Dead Reign

[Zenvis]

Yes it is the one by Palladium.

Web, i'm not sure what the Palladium system consists of exactly, due to my lack of RPGing XP. but i do believe it is that system. I bought the book before i posted.

I had always wanted to do a zombie game. Ever since i play Resident Evil on the PS1.

I do agree with the review on the part of the lack of combat rules. It took me awhile to grasp what they were saying, so i just took what i could and went with the flow for the rest.

We did play our first game about a few days ago. It went smoothly. I actually set it in the city where i live. Chi is player her real life self. Its been fun so far.

I really like the class options. Especially the ordinary people occupation options!

I have the game too and have been playing Palladium games for 25 years. This new game is a more edgy and intense game. Other then their games where there is not quite an edge (granted Rifts and the other games can be) Dead Reign is such that it could be played like Zombieland the movie or something that requires more fear and intensity. I like the game and play it with a lot of humor.

[MisterBook]

You know, in looking over these books I wouldn't mind playing Dead Reign, despite it being Palladium.

[mindravel]

AFMBE is good for a short campaign. You need a really good GM to keep it going past a few sessions. Its mostly due to the lack of a solid background world. If you go by their few pages of "lite" campaign info (called a Deadworld), then you will only get a few sessions out of it. Also, the genre itself is hard to keep stretching to something interesting. You need to focus a lot on npcs, and inner character conflict (with allies and enemies, or with supplies, i.e, the generator goes bad, uhoh!), the zombies will get old, and looting and hording gets boring. Check out the Walking Dead series to see how they can make a zombie theme series interesting into further sessions (they focus alot on npc turmoil, most good zombie ANYTHING does, its the bad zombie movies that just have the cast fighting zombies all night, though I love'em anyway).

The rules for AFMBE are pretty simple and to the point. Its not a perfect system though. They have this set-up about declaring actions before a turn, and penalties for multiple actions, and penalties for melee, and recoil penalties, that could have been better addressed in their books. It seems the majority just let the players take their turns, and ignore recoil (considering that AFMBE only used one gun as an example of possible recoil, but they never explained recoil when using a burst, or explained other shooting techniques better). So they arent that polished, same with Palladium. So both have this edge that you use what you want and change as you wish.

Dead Reign has a great campaign background. They also have good substance. Their random charts for items, locations, and events, are really well made. Using this with any other post-apocalyptic setting would always be worth its cover-price over and over. This is less do it yourself than AFMBE. Though you can tailor AFMBE after Deadreign (use the charts, create DR zombies using AFMBE zombie creation rules). The OCCs (classes) are well thought out, especially the one that trains dogs. They are very creative, and a class that trains dogs to sniff and hunt out the dead was something that I would have never thought up. Also, they have specific zombie rules for combat. Its called the convergance, which basically means that when you see a zombie, and it sees you, either run, or kill it now. It will alert all zombies in its radius. It adds a creepy tense flavor to the zombie game as players have to scramble and run, or use some serious stealth to get by. Lastly, their npc enemies that arent zombies are also well thought out. Crazy religious nuts, societies who fall to savagery and cannibalism, with stats and background info. So, a lot of substance.

I understand the rules of Palladium is a problem for most people. But frankly, I dont see how unisystem is any different. I can point out the lite-ness of it, and the lack of clarification of certain rules. Most Palladium people use the same rules without problem, they pretty much defaulted to a standard. Unless there is issues with OCC balance that bothers most people, which is understandable. You can fix this with awarding weaker OCCs with better items. But I never liked cookie cutter balanced classes, it gets too mathy for me, too programmed. Either way, after a few sessions, chances are one character might get lucky and get items before others, which can unbalance the characters anyway, or a PC can make alliances with powerful npcs, etc.

[Dark]

I've played both and I like both depending on my gaming mood if I was to choose it would be Dead Reign but hey thats my choice to each their own.