If you ask me, the best part about zombie movies is the tactical aspect: When I see the hordes of zombies descending upon the last remnants of humanity, I always ask myself, "What would I do here? How would I go about fighting off a group of zombies like this?" And, unfortunately, it's mighty hard to find a suitably tactical zombie experience in a roleplaying game. Oh, All Flesh Must Be Eaten is good--very good, outstanding even--but it's a little, well, complicated. Ultimately, AFMBE is better suited for the intense, personal horror kind of zombie apocalypse, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not the first thing I look for with a zombie game.

Zombie Run is. Or rather, the Savage Worlds system is, and Zombie Run, well, runs on Savage Worlds. The three principles behind Savage Worlds are "Fast," "Furious," and "Fun": gameplay is streamlined, visceral, and rewarding. Plus, Savage Worlds functions as both a tabletop RPG and a tactical wargame, so feel free to send that swarm of zombies, hundreds-strong, on that one isolated farmhouse and see how the PCs handle it. The game also has a delightfully sensible approach to starting equipment for a zombie game: you draw a couple playing cards (modified, perhaps, by a lucky or unlucky die roll) and that determines what you've managed to scrounge up. As far as the rules go, this is a solid product.

The plot, however, is decidedly middle-of-the-road. While there are plenty of great atmospheric moments--in particular, an early scene involving an unpleasant discovery in a church basement will give you the willies, unless you're a complete sociopath--the end-game forces the PCs to choose between two equally obnoxious and incompatible alternatives. The one thing the module absolutely gets right, however, is the zombies. They're always there. Even if you can't see them, they're there, and they brought their friends.

I want to like this book better. I really do. It's got a good, intuitive game system. It lets you play just about anything. It doesn't take itself too seriously. It's clever. These are all very, very good things, and you should seriously consider buying this game because of them.

On the other hand, while the game is very clever, it's not especially funny. This is a very, very bad thing, because the game so desperately wants to--and deserves to be--a comedy. But comedy is damned hard to do, especially when you're laying out a system of dry, probabilistic mechanics and writing up a campaign setting that the characters are supposed to take seriously, even if--especially if--the players aren't. For whatever reason, this book just can't take itself seriously enough to be a good comedy. It should be a simple matter to make a Demon Hunters game into a rollicking fun time--that's just the DM'ing part, and that's all in timing and delivery--but it still feels like the authors are passing the buck on to someone else.

The Shadow Lords are a peculiar Tribe. Whereas most werewolves are ever so happy to rend their enemies asunder, red in tooth and claw, the 'Lords believe in thinking things through and outwitting their foes. But because it's hard to write a convincingly smart and manipulative character--let alone an entire society of them--the Shadow Lords' portrayal is anything but consistent. On their best days, they're somewhere between Batman and John Constantine. On their worst days, they're Snidely Whiplash wearing a shirt from Hot Topic.

This book ... is not one of their better days. It's not an especially bad book, this, but it's not especially good, either. But if you really want to know what a Tribe of politically-minded werewolves would act like, you should read "The Prince," then the Red Talons splatbook, then go people-watching for an afternoon.

Of all the games from the old World of Darkness, Werewolf is far and away my favorite. It's more conducive to group playing than Vampire because it focuses on the deeds of a pack of werewolves rather than a necessarily self-center collection of vampires. It combines raw, visceral action with esoteric head-trippery worthy of any Mage game. Werewolf even trumps Changeling for optimism and hope for a better world--for even though the Wyrm is strong and its minions legion, the Garou will fight on, and will work to make a better world, even if only because doing so weakens their enemy.

Mechanically, Werewolf can get pretty clunky, what with its "Fistful-of-Dice" approach to task resolution and the fact that there's no clear-cut way to determine whether a harder task ought to require more successes or a higher target number. You should seriously consider tinkering with the mechanics before running a game of Werewolf. I'm sure there are plenty of solutions on this "internet" thing the kids are always talking about.

Finally, It's always harder for me to read from a computer screen than a book, but this is a pretty good quality scan. Easy on the eyes, this.

It is a testament to Monte Cook's talent as a game designer that he is able to translate the World of Darkness into a workable d20 ruleset, especially considering how, well, BAD the superficially similar translations of Aeon/Trinity, Aberrant, and Adventure! to the d20 rules turned out. Equally wise on Cook's part is the choice to jettison the myriad and at times Byzantine (not to mention conflicting) metaplots the World of Darkness product line is known for.

That said, to say Monte Cook's World of Darkness has complicated rules is to strain "complicated" to its utmost limits. Keeping track of the names for each character's special abilities is hard enough, much less determining what, exactly, those abilities DO. Do NOT start a "MCWoD" campaign above first level unless you have supreme confidence in your ability to crunch numbers, keep track of figures, and memorize charts.

Stylistically, the book at times feels as though it's reaching too far for the "edgy" descriptor--which may itself be a commentary on the Old World of Darkness books' zeal in using first-person narration, but I'm probably overthinking that--but manages to get the point across that this World of Darkness really is not a nice place.

All things considered, this is a solid (well, relatively solid, this being a .pdf file) book, but I cannot recommend it for anyone who is not a fan of Monte Cook and the bloodier side of the World of Darkness (which includes the Vampire, Werewolf, Demon, and Mage books; Changeling fans are sadly left out).