Thoughts on Zombie World

Magpie has finally sent out rewards for their Zombie World Kickstarter, and the game should be widely available at this point to the public.  I say “finally” not because they were long overdue, but because I was excited to see the product.  I had not read any of the draft and early rules that Magpie shared through the Kickstarter, so reading through the rules and cards were my first experience with the game.  There is a lot to love here.
 
There has been a lot of experimenting with packaging and presentation in the RPG field lately.  We’re seeing a lot of games being published that don’t take the form of a single book.  Star Crossed comes packaged with a set of tumbling blocks, printed cards and character sheets, and a pamphlet of rules.  The King is Dead has individual play booklets and various optional sets of cards.  The Companions’ Tale is a card game with a thin booklet of rules.  While these innovations eat up a lot more room on our bookshelves, they all cut down drastically on the amount of time we have to invest in learning to play the games.  And of course they emphasize the “game” part of the title role-playing game, making these games look like other games sold in small and medium boxes.
 
Zombie World makes it so that you do not even have to print anything out.  If you have the box and its contents with you, you can play the game without needing so much as a pencil.  (Well, okay, you might want to have a set of dry-erase markers, but you can make do with the one provided if you’re a patient and friendly group.)  The rulebook is a small and beautifully produced 5”x6.5” booklet of 33 pages.  Unlike Star Crossed, Zombie World doesn’t avoid the RPG title or terminology, but it does avoid giving overelaborate instructions, assuming a base familiarity with RPGs or assuming that a base familiarity is unnecessary.
 
The game comes with 8 glossy cardstock character sheets that can be written on with dry-erase markers.  Because your character’s details come primarily on the playing cards that are the center of the game, there is very little information that players need to write on their sheets.  There are 4 stats, a stress track, a space for you name, and an area to write the names of the various NPC allies you have.  Other than that, the card includes two basic moves, and a place to put your character cards associated with your past (pre-zombie occupation, your present (job within the enclave of survivors), and your trauma (that you suffered surviving for as long as you have).  Players also get a glossy card with all the other basic moves they’ll need for the game (yes, the game uses Apocalypse World mechanics, but it doesn’t market itself as a pbta game).  The moves are divided into basic moves on one side of the card and zombie moves (meaning, moves you make when dealing with zombies) on the other side.  Anything else you might need to play your individual characters are included on those set of cards I already mentioned with your past, present, and trauma.
 
The GM gets their own glossy card, with the order of play and a few specific rules on one side of the card, and a set of lists on the other side.  Those lists are things like useful items that will probably enter the fiction at some point, places characters might visit, and names for NPCs.  The card also includes two of the moves the players will commonly make, for the GM’s convenience.
 
The rest of the game exists in a series of decks of regular-sized cards.  There is a deck of pasts, presents, and traumas.  Your past begins in the face-down position, and the card gives you instructions on what you have to do within the fiction to reveal your card in play.  Once it is in play, it gives you a bonus under certain thematically-relevant conditions.  Your present begins play face up and can consist of a variety of things.  You might change a stat because of your role, or you might have a special move that you have access to.  All present cards give you a unique way to clear stress from your stress track.  Like pasts, trauma cards begin face down.  As long as they are face down, you can use that information to guide your roleplaying, but they don’t have any mechanical effect on play.  You can reveal your trauma anytime you want once you’ve brought your character revealing the trauma into the fiction. When you reveal it, it might, like your present, affect your stats or give you a special move.  Moreover, while it is revealed, you get a new way to clear stress (though that way is typically by engaging in that traumatic behavior) or some other tweak to how your character plays.
 
There is also an enclave deck.  At the beginning of play, you choose which enclave your survivors will be living in.  Each enclave consists of two cards.  The first card gives you a couple of moves that are unique for that location.  The second card has a list of options for your enclave, lists of scarcities, populations living with the enclave, surrounding geographical features, and possible advantages.  At the beginning of play, because characters are made, players take turns selecting items from the lists to define the specific advantages and drawbacks of their chosen setting.
 
There is an advantages deck that has one card for each possible advantage listed on the various enclave cards.  When they players choose an advantage, you pull that card out of the advantage deck, and it will let you know how that advantage affects the fiction and play, usually giving you a special move for when you try to make use of that advantage.
 
There is a Fate deck.  These card each have two uses.  Each card has a quick relationship detail.  After the enclave is created and characters are sketched out, the Fate cards are handed out between players to randomly assign a relationship fact between their two characters.  The Fate cards are also used as a way to kick off a session by providing an immediate crisis that the enclave is facing.  Whenever the situation is settled and a new status quo develops, the GM can draw from the Fate deck and see what new crisis tilts the enclave’s equilibrium.
 
The last two decks are used the most frequently once the players enter fictional play.  The Survivor deck is the main deck used in resolution.  The deck consists of 11 cards.  There are 6 misses, 3 edges, 1 triumph, and 1 opportunity.  A triumph corresponds with a 10+ in regular pbta games.  Edges are like the 7-9 result, and misses are misses.  The opportunity is a miss, unless the player wants to mark a stress on their character; if they do, then the opportunity counts as a triumph.  So whenever cards need to be drawn, the 11 cards are shuffled and the player draws a number of cards equal to their stat for whatever move they are making.  You can then play any one of the cards you drew (typically the best card, of course).
 
The Bite deck is the final deck.  It has 15 cards in it, and it is drawn from whenever a PC has a close call with a zombie.  The deck has 5 “safe” cards (you’re safe), four “something breaks” cards (which gives the GM permission to break something in the environment to worsen the characters’ situation), four “more zombies” cards (you get it), and one “bite” card.  If you draw the bite card, your character is going to die, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.  The GM and player can work out when and how that happens together, but it will happen before too long.  The bitch of the bite deck is that it is not shuffled after each draw.  It is shuffled once at the start of the session, and then it is not shuffled again until the bite card is drawn.  Right?
 
Situations for the game write themselves, so there is no prep needed by the GM.  The enclave has weaknesses, the characters have drives, and there are hordes of zombies in the outside world—things can take care of themselves from there.  In one-shots, the story is about these particular characters surviving (or not) in the zombie apocalypse.  In campaign play, the story is about the enclave and how it stands or falls no matter how many individuals pass through its halls.
 
There are a lot of things I love about the way the game is constructed.  I love that past and trauma cards remain face down until you want to introduce them.  So you can reveal or hide them for a number of reasons.  First, you can use them to fuel your roleplay, hinting at things if you want or not if you don’t.  Second, you can reveal them at a dramatic moment, if you choose.  Third, you can reveal them solely because you want the benefit they offer.  Finally, you can choose not to reveal them and not to let them inform your roleplaying.  You don’t get to choose your past or trauma; they are just given to you.  So if you get a trauma you don’t want to play out, don’t.  If you never flip the card over, it never enters the fiction as a fact, and you can have whatever past and trauma you imagine for your character.  And when you don’t flip the card, there is implicit tension there as other players wonder what they don’t know about your character.  In addition to all these cool things, the help or interfere move makes you draw cards equal to the number of face up cards the player you are helping or interfering with has.  It’s a quick and easy way to see how well the enclave knows your character, how vulnerable and exposed they have been made in this apocalypse.  And since you can gain multiple traumas through play, you can conceivably have someone draw 5 cards to help you, which is one hell of an incentive to be open.
 
Traumas are also a neat way to have your character exist thematically in this apocalyptic world.  Every time something goes wrong, you have to mark stress, because this is a stressful world.  When you mark your fifth stress, you erase all your stress and take a new trauma.  If you ever draw a fifth trauma card, your PC becomes and NPC.  But each trauma can also make your character stronger or more effective in some way, so gaining stress and trauma is not a frustrating experience for players.  As such, the game rewards you for leaning into the thematic content of the game.  In addition, the more trauma you have, the more tools you have to clear stress, so there is a self-correcting tool to let you slow down the traumas you’ll have as you go.  To make matters better, the means for clearing that stress makes for excellent drama.  For example, one trauma is “xenophobic.”  To clear stress once you are xenophobic, all you have to do is “barricade a place and someone is left outside.”  Oh shit.  That’s awesomely horrible.
 
In addition to trauma of course, you can be taken out by other means.  PCs do not have hit points or a harm track.  So the only ways to be removed from the game outside of trauma is if you draw that bite card or if you draw a miss when you suffer serious harm.  Suffer serious harm is a harm move for non-zombie violence, and it’s a really well-designed move.  If the harm you suffer isn’t serious, just play it as an inconvenient and quick-healing wound.  If it is serious, then you draw cards from the Survivor deck.  The number of cards you draw is determined by how intentional the injury was (was someone trying to kill you?), how lethal the source of harm was (were you shot with a gun?), and whether you had any protection (were you wearing a flak jacket, by chance?).  In the worst case, you draw just one card, which gives you more than a 50% chance to miss, and on a miss you die.  Those are serious stakes.  Death in this game is necessarily always on the table.
 
The basic moves are wonderfully conceived as well.  Your move to influence someone else demands that you “get in someone’s face.”  There is no seduction or manipulation, only savage aggression.  But my favorite basic move is the do something under fire move: “When you try to avert disaster, say what you’re trying to prevent and draw Survival.  On a Triumph, you manage it.  On an Edge, you pull through, but it will cost you.  The GM will offer you a hard bargain, ugly choice, or Pyrrhic victory.”  To me, the beauty of this move exists in the wording of the trigger: avert disaster.  You know exactly when to make this move and when not to.  Are you trying to do something hard?  Who cares!  Is that hard thing a desperate attempt to avert disaster?  If you fail, will disaster befall you and your friends?  It’s such a clear fictional marker and it avoids the abuse or over use of the move to cover situations for which it is not intended.  I love it.
 
I haven’t had a chance to play the game yet, but I’m very much looking forward to our next one-shot night!

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