie with a mutations called Scabrous Wings might spend 2 of its successes to glide silently down onto a groups sentry tower and approach for the kill. A survivor might then spend successes in the conflict in order to disrupt this; saying perhaps that their survivor notices the zombie as it lands or that a stiff wind prevents the zombie from landing on the tower in the first place. Mutations that increase or decrease threat ratings are simple and straightforward. When the mutation would realistically help a zombies chances of achieving its goals (such as exceptional undead strength aiding in tearing apart a makeshift barricade) add 1 to the zombies threat rating for that portion of the conflict. When a negative mutation would hurt a zombies chances, subtract 1 from the zombies Threat rating for that exchange of the conflict. Mutations and Zombie Hordes When determining the capabilities of zombie hordes, only count any particular mutation once to determine final threat level for any given exchange-even if you have a horde of 1,000 zombies that are inhumanly strong their Threat rating for trying to storm a fortified bunker is only going to be increased by 1. Likewise, if a mutation grants a new capability like sentience or acidic projectile vomit (dont ask), only those zombies that have that mutation can use that capability. Thus, if your survivors kill all of the vomiting zombies in a horde, they wont be spraying acid anytime soon. Step 5 Determine How They Pass It On To have a zombie apocalypse, theres got to be a way for zombies to reproduce, and barring some uncomfortable speculation on the possibility of hot zombie-on-zombie action, some sort of affliction is the most probable cause. It might be an ancient curse unleashed
by an apocalyptic cult onto the modern world, an alien parasite that crawled off of a fallen meteor, or the result of a mutated mad-cow strain that tainted a particularly unfortunate truckers hamburger but whats important is that this affliction drives your zombie apocalypse and is what makes zombies a real and constant threat to your survivors. In game terms, infecting a survivor with the zombie curse/parasite/virus/radiation is simple, its treated as a risk with multiple stages. Each details a step on the path from normal person to slavering undead killer. The risk of infection is a constant one, and doesnt count against the GMs normal limit of 4 Risks per roll, nor does it grant survivors experience for confronting it. Its something thats best avoided if possible (just like in the movies). Just remember though, that like any other risk, it can be avoided both through in-game preparation (such as wearing full-body scrubs and gloves to prevent contact with a zombies bodily fluids) or by spending 1 success from a roll in order to negate it. Also remember that because infection is a Risk, it cant be forced on survivors when theres no conflict. The GM cant just tell you that your survivor wakes up with a strange craving for brains. The first stage is whats known as the Transmission stage and describes how exactly survivors (and perhaps animals if youre particularly sick and twisted) contract the zombie nastiness. This is the part of the zombie movie where some poor sucker gets bitten, exposed to the secret government weapon, or cursed by their insistence on sinning in the middle of an area claimed by hell. The risk of transmission is phrased as If _____________ happens then the survivor is infected with the first stage of the affliction. The trigger can be anything your devious little mind can conjure, whether thats the zombie taking a big honking bite out of someone, coming into contact with their bodily fluids, profaning a corpse, committing one of the seven deadly sins nearby a demon, or even just dropping dead (dont laugh, both the Walking Dead and Night of The Living Dead use this device to great effect). The effects of this first stage of the affliction can be any or all of the following, just make sure to stick with whatever effects you pick so that your players will have faith in your worlds relationship between cause and effect: You Dont Look So Good: The survivor takes a -1 penalty to rolls of a certain type. Maybe theyre starting to look at their companions like food, and they take the penalty whenever theyre near someone vulnerable, or theyre pale and sickly and take a penalty to rolls where physical exertion is needed. It Hurts.: The survivor takes 1 point of damage to their Beaten Up or Fucked-Up track (your choice, based on how vicious you see the affliction being). This damage cant be healed until the affliction is cured. Plague Carrier: The survivor can afflict others, exposing people nearby to them to the same risk that they were exposed to in the Transmission stage in any conflict that they get themselves into. Unnatural Enhancement: The survivor gains a single automatic success in every conflict that goes towards something of the GMs choice. Perhaps theyre beginning to notice a certain unnerving strength in their limbs that lends itself well to rending and killing with ones bare hands, or the demon thats crawling around in their head starts whispering horrible secrets about the survivors friends into their ear.
Weird Shit Starts Happening: Any scene in which the infected survivor (or the survivors corpse, if your zombies come back from the dead, or infest corpses or whatever) is present the GM can elect to bring some weird shit down on the players heads. The GM gets 2 successes per infected individual present in the scene to spend on any of the options listed in the Resolution Rules area. These successes can represent demons swarming around the soon-to-be possessed and causing havoc, nearby zombies smelling one of their own and drawing near, or just the narrative law that says that once someone gets afflicted things just tend to naturally go downhill from there.
The next stage is Progression: things are getting worse for the survivor both because theyre one step closer to joining the ranks of zombie menace and because at this stage its harder to hide your little problem. The risk associated with the Progression stage is phrased like so: Unless _____________ happens, the affliction gets worse every ___________ until ___________ The way to prevent the zombie affliction from progressing is up to the GM. There might be an honest to god medicine out there, still in their little plastic syringes in long-abandoned CDC buildings, or maybe acts of kindness and charity towards your enemies (or even better, acts of petty evil and destruction) are enough to keep the demon inside your head at bay. The info that goes into the first blank represents a sort of stop-gap, not a full-blown cure (the survivor is still infected after all), but it offers a measure of respite to those looking for one. Unlike other risks, an infected survivor cant delay the progression of their little problem by spending successes-turning into a zombie isnt something you can just power through. The second blank is a timeline of how quickly the survivor transforms. A virus might strike every day (or for particularly tense times, every hour), while a curse might have a more particular trigger like every time the survivor breaks their word or sees a zombie. This timeline is generally unalterable, unless a survivor succeeds at a goal that involves buying more time like whipping up a stopgap medication in an improvised pharmaceutical lab, or praying for mercy from an uncaring god in an abandoned church. The effects of the progression of the zombie affliction are the same as those suffered during the transmission stage, but they get worse and worse. Each time the affliction progresses, the GM can select one option from the transmission list to add onto the survivors plate. If the same option is taken multiple times, its effects stack ( so a survivor thats already taken 1 point of incurable damage now takes 1 more, or a survivor takes a -2 penalty to rolls in a certain situation). The third blank is what seals the deal and marks the survivors complete transformation into one of the ravening dead. It might be a certain amount of time elapsing, the survivor dying (or perhaps dying in a certain way), or the survivor doing something like returning to the site where the first alien spore landed and spawned the brooding chamber. This leads us to the third stage: Zombie goodness things arent done at this stage (despite what one might think). When a players character succumbs to the zombie affliction that character is removed from the players control, and becomes a zombie under the control of the GM (with mutations, a
threat rating etc generated by the GM).While the players character has moved on, the player still has a say in what happens next-they can choose one of the following to be true about their erstwhile character:
Their character has just enough time to say goodbye, or accomplish one final significant action before they transform. This time cant be cut short by transformation. Circumstances will be such that therell be time for the survivor to do what they need to do before the virus/curse/parasite takes hold. Should the survivor enter conflict before they turn, they get one exchange wherein all dice they roll are maximized so that they can go out with a bang. The zombie wont attack a particular individual whether out of some lingering emotion that still abides in their new state, or because they smell wrong for whatever reason. This protection doesnt extend to any of this special individuals friends(but hey, a zombies gotta eat). This is an absolute prohibition. Nothing will cause a zombie whos former player has chosen this option to attack the selected individual. The zombie will seek out and try to kill an individual (or a group of related people like the bastards that killed his daughter) that the player specifies. The target of the former survivors zombie vengeance is up to the player, and can be someone their character hated in life, someone they loved, or any other person or cohesive group that the player thinks their zombie has fixated on. This is an absolute obligation on the GMs part, and acts as an additional craving for the zombie in question.
But What About A Cure? There very well might not be one. Its taken for granted by Fear The Living that once a survivor gets afflicted their days are numbered, and that its just a matter of time before they turn. All of the rules that youll read throughout this book go off of that assumption, as most of the time offering a cure for the zombie affliction is anticlimactic. If your players survivors really want (and need) a cure, or if The Guy Who Saw All This Coming or someone with the Necrologist Perk says so using their once-per-session abilities then you need to figure out whats what. Obtaining or developing a cure, no matter its derivation shouldnt be easy. Were talking life purpose, plot-arc sort of stuff here that goes way beyond spending successes to accomplish a goal during conflict (though conflicts should play a part). Make your survivors work hard for the privilege of obtaining a cure for the zombie plague, let them enjoy it, and then make them wish that they hadnt gotten it. Dont screw with them just to screw with them, but present them with the consequences of their actions: the people they raided to get supplies for the wonder drug, the mole in the group whos been waiting to steal it the entire time, the cult compound that cant bear to see Gods judgement stopped by a bunch of filthy unbelievers. A cure for the zombie plague will change the world that your game is set in. Make sure that your survivors have to deal with the fact that not all change is good. Step 6 Determine How To Kill Them (Again)
Lets not kid ourselves, the information that your players survivors are really eager to hear is how to kill these things once and for all. Sure enough, every zombie has a particular Weakness-something that can kill them without the bother of cutting the zombie into a thousand twitching pieces or burning them to ash. A zombies weakness might be anything that fits with the lore that you and your group have put together-fungicide for zombies animated by a parasitic fungus, a chemical that reacts strangely with the nerve gas that drove everyone nuts, or just the classic remove the head or destroy the brain. To use a zombies weakness against it though, a survivor must spend successes on exploiting its weakness (treat this as spending successes to accomplish a goal and the zombies can and should oppose it) and must have a way of exploiting the weakness-a gun or blunt object for zombies vulnerable to traumatic brain injury, a source of flame for zombies vulnerable to fire, or being in a church with a zombie horde thats vulnerable on sanctified ground. If your survivor is successful, they can spend successes to inflict damage on the zombie on a one for one basis. Unlike with normal damage, this isnt reliant on a survivor having a weapon just on having whatever tools are necessary to prey on the zombies weakness (you cant punch a zombies head off, or set a zombie on fire without some means of ignition). This damage is also far more effective at bringing zombies down (refer to Zombies and Damage above for more info). The weakness that you choose for your zombies is an important step in defining what theyre like, and perhaps even shedding some light on the origin of the plague. A seizurelike vulnerability to crosses suggests a supernatural or religious explanation for the zombie apocalypse, while a conventional headshot weakness typically means some sort of biological explanation (whether a virus or a parasite). The weakness that you choose for zombies in your game should fit with the lore that you and the table have established about them both before play starts and during play with things like the Guy/Gall Who Saw All This Comings Crazy Prepared ability, or the zombie-studying skills of the Necrologist. Make sure you have a good reason if youre going to diverge from this baseline (like there being multiple strains of a virus that create slightly different zombies with different abilities and weaknesses). Nothing will erode players confidence in your shared creation of the world faster than having an ever-shifting reason for the zombie hordes that plague their lives. Being vague is fine, at least until your survivors get to the bottom of things as is a combined origin that shares features of both (like a demonically engineered virus, or radioactive fungi), but switching your established explanation after things have already been established is a big no-no (and actually counts as cheating by you as GM; see the GM advice section for more details). Zombie Rules So just to summarize, here are the rules that govern any zombie that you might devise for a fear the living game:
1. Zombies dont roll, and dont have stats. In each exchange of a conflict, a zombie gets a number of successes to spend equal to its Threat rating plus or minus bonuses or penalties from mutations. 2. All zombies have a craving that is the entirety of their existence; a horrible hunger or desire for brains, flesh, blood, souls, spreading their plague, vengeance, or violence. When a zombies craving is satiated (temporarily, its always temporary), add +1 to its threat for the entirety of the next conflict its involved in. Any attempt to exploit a zombies craving gets 1 automatic bonus success that must be spent on something involving the zombies. 3. Without a mutation that gives them the ability to do otherwise, zombies can never spend successes to: avoid damage, eliminate risks, accomplish goals that dont have to do with their craving, or manipulate another person or zombie. 4. Zombies dont have wound tracks like survivors do, instead comparing any damage they take to their Threat rating (plus or minus the effects of mutations). Damage thats less than a zombies Threat rating and that doesnt involve its weakness reduces its Threat rating by 1 for one exchange. Damage thats less than a zombies Threat rating that involves its weakness reduces the zombies Threat rating by 1 permanently. Damage thats more than a zombies Threat rating that doesnt involve its weakness inflicts a Liability on the zombie and reduces its Threat rating by 1. Damage thats higher than the zombies Threat rating and that involves the zombies weakness destroys it instantly. 4. Zombies that group together form a horde, a mass of tearing hands and teeth that seeks to destroy and consume whatever it craves. Take the highest threat rating zombie and use that as the threat rating for the entire horde that acts as one unit. For every additional zombie in the horde add 1 to the hordes threat rating to a maximum of 10. Every time a hordes Threat rating would be reduced, kill of a zombie of your choice (or the players choice if they spend successes to achieve that as a goal). Mutations (both positive and negative) are applied only once to the entire horde so a horde of a 1000 super-strong zombies only gets a +1 to its threat rating when their strength would be useful. Zombie hordes spend successes as a group unless they are dispersed (as a goal), or until they start pursuing separate goals. 5. Zombies are either living or dead, which determines a lot about how they fit into the games setting. 6. All zombies have one or more mutations. Mutations either give a +1 bonus to threat rating when they apply (positive mutations), a -1 bonus to a zombies threat rating when they apply (negative mutations), or give the zombie a new capability like being able to skitter up walls like an insect or think like a living creature. 7. Zombies all have a way of passing their condition on, whether to living survivors, dead humans, animals, or all three (welcome to hell by the way). This process is broken down into three stages: Transmission (which acts like a risk) and where your survivor contracts the sickness, Progression (which acts like a risk that cant be avoided by spending
successes) where things get worse, and Zombie Goodness where the survivor says goodbye and barring preventative measures turns into a zombie. 8. All zombies have a weakness that details how you can put them down most easily, like headshots, fungicide, holy water and exorcisms, or good old fire. A weakness makes it outright easier to kill zombies by allowing survivors to inflict damage on the zombie in new ways, and making the damage they inflict more effective. Exploiting a zombies weakness might (at the GMs discretion) count as attempting a goal and require that successes be spent to accomplish it. Creating Living Breathing Non Player Characters (NPCs) But what about creatures and people who dont insatiably lust after the flesh of the uninfected? Surely your players survivors arent the only people left alive in the entire world(although for a particularly chilling possibility maybe they are, or think they are). Likewise, on occasion your survivors will cross paths with animals, stalking predators that might pick off a straggling survivor, or a crazy old survivalists mean-as-hell guard dog. And when the needs of your survivors conflict with that nice group of men down by the old refinery or even NPC members of their own group, youll need to know exactly what they can do, what theyll do, and why theyll do it. Step 1 The Basic Idea: All you need at this point is a rough outline of who the NPC is-a simple one sentence description is best. It doesnt need to be something profound, just something that describes what distinguishes them from a hole in the ground. Youll need this description to help you figure out the rest of the steps, and to give you something to start with. Its alright to start with stereotypes; the precocious child scavenger, the kindly but stern old patriarch leading his family and farmhands through the crisis, a group of old drinking buddies that have turned to cannibalism to fill their dwindling larders. Just dont stop with stereotypes (but as youll see, thats what step 2 is for). Step 2 Establish Goals and Needs: Before you figure out what an NPC survivor or animal is capable of, youve got to figure out why its even involved in the developing story at all. Why is it here? What does it want? What does it need? How is it going to try to get it? How do these needs and goals intersect with and conflict with the needs and goals of the survivors? Answering those questions will get to the heart of what the NPC is all about, giving you a surefire way to portray them as more than a cardboard cutout or stereotype (and to get your players to invest in them as such). Why is it/are they here? Decide why your NPC, whether beast or man is crossing paths with the survivors. Just stumbling into them doesnt cut it. Barring a thousand to one odds, the person or creature has a reason for being exactly where it is: determine that as your starting point. A fleabitten old wolf and its pack of half-dogs are trailing your group of survivors to feed off their scraps, and because a vestige of their ingrained yearning for human companionship lingers still. A group of cultic survivors who pay tribute to Dionysus make their home in an abandoned gated community because there are still unspoiled luxuries in the decadent little buildings, and great tracts of forest in which to conduct their midnight revels. Another ragged band of survivors might be traveling in the same direction
as the player characters because they too have heard that there are still places untouched by the plague far to the east. The motivation doesnt have to be anything complex, but it should be understandable even if that just means that its understood that the NPC is completely off their rocker. Think about how they got where they are (walking, running, biking, driving, born there and never left), as well as how theyre managing (or not) to stay there (few zombies in the area, abundant food and water, holding onto their sanity by the skin of their teeth) and why theyve picked that location, or how theyve been forced into it if they havent chosen it. What do they want and need? This is where you get to the meat of an NPC-the desires and needs that drive their actions. Lets take Freddy as an example-hes a guy whos had a hard time of things. When the dead started rising his wife and little son Johnny got ripped to shreds and he had a nervous breakdown. He barricaded himself in an abandoned grocery store not too far from where the survivors have set up camp and has been living off of dried meat and nuts for the past 5 years, never once wanting to brave the outside world (that answers why hes here). Freddy really wants to see his wife and kid again (not going to happen, but as weve established, Freddy isnt really all that stable), he wants to feel safe (and with his nightmares and such that isnt easy) and he wants to eat something other than stale beef jerky and old energy drinks. You probably already feel sorry for Freddy, and thats because you can understand where hes coming from, hes a person now. Make all of your NPCs around that complicated at the outset: 3 or 4 big things that they want to accomplish, want to avoid, or desperately need. These dont need to be big picture things, but should be things that someone might think are important, even if its just wanting a hot meal or the comfort of a good lay. You can even make several different needs or desires for an NPC that conflict with or contradict one another. A devout Christian might be trying to find evidence that her god still cares after the dead have risen, but might also yearn to dance on the ashes of civilization and indulge in all of the things that she never allowed herself before the end of the world. With groups of NPCs, do much the same thing for each member of the group and with any significant sub-groups or cliques of people can have goals very much distinct from those of their members). Just like with individual non-player characters, the desires and needs of groups are all the more entertaining for you and your players if some of them conflict with one another, or with the desires of individuals within the group. Sarah and her band want to find a cure for the infected, but Hakim (whos part of Sarahs band) thinks that the dead are an unholy blight that should be wiped out and that a cure is impossible. Even simple conflicts of interest like that will produce unprecedented amounts of play material as those desires interact and conflict with the desires of other NPCs and off the goals and desires of the player characters. The same principle applies to animals. A cougar that wants to feed its cubs, but also wants to avoid the dead that plague its hunting grounds (putting it into an ideal situation to conflict with your survivors). All living creatures also need, to one extent or another the big
three: food, water, and shelter. So always keep those in mind, in addition to whatever else you work out for a particular NPC. An NPCs wants and needs can and should grow and shift as they interact with your players survivors and as theyre accomplished or frustrated. Maybe Freddy starts trading with your players survivors, giving them canned food in exchange for stuff from the outside without ever leaving his hidey-hole. But a survivor reaches out to the poor guy (remember how sorry you felt for Freddy?) and starts talking to himgiving him hope. Freddy slowly comes out of his shell, and he realizes that his wife and child arent ever coming back, but that these people who were so nice to him might be the start of a new family. Thats just one way it could go, and thats the beauty of fully realized NPCs. Based on how they interact with your survivors, theyll change in ways youll never have expected if you allow them to (and you should!). What are they going to do to get it? (And why do your survivors care?): Now that you have why your NPC(s) are nearby, and what each of them wants and needs you need to determine how those wants and needs will push them, pull them, or catapult them into the path of your survivors. Incredibly vivid and detailed NPCs are all well and good, but they mean exactly jack if the players characters never get to meet them, or if they never get to see beneath the surface. So figure out how the NPC is going to go about getting what they want, and how that might impact the survivors. Start by making a list of the NPCs wants and needs and then ask yourself as you come to each desire if I were them, in there situation how would I go after this?. Try to think like youd imagine they would, and make sure that each answer drives the NPC to action. Thinking about doing something is well and good, but your players (and their characters) cant read thoughts, theyll form their characters impressions of the NPCs in your game based off of what they do, so make sure that your NPCs take action during play. At each juncture, double check yourself and make sure that what the NPCs are going to do matters in some way to the player characters. If a group of ragtag survivors from up the road wants a leader that they can rely on, food, and weapons and you decide that they go scavenging for food and weapons and elect a new leader peaceably then youve just robbed the NPCs of any reason to impact the player characters. If theyre going to scavenge for supplies, maybe they start edging in on the territory of the groups Badass, and are stealing all of his snack cakes. If theyre looking for weapons, maybe one of their number starts cozying up to your players Guy or Gal who saw all this coming in order to get them to part with some of their gear (hey, maybe it starts out as a lie, but the feelings develop into something real). If theyre looking for a leader, have them latch on to one or more people amongst your survivors who are currently fighting for control of their group, or have them vouch for someone thats divisive and that some of your players characters think (or know) is up to no good. Every second be thinking how could this action cause conflict with my group of survivors. Thats not to say that NPCs cant benefit your survivors, or that they shouldnt be able to have positive relationships with them (not all conflict is bad), but that the status
quo is boring and NPC actions are a way of shaking things up. Even positive events, like falling in love can and should be used to start conflict and spur change in the situation: even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland things dont always get worse. . Step 3 Determine Capabilities By now you have a good handle on what your NPCs are like: who or what they are, why theyre there, what they want, and what theyll do to get it. You toss them into the situation, and the sparks start flying. Tension, entanglements, alliances, treachery, hope, love-all of the good stuff starts coming like crazy. Then comes the time for a conflict; an NPC takes their lovers side in an all-out brawl or a crazy loner stalks into camp ready to bring Johnny home. And you realize that you dont have any sort of stats written to determine what the NPC can do. Oh crap Dont worry, determining an NPCs capabilities is far easier than what your players had to go through to make a survivor. You have two options for generating an NPCs abilities: quick and dirty, or detailed. Quick and Dirty Sometimes you need an NPC right now, and you absolutely cant be bothered to go through the more detailed process below but dont want to cheat and just BS some numbers onto a piece of scrap paper. This is the sort of thing youll use when an as of yet unnamed NPC becomes the focus of a players attention, or a huge swarm of people with weapons raised high descend on your survivors with murder and rapine on their minds (poor bastards). Its also a good method to use for generating abilities for animals, since who cares what relationships a Grizzly Bear has? Here it is: For unskilled or minor NPCs that dont have a lot going for them, or for run of the mill animals decide a broad category of what theyre good at, what theyre alright at, and what theyre bad at. Whenever an NPC in this category rolls in a conflict, and theyre doing something theyre good at (like bashing in heads for someone whos good at being a thug) roll 3d6. Whenever an NPC in this category rolls in a conflict and theyre doing something theyre okay at (like shooting a gun for the aforementioned thug), roll 2d6. And whenever theyre trying to do something theyre bad at (the same thug trying to reverse engineer a found motorcycle engine) roll 1d6. Then decide if they have any significant relationships, and mark them down (if they have a relationship with one or more player characters, the players get to determine how their character feels about the NPC). For every relationship that applies to a roll, add a +1 die bonus to the NPCs roll (and give the same die bonus to anyone who uses their relationships against them). Even if a particular character is supposed to be a throwaway thug or raider, or if they didnt even have a name up until 5 minutes ago when you picked one out of the phone book, make sure to put some thought into their relationships. Theyre what will make the NPC come to life. Detail a few specific talents of theirs, as well as a few liabilities and any gear they might have. Animals typically dont have relationships (unless theyre domesticated), but some
might have a relationship with their mate, or with their parents (for cases like a mama bear and her cubs). For your average survivor or trained animal, go through the same steps (picking one strength, one category that theyre okay in, and one area of weakness), but use 4d6, 3d6, and 2d6 respectively for when its time to roll the dice. Give a bit more thought to the talent load out of these NPCs as theyre likely to become recurring characters in your game. For an truly skilled and talented survivor or formidable animal like a grizzly or a wolf go through the same steps but assign 5d6, 4d6, and 3d6 and up to 5 talents. This is the closest that a quick and dirty NPC comes to being a fully written up character, so use it only on occasions where you need a quick badass of some sort. As with all other NPCs, make sure to give them relationships with each other, and with the player characters if applicable. Quick and dirty NPCs gain experience just like your players survivors do-by getting risks handed to them that they need to overcome, and by getting into conflicts based on their relationships. Each time a quick and dirty NPC marks 10 experience, they can increase on of their categories by 1 die, develop a new talent, or erase a Liability. And thats that Detailed NPCs Use this process when you have the time to, or when youre designing NPC survivors ahead of a game session. These include NPC members of your survivors group that your players have developed for you to fill out their relationships along with any that youve designed to drive specific types of conflict. You can also use this process to convert quick and dirty NPCs into fully detailed ones if say Nicholai the raider gets captured instead of killed during his raid on the survivors little compound and starts becoming a recurring presence in the story. In the case of NPCs developed to fill a certain area on one or more characters relationship tracker, make sure you confer occasionally with that player as you design their NPC. Tf they see Wairnola as a kind easy-going sort of gal and you jack her Ruthlessness up to 5 and her Humanity down to 1, then theres bound to be some friction there. Work with the player who came up with the idea for the NPC each step of the way, and listen to their feedback. After all, NPCs are important only insofar as they interest the players (and their characters). When creating detailed NPCs, use the same steps used by players to generate their characters with a few exceptions: NPCs never possess an archetype. Player characters have them because they are the stars of the story being woven around the table and the moment you change that, youre taking away the ability of players to be the stars. Nobody wants to sit around and watch your NPCs do everything. NPCs can never have perks, because no matter how vivid their histories and personalities they havent actually earned them. It isnt fair to force a player to make a
strong moral statement by refusing to kill another survivor in play in order to get the I dont kill the living perk and then give that same perk to an NPC simply because they supposedly did such a thing in their back story. Feel free to describe how strongly an NPC is against murder, and use that to guide their actions but they can never get a perk for it. NPCs, just like player characters cant have any ability rated over 5. Youre developing people, not gods. No one wants to sit back and watch your NPCs save the day. NPCs share the same rules as players characters with regards to Reserves, Refreshes, Liabilities, Gear, and Relationship both beneficial and baneful. That means if an NPC uses a gun with the Obvious Drawback on it, it makes just as big and nasty of a noise as it would have if a PC fired it. It also means that NPCs can be manipulated through their relationships, can be betrayed, can exhaust and Refresh their Reserves, and all of that fun stuff. Here are some suggestions for matching the stats you choose to the type of NPC you want to make:
When designing NPCs, keep the fiction first. If an NPC is a frail-hearted coward whos got little presence or pull with other people but a deep determination to do the right thing, give them abilities (in this case high Humanity, low Ruthlessness and Authority, and a moderate Will To Live), talents, Liabilities, and Gear that fit that image and identity. Whenever you give an NPC something, ask yourself why is this here? If you cant come up with an answer that wont have your players rolling on the floor laughing or rolling their eyes, then dont include it. NPCs will abilities totaling less than 10 are average guys and gals. Theyre the sort of folks your survivors would have gone to school with or bumped elbows with in the local supermarket who are still not acclimated to dealing with the zombie apocalypse. NPCs with abilities totaling 10-12 are practiced at survival and can roll with the punches of life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland (just like the player characters). NPCs with abilities totaling more than 12 should be rare indeed, and are the sort of storied individuals that other survivors tell campfire tales about and who change their little corner of hell forever (just like the player characters will if they survive). NPCs with 0-2 talents are people with no specialized training or particular gifts (or at least no training or knowledge thats useful in a world without computers or credit cards). Highschool kids, people who were stuck in middle-management their entire lives, or just plain unexceptional folks are likely to have this level of talent. If you want an NPC to be a novice, to be incompetent at what they do, or to have plenty of room for growth give them 0 to 2 Talents. NPCs with 3 or 4 Talents are naturally gifted or are people who have quite a few skills that are actually relevant to survival. Folks like park rangers, police officers, nurses, career politicians (hey, its always good to know how to talk to people), and auto mechanics. If you want an NPC to really know what theyre doing, and have a solid base of knowledge to work with give them 3-4 talents. NPCs with 5 or more talents were incredibly rare even before the zombies wiped out most of humanity. These are the crme de la crme, the people who are the best at what they do, or simply the best (much like the Professional archetype). SWAT team
members, high-ranking military officials, world-class craftsmen, hardcore survivalists, biochemists, or just that guy that you always get compared to at family get-togethers (you know that person that youd probably hate if you werent in awe of how awesome they are). Give NPCs Liabilities that show off what theyre all about. If theres not an interesting story involved in how an NPC lost her leg, and it doesnt interestingly impact her interactions with the players survivors, then dont give it to her as a Liability. Other than that, go crazy. Give them as many Liabilities as you think fit, keeping in mind that Liabilities arent a measure of incompetence, but more like vulnerabilities that stick out in high pressure situations. Give NPCs gear that fits their circumstances, personalities, and goals. The leader of a rapidly growing ascetic cult might have a handwritten notebook filled with their hunger-induced ravings, a scourge, a dingy hooded sweatshirt pulled low to cover up their scars, and a few boxes of strychnine just in case the Adversary comes a calling. Your Professionals old army buddy Gloria (and ex-girlfriend besides), needs an entirely different array of gear to set her apart, and poor old Freddy needs still another load out. Dont forget supplies either, NPCs need to eat and drink too. Once youve figured out what theyve got on them, detail it with Features and Drawbacks just like a player characters gear asking yourself questions each step of the way. What does Glorias Obvious, Weapon +2, High Maintenance, Sentimental Value Handgun look like? What does it feel like in her hands? Why does she care so much about it? Why does it make itself obvious? Is it a 9mm service civilian weapon, or something from her military days? Is it obvious because its loud or because its a garishly customized street piece lifted from some unfortunate gangster? These sorts of questions will give an NPC and their Gear untold amounts of personality. Give your NPCs relationships that matter, relationships that will see the light of day in play. Stay away from luke-warm emotions like Gloria really likes Steven because of the way he treats her now that shes not with Erica anymore. Keep it personal, keep it intense, and dont be afraid to make at least some of your NPCs into walking, talking, soap operas. Doing so gives everyone a reason to respond to respond to their antics. Try also to keep track of the reasons for each relationship that an NPC has. Why do they hate so and so, why do they distrust so and so, why do they love the best friend of the person that they hate? Dont shy away from contradictory relationships, unstable relationships, or risky relationships (those are where the fun is) but do take some time to rationalize why the NPC feels this way so that you can play them accurately and realistically. When designing your NPCs relationships, if they are someone whos in regular contact with the players characters have each players survivor write down how they feel about the NPC. By encouraging player characters and the NPC to have some sort of relationship, you encourage them to interact and to conflict with one another.
GM Rules/Duties Yes the GM has rules to abide by too, in part because the GM of a Fear the Living game has so much power. Youre in control of events in the world that arent instigated by the players characters, in control of NPCs, in control of setting scenes and delivering exciting descriptions of what happens as a result of the survivors actions. Its easy to let all of that
power go to ones head and decide that you can ignore a rule or two in order to tell a better story. Well here are some hard and fast rules to set you straight on that point: Dont Cheat Cheating means disobeying any of the rules laid out in this book without having already agreed upon house rules with the entire group or ignoring a players successful (or failed) roll because it messes up what you had in mind. When you decide to ignore a rule, youre putting your ideas as to what should happen next ahead of everyone elses, which is bad form for a game where everyone is supposed to have input into how the story develops. The same thing goes for fudging die rolls rather that rolling with what comes from the dice as they fall and following the story that comes from those consequences. Not only is it selfishly saying I want to tell my story, not our story to the entire table, it makes the actual events of the game into nothing but smoke and mirrors. None of it matters if you already know whats going to happen because youve cheated with the dice. Plus, your players wont be too happy to know that their decisions and efforts made no difference. Even death or embarrassment are a part of this. If your cheating is the thing that saves a survivor, then all that does is let them know that they live, die, and act only at your whim, which leads to complacency, boredom, and frustration. So dont cheat, and dont give your players any reason to suspect that you are cheating (such as by hiding your dice rolls). Likewise, when you commit an NPCs statistics to paper or to memory, dont just change them around willy-nilly. A players survivor doesnt get that benefit, so neither should your NPC. If you want them to grow and develop have them deal with Risks and Liabilities and enter into conflict because of their relationships. Dont Plan the Story. Act and React Fear the Living is a game where you play to see what happens next. Where you find out what your NPCs will do in response to the actions of your survivors, what the survivors will do to cope with the pressures youre throwing at them, how theyll change and whether or not theyll survive. Once you transition from thinking for your NPCs and determining what their needs and wants are and how theyll achieve them to planning a story to run your players through youve lost your way. Either your players will do something you didnt expect them to do and youll have to throw out all of your prep to accommodate what theyre doing, or youll end up trying to force them back into your pre-planned story line and experience player resentment as a result. Instead of planning out scenes like So this is when the decadent leader of the Nevada compound comes out to make his gloating speech and sic his thugs on the survivors and then theyll run and come over to the crumbling damn where the Badass will inadvertently trigger its collapse and theyll be forced to team up with the decadent leaders lieutenant.and then plan from the perspective of the NPCs. Decide what the decadent leader of the Nevada compound wants (To keep his discontented subjects pacified, to get more women for his burgeoning city, to wipe out the rebels amongst his people, to get someone expendable to take care of the zombies to the east of the compound), and what hell do to accomplish or get what he wants. Do this for every major NPC youve written
up for the area and then once play begins have each of them act on it both on and off screen so that the players characters catch wind of it (or of the side effects). Maybe they know someone from the decadent leaders city, and they start talking about how people are being shot in the streets and women are being rounded up from the cleared-out countryside and turned into slaves. Maybe the survivors get targeted by a raiding party looking for women of childbearing age. Maybe the leaders mistress comes to a criminally inclined member of the group and begs her to help her smuggle the women enslaved in a recent raid out of the compound before theyre subjected to a horrible fate. Whatever it is, make each NPC under your control go after what they want in whatever way best fits their capabilities and character and watch how your players characters respond. Once theyve responded, have your NPCs react and make new plans. Lets say Devon tries to take command of the group after a failed supply run ended with two people dead and one person bitten. He tries to rally support amongst other members of the group (including some players characters) but the groups leader (a players character) isnt having it, and puts down the uprising hard, beating the conspirators to within an inch of their lives and having his supporters tie them up and imprison them some where so that he can determine what to do to them. Nows the time for you to weigh the Devons options and his personality. Does he give up his aspirations and try to negotiate? Does he hatch an escape attempt to break away from the group with what support he has left? Does he play on the sympathies of a player character sent to watch over them and try to take command more subtly? Is he out for revenge? Thats up to you to decide, but whats important is that you have Devon act on those plans and then react when those plans smash into the actions of the players survivors. Put Pressure on The Survivors When the game starts, the situation is probably in a state of equilibrium. Everyones getting used to their characters and establishing what the status quo of their little ragtag group of survivors is. Let them get their feet under them, but then fuck the status quo. Throw situations at them that beg to be resolved. A bitten survivor stumbles into camp, in the throes of advanced infection with valuable information on a rival group that cant be obtained if they just kill her. Their favorite abandoned military surplus store finally runs out of Meals Ready To Eat and bottled water, and winters coming. Tensions flare between the NPC members of two different cliques in the survivors group, and it looks like things are going to get violent at the worst possible time. They dont necessarily have to be purely negative situations (try springing an abandoned defensive line well-supplied with armaments from the militarys last desperate defense on a group struggling with internal tensions) but they should be situations that cant just be shrugged off without significant consequences. You can spring new situations on survivors in multiple ways, but the simplest and most direct is to declare Risks and threaten survivors Liabilities. By declaring a risk during a conflict, youre telling the players what could go wrong, and that by itself (whether they negate the risk by spending a success or not) will drive people to action. If during an openair debate on where to head next, you say Phil clams up during the conversation, looking off into the distance. Unless you can give him assurance that Rick will stop stealing from
his supplies hes not going anywhere. Hell he might even pack up and go youve just established a whole hell of a lot. One that Phils the sort to take care of his own shit, and two that Ricks a shady character (or at least a scapegoat). Both of which have the potential to upset the status quo. Maybe someones character owes Rick a favor and doesnt want them dealt with, maybe someone loathes Rick and wants to see him pay, maybe Rick feels like hes being framed and wants to clear his name by any means necessary. Negating the risk and assuring Phil that Rick will be dealt with just puts even more pressure on the players survivors. How are they going to do it, and what will the repercussions be? Liabilities offer an excellent tool on this front because they detail exactly what sort of struggles players find interesting. Someone who chooses a lot of mental and psychological problems (or even a lot of dependent NPCs to take care of) as Liabilities for their survivor is begging you to mix things up with those issues. Mental breakdowns, hallucinations, their child coming down with the flu or running off on their own. Its all good stuff (both for you and for the player, who earns experience for their troubles). Dont constantly hit them where their weak (a Liability loses its punch if its always invoked) but dont let them forget about their characters vulnerabilities. They chose them for a reason. Relationships are also a tool for creating conflict and shifting the status quo, but theyre one that lies mainly in the hands of your players rather than in yours. Relationships reward those who act on them strongly (by giving bonus dice and Refreshes) and to those who fight for them (granting experience for going into conflict because of them) and so are an excellent motivator for players to have their survivors initiate interesting conflicts. Keep in mind though that your NPCs also have Relationships, and are rewarded for them in the exact same way. If you ever get stumped on what an NPC might do next, look to their relationships and figure out what theyre going to do about their loves, hatreds, envies, fears, dreams and desires and figure out whos going to get involved as a result. Even outside of conflict you can threaten the status quo by throwing situations (both good and bad) at the survivors. Another band, heavily armed but waving a white flag come over the hill looking to join together to make it through a city of the dead. Squalling babies take their first breaths, and start crying out for food and comfort in an uncaring world. Lovers headed off into the woods on sentry duty find a hidden cache of food and weapons in a hollowed out tree trunk-that looks like its been visited recently. None of these situations demands immediate resolution like a formally declared Risk or Liability but they all change the dynamics of the group and eventually someone will need to make a decision about what to do next. Thats where you come in. Whatever they decide: good, bad, stupid, reckless, genius take that and run with it and ask yourself what are the possible consequences of this? Likely youll come up with a lot of them; pick one or two that seem most catchy (and that are at least somewhat likely) and have them happen, leaving things open for the actions of players to effect the outcome. If the consequences lead to confrontation, start a conflict using the Resolution Rules. If not, keep on building up on the consequences of the survivors decisions, the actions of NPCs, and the consequences of those actions until conflict bubbles up (and sooner or later it will). Then ask yourself whats at Risk, and declare it as a Risk. Once the dust settles and the
conflict is done, ask the players what their characters are doing next. Maybe itll be to lick their literal or metaphorical wounds, or maybe theyll start another conflict all by themselves. Whatever the case, follow up on it, itll lead you to and the rest of the group to interesting times. Failing all of this, you have one final tool in your arsenal to put pressure on the survivors, their group, and the status quo: your good-old friends the zombies. If youre stagnating, the players characters are cooling their heels and waiting to see what happens next, and youre at a loss for NPC action or motivation, have some zombies make their presence known. It doesnt have to be a horde shambling or sprinting forward on the horizon, zombies can make their presence known in other ways. Maybe scavenging in their area is starting to run dry and fresh pickings are deeper into the city where the hungry dead wait. Perhaps they come upon another group or even a particularly resolute individual under siege by zombies and need to make a split-second decision of what to do next. Either way, zombies by their very nature spur direct action and decisions: run or fight, sacrifice to save the vulnerable or look after your own hide, risk infection and death to get supplies or struggle to survive in more safer areas that have already been picked over. When survivors get infected, that prompts the same sort of decisions. Hide your affliction for as long as you can? Go down fighting? Let people know and hope they dont put you down? Do it yourself, no matter what harm that wreaks on the people that love you? All of it makes for powerful role-playing. Even after your survivors have dealt with numerous zombie infected survivors, they need to weigh the practicality of disposing of the infected with what that says about their survivors humanity (big H and little h) and what itll mean for the group. You can still have a (one sided) relationship with someone whos dead after all, and people do hold grudges(as a matter of fact, Fear the Living is a game where holding a grudge actually benefits your character). Make the World Come Alive The rules of the game are a skeleton, they offer support to drive the story forward and decide what happens next. But like a skeleton bereft of muscle and fat, they dont have any animating power behind them and run the risk of being dry and boring. Your description and interpretation of the rules is what throws meat on the skeleton. Dont ever straightforwardly describe the effect of a rule as in He shoots you for 3 points of damage what do you do? Use the rules as written (by all the gods, dont cheat) but do describe them in the context of whats going on in the story rather than in the context of them being rules on a sheet of paper. Say Chen looks at you with cold hatred as he raises his hunting rifle and tears start to shine in his eyes THAT WAS MY FATHER YOU BASTARD! he screams as his gun fires and a bullet sinks into your shoulder. You can feel yourself losing your grip on your gun, and its weight now seems unbearable. Then describe what happened in game mechanical terms you take 3 damage and unless you ditch your own gun or spend a success youll fall to the ground. Likewise, if a player just describes what rule their character is invoking like I spend 1 success to negate the risk of falling down prompt them to describe it in terms of the game world by asking them what their survivor is doing, or what happens.
Likewise, dont think of your NPCs as numbers on a page but as living breathing people with goals, dreams, fears, you name it. Play them to the hilt according to their personalities and have them fight and die for what they believe in (or run and hide) based on your sense of who they are. Let them change, let them die, but always think of them as real people of the game world (and have them act like it) and your players will too. This responsibility of making the world seem real also involves evoking the feel of your particular zombie apocalypse. Describe the devastation, the eerily silent bus routes through a citys main drag, the crumbling highways filled with abandoned cars whose back seats might house a waiting zombie ready to pounce. Describe the blood that spatters your survivors as they beat their former friend to a bloody pulp, and the smile of their love after a night of passion beneath the stars. Describe the empty hunger in your zombies eyes, or the cold hiss of inhuman intelligence that comes forth when they lunge towards your survivors whispering Join Ussss. It might seem like an overwhelming task, but you can delegate a lot of it to your players (and can get them involved in the bargain) by asking them questions about their survivors perceptions and experiences. Ask them about their survivors keepsakes and where they got them, ask them about their children (living or dead) and what bedtime stories they ask(ed) for again and again, ask them how the soil of their friends freshly dug grave feels, or what they notice first when they walk into a New York city that hasnt seen a living face in 8 years. If they dont know, wait for a moment and then come back to them when theyve figured it out, prompting but not dictating, all the way. I promise you that youll like what they have to say. If what they say doesnt fit your vision, take what theyve contributed and put your own spin on it, but keep the core of what theyve said alive. The more your players assist in crafting the world that their survivors live and die in the more invested theyll be in it. Give Players (and their survivors) What They Earn This feeds into the first dictate about not cheating, but it bears repeating. When a player makes a successful roll to accomplish something, give it to them. When they save someone, let them be saved (until something comes around to threaten the person again). By the same token, if they fuck up dont mitigate it. If theyre surrounded by zombies alone and unarmed because of how the dice have come up then thems the breaks. They either deal with it, have it dealt with for them by other survivors, or get torn to shreds. Giving players what theyve earned (either way) is your surest way to make the world seem real, by maintaining a direct link between cause and effect. Once you start messing with it, they cant trust that their efforts will have any effect that you dont arbitrarily decide on. Risks are a part of this as well when a survivor mitigates a risk (either through taking a consequence or spending a success), theyve stopped the risk entirely. Not softened it, not put it off, stopped it entirely for the duration of the conflict and after that until things change significantly. If the risk is that they get surrounded by zombies unless a friend of theirs goes into danger with them and they drag a friend along, they wont get surrounded during this conflict until things change: they go to a different location, they get separated etc. Take care also to make sure that the effects of risks dont negate a survivors successful rolls during a conflict, but instead complicate them. If a survivor wanted to
rescue his son from a zombies grip but ends up getting grabbed himself as the result of an unresolved risk, he rips the kid free just in time to be dragged away himself to his childs desperate cries of DADDY! Risks can and should build on one another (even Risks that have been avoided can provide grist for future trouble) but once a Risk has been avoided, that particular problem shouldnt plague that survivor until the situation changes. On a related note, dont make your survivors earn absolutely everything. Dice rolls are specifically for when theres something important going on, and when somethings at risk. If theres no Risk, dont bother bringing out the d6s. If they want to go somewhere and theres nothing standing in their way, then theyre there. If they get involved in a casual conversation where nothings at stake and neither party wants something that the other doesnt want them to have then dont worry about the dice, just play the conversation out. Ask Lots of Questions (Or Scene Setting For Dummies) If youre sharp, you might have already picked up on this one. Its your job and obligation to always be asking questions of your players. Where are you is a good one to begin scenes with, closely followed by what are you doing, who are you with, why are you doing it etc. Then once youve gotten answers from one player, pop over to the next and do the same thing until youve established a starting point for each survivor. Some might be grouped together with other players characters or NPCs, while others might be all by themselves thats perfectly fine. If they mention that another survivor is nearby them, ask that characters player why theyre nearby, especially if its an unusual pairing until they come up with an interesting explanation. Once youve established a scene keep on asking questions about the characters actions. Prompt them for description each step of the way and having any NPCs present respond to those actions (advancing any off-screen NPCs plans as you do so). If this pushes characters into conflict thats great, start the conflict off with the first set of rolls for everyone involved and then pan over to any survivors that arent a part of the conflict and start asking those same questions all over again. Occasionally youll get non-responsive answers like Im still doing what I was doing in cases like those prompt action by changing the situation. Have a new NPC wander onto the scene (preferably one with some history with their character), a new stressor make itself known, or if all else fails ask them what they do next. This will spur them to action. If someones really devoted to having their character remain asleep (or whatever) while action is going on elsewhere, pan over to the conflict for a bit and then back to the uninvolved character, asking them illuminating questions about their situation. What does the food theyre preparing smell like? What are they thinking about? What are they dreaming about? They can hear gunfire on the horizon (from the firefight that another character started) does it startle them awake, and if so what do they do? Eventually youll get some action out of them, or else a whole lot of interesting exposition that youll be able to use down the road to make the world come alive for your players. Build off of What Happens It seems simple, and it is, use events in the game to spur further events. Figure out what the repercussions of the survivors actions are and let them unfold, and then figure out how the
survivors responses to those repercussions create new consequences. Ask yourself what next? constantly, but dont answer it every time. Leave yourself some stuff to wonder about, because if your players are contributing at all, the situation in the game is going to be constantly changing so you need to keep things flexible in order to change with it. NPCs, pressures, zombies, Risks, all of these are ways for you to build off of what happens as a result of player action or an NPCs attempts to accomplish their goals. Ask yourself who gets involved now that _______ has happened, what could go wrong or right now that _________ has happened, and how do zombies figure into ___________. Sometimes you wont have answers for some of these questions, or the answer will be nothing or no one at all, but you should be able to find at least one question to answer. Those answerable questions are what you should seize on, because once you introduce it youll have a whole new situation and entirely different questions to ask. Love Your Job, And Love Your Players Characters It might seem sometimes like being in the GMs seat is a hell of a lot of work, and like its your job to kick the asses of your players survivors. Both of those assumptions are complete bullshit. You might have some work to do, but a lot of it (particularly making the world come alive) is work that you can do alongside the players in coming up with your own unique spin on the zombie apocalypse. By asking questions of your players, asking yourself always what comes next? and looking at situations from the perspectives of the NPCs that you have in them, you can create a game that by and large creates material on its own-you just spice it up and stir the pot every now and again. The second part of the assumption is less false than the first, but still untrue. Your job isnt to kick the asses of your players characters, its to be huge fans of them. Its to prompt them to do awesome stuff, and then bask in the glow of their success or commiserate over their failures. But to do that, to help weave an awesome story about these amazing survivors, youve got to put them into difficult situations. Youve got to put pressure on them, and sometimes thatll mean that their asses will end up getting kicked (or bitten, or eaten, or embarrassed). But thats not the goal, such setbacks are just another opportunity for players to define their characters and for story to be generated. So a players survivor gets infectedtheir story isnt over. How do they deal with it? How do they cope (or not)? What do they do about it? You and your fellows should be on the edge of your seats playing to find out. Even death isnt the end-because of Fear The Livings Relationship mechanics, people have an incentive to remember a character whos passed, and their feelings for him or her. So laugh with your players, cry with your players, and dont feel too bad if they throw dice at their head after a zombie eats their brains. So long as youre not cheating its nothing personal. Now get out there, grab some friends and some dice, and start a game! The zombies are coming
-FIN-