So here’s the thing: I haven’t gotten a lot of inspiration from “All Flesh Must Be Eaten” specifically. What I have gotten inspiration from is the Unisystem, which is the multigenre game system used be such games as “Witchcraft”, “Armageddon”, the Buffyverse games, and of course, “All Flesh Must Be Eaten”.
AFMBE is my favorite of these games, and since it is fitting for the Halloween season… Let’s talk about it.
Look, the Unisystem does one thing really, really well. It is a basic point-buy system that is easily slapped into pretty much any setting or game genre, and make it work. Better yet, it makes similar games easily compatible with each other, like if you are a bunch of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fans, but want to incorporate some players who enjoy the “Angel” TTRPG and their characters into your game. It may not fully track, but it should be fairly easy to make it work.
Not every multigenre system can pull it off (“World of Darkness”, I’m looking at you), but Unisystem does it in spades! And I love that. My goal with my games has always been to make something that is simple enough to mold into any type of game, but also robust enough to keep players satisfied.
You see, any “game” can be simple, and even fun, if the setting is engaging enough. For example, one could play a tabletop roleplaying “game” that uses no dice, no skills, no character sheet at all. Let’s say every action or skill check is resolved by flipping a coin. Simple, no fuss, no muss, and you can do this in any setting.
But it would not be very fun, would it?
That said, “All Flesh Must Be Eaten” is a fairly simple TTRPG, but robust enough to give players a structure that fits well into the game they are playing, being a “Zombie Apocalypse” TTRPG. Frankly, I would use the Unisystem for my own game, but I don’t think it has a Standard Resource Document (SRD) which allows for this. I did consider using the SRD for Modiphius’ 2D20 system, but ended up going with a rendition of “Powered by the Apocalypse” in the end.
Simple, but robust enough to give structure and consistency to the gameplay.
