If you ever thought a zombie was just that, a zombie, think again. This book taps into traditions of the undead from around the world, presenting a vast range of different zombies from rotting, shambling brain-eaters that are driven by instinct and can be put down with a shotgun blast to undead raised by arcane (or scientific) means which have a purpose to fulful and won't be stopped until they have done whatever they were sent to do if then...

Obviously, this is a resource for the Zombie Master. It taps in to legends of the walking dead from a multiplicity of cultures, some familiar and others obscure. They are presented with appropriate game statistics, along with ideas for adventures involving them and other new material such as new Aspects culled from the new zombies here and made available to those who like to craft their own undead. Maybe your party has gone travelling, and encounters exotic zombies on their home turf. Or maybe the zombies have come along with living immigrants and can be found in your own neighbourhood along with ethnic restaurants and other more enticing parts of multi-cultural living.

There are a full eighteen different varieties of the walking dead presented here, and each has its own variations. Each comes with atmospheric fiction, game statistics and story ideas. Exotic animated Aztec mummies rub shoulders with Scandanavian draugr... and of course the female of the species is more deadly than the male, certainly when you meet an undead femme fatale. Traditional Egyptian mummies and vampires are also included. And you don't want to meet a gaki, a Japanese 'hungry ghost'...

A lot of the suggested plots involve archaelogical expeditions digging up more than they bargained for, or remains being disturbed during developments and road construction. A few make A Night at the Museum look tame. They all suggest adventures that should keep the party occupied for a few sessions, some could easily develop into a complete campaign. Some fit in with one or more of the settings presented in other books in the game line, others are less-specific or suggest a whole new setting of their own. There's even scope to spin some of them together - perhaps the party specialises in investigating unusual events in museums or at archaeological digs and gets called in to several of the plots from all over the world. That could make a good episodic campaign. Or maybe like the characters in the TV shows Supernatural and The X-Files, they go around investigating mysterious happenings in general.

This supplement provides a wealth of ideas for any Zombie Master, and could prove fertile ground (providing you are up to doing any necessary conversions) to GMs of other systems who want to introduce a range of unusual and well-developed walking dead to their game.

Return to Atlas of the Walking Dead page.

Reviewed: 26 June 2017