Experience The End Of The World RPG With Fantasy Flight!
September 5, 2014 by brennon
Fantasy Flight Games are taking you to the brink with The End of the World Role-Playing Game which all starts with a Zombie Apocalypse which is of course all kinds of awesome...
The game sees you playing through a variety of different scenarios that could end our world. Maybe it's a Zombie Apocalypse, the Wrath of the Gods or an Alien Invasion, each of them is just perfect for a role-playing adventure. The big twist in the format though is that in this role-playing game you don't play a mighty elven hero or surly soldier. You play yourself.
When making your character to begin the story you take your own negative and positive qualities and apply them to your character. What you have on you at the time and what's around you in a friends house is your equipment and you have to survive with what's around you in the 'real world' meaning that you'll have a variety of very different starts if you do this in different places and different countries.
Here in the UK imagine trying to find at least one gun to protect yourself! Would be pretty hard! In America on the other hand maybe you know a guy down the street who has a fairly nice gun collection!
As well as the actual point of apocalypse there will also be a stage where the post-apocalypse arrives and you'll have to work out how to survive in a changed world.
This sounds awesome!
And my collection of Fantasy Flight RPGs just got larger. I assume they’ll be like the rest of their games, a lot of fun if a bit chart heavy.
I’m completely uninterested in the zombie apocalypse one personally (other then playing myself here in the UK), but the other three very much have my interest. Eitherway I live a little under a mile from an Army Reserve base. 😛
I’ll have a closer look at this, for sure! 🙂
Mary Sue: The RPG!
Over the past several years I’ve gone from being a total fanboy of FFG to being a hater. Subject matter for this looks great, their rules are horrid for all their RPGs. On this one, of course, I’m flying totally blind. Everyone I know though has completely abandoned all their RPGs from the dark heresy stuff (not their fault entirely, it is a game that should have departed from the old school hogshead/green ronin engine … which is fine for old school fantasy but always left much to be desired for a Sci-Fi game) to the new star wars stuff. The very complex, mostly clunky, dice pool thing is far more about building a 100% proprietary game than it is about building a fun, clean, game that delivers on what it promises. I’m sure there are many groups out there still having fun with FFG stuff but that is more about having a good group than about FFG building awesome games that facilitate that right out of the box.
I personally prefer cleaner, simple, fun rule-sets these days and really don’t like the endless releases and quasi-collectible nature of what FFG is all about.
That said I’m sure my comments will get super napalmed by fan boys/gals. I would have been in that camp a few years back myself. To each their own though, FFG is making piles of cash so I’m certainly am in the ultra minority on my view of them.
I don’t begrudge FFG making money, especially on a licensed game, but their approach to rpgs is not for me.
I guess I am a FFG fanboy, in the fact that I enjoy FFG RPGs, board games, and X-wing.
I love their board games, and X-Wing as well, but I do find that they have a tendency to just milk a property to excess. Multiple Star Wars mini games now, multiple Star Wars card games now, multiple Star Wars RPGs, expansions by the dozen all over … pick another property, the list goes on.
I’ve also become ambivalent to their RPG release style though. Take a property, blow it into multiple “core” products, then release multiple GM screens, multiple bestiaries, the requisite three part adventure, the inevitable ‘cross-compatible’ promise, etc etc. Dark Heresy 2nd Ed. just hit the streets and it’s already following the same release format as the original… I guess it works for them, cause they keep doing it.
Anyways, having said that, I am intrigued by this series if the mechanics hold up. I own a copy of Outbreak Undead which was supposed to fill the simulation style Zombie Apocalypse RPG gap (and operates under a similar play as yourself principle) but it ended up being too clunky. My wife is a massive zombie/apocalypse fan, and a simple to play, well supported, and fluid RPG experience in that premise might just be the gateway RPG I need.