How to Run All Flesh Must Be Eaten

By

Matthew McFarland

You see a man shambling towards you. He might be drunk, but something in his gait suggests that the situation is worse than that. As he gets closer, you see fresh blood on his shirt — he’s injured! You approach to help him…and then you notice the bullet wounds in his chest. He can’t be walking…he’s already dead!

All Flesh Must be Eaten is a game of survival horror from Eden Studios. The game makes very few assumptions about the characters or the setting of the story, except that zombies walk the Earth…and they are hungry. Beyond that, the setting of the game is left entirely in the hands of the Zombie Master (that title alone is worth running a game of All Flesh). The core book for the game (a little pricey at 30 USD at 227 pages, but it really does contain everything you need to run the game) includes eleven different zombie-filled settings for potential ZMs to “flesh out.” These settings run the gamut from a standard, modern-day, dead-rising-and-feasting-on-the-living scenario to an “After the Bomb” where the zombies are gigantic nigh-unstoppable mutants. Any one of the settings could very easily power a chronicle.

The system for All Flesh is fairly straightforward. Characters fall into one of three types. Norms are, as the name suggests, normal folks with few special skills. Survivors are similar to Norms in that they don’t have access to any sort of “magic,” but they do receive more points to spend on skills and other game traits. Finally, Inspired characters get fewer points to spend on mundane stuff, but can purchase Miracles, including the power to call holy fire or even control the undead. The game recommends that a group either be comprised of all Norms or a mix of the other two; I found that mixing all three types works just fine (so long as the players don’t carp about the difference in point spreads).

All characters have six primary attributes: strength, dexterity, constitution, perception, intelligence, and willpower. These are fairly self-explanatory (strength is physical might, whereas intelligence measures one’s smarts) and range from 1 to 5 for most human characters. Two is about average, whereas five is superlative.

In addition to the primary attributes, characters have four secondary attributes. Life points measure how much damage a character can absorb before dying. Speed indicates how fast the character can run away from a zombie; exertion can cause a loss of Endurance Points, which measure how long a character can push herself before collapsing. Finally, Essence measures a character’s mystical attunement and force of will. On the whole, only Inspired characters need to worry about Essence, although other types can lose Essence from fear.

Characters also have Skills, which run the gamut from Driving to Smooth Talking to (of course) Guns. They work on the same scale as primary attributes; 1 to 5, with 1 indicating only basic knowledge and 5 indicating expertise.

Finally, players may purchase Qualities and Drawbacks for their characters. Qualities are positive traits such as Nerves of Steel (making the character difficult to scare) and Hard to Kill (granting the character extra Life Points). Drawbacks grant the character extra points and range from Minority to Recurring Nightmares. Inspired characters must purchase ten points worth of Qualities (the 5-point Qualities Gift and Inspiration), and then may also purchase Miracles.

The game system is simple. Players attempt either Tasks or Tests. A Task combines a skill and a primary attribute (Dexterity and Guns, for instance). The player totals the two appropriate traits and adds 1d10. A roll of 1 or 10 requires a second roll; the result of that roll might add or subtract from the total. Any net result of 9 or better is successful, although degree of success depends on the amount by which the roll exceeded that target. Tests are much the same, except that only an attribute is used. A Simple Test uses twice the attribute (solving an easy riddle would be a Simple Intelligence Test, for example) whereas a Difficult Test uses only the attribute and the die roll. The ZM can, of course, modify the rolls as necessary.

I haven’t encountered any real problems with the system. Indeed, neither has Eden; it uses this “Unisystem” for several of its other games, including Witchcraft and Armageddon. Characters from All Flesh might, in fact, be easily imported into or from these other games, although the core book warns that All Flesh characters are built with fewer points and might therefore be underpowered.

The book includes an entire chapter devoted to the antagonists of any All Flesh game — the flesh-eaters themselves. Zombies are built with such considerations as Getting Around (how fast they move; possibilities include Slow and Steady and the Quick Dead) and Spreading the Love (how normal folks become zombies — the classic, of course, is One Bite and You’re Hooked). Given that chapter, a favorite setting, and few minutes to design the zombie, a Zombie Master can have a scenario ready in minutes.

I ran a one-shot game of All Flesh Must be Eaten recently (hence this essay) and was very pleased with the result. I’m a big fan of the zombie horror genre, and the idea of an entire RPG based around the notion of flesh-eating corpses struck an odd chord with me.

The game was set in Ireland during the potato famine (that’d be 1846 to 1850; my game was set in 1847). The basic premise was that the potato blight wasn’t just killing potatoes; any human being interred in the earth near a blight potato field rose to attack and eat the organs of the still-living. The characters included an Italian investigator for the Vatican; a British accountant sent to assess the financial impact of the famine; an Irish soldier-turned-doctor; and his cousin, a self-described sturdy peasant girl. They started out in a small village not far from the coast. The priest had inadvertently received word that a ship would be arriving there to pick him up and take him to the mainland. The ship would have room for two other people (so right away, it was obvious that not everyone would survive).

The characters took off through the night to reach the ship, tramping through a peat bog (where they lost their first member, the peasant girl’s brother, an NPC). They also discovered that the zombies could be destroyed by stabbing them in the heart (their Weak Spot; enough damage targeted at the heart stopped them). They arrived at the coast — to find it swarming with zombies.

Using the priest’s Binding Miracle, they managed to make a hole and start swimming for the boat (the boatman not daring to come aground, instead remaining on the boat and yelling “Helloooo!” like the character in the opening of Day of the Dead). The doctor, the only one with a gun, shot the accountant in the shoulder to allow his cousin to swim for the boat (the zombies attacked the weakest target), but of course, sacrificed himself in the process. The priest, against all odds, actually made the swim, and the two of them reach civilization once more.

When running All Flesh, I found it advisable to keep the action moving. A one-shot game, especially, requires that the characters be kept on the run. Likewise, remember that zombies might at times seem comical or even pushovers, and that’s fine (check out Dawn of the Dead — the scene in which zombies get splattered with pies is priceless) but they’ll still rip you to pieces if they can.

One of the greatest strengths of this game is that it’s accessible. The characters are normal people, trapped in a horrifying world overrun by the undead. While I can see potential for long-term play, All Flesh Must be Eaten probably works best as a quick way to get new players into horror gaming. Grab some friends, order some pizza, and spend an evening being chased by the simplest and perhaps most horrifying monsters of all — zombies.

Want to learn more about this game? Click here!

All Flesh Must Be Eaten and all associated terms are property of Eden Studios and this article is not intended as a challenge to these or any other copyrights.

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