Character Creation Challenge 26: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

26: All Flesh Must Be Eaten revised edition

(website, quickstart)

26 letters in the alphabet, and the last one is Z. And among geeks, Z stands for Zebra. No, wait. Zombies.

I already covered Cinematic Unisystem with Buffy, All Flesh Must Be Eaten uses original Unisystem. More specific skills, no Drama Points. It also splits Life Points and Endurance Points to reflect fatigue and exhaustion separately from injuries, suitable for a survival game.

It also has a more involved paranormal power system, though less so than the first Unisystem game WitchCraft and its sequel Armageddon. AFMBE also has several supplements expanding it into other genres with a sprinkling of zombies on top of pirates, Westerns and space opera. I’m going with the core rules and the default zombie apocalypse.

Kristen Danner

College newspaper reporter

Character Type

AFMBE has three default character types, Norm, Survivor and Inspired. With fewer points to spend and no balancing mechanic like Drama Points, Norms are straight-up less capable than Survivors and don’t have access to Inspired abilities, more meant for short-term games. But they fit the genre and it takes less time to make one.

Norm

14 points for Attributes, 5 points for Qualities (and up to 10 points in Drawbacks) and 30 points for Skills.

Attributes

(1-5 cost 1 each, 6 costs extra.)

Strength 2

Dexterity 2

Constitution 2

Intelligence 3

Perception 3

Willpower 2

Life Points

(Constitution + Strength) x 4) + 10

26

Endurance Points

(Constitution + Strength + Willpower) x 3) + 5

23

Speed

(Constitution + Dexterity) x 2

8

Essence Pool

Add the character’s Primary Attributes together. (So characters with Attributes of 6+ would have less.)

14

Qualities / Drawbacks

You can get more than the default amount with Drawbacks, and can spend them on Skills or more expensively Attributes as well.

Charisma 1

Nerves Of Steel (3)

Resistance (Disease) 3

(There’s no immunity to zombie bites in the rules, and different kinds of zombies infect differently, but this seems like a handy advantage to have.)

Honourable (the truth must be known) -2

Skills

Acrobatics 1

Brawling 1

Dodge 2

Driving (cars) 2

First Aid 2

Guns (handgun) 2

Humanities (history) 2

Language (Spanish) 2

Notice 3

Questioning 3

Research / Investigation 3

Running 1

Stealth 1

Streetwise 1

Swimming 1

Writing (journalist) 3

Metaphysics

The Inspired get most of this, though a Norm can have some. This one doesn’t.

Possessions

DSLR camera, pocket Dictaphone, laptop computer

Kristen was cynical even before the zombie apocalypse, though she still believes in the importance of the truth. Now she wants to keep the rest of the paper’s staff safe and let the world know what really happened.