As I mentioned some weeks back, the fine folks at OneBookShelf (by way of DriveThruRPG) put out a bundle of about $1400 worth of RPG products for $20, all proceeds to help Doctors Without Borders. They raised something like $178K, by the way. That's worth a whoop.
Whoop!
OK, so of course I scooped that right on up. I already did a character from one of those games, Barbarians Vs, but I'd like to do a character today and I started to do one for a game called Shambles. Since I already printed the sheet, might as well finish it on up today before...dinner. OF BRAAAAAINS.
(Side note: Heather and I were playing Scrabble with Aaron when he was here visiting, and he had the letters to spell "BRAAINS", but we wouldn't let him.)
Anyway:
The Game: Shambles
The Publisher: A Terrible Idea
Degree of Familiarity: With zombies and related media, lots. With this particular game, none.
Books Required: Just the Shambles pdf.
The system works on three principles: Players Like Rolling Lots of Dice, Players Hate Doing Lots of Math, and Fudging Dice Rolls is Fun. While I haven't found the first point to be universally true, there certainly is something to be said for throwing a fistful of dice around.
Anyway, this is a game in which you play zombies. Yep. The game asks you to design a person who is boring as hell, and then make him/her a zombie. The setting for the game isn't...well, set, and there are several suggestions on how to use the game engine and setting conceits (you heal by eating brains, otherwise you slowly decay).
Basically, all chargen asks you to do is think of some backstory, and then assign numbers to the six stats using either a die roll or point division. I'll worry about numbers presently.
My zombie is (was?) named Josh Wilson. Josh wanted to be a writer. He surely did. That doesn't mean he actually wrote, of course. He just wanted to be a writer. He had a computer and everything. Every day, he'd get done with his shift at the gas station/convenience store, come home...and plop on the couch. He just really wanted to watch this movie he got from Netflix. He really wanted to get that last achievement on Prototype (awesome game, BTW). He really wanted to just do this one thing, and then tomorrow he'd write.
He had it all planned out in his head.
Then he died. But then he got up. Because his death, like his life, was a little thing, a speed bump on the road to true greatness. Josh is a zombie...but he still wants to be a writer. In fact, he always carries a pen.
There, that's good for a backstory. Now I assign numbers to my stats. Stats in this game are Lurch (moving around), Flail (beating stuff), Clutch (grabbing stuff), Brawn (strongin' stuff), Chuck (flingin' stuff), and Sense (huh?). I choose to use the "Roll Lots of Dice" method of chargen, because the book assures me that this is fun. I don't have dice handy, though, so I slip over to good ol' entropy-land. OK, I get 6, 1, 3, 3, 4, 2. Not horrible.
These go 1 to 6, BTW, where 1 is "poor" and 6 is "awesome!" I'll put my 1 into Brawn. Josh is the kind of Zombie that can't make it through a paper screen without help. I'll put my 2 into Flail. Not strong, so not so good with the beating.
I'll put my 3s into Clutch and Lurch. Josh can hold on tight (you should see him work a burrito), and he moves OK for a zombie. I'll put the 4 into Sense. Josh isn't dumb, just lazy (and undead). And that means the 6 goes into Chuck, which means that Josh
I don't start with any Laff points or Brains or anything, so that's me done, then.
