New Dead Reign book?

[auyl]

Oh yeah, I just read the Weekly Update

Can't

Wait.

[Snake Eyes]

Yeah, i saw that

[gaby]

Great,we can see some npc,s.

I hope thers a Sneak preview of it,at Drivet,Rpg.

[Tor]

Reading https://palladium-store.com/1001/catego ... Reign.html why is "Fear the Reaper" listed as "Sourcebook Three" when this is what Endless Dead is?

It's showing 'Four' correctly in the image and the description text https://palladium-store.com/1001/produc ... eaper.html but not the actual heading.

[Illendaver]

Only 48 pages? I might have to wait and see if it is worth the money from somebody else who buys it. I am not too impressed by the preview...

[Icefalcon]

I am not keen for the focus to shift even more heavily to the Road Reapers. In the games I run, I do not let them become the central focus of all things zombie hunting.

[mrloucifer]

I dunno, I kinda look forward to reading more about the Reapers and what makes them tick. And a 48 page book sounds about the size for details about them.

[mrloucifer]

This might be an ideal book for players to buy and use as a reference while playing as the Reaper's book came up regularly in my games.

[azazel1024]

I am interested, but I do feel like there is a lot more that could have been covered before the Reapers. That said, you write what you have the inspiration for.

I am a little sad that it is all of 48 pages long.

One of my big issues with DR, other than the fact that it has some baggage from the original design and then coverted to what it is, is the fact that even with the main book and the SBs for it, you'd have a really hard time actually playing the game with the material in the books. The main book is just too skimpy on a lot of things. It also doesn't help that a number of things were very poorly researched for it (like how much power things use. If you are going to include a detail like that, at least do a few hours of research as the numbers for things like fridges is massively off).

It sounds like Fear the Reaper isn't going to have anything like common vehicles used by the reapers, or common weapons or anything like that.

So again, my issue is that Dead Reign leaves a little too much of "well, just fill in the blank and take a good guess" along with "well, maybe you need to pickup the massively outdated compendium of contemporary weapons if you need anything"

The main book is missing a ton of information on things like weapons, gear, scrounging, etc. It has some, but it is very, very scanty compared to any of PBs other main books. I don't think it needed a 50 page section on guns, or knives or something, but its all of something like 2 pages, thing, inconsistent, etc.

I'd been hoping that the Endless dead, since it talks a little bit about the military and police might actually have a few military/police items included/stated out. Like, say an M-4 carbine and M16A4. Maybe a few grenades, some military body armor and how it works to protect against zombies (and fellow man), maybe a few basic vehicles like a Humvee, duece and a half, maybe even a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter. Also a hadful of "common" police weapons, like the .40 Glock, shotgun, AR-15, basic police body armor and riot gear (especially useful with zombies), police cruiser and maybe a typical police "armored car". All that might have taken 5 or 6 pages total, but would have been really, really nice to have.

Also the vehicle section was a big dissapointment. It had a couple of ideas in it, but it was much, much smaller than I thought it would be. I had been hoping for some real customization ideas, not the 5 or 6 it had in there (which was basically just add some hodge podge armor, moving right along) and not much on vehicles themselves (I don't need 12 different models of pick-up truck stated out, but hey, a couple of pages about how different types of vehicles handle things like driving off road, common features of vehicle, advantages of AWD versus 4WD versus FWD and RWD, road clearance, common SDC of car doors, truck doors, glass, tires, etc).

The only remotely similar resource is Compendium of Contemporary weapons, which is really only contemporary to about 20 years ago.

I've also been hoping for something talking about ways to survive. We have a little on urban environments and tunnels and stuff. We don't really have anything on, for instance, living on a boat or surviving on inland waterways or on the ocean or something. Not much about living off the land in rural areas, that sort of thing. I know DR is kind of an open world without specifically talking about "settled" things, but it would also be nice to have more on Safe Havens. Heck, even as keeping it an open world, would it kill them to talk more about safe havens, maybe have a Safe Haven point based construction guide (PB does seem to love them) and maybe have a couple of example generic safe havens rolled up and expanded upon a little (like, say a farming commune safe haven, a Retro safe haven, a death cult "safe haven" and maybe even a former town converted in to a reaper safe haven or something).

[Illendaver]

So again, my issue is that Dead Reign leaves a little too much of "well, just fill in the blank and take a good guess" along with "well, maybe you need to pickup the massively outdated compendium of contemporary weapons if you need anything"

The main book is missing a ton of information on things like weapons, gear, scrounging, etc. It has some, but it is very, very scanty compared to any of PBs other main books. I don't think it needed a 50 page section on guns, or knives or something, but its all of something like 2 pages, thing, inconsistent, etc.

I'd been hoping that the Endless dead, since it talks a little bit about the military and police might actually have a few military/police items included/stated out. Like, say an M-4 carbine and M16A4. Maybe a few grenades, some military body armor and how it works to protect against zombies (and fellow man), maybe a few basic vehicles like a Humvee, duece and a half, maybe even a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter. Also a hadful of "common" police weapons, like the .40 Glock, shotgun, AR-15, basic police body armor and riot gear (especially useful with zombies), police cruiser and maybe a typical police "armored car". All that might have taken 5 or 6 pages total, but would have been really, really nice to have.

Also the vehicle section was a big dissapointment. It had a couple of ideas in it, but it was much, much smaller than I thought it would be. I had been hoping for some real customization ideas, not the 5 or 6 it had in there (which was basically just add some hodge podge armor, moving right along) and not much on vehicles themselves (I don't need 12 different models of pick-up truck stated out, but hey, a couple of pages about how different types of vehicles handle things like driving off road, common features of vehicle, advantages of AWD versus 4WD versus FWD and RWD, road clearance, common SDC of car doors, truck doors, glass, tires, etc).

The only remotely similar resource is Compendium of Contemporary weapons, which is really only contemporary to about 20 years ago.

I've also been hoping for something talking about ways to survive. We have a little on urban environments and tunnels and stuff. We don't really have anything on, for instance, living on a boat or surviving on inland waterways or on the ocean or something. Not much about living off the land in rural areas, that sort of thing. I know DR is kind of an open world without specifically talking about "settled" things, but it would also be nice to have more on Safe Havens. Heck, even as keeping it an open world, would it kill them to talk more about safe havens, maybe have a Safe Haven point based construction guide (PB does seem to love them) and maybe have a couple of example generic safe havens rolled up and expanded upon a little (like, say a farming commune safe haven, a Retro safe haven, a death cult "safe haven" and maybe even a former town converted in to a reaper safe haven or something).

Super agreeing to everything here. I bought the Compendium of Contemporary weapons and I believe I would have gotten more/better use of the weapons and castles book. This isn't me saying that the contemporary weapons book is worthless, I just feel that hand to hand combat does much better than weapons in the DR situation. I tried using guns four times and every time I wind up giving away my position/attracting more than I kill or running out of ammo.
And I would love to be able to play a campaign in the UK from a castle.

[flatline]

Super agreeing to everything here. I bought the Compendium of Contemporary weapons and I believe I would have gotten more/better use of the weapons and castles book. This isn't me saying that the contemporary weapons book is worthless, I just feel that hand to hand combat does much better than weapons in the DR situation. I tried using guns four times and every time I wind up giving away my position/attracting more than I kill or running out of ammo.
And I would love to be able to play a campaign in the UK from a castle.

I have both compendiums (contemporary weapons and weapons, armor, and castles). I enjoy both, but WA&C really is a gem compared to the other. The damage ratings in WA&C needs to be scaled up to work with DR or any Palladium setting that uses SDC since it was clearly designed to work well with Palladium Fantasy 1st edition where 2d6 was dangerous and 3d6 was downright deadly.

--flatline

[azazel1024]

Super agreeing to everything here. I bought the Compendium of Contemporary weapons and I believe I would have gotten more/better use of the weapons and castles book. This isn't me saying that the contemporary weapons book is worthless, I just feel that hand to hand combat does much better than weapons in the DR situation. I tried using guns four times and every time I wind up giving away my position/attracting more than I kill or running out of ammo.
And I would love to be able to play a campaign in the UK from a castle.

I have both compendiums (contemporary weapons and weapons, armor, and castles). I enjoy both, but WA&C really is a gem compared to the other. The damage ratings in WA&C needs to be scaled up to work with DR or any Palladium setting that uses SDC since it was clearly designed to work well with Palladium Fantasy 1st edition where 2d6 was dangerous and 3d6 was downright deadly.

--flatline

That is actually kind of the problem with both weapons compendiums. I don't recall when/if there was an original WA&C, but with Contemporary Weapons, the original was written around 83-86 time frame and then it was updated slightly (about 25% additions, plus the few vehicles it has an body armor) for a revised/second edition sometime in the 90-94 time frame.

Its been begging for a redo for ages. Honestly, one of my biggest gripes is, even though it has a lot of material in it, it could really use a paragraph description of each, even if it means reducing the content a little. Maybe throw in things like "average price", since it was designed for RPG use, generally for PB Megaversal system...it doesn't help looking at one pistol and thinking "hmmm, seems decent" without considering in an RPG context that, hey...that decent pistol is $1,500...but that other one is a $600 pistol and almost "as good". Not that germaine to DR though (cost I mean).

WA&C is a little better for DR.

Guns work okay in the few DR games I've played, but I've also heavily modified the combat rules to get rid of zombie AR (replaced by called shots to the head) so no ridiculous huge penalties for light caliber weapons in head shots (which make a 9mm, which would easily blast right through a skull, nearly worthless against a zombie). I also added in the CoCW "bonuses" to strikes to parts of the body. So a head shot does quadruple damage to humans AND zombies. So if you can hit one, a 9mm is likely to kill the zombie unless you happen to make a rather low roll in damage (2d6x4, or 8-48 damage, the average of 28 is enough to kill a zombie).

That said...yes guns attract attention. So ad hoc silencers, only using them when you are already starting to get swarmed or can book it out of there and/or have no choice. Since bullets also go a lot further, my games tend not to have PCs get swarmed under if they use a gun...though in a city setting...

Actually, you are pretty much just screwed in a city anyway, but firing a gun should really only be done if you are shooting yourself in the head, because it is committing suicide.

My play groups do best with improvised and medieval weapons, bows and arrows and crossbows with a gun as a back-up only (or silenced).

In one running game (one of the few times I've GM'd in the last couple of years was that play series) my PC group managed to make it out of town (it didn't start in a big city) to a rural high school. They managed to barricade the school and then basically build a pallisade, fighting platform behind it, gate and towers (its amazing the kind of supplies you can get raiding farm and tractor stores and home depot). The 4 of them plus half a dozen NPCs did it over the course of a month, which was good as they finished constructing it only a couple of days before a huge swarm from Pittsburg hit them. Guns were used. And used. And used. I think the final body count was around 3,000 zombies killed (and 2 NPCs and one PC became a half-living from his wounds). Battle took about 4hrs even simplifying it.