RPGPundit Reviews: Hunger

Hunger: Zombies Must Feed is an RPG by Precis Intermedia, written by Peter Spahn for the Genre Diversion i system.

Let me start by saying that I'm no fan of the "Zombie craze".  Zombies bore the fuck out of me. So any Zombie game will be fighting an uphill battle to impress me. That said, this Zombie game in particular has one quality that makes it really stand out from any other Zombie RPG I've ever seen; here, you don't kill the Zombies, you ARE the zombies.

That's right, Hunger is an RPG where you play a (nearly) mindless undead, plaguing the world and seeking to eat the internal organs of the living.

Now, on the one hand, this piques my interest; I mean, before reading this I never even considered the possibility of playing a Zombie in an RPG. Vampires, sure, werewolves, even ghosts; those are all common enough, but Zombies? So this stood some chance of catching my attention at least, in a way a standard "let's kill zombies" game wouldn't.

On the other hand, this game faces quite a challenge.  I mean, how do you play a shambling brainless undead moved only by its instinctual hunger in a way that stays interesting for more than a few minutes? Let's see if Mr. Spahn pulls it off.

This book is only about 25 pages long, with about 8 pages of sample (zombie) characters (plus blank character sheets) on the back. I should note that its not complete in itself, its an "add on" for any Genre Diversion game; you need to have a full version of the rules in order to play.

The system is the basic GDi system, but obviously character creation provides a few mods to the standard process. You have the option of creating your character or choosing a sample zombie from the back of the book, or you can roll up a fresh Zombie's stats on a convenient table (where you roll for each attribute, and the columns of the table correspond to male, female, or child Zombies).  There are also quite a few Zombie Gimmicks. All zombies have "lurch" (basically meaning that by default they shamble about but can choose to make a special attack where they run at full speed at someone), "scent of life" (which lets them smell living things that are near), and "vibe"  (allowing the zombie to communicate, without words, summoning other Zombies to him when they sense the presence of food).
There are also plenty of other special Gimmicks, things like "Acid spittle"; "explosive regurgitation" and the suitably grotesque "Intestinal Attack" (yes, it means that a zombie with that gimmick has intestines that have a life of their own and can attempt to strangle an opponent).


Zombies' raison d'etre is to gain "Glut"; these are special points that are gained by eating the organs of the living. Different organs will grant you different levels of glut; the best are of course the Brains, which give you 3 points of glut. Zombies can use "Glut" points to use certain gimmicks, and also to gain "Epiphanies", which are brief moments of remembering the zombie's former life and experiences, allowing them to accompish acts that a zombie would usually be far too stupid to do. There's no real "regain your humanity" business going on here; essentially all that Epiphanies are really good for is to help you on the neverending quest to acquire delicious organs.

The author himself suggests that Hunger is a game that is best suited for a one-shot game, so there are no illusions of this being a "campaign" kind of RPG. Nevertheless, Mr. Spahn includes some options for extending play; mainly that if a Zombie spends an insane amount of glut he can permanently regain skills he had in life (he can't learn new skills, however). There's also a short paragraph on the option of playing humans in the game.

To round out the product, you have some scenarios. A number of "story seeds" are provided, most of them curiously describing some group of hardened zombie-survivor humans and the defenses they've set up; the premise being that your Zombie PCs will attempt to get through these defenses to eat the humans' gooey brains. A full-length scenario is also provided, detailing the Zombie attack on a college campus.

Pages 17-24 detail an "example of play" script; with some imaginary players and a GM going through some adventuring. Frequent comments are made in the script of how gross the game is.

On the whole, I would agree. The game is pretty gross, and I guess that's part of the fun of it. Its also fairly stupid, in the sense that if I wanted to play a brain-dead rotting corpse I'd have joined the Republican party.

I can see this product being ok for a night of fun; maybe more than one night, if you're a zombie fan (or are pretending to be, because for some dumbfuck reason I can't comprehend, Zombies have a lot of Geek-chic lately). I can't see this game being very entertaining beyond that.

Where I do think it has potential, however, is as additional material for any other GDi game; presuming you want to include zombies in said game at some point in time.

Anyways, that's the long and short of it. If you like the wacky premise of the game, you'll enjoy the game. Its pretty much as well-made as one could reasonably hope; it delivers what its promised, it doesn't have any surprise twists, and stupid moralizing, it doesn't miss the point, and it doesn't have some fucking Swine-nonsense about bemoaning your lost humanity. Zombies aren't misunderstood, and they don't glitter in the sunlight.

On the other hand, if like me you're not a Zombie fan, this product probably won't be able to get you past that 10-yard line of convincing you otherwise.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Mastro De Paja Media Bent Apple + Altadis' Fox & Hound

Hey, thanks for the review!  Our tastes in settings don't always seem to match up (vanilla fantasy, zombies, 1980s Miami, etc. ), but I can always tell you actually read the material rather than just skim it, jot down first impressions, and call it a review.  If I recall correctly, you don't care much for post-apocalypse either, but you can still expect a copy of Stormrift: The Invasion of Earth in the next few months.  

Thanks again!

Pete

Sounds good. I can say that though your products tend not to be in genres that are much to my taste, you are a good writer, and clear.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;351707Sounds good. I can say that though your products tend not to be in genres that are much to my taste, you are a good writer, and clear.

RPGPundit

Hey, thanks!  You did seem to like Dreamwalker and the work I did on Coyote Trail (the Indian Trails section, the town and NPCs of Shady Gulch Revisited, the five adventures in the core book), so we're not _totally_ off.  

Pete

Quote from: pspahn;351798Hey, thanks!  You did seem to like Dreamwalker and the work I did on Coyote Trail (the Indian Trails section, the town and NPCs of Shady Gulch Revisited, the five adventures in the core book), so we're not _totally_ off.  

Pete

Yes, those were good, particularly the Coyote Trail material.

RPGPundit