Announcing a New Roleplaying Game Line of Horror and Survival

“Shoot it in the head – that works in the movies!”
   –A survivor who’s about to be very disappointed

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of The End of the World series, a new roleplaying game line of horror and survival in humanity’s last days!

Four books make up The End of the World roleplaying game series. Each of these four books offers a different apocalyptic genre and experience. The first book in the series, Zombie Apocalypse, challenges you to face hordes of undead that rise and stalk the earth, hungry for the flesh of the living. The series continues with Wrath of the Gods, pitting players against a pantheon of supernatural foes intent of destroying humanity. Ranging from the Mayan apocalypse to Cthulhu, the gods return to exact terrible vengeance in this book. The third installment in the series is Alien Invasion, giving you the opportunity to battle unknown life forms from beyond our galaxy. You may face a species of conquering warriors, or aliens too small to see with the naked eye. Finally, Revolt of the Machines invites you to match wits against artificial intelligence. When our technology develops consciousness, even normal people will need to battle technology in every form. Each of these books offers a complete self-contained experience, although they share the same rules system. No matter which apocalypse you want to explore, you’ll find unending horror and adventure in this roleplaying series.

Better Me than You

In the majority of roleplaying games, you take on the persona of a fictional character – ranging from a elven thief to a half-orc war-mage to a human soldier, and beyond. The End of the World line changes all of this by inviting you to play as yourself amidst the tumult of the world’s ending! You’ll use your own physical, mental, and social attributes to create yourself as an in-game character, allowing you to come as close as you (safely) can to experiencing the apocalypse first-hand. In addition to your chosen attributes, you can represent yourself more accurately by imagining positive and negative features. For example, you may have the Long-distance Runner positive feature, but you may also cope with the Extremely Nearsighted negative feature. Another character may have the Natural Leader positive feature, but this could be tempered by the Wants Revenge negative feature.

Since you’re playing yourself in every game of The End of the World, your starting gear is also limited to what you can find close at hand when you sit down to play the game. You could start with a cell phone, but how long will it stay charged? Who knows how long the cash in your wallet will be accepted as viable currency in light of the world’s ending? You might want a good shotgun to defend yourself, but that could mean venturing out of your friend’s apartment. Kitchen knives might be your only available weapons for defending yourself against hordes of ravenous zombies or conquering aliens.

The Beginning of the End

The world can end in countless ways, and in each of The End of the World books, there are five different scenarios for you to experience. Because these scenarios function like different campaign settings within the same theme, you can enjoy all of these scenarios time and time again. Although each book’s scenarios share the titular theme, there’s plenty of room for variation within the genre. In Zombie Apocalypse, for example, every scenario varies in the origin of the zombies, the government’s response, the timeline of the apocalypse, the ways you can kill the zombies, and countless other details, both large and small. The apocalypse may start with an outbreak of disease, or a sudden earthquake that releases a once-dormant parasite.

Of course, even the panic and terror of the apocalypse can’t last forever. Eventually, you’ll have to cope with the aftermath. Each scenario features a post-apocalypse, illustrating how some semblance of order returns in the shattered aftermath of the apocalypse. No matter how humanity has adapted in order to survive, life in the post-apocalypse is completely different from life before. The post-apocalypse is just as dangerous as the apocalypse itself, presenting entirely different challenges and threats to whatever remains of you and your haggard band of survivors. Aliens may enslave the nations, or Norse gods may return to earth to enact the cataclysmic battles of Ragnarök.

Because of the flexible apocalypse/post-apocalypse scenario structure, your adventures at the end of the world can vary widely in length. Whether you play a single session that ends in gruesome death for every player, or begin a campaign that stretches from apocalypse to post-apocalypse and beyond, every scenario takes you straight to the terror and adventure of the apocalypse.

For more on the The End of the World experience, we turn to the game’s developer, Tim Flanders.

Developer Tim Flanders on The End of the World

For the last several months, I’ve had the pleasure of working on something a little different – a series of roleplaying games called The End of the World, which begins with Zombie Apocalypse. Each game in The End of the World series covers five thematically linked scenarios that bring the world as we know it to a dramatic end. The four books in The End of the World are each dedicated to a beloved apocalypse genre that has inspired countless movies, books, comics, and stories. You can experience these apocalypses with any tone, whether you choose to play a light and humorous version of the end times, or embrace the horror that surrounds the end of life as we know it.

Obviously, the first book, Zombie Apocalypse, covers the much-loved brain-eating undead. One of the great things about starting with this particular form of the apocalypse is the amazing depth of narrative and sheer quantity of media on the subject. The amount of material available for inspiration is nearly endless, and I think the scenarios we’ve included in this book sum up the most exciting elements of the genre. Game Masters will be able to dive headlong into their favourite themes and tropes from zombie horror. In this book, we’ve got everything from shambling, brain-hungry undead to tireless, sprinting rage zombies. There are infections, radiation, parasites, and even voodoo magic!

Of course, the other major theme that runs through the entire game line is that the players get to explore and experience these world-ending events as themselves. This is, hands down, the most exciting part of this game for me. The idea of playing through an apocalyptic (and eventually post-apocalyptic) scenario with my friends, in my home town, definitely adds a pretty unique thrill to the game.

I think people are going to be very excited about this new game line we’re working on, and I can’t wait to hear what kinds of stories your group comes up with as you make your way through The End of the World!

The End Is Nigh

Thanks, Tim!

The day of the dead rising is quickly approaching. It’s up to you to ensure that you survive the apocalypse. For more information on the other books in The End of the World line, visit the description page.

Prepare for hordes of zombies to end the world with the release of Zombie Apocalypse in the fourth quarter of 2014, and look for the rest of the books in The End of the World series to be released at a later date!

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