Geek legend and Vampire: the Masquerade creator Mark Rein-Hagen has a new RPG. It’s post-apocalyptic zombie horror with a killer twist. You don’t destroy zombies, you are the zombies.
In I Am Zombie, published by Make Believe Games, players take on the roles of intelligent zombies trying to live through another night. Humans are your enemy, and brains your temptation. (Eating a human brain allows you to relive the person’s entire life in one go. It becomes addicting, so it should be no wonder that zombies eventually learned to run.) The humans have confined you to zombie cities, called hospices, below ground.
Zombies have been around since time immemorial, and many historical events are in fact cover-ups for zombie breakouts. The plague of Justinian? Zombies. The Black Death? Zombies. Nuclear testing? Efforts to wipe out hordes of zombies. North Korea? Guess which country is frickin’ ruled by zombies? The zombies are of course riven by factions, and there are different kinds of zombies with different powers.
The game’s character creation system is easy as can be. It’s card-based; you choose five cards, and your character is complete.
The game itself comes with the system in a box set featuring a journal to tell the story of your zombies, character creation cards, and dice (featuring brains!). It even has LARP rules included. There’s also a setting book, written by zombies and for zombies, that describes the world, its dangers, and current state of decay. The book is system free, which means that if you have a friend who just really, really, loves zombies (maybe she’s a member of Zombie Squad) the book would make a magnificent if disturbing gift.
Oh, and then there’s the art. As you can see from these samples, the art is magnificent throughout, evoking grindhouse horror films at every turn. Enjoy the eyeball feast of images!
This is the first role-playing game Mark Rein-Hagen has worked on since he left White Wolf Games. If you spent time in high school as a Brujah, or know what the Sabbat is, you should check out I Am Zombie. You’ll like what you see.
Click here to learn more about I Am Zombie.
Thanks to Mark Rein-Hagen for a moment of his time at Gen Con.
All images courtesy Make Believe Games.