Friday, January 14, 2005
News flash: The dead will rise!
I've been spending a fair bit of time reading the All Flesh Must Be Eaten core book, and I'm really impressed with it. In fact, I'm so impressed by the quality, I'm dying to pick up supplements for AFMBE, as well as other games published by Eden Studios.
The Unisystem, which most of Eden's games use is designed to be simple to learn, but it's also designed to fade into the background and let the story take centre stage. Now, I'm not sure whether it does that any more than any other game, but I do kind of like what I see. The first big thing that's different is that combat is treated like anything else -- just another skill roll. There are no complicated war game-like extended rules for doing combat, which is kind of nice. I do get tired of trying to remember the various rules in D&D for things like flanking, charging, bull rushes, range increments and other crazy combat stuff. It just gets to be a bit much at times.
The Unisystem uses a fairly simple task resolution mechanic. You roll a d10, add in an attribute/skill. If it all adds up to a nine, it's a success. Of course, the game master can add bonuses or penalties to a roll based on difficulty, distractions and whatnot. Damage is done by rolling d4s, d6s and d8s, and then factoring in multipliers. Here and there, the mechanics get a little more complicated, but for the most part, it looks fairly simple to learn.
The system is also fairly brutal. Combat can be deadly, by the looks of it. But as a zombie survival horror game, I wouldn't expect anything else. I know with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, Eden implemented a more cinematic version of the Unisystem. I don't really know what the differences are, but I would imagine it's a lot harder to die.
The Unisystem, which most of Eden's games use is designed to be simple to learn, but it's also designed to fade into the background and let the story take centre stage. Now, I'm not sure whether it does that any more than any other game, but I do kind of like what I see. The first big thing that's different is that combat is treated like anything else -- just another skill roll. There are no complicated war game-like extended rules for doing combat, which is kind of nice. I do get tired of trying to remember the various rules in D&D for things like flanking, charging, bull rushes, range increments and other crazy combat stuff. It just gets to be a bit much at times.
The Unisystem uses a fairly simple task resolution mechanic. You roll a d10, add in an attribute/skill. If it all adds up to a nine, it's a success. Of course, the game master can add bonuses or penalties to a roll based on difficulty, distractions and whatnot. Damage is done by rolling d4s, d6s and d8s, and then factoring in multipliers. Here and there, the mechanics get a little more complicated, but for the most part, it looks fairly simple to learn.
The system is also fairly brutal. Combat can be deadly, by the looks of it. But as a zombie survival horror game, I wouldn't expect anything else. I know with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, Eden implemented a more cinematic version of the Unisystem. I don't really know what the differences are, but I would imagine it's a lot harder to die.
// posted by Chris @ 1:06 PM 
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