Fear the LivingA Zombie Apocalypse Roleplaying Game

by John Thomas Jessop

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�ey’re not your friends.

�ey’re not your family.

�ey’re not even human.

Just a puppet or a walking corpse.

Transformed by the a�iction, they are overwhelming the living.

�e world you knew is gone,

Consumed by the hungry dead.

�is is the story of what happens next.

Fear the Living is a zombie apocalypse roleplaying game for 2-5 people.

Play to survive.

Play to live.

Play to �nd out what happens next.Sam

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Fear the LivingA Zombie Apocalypse Roleplaying Game

by John Thomas Jessop

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AcknowledgmentsA big thank you to:

•My faithful, brilliant, beautiful, and long-suffering wife Holly and my little zombie snack Perry, without whom I never would have stuck with this project.

•My incredible editor and layout guy Craig Judd, whose tireless efforts to make my ramblings coherent and to present them in an appealing fashion have made this project what it is today. He also designed an incredible Survivor Sheet and Advantage Sheet in the bargain.

•My wonderful artist Wendy Tigges, whose gorgeous black and white ballpoint illustrations have brought the zombie apocalypse to life upon these pages.

•Arjana, Norbert, Red, and Sgt. Henry, along with their players Danelle, Aaron, Manu, and Mike, without whom I wouldn’t have known the full scale of this game’s awesomeness.

•Kit Fowley, who designed the incredible placeholder Survivor Sheet which we used as a basis for the final product.

•The folks at Story Games.com, from whom I recruited the first playtest group for the current version of the game.

•My old D&D group (Seth, Garrick, Neil, Alex, and Chris) who labored through the incredibly buggy first version of this game and helped me realize just how much work I had left to do.

Fear the Living is Copyright © 2015 John T. Jessop & Just A Statue Games. Permission is granted to copy the Record Sheets for personal use.

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And a big shout out to all of my backers, big and small, without whom Fear The Living wouldn’t be possible:

Chris Gunning, Bri and Rhi, Pat Davis, Stytch, Tabitha Cerilli, Chris “The Chef ” Karr, Alex and Amanda Fux, Brad Eckhart, Seth Eliot, Michael “Eastwood” Stuewe, John, Morgan Hazel, Maria Jessop, Bartholomew Picca, Wolfer the fox, Dezerata, & Radayen, Deben Bain, Carl Garrett, SelousX, Rob Hanz, @ATerribleIdea, James T. Harnden, Johnathan “Buddha” Davis, Chris Csakany, Damian Taylor, Simon Ward, Travis Casey & Julian Stanley, Martin Krebs, John Lee Strough, Jason Vanhee, Alex Troso, C.S Anderson (Author of the Black Irish Chronicles), Bill Edmunds, Troy Stuart, Matt Black, Jeffrey A. Lucarelli, Austin Zalewski, Ryan H, Carl Rigney, Brian Allred, Alexander «SquidLord» Williams, Caoimhe Ora Snow, Comics Cubed, Matthew McFarland, Chris Snyder, James Mack, Richard ‹Scylld› Comfort, Shelton Windham, Jeff «Cad Davers» Zitomer, David Harrison, Nick Hopkins, Brian Vander Veen, Aaron Enskat, Dad, John Cohen, Andy Keith, Augusta Ferretti, Little Azn, Petri Leinonen, Andy Belfield, Liam Routt, Paul and Samantha, Thomas Krømke, Richard Harrison, Chris Smith, Jake Leeder, Anna Chaykowski, Jessica and Christopher, Steven Ward, Aljen, Markus Plötz, Maxadon, Frank, Donogh McCarthy, James Wax-Edwards, Oliver Ullmann, Brennan Dawson, Ben Dutter, Frost Holliman, Jason Italiano, Svend Andersen, Gauthier Descamps, Dan Maberry, Ignatius Montenegro, Mike Gerdes, Christian Theriault, Vic17, John Gabriel, Derek «Pineapple Steak» Swoyer, Gerry Saracco, Gavin Carr, Chris VanDriessche, Alex Lieberman, Kyle «Qualta» Grant, Remy Handler, Trygve Lie, Sean Howard, Pete Petrusha, Claes Florvik, Warding Circle, Doug Hagler, Kit Fowley (ADVENTURE!!), EvilLego, Eric Coates, Thessaren, Bryan Rennekamp, James Dillane, Maniac von Hannover spielt!, Dave Polhill, Christopher McDonough, Eric P. Kurniawan, Michele-Patrizio Rossi, Rafe Ball, Joshua Ramsey, Andrew Medeiros, Darren King, Dan Byrne, Kammy, The Mysteriouz Benefaktor, CW «Fuzzy» Lausten, Jacob Korst, Leron Culbreath, @ShawnMcCarthy, Lawrence «Senile Larry» Parrish, and The Phalanx Consortium.

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Conte

ntsIntroduction 5

What Is Fear The Living? 5Building Your Own Zombie Apocalypse 7

Example Settings 10Creating a Survivor 15

Step One –  Concept 18Step Two – Attributes 18Step Three – Modus Operandi 20Step Four – Relationships 21Step Five – Talents 25Step Six – Gear and Supply 27Step Seven – Liabilities 31Experience and Advancement 34

Playing the Game 37Introduce Your Survivor 38How To Play 39Conflicts 39

Resolving Conflicts 41Step One – The GM Describes the Scene and Asks Questions 42Step Two – Gather Your Dice Pool 42Step Three – Roll Dice then Count Successes and Harbingers 44Step Four – Add Extra Successes 44Step Five – Spend Successes and Describe 45Step Six – Check the Status of the Conflict 50

GM Rules 51The Entropy Pool 52Declaring Risks 55Principles of GMing 57

Injury and Death 67Damage 68Healing Injuries 70

Dying 71NPC Survivors 73

Creating NPC Survivors 73NPC Mobs 79NPCs in Conflict 80NPC Advancement 84

Zombies 85Creating Zombies 86Zombies in Conflict 90Using Zombies 96The Zombie Affliction 98

Appendix One: Advantage List 101Achieve a Goal 102Avoid 105Betray 106Bribe 108Harm 109Heal 110Help 112Hinder 114Inquire 115Threaten 116

Appendix Two: Modus Operandi 117

List of MOs 118Designing New MOs 128

Appendix Three: Optional Rules 135

The Meatgrinder 135Optional Advancement: A Happy Ending 144

Index 145Survivor Sheet 147Advantage Sheet 148

Contents

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Introduction

They’re not your friends.

They’re not your family.

They’re not even human.

Just a puppet or a walking corpse.

Transformed by the affliction, they are overwhelming the living.

The world you knew is gone,

Consumed by the hungry dead.

This is the story of what happens next.

What Is Fear The Living?You know the end of every great zombie movie out there (that doesn’t end with everyone getting ripped to shreds or blown into their component molecules), where it fades to black and some tiny part of your brain is asking itself “What happens next?” “How do they cope?” “Do they rebuild civilization?” “How many Twinkies are left?”

Fear the Living answers those questions – not right away, but as you play all of those questions will end up answered one way or another (except for maybe that one about the snack cakes). It’s based off of shows like The Walking Dead and The Stand where each new episode (or session, in gaming parlance) presents new and different pressures and crises while building up and feeding off of what’s come before.

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Introd

uctio

n Most of the players will portray individual Survivors – people who have thus far managed to cope with the zombie apocalypse, but who still struggle every day against the threat of zombies and the weakness of their fellow man.

Each person’s Survivor, known as a Player Character (PC) or Player Survivor, isn’t your run of the mill survivor sitting huddled in a fetal position waiting for all of this to blow over. They’re the protagonists of the story, the ones on whom the ultimate fate of their hapless little band of refugees and rejects depends. They can be the vanguards of a new, bright age, or the last push that their little corner of the world needs to fall right into Hell. That’s up to you.

Instead of playing an individual Survivor, one of you is called the Game Master (GM for short). The GM is in charge of designing and controlling the zombies, making the world seem real, and portraying survivors both hostile and otherwise that aren’t portrayed by one of you or your friends (called Non-Player Characters or NPCs).

The GM also introduces threats, forcing the Survivors to deal with them or suffer the consequences. The way that your Survivor copes (or fails to cope) with these challenges will change them, and through them change their little corner of the world.

What You Will NeedThe game plays best with around three or four players and one Game Master. The game can handle five or six players, but dealing with the relationships and individual stories of that many Survivors can spread the GM too thin.

The game also works just fine with one or two players and a GM, but it significantly changes the tone and tenor of play. The GM will have to put in some extra work to design additional NPC Survivors in order to create the sort of group social dynamics that Fear the Living thrives upon.

In addition, make sure the group has each of the following:

•A copy of the Fear The Living Character Sheet and Advantage Sheet for each player portraying an individual Survivor.

•Notecards or flashcards for the GM to write down Zombie and NPC Survivor stats on.

•A notebook for the GM to keep track of their Entropy (see page 52), ongoing threats, and general notes.

•Pencils and scratch paper for everyone, for editing character sheets and keeping notes.

•At least ten six-sided dice for each person. If you don’t have anyone in the group who’s touchy about sharing dice, you can dump everyone’s in a bowl or something in the center of the table to share as need be.

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Building Your Own Zombie Apocalypse

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Build

ing Yo

ur Ow

n Zom

bie Ap

ocaly

pse Before you and your friends do anything else, before creating your Survivors or the

GM begins plotting ways to put them through hell, you all need to sit down and decide what sort of zombie story you want to take part in.

Over the years, zombie media has covered a lot of ground, ranging from pure horror to B-movie splatter fests to subversive social commentary, all the way to lighthearted comedy. The zombies themselves have been just as varied, with explanations for their origins, their abilities and weaknesses, and the threat they pose to the Survivors all varying wildly from treatment to treatment.

This section gives everyone a say in the setting that their Survivors will exist in, letting the group know what they want out of the game. The choices that you and your friends make here will determine the tone of the game, what sorts of Survivors will be appropriate for the game, and what manner of threats they’ll have to deal with during play.

If your group has already unanimously decided on a particular type of zombie apocalypse then you may freely skip this step and go with your shared vision. If on the other hand most of the group prefers to leave setting decisions up to the GM, challenge yourselves and try to run through the list. You won’t regret it.

This procedure is divided into sections that require the players to each pick one or more options from a list, or answer a series of questions.

If a section asks you to pick options from a list, pick as many as you like and tell everyone how you see the options you’ve picked working out in the game world. If the section asks you to answer questions, pick one of the provided answers or give your own, as you prefer.

Once you’ve completed a section, write down your answers or the options you’ve selected and describe to the group how you see them working out in the game. Once everyone’s made their pitch, everyone votes for the option they like best, with the winner getting their way and being unable to vote in the next round (ensuring that everyone gets a say). If you’ve got a deeply divided group, it’s the GM’s job to take elements from all the camps and make a workable compromise.

So long as such disagreements are civil, this can be an excellent way to create a zombie apocalypse that is uniquely yours: ending up with things like Demonically Powered Nanites created by a Sorcerer bent on world domination as the origin for your zombies is one of those things that can’t help but bring a smile to your face.

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