Customer Reviews

Dead Reign: Zombie Role- Playing Game

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3 star:		(2)
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Dead Reign is a zombie-apocalypse setting using Palladium's Megaverse system. When you open the book, it's clear this is not a traditional Palladium product. It starts out with a first-person narrative explaining what happened without explaining everything. It's five months after the zombie apocalypse and a biker gang known as the Reapers provides advice on how to deal with the undead plague.

Five months after the apocalypse is significant, as it provides unique opportunities for scavenging. The world is only recently destroyed, long enough to ruin infrastructures and destroy organizations, but not so distant that houses and habits become unrecognizable.

The zombies themselves operate under a very specific set of rules. Specifically, they consume life-force, which keeps the zombie functional; they fear fire; and they have a moan which calls other zombies to them. Zombies see via a form of life-sight that attracts them to living beings, and go dormant when there is no fresh life-force to eat. And yes, they can only be permanently slain by destroying their heads.

In the tradition of Palladium's unabashedly old-style approach to gaming, there are random dice rolls for everything (1d4 cans of soup can be found in a home!) and new rules are made up on the fly to adjudicate the topic at hand. More recent systems have long since moved past this style of game rules, but Palladium embraces it.

What this means is that the game has huge amounts of "crunch" interspersed amongst its ideas. There are rules for how much damage a zombie can take at close range, how many zombies move in a pack, the chances that they will wander off, the odds that one is sleeping in a car, how many will stick around trying to eat you, the chance one is holding something...the list goes on and on. For d20 games and their ilk, this is a game master's treasure trove of material.

Dead Reign covers a range of zombies; Slouchers are your typical horror movie zombie, Fast Attackers run, Pattern Zombies repeat their old lives (just like Romero's mall zombies in Dawn of the Dead), Flesh-Eating zombies are vegetarians - just kidding! - and so on. All the zombie tropes are here too: fundamentalist nutjobs known as Retro Savages, Death Priests who keep zombies as pets, thieves, thugs, soldiers, and scrappy survivors. Because Palladium's system isn't very modular, every form of survivor requires a different set of rules (in some cases, repeated rules).

There are piles of rules on random encounters in this new world, including typical zombie settings; all really useful information for game masters who aren't sure how many zombies are lurking in an industrial park or a corporate high rise building. There's even a random corpse search table.

There's also the obligatory set of rules that most gamers skip, explaining the skills and equipment that are part and parcel of Palladium games. Fortunately, these rules have actually be customized for the setting rather than cut/paste from other Palladium games.

If you are a Palladium fan and love the action horror genre, Dead Reign is an awesome supplement. If you're not a Palladium fan but you enjoy d20-style rules, Dead Reign is an excellent addition to any apocalypse game; the rules and advice on scrounging and scavenging are excellent, and the random tables (assuming you use random tables) are very useful. I plan to use some of the rules in my own d20 Modern game.

But if you're not a Palladium fan and don't play d20-style games, Dead Reign isn't going to change your mind. Kevin Sembedia's writing style is strongly represented here. He tends to list everything in threes (e.g., "People are rivals, enemies and food to be hunted, killed and eaten."), lectures for two pages on how level-based systems reflect his real life experience in "leveling up" as a game designer, and on page 55 he actually includes a parenthetical note to someone named Taylor ("Hey Taylor, this might be something you and I want to revisit.").

If you can ignore that stuff, and it's easy to ignore, there's a lot of great raw material here for any apocalyptic game.

Traditional role-play gaming as pioneered by Kevin Siembieda and Palladium Books is an enduringly popular pastime, even in this era of computerized gaming. Combine the fun of fantasy roleplay with the popularity of zombies and you have "Dead Reign" which has been written and designed by roleplay expert Siembieda with the assistance of Josh Hilden and Joshua Sanford. Civilization has ended as we know it with the emergence of the undead. There is no government, no army, no television or internet. The cities have gone dark and zombies are everywhere. "Dead Reign" players are provided with a complete gaming universe that includes six apocalyptic character classes; sen types of zombies (plus the Half-Living); background information on zombies, 'Death Cults', random tables, a wealth of adventure ideas, all combining to make a complete role-playing game that will provide hours (and even days) of non-repetitious gaming fun. Enhanced with occasional black-and-white illustrations and 'Quick Find Tables', "Dead Reign" is a welcome addition to personal role-play gaming collections. Also very highly recommended from Palladium Books are "Beyond The Supernatural" and "Nightbane" dark fantasy role play games.

Hands down the best zombie rpg I've ever played. If you like the Palladium system, this one's for you.

I've been a GM of tabletop RPGs for the last 20 of my 33 years. In that time, I've played various incarnations of the D20, D100, and D6 systems. The Palladium system (a mod on D20) is, by far, my favorite and they've hit a homerun with Dead Reign.

Set in the year 2012, an outbreak of an unstoppable disease spreads throughout the globe. After the initial death toll is taken, the victims of this strange malady rise again as the undead (nothing we haven't heard before). This initial transition is called "The Wave". Your character survived The Wave and now must continue to survive amongst hordes of the undead.

Now, while the Palladium system is my favorite, it's not without its faults and quirks. As a warning, you will spend about 3 HOURS creating your first character if you've never made a Palladium character before AND you do it "by the book". This is due primarily to their Skill System, which breaks down into pretty fine-point selections (i.e. the Transportation skill set contains separate skills for driving/piloting a car, truck/big rig, boat, plane, bicycle, APC, etc). However, this granular approach also makes it MUCH easier on the GM when it comes time to adjudicate against the age-old player question, "I want to [do some action]. Can I do that?" Also, the skill system contains the Hand-to-Hand selection system which adds variety and strategy to melee combat.

Combat is MY FAVORITE PART of Palladium's unique RPG system. This takes some minor explanation of other major systems first to fully understand.

In the standard non-Palladium D20 world, there is this notion of vital and non-vital damage. I roll D20 as the attacker and, if it exceeds the defense of my target, I (typically) land non-vital damage. The expenditure of these non-vital points by the target of my attack represents exertion in dodging and defending against my attacks. Once, I have depleted my target's non-vital health, then vital damage is dealt with each successful attack. This D20 system works, but has no style or creativity. It amounts to players saying "I attack," rolling the D20, resolving the numbers and moving on to the next combatant's turn. The GM is left with the job to add flourish and creativity to the storytelling, but combat itself never really changes. Outside of a well-timed critical success/failure, there are no OMG, table-turning moments.

Conversely, Palladium's combat system allows INCREDIBLY detailed control over HOW a combatant attacks AND defends. This makes combat lengthy and complicated, but the players get to make VERY creative, entertaining, and sometimes table-turning actions! Instead of "I attack," and rolling the die, the player says "I feint a right hook, but I deliver a left uppercut" or "I raise my pistol and take a headshot while he's charging at me". Defending one's self is similar. "I block with my left arm" means that, when the player's turn to attack comes around, their left arm is busy and now they must chose an attack that doesn't incorporate it. The combinations and permutations of defensive and attack maneuvers are countless.

The great news is, any part of the system a GM/player doesn't really like can be thrown out in favor of another system or a set of house rules. In fact, Palladium ALWAYS ENCOURAGES THIS in their introductions. It's their book, but it's our game! Make it your own.

In summation, this game is my favorite RPG of all time (with Palladium's RIFTS a VERY close second). I HIGHLY recommend this game to any fan of RPGs and/or zombies. Have fun with this and remember to ALWAYS aim for the head!

I've said it before and I will say it again: Palladium Books are known for incredible storytelling creating worlds that can grab everyone's attention. The other side of the coin is their incredibly nonsensical mechanics. Roll a d20 here, now roll a few d100's. Now roll 4d6+8 for shooting a zombie in the left hip joint, etc, etc.

The cover is pretty typical, scene straight from every-other zombie whatever: the family that plays together gets to be dinner for the zombies. Interior art is hit and miss, as it is with most every other Palladium titles.

Crunch - there are a lot of rules (read: mechanics) involved with taking out a zombie; pretty every thing can be used, and the rules reflect it. The best part of this are the 'types' of zombies: flesheaters, crawlers, fast attackers and the like.

All main character creation bides its time and waits for the last section in the book, spitting into the eyes of Palladium Books previous and successful projects. Maybe I am too old and set in my ways when it come to the usual formats.

If you want a slow paced game rooted in the world with all the work done for you, look no further. I don't see this game moving very fast at all - the combat system for all Palladium is very realistic (read: tedious), special aimed shots for anyone with half a brain, and a skill system that almost forces a character to have no combat abilities for the first half dozen levels. Time east up a fair majority of Palladium's combat scenes at low levels, and it only gets worse from there.

Far from perfect but quite the sight in the right direction. YMMV, but this book should be used as intended - as a source book for Palladium's Beyond the Supernatural.