Character 7 - All Flesh Must Be Eaten

 Welcome back to day seven of the Character Creation Challenge! Today we're going to be jumping into Eden Studio's 1999 release All Flesh Must Be Eaten. AFMBE is a zombie horror survival game that tries real hard to be generic. And it does a pretty good job at it, to be honest. There's not really a "setting" in the game, per se, so you can use the rules for whatever zombie themed gaming you want. You wanna do Resident Evil? Go for it. Night of the Living Dead? Sure. Dawn of the Dead? Knock yourself out! World War Z? Absolutely! That being said, we'll be doing a generic survivor in a generic walking dead style post-zombie apocalypse setting. Let's get to it!

Step 1 - Character Type

AFMBE allows for three different types of characters: 

1. Norms. These are the regular folks who survived the zombie uprising. Bank tellers, cashiers, gas station attendants, school teachers, the people that you meet walking down the street each day. 
2. Survivors. These are your former mercenaries, black ops agents, super spies and other Billies Badass. If you want a more heroic or action oriented kinda game, this is the kinda characters you want to build.
3. Inspired. So they included rules to play actual, factual magical types in the book. More like "the hand of god" than "merlin the mage" but still. I haven't personally seen a whole lot of zombie media where Father Mulcahy holds the horde back through Faith alone. But I mean...if you want to use the AFMBE rules to play a bunch of knights of the round table keeping the dead from taking Camelot I guess this is your preferred character type.

Right, so that's a quick and easy overview. You have people, better people and magical people. For this character I'm just going to go with a Norm. They probably won't last long in the world, but they'll be fun to play before they get eaten.

Step 2 - Attributes

AFMBE has six primary Attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Perception and Willpower. You buy them up with your starting attribute points, determined by your character type, at a 1 for 1 ratio until you get to 5 points and then they're 3 points to raise for each point after that. Average humans have 2s across the board and Norms are pretty average humans, they get 14 points to distribute.

So now I need to think about what kinda Norm I want to play. No matter what he's going to get a couple extra points to put in at least 2 attributes, or more if he's below average in one or two. So who was this guy before the zombies rose up? I'm going to go with a younger survivor, someone in his 20s. He was a college student on Z Day, working late night shifts at a convenience store when the dead first started shambling through town, eating anyone they could drag down. Nick - his name is Nick - was working behind the counter at the Circle K when he saw one of his regular customers get attacked while she was filling her tank by what he thought was a homeless person. He ran out to see if he could help, but it was too late and now he had two zombies hungry for brains to deal with. But hey, after that night he didn't have to worry about student loan payments anymore.

Right so, Nick is an average guy in most regards but working nights while taking classes has given him a higher than average Constitution and dealing with the public and not jumping over the counter to rip them in half has improved his Willpower. So those both get bumped up to 3 and everything else sits sadly at a 2.

In addition to the primary attributes, there are four derived secondary attributes. Life points are your physical health and are derived from your Constitution and Strength. Endurance Points are how long you can work and tire yourself out without collapsing and are derived from Constitution, Strength AND Willpower. Speed is how fast you can run at max speed and is determined by your Constitution and Dexterity. Looks like Constitution is the surprise power stat in this game! Essence Pool is your "spiritual energy" which is super useful if you're casting miracles. Which we aren't. Because Nick is a Norm. Anyway it's figure out from adding all your primary attributes together.

Step 3 - Qualities/Drawbacks

I do love a good merits and flaws system and this game definitely has a system of merits and flaws. They're point buy and Norms get 15 points for Qualities but can buy up to 10 more with Drawbacks. Norms are not allowed to purchase the Gift or Inspiration Qualities since those are reserved for the Inspired. Ok so let's see what we have to pick from for our student/cashier/survivor. 

So there's a whole long list of Qualities that ... honestly don't make much sense in a zombie apocalypse. Like Contacts might make sense if you're a group of hunters trying to keep the existence of zombies a secret. But if you're a roving band of survivors then your contacts are probably the other PCs and maybe a couple people back at home base, if you have one. The usual Acute/Impaired Senses are here if you're particularly good at hearing things or need glasses along with some probably problematic Drawbacks like "Emotional Problems" and "Minority". Again, this is the zombie apocalypse, it takes a DEDICATED racist to turn down help from anyone who isn't green.

Dang, there's even a Resources Quality/Drawback if you want to play someone who was super rich or hella poor. Which, again, ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. Who cares how much money you had in the bank? Wild, y'all. A lot of the Qualities also affect Skills which we haven't gotten to yet. Seems like an odd way to do things. But whatever, I'll just skip those. I got 15 points. I'm gonna put 5 points in Charisma, because gosh darn it people like me, 2 points in Fast Reaction Time because of all the energy drinks Nick chugged in his life, 3 points in Hard to Kill which will net me 9 more Life Points and the last 5 in Good Luck because whenever a game gives that as an option it's fun to take.

Step 4 - Skills

Skills are purchased just like Attributes above, 1:1 for the first 5 points then 3:1 thereafter for most skills. Some Special Skills like Martial Arts and Medicine cost 2:1 then 5:1 after 5 points. Norms get 30 points for Skills so don't expect to have a lot of doctors or karate black belts amongst the Norm survivors, I guess. 

Nick will put 3 points into Humanities (Sociology), his major back when that was a thing. 2 points into Brawling because he's had to break up a couple fights in the store but it's not something he went out looking for. 3 points in Bureaucracy because he has had to deal with both university AND corporate bullshit in his time. 3 points in Computers because he existed in the modern world. 2 points in dodge because he didn't ENJOY getting hit in those fights he broke up. 2 points in Driving (car) because he owned a car to get him from home to school to work to back home. 3 points into First Aid because he had to sit through those training videos at the Circle K and he took good notes. 3 points into Lock Picking (Mechanical) because everybody needs a hobby! 2 into Mechanic because that car he owned was not new when he bought it. 3 points into Notice because hey, something kept him alive so far. And finally 2 points each into Research/Investigation and Stealth to cover his studious nature and his "oh shit, zombies, hide" nature.

And that's it! Unless you're playing an Inspired in which case there's a whole metaphysics section. But we ain't. So that's Nick. He has a beat up old car that he stuffed a bunch of snacks and drinks in, a tire iron and a will to survive. I don't give him great odds, but he seems like he'd be fun to play regardless. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a form-fillable AFMBE character sheet online so there won't be a sheet to download for Nick. Anyway, see you all tomorrow for another fun character creation session!