I like The Shotgun Diaries
The Shotgun Diaries is a zombie survival RPG by John Wick (RPGNow link.) It is a minimalist presentation, with only 18 pages and absolutely no art. It was originally written as a birthday present to one of John’s friends, and only recently was made available as a commercial product.
Character creation is almost non-existent. You pick a survivor archetype, such as clever, fast, sneaky, or strong–and that is it. This archetype serves as your concept, character class, party role, and skill list all rolled into one choice. One could argue that this is lazy design. A system involving attributes and skills could easily be attached to this game. However, I think that would nullify two important aspects: First, character creation is a snap. You pick your archetype, fill in a little narrative window dressing to give it life, and you are ready to play. Very little time is wasted, getting you right into play. Second, having characters fill an archetype creates a wonderfully tense situation where nearly all of your eggs are in one basket. Losing a character is a heavy blow to the rest of the group.
The most interesting aspect of gameplay is that you never specifically roll to shoot zombies. Zombies are everywhere, around every corner, and endless in number. It is assumed that no matter what you do, you are shooting zombies while you do it. This seems shocking at first. A zombie game where you don’t run around killing zombies? Honestly, most of us have played that kind of game before. There are plenty of other game systems that do it well. This game isn’t about that. This game is about asking the bigger question: what does it take for long-term survival? This also means that every dice roll poses a real threat to your character. Fail a roll and you are either eaten or infected. If eaten, your game is over. (Unless the GM lets you roll up a new character.) If you are infected you are not immediately removed from play. Instead you become a walking time-bomb, still capable of helping the party out, but capable of turning into the enemy at any moment.
Another interesting feature of the game is the zombie clock. At a set interval during the gaming sessions (that is real time, not in-game time) the GM adds a point to the zombie clock. This represents the undead threat growing and the tension rising against the players. The GM can spend points from the zombie clock to initiate unfortunate things against the players. The real use of the zombie clock comes when players try to find sanctuary. The players can lock down and reinforce a location to try and make it safe for a while. Eventually, the zombie clock reaches a level that the undead break down the doors. When this happens the survivors are flushed out of the sanctuary and the zombie clock resets. This results in a game where players don’t have much time for idle table talk. The zombie clock is counting up, even when you go to grab another slice of pizza.
Ultimately, I would have liked a little more discussion on GMing the game. With a system like this where there are some large, non-traditional components that change the basic model of play, the book needs some tips on how to use those new components. Even an extended example of play would have served well to this end. The game leaves me asking important questions, like if the players never roll to shoot zombies, how can I present them as a non-mechanical threat? For instance, the GM says, “There are 5 zombies coming down the hall, what do you do?” Because you do not roll to shoot zombies, the players can never say, “there are only 5 of them, we stand and fight!” Does that mean the GM is never to present a situation where the players would be motivated just to fight? Or is it the burden of the players to never answer the question with “we fight,” but instead think of other objectives? Maybe that is a question of personal play style–but even if it is, it would have been nice to see a paragraph about it.
In the end, you get a concise little set of rules that let you tell stories about surviving the end of the world. Character creation is blazingly fast, every single dice roll might see someone eaten or infected, and each moment the zombie clock ticks up a notch. The game text puts it best with its final paragraph, which instructs you to, “Run, run, run!”
