Product–  Undead Paradise

System– Undead Paradise

Producer– Akiva Villins

Price– coming soon! Here https://undeadparadise.com/ and   https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/550749/undead-paradise-quickstart?affiliate_id=658618

TL; DR– A solid handbook for the recently deceased. 92%

Basics:  So… you’re dead, now what?  Undead Paradise is for the after.  After humanity fell and all areas were lost, what happens next?  Some undead get better!  They regain bits of themselves and begin to attempt to move forward. Not the mindless zombies, but now the inheritors of the lost earth.  What will you do?  Let’s break down the game.

Basics- Undead Paradise uses a simple 2d6 + bonus method to determine success and failure.  Basically, when you want to do anything, you roll 2d6 and add a skill bonus from your attributes and skills.  A 7 succeeds against a simple issue, but a 13 is the highest you can expect to encounter.  The biggest number you will normally add to a dice roll isa bout +5.

Advantage and disadvantage- Situations make life easier or harder.  This is represented by advantage and disadvantage.  For advantage, you roll 3d6 and take the best two dice.  For disadvantage, you roll 3d6 and take the lowest two dice.  When people help you in a task, you get advantage.

Memories and damage- In this game, as you awake, you remember things.  These are good and bad memories of what you were.  These are also your hit points, as each memory has three parts.  When you take mental or physical damage, you lose one of the three parts of that memory.  When you lose all your memory parts, you risk going feral.  Feral is kind of dead for the undead, as you basically go back to the mindless zombie.

Combat– Combat in this game is as simple as task resolution.  When combat happens, players get three action tokens.  An action takes a token.  But some more awesome actions take more.  When you use your token, they go to the GM.  When the GM uses theirs, it goes back to the player bank.  Players go first unless there is surprise. 

Ok, now to my thoughts

Mechanics or Crunch: This is a solid player guide, but I’d like a bit more crunch.  This book gets you making characters and ready to play.  My one criticism is you can play, but running is a bit beyond this one.  I wish I had more crunch to really understand the rules of this one, but it’s not bad.  It’s got enough to get you making and playing quickly. It’s also not a crunch-heavy game.  That’s not bad, but that is a key fact you need to know going in. 4.5/5

Theme or Fluff– This book doesn’t fully build out the world, but it gives you a solid start.  There is more here than you can see in this player guide.  That is not bad, but it’s a bit simplified.  That also leads to mysteries you can investigate.  The character art and class structure describe different events leading to your custom ghoul.  They describe everything from fungal infections to insect plagues.  I’m intrigued by how it all happened.  I want more, but this is a good intro to a fun zombie world.  4.75 /5

Execution: I like this book, but it makes a misstep.  The book reads easily, describes well, has amazing art, and a good walkthrough of how to play and make characters.  The one issue I have is no hyperlinks.  It’s short, so it won’t kill me to scan up and down the book, but hyperlinks would make life easier.  Aside from that, it’s a solid, well-put-together book.  4.5/5

Summary: This is a good book to get players playing fast.  It will not get your whole table playing fast, as this is just the player book. You will need more.  The game is a bit more roleplay than rollplay, so keep that in mind for your table.  DnD dungeon crawls are fun, but this is not the RPG for that.  The theme is fun. I want to know more about how the world fell apart.  That is a good hook, but I’d like a bit more to get me involved.  The book is well crafted, but give me a few hyperlinks to get me moving fast.  Aside from some minor issues, this is a solid RPG book.  If you want to play the zombies in the zombie apocalypse, check this one out. 92%