Welcome to The Blog of Giuseppe Filotto

Vox wrote an interesting report on warhammer 40,000 and why it survived so long against leftist invasion. The original post he links to specifies that writing an RPG based in hardcore truths is resistant to woke agendas.

Well, this is precisely why I have made my RPG as it is.

Surviving the Current Zombie Apocalypse (SCZA) is written so as to be both humorous and entertaining yet useful as a learning tool too.

You can get it as a full colour hardcopy from Amazon, or as a PDF from my E-store.

And don’t take my word for it. Here is an Amazon review:

Andy Gryc

2.0 out of 5 stars

Verified Purchase

Fun idea, but ultimately not much usable

Reviewed in Canada on March 24, 2022

The “Inside pages” preview gives you a sense that this is a zombie apocalypse game in a world where all the conspiracy theories are real. Fun sounding premise, right? I thought so, so bought the book, but it wasn’t what I hoped for. For anyone else who’s considering buying this, let me explain my issues with it so you can see if it’s worth it or not for you. The book is in two major pieces – the story of the world, and the role playing system. The first part wasn’t really what I expected, and maybe that’s my fault. Here are my issues with the book. 1) By taking most conspiracy theories as factually true, the world it creates has a definite white nationalist tone. It’s all done tongue-in-cheek, but nevertheless, you have an anti-equality, anti-Semitic, transphobic, bigoted world-view that runs throughout. That’s not the kind of campaign I want to run. I play with women and visible minorities, but I wouldn’t want my campaign to be like this even if it was all white men – it just feels a bit gross to my modern sensibilities. Perhaps it’s my bad that I didn’t expect that outcome from the premise, since that seems to be the logical conclusion of most modern conspiracies. It’s a game that’s supposed to be dark, and I understand that – I just don’t want to breathe life into it. 2) The game also veers into pretty distinct religiosity. Again, I know it’s entertainment, but there’s an awful lot of the story dedicated to the Christians, a particular strain of Catholicism that is the “true” religion, good fighting evil, God and Satan, bishops, popes, priests, etc. This is more than just a normal character class or a faction, it seems like it’s the backbone of the new world order. Meh. Just won’t be that interesting to me or my players. 3) I could be wrong on this, but I don’t believe the zombies are intended to be literally zombies. If they are, it’s pretty darn subtle and easy to overlook. While there are a couple bits of colour text that say the “zombies” might even be commanded eat to flesh, it’s really more about how all the vaccinated are under mind control from the evil overlords. In other words, the “sheeple”. Instead of getting World War Z, it feels a bit more like a dysfunctional version of The Office. Again – unique perspective, but not what I was truly after. This is the factor that’s probably the biggest disappointment. 4) Finally, the game system. I give the author kudos for inventing a system that’s simple, uses standard dice, makes the players fragile, and is built on a bell curve. Those are all great attributes, although for me personally that’s only a 50% win. I think the game system is just a bit too simple – specifically character creation. Basically 2 stats and some optional skills. Don’t get me wrong – I hate Pathfinder and feel 5e is burdened with books and books of rules. But I think Chaosium’s Basic Role Playing has it just right. Just enough complexity for the GM and Player to manage easily at the table as well as giving lots of room to grow the character. Also, on the d6 thing – I’m just not a huge fan of d6 only systems. My crew has “invested” in tons of dice, so limiting them to one set only seems almost a bit cruel. Half the fun of an RPG is owning all the platonic solids. In summary, like most anything you’ll get for a real game, it’s a sourcebook. Every GM has their own personal tastes, and some will be able to use more that’s here than others. What I’ll personally be able to salvage from it in terms of good, usable, and playable ideas is less than a single page. I recognize the work that’s gone into it, and I’m not trying to be critical about the result – it just doesn’t match what I need. If you are expecting something more like a playable version of Max Brooks “Zombie Survival Guide” like I was, keep searching. But if you’re more open to taking today’s world and dialling up the dysfunction and conspiracies up to 11, it might be just for you.

All the other reviews are 5 stars, but I am not sure that Andy Gryc’s review is having the effect he intended. I know several people purchased the game as a result of it.

And there is of course a starter set Module for it (E-store PDF)

And for those already willing to experiment with the game system, the game could be easily adapted to play out some of the events found in the recent novella In the Shadows of Monte Castello.

The point is that with much of my fiction writing the baselines are rooted in very solid reality.

The whole Overlords of Mars trilogy as found in one volume (Nazi Moon) is soundly based on The Face on Mars written in 1995 and Systema written in 2011 and the thread of Reclaiming the Catholic Church shadows most things I do today.

So while the route and the road may be flexible, ultimately, if your entertainment is any good, it should reflect recognisable realities, regardless of how fantastic the setting might be.

And real virtues, such as courage, moral fortitude, reason, Justice and so on, are ultimately timeless, no matter how much the woke want to pretend otherwise.