Back when I first started writing Year of the Zombie, I sat down and decided whether or not to do a clean, sanitary game. Less Romero and more 28 Day Later perhaps. The playtests I'd done on my notes had gone, well, spectacular. Those who survived the one-off games wanted it to keep going. They felt they had earned the right for the story to progress. The two ongoing campaigns had reached a point where the PC's (and the players themselves) worried more about survival than social niceties.

So I looked at the manuscript, and made a decision.

Of course, this was 2003, and I had not seen All Flesh Must Be Eaten (And I still haven't) and there wasn't much zombie stuff out there.

But, to get back on track, I chose the Romero-esque world.

Why?

Because it was harder to survive intact. The Romero world (excluding Land of the Dead) was dirty, messy, and in some ways very dark. I wanted that. I wanted pride for players who managed to get 2 of their characters out. I wanted heroism and legends.

I hit up my contacts, and started collecting data. From FEMA and a few other organizations, including the NBC Warfare division. Mostly settling on how things went down during major catastrophies, but also US government plans for handling it. I found out that most of the civil defense and emergency prepardness programs had been abandoned in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Budget cuts and cries of "facism" and "warmongering" had gutted the programs, meaning that basically people were on their own in case of a disaster.

So I took into account the predictions for a worst case viral infection, with multiple points of infection, a rapid dehabilitation cycle, and a permanent (non-terminal) infection vector. (There are diseases out there that the body is infectious, and must be burned by people wearing protective gear, and that's without cracking into the bioweapons stocks) I looked at power failure rates during the 1914 influenza crisis, I looked at the aftermath of hurricane Hugo (which was a most unpleasant on the ground experience for me) and applied it globally.

I read tons of men's fiction: Deathlands, "__blank__" In the Ashes, The Survivor, Mack Bolan, The Warlord, etc. While the writing isn't good, and some keep recycling plots (Mack Bolan, I'm looking at your 90 year old ass) and the basis was pretty much the same...

The end of the world sucked, and only those capable of responding to force with force survive.

From there I took polls at colleges, and even wandered around a couple of malls with a clipboard and a quiz. That got me punched in the face twice, but the data I gained was overwhelmingly useful. I got over 10,000 reactions to my quiz over the course of two months.

OK, so I had official documentation, public self-opinion polls, and some of the best software out there. (Nuclear weapon damage estimation programs, chemical weapon propagation  programs, biological warfare programs) I had some maps of the US, and some maps of the world, and set to work.

I coined the term Zero Hour for when the dead returned to life, and applied it globally. I took the amount of people that die on a daily basis, per country, and world-wide, and punched in that data. I took a look at the murder/accident rates per nation and punched it in.

What did I find out?

Total time to start of collapse: 98 hours.
Total time to total collapse: 3 weeks, 1 day.

Russia and China stood a better chance that the US and EU due to still intact civil defense programs. However, I decided that their civil defense shelters would be comprimised.

The military got pwnd by the zombies. It's not to say they are incompetant or cowardly, but they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers and trying to save people. Sure, there was desertion, but not until almost 2 weeks in did the desertion rate rise over 10%.

I talked to military officers and law enforcement officials.

Ever sat in the office of a  County Sherrif and seriously discussed an outbreak of the living dead? Thankfully I didn't get looks of "jeez, what a retard" when I spoke to him. He knew I was an author, I'd made an appointment, and offered him a look at what I had written about Law Enforcement in the rough notes.

He thought I gave the police too much credit. He told me "We're still men, we're still human, and while what you wrote was noble and heroic, we would eventually do the same thing as the military, and write off a segment of the civilian population."

So I rewrote the Law Enforcement entry to reflect reality. I really wanted tragic heroism, but I settled for the estimates I got from Law Enforcement officials of 70% casualties overall, most cities being 95-100% fatalities.

The military section underwent revision after revision. This was important to me, as the modern military has equipment and resources undreamed about in the original XXXX of the Dead series.

The military was nice enough to let me ride around in a Bradley (bringing about memories of border patrol in the late 1980's in Western Germany) and organizing "excersizes" so I could see how it would go down. They let me go to the range and fire the weapons that replaced the venerable Vietnam Era crap that I'd used during my tour.

Part of it had to do with the fact I still had connections from my service days, the majority, however, is because I went through DoD Public Affairs and was willing to jump through all the hoops. The PA section considered YotZ good press, as the military wasn't cast as the villians of the piece.

So, research done, playtests underway, I still had to choose a path...

Dark survival horror

or

Standard zombie fare?

Then it hit me. Zombies weren't the real threat past a certian point. They became environmental hazards, just like radiation in Gamma World or Twilight 2000. The REAL threat came from their fellow humans.

I got an interview with some African Relief societies, and got into some serious discussions with what is called "Invisible Children", as well as was given stuff to read from North Korean refugees, African aid workers, 1980's Central American refugees, etc.

Which showed me the dark depths of humanity.

Kids as young as five trained to fight and kill. Internment camps that made the Nazi arocities look like a Care Bear slumber party. Horrible savagery all around.

Many people think the Wolf Packs would be localized, or a rare thing. Child psychologists who read it said it was feasible, but they were unable to predict just how frequent it would be. However, animal regression is not uncommon. Combine that with the reports of children in North Korean "Education Camps" (they were all born there) and African children in war zones, Wolf Packs are suddenly quite believable.

I had to cover slaughter, slavery, brutality, and worst of all, rape.

Coined "A Really Bad Day" in the Diaries of Becka in subsequent books, I decided to take it on in a frontal assault. It would be mentioned, it would be a fact of life, but I wasn't going to wallow in it, unlike many adult fiction novels. Still, this was a sore point. I'll admit, I'm not Stephen King, I can't get away with describing a brutal child rape from the viewpoint of the child (It was in one of the "Bachman Books") but I sure as hell could acknowledge it. And I did, which has gotten blasted by more than one reviewer.

Despite being denied by many organizations, I remember listening to the intrepeter as he told us what the three women we'd gathered up when we found a group of Kuwaiti refugees described. Gang rape, the murder of a child, and other brutalities. When Iraq overran Kuwait, many Iraqi soldiers engaging in rape, viewing it as a way to shame the Kuwaiti women, and as a sport. Sadly, from everything I researched, rape went hand in hand with the collapse of society.

According to post-holocaust fiction, in many ways, women become valuable property. Yes, they are second class citizens, but they are valuable to the men who "own" them, and those men will fight to the death to protect them. Only rarely are women "independant" in the way we think of it nowdays.

Many people would probably be shocked at the depths mankind (and womenkind) are willing to go to during a disaster. (Remember, this was written before Katrina reduced New Orleans to a slice of Hell) For the villanous side of YotZ I had to take people there, and it wasn't easy.

I created a world where there were villians that there were no moral quandries about shooting in the face or curbstomping. I created heroes that adapted to their environs, and struggled to hold onto their humanity. I created a world with black and white, and a whole shitload of grey.

So I sit here, and look at the five documents I have open. In it, there are rules for bartering sexual favors, as well as a list of what skills are useful to counsel a victim of a Really Bad Day. Once again, rape was approached and listed. Not in a WHEE! ISN'T THIS FUN! aspect, but rather a straight forward "it happens, and in a world where the brutal and hard core survive, the brutal will have their day" manner.

I could edit those segments out, remove all the cruelty and violence toward women that the bad guys do, but then it feels rather flat. When I remove that, I better chunk out the part about predatory child abusers. Oh, and remove the slavers, they're pretty horrible. Oh, and now I better pull the reavers, they might offend someone.

So I leave it in.

Not because I'm sitting here stroking my dick going "Rape is cool! HURR!" or focusing primarily on the fact that women have very limited options if they want to avoid having a Really Bad Day happen to them because I hate women, but because it's part of the whole.

The zombies brought down society, but you don't see them preying on one another.

It's up to the living to rebuild. Those who inhabitant YotZ have met the enemy, and they are us.

(edit-More in a minute)

Bloody hell T, interesting stuff, more in a minute would be welcome.

So there I was, with a brutal and dark world that I had created. I had designed the zombies to reflect the "HEADSHOT BITCH!" zombies, rather than the indestructable ones of Return of the Living Dead. I briefly considered making a "power plug and play" system so that the GM had a single zombie template that they could add powers too, but changed my mind as it being clunky and unwieldy. (Remember, I didn't even know AFMBE existed at that time) Looking back at it, I'm glad I made the decision I did to create various zombie types and leave it at that. It gave a cohesive feel to the accounts of survivors (something that became really important when I began writing Marion's story) that I planned on recording in books.

I had to take into account the various places that people would hole up, and how people would try to survive a zombie apocalypse. Someone told me that a bicycle was the best thing, and I busted out laughing. The idea of some mountain biking idiot pedaling furiously to get away from a horde of zombies, turning a corner in a city, and coming face to face with another mob amused the shit out of me. Plus, a bicycle isn't exactly a secure place to sleep, and there are many mechanical difficulties that can occur.

So I had to look at vehicles. This meant figuring out how long a Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicle would remain running in the fierce urban fighting of the late first week and second weeks of the Rising. I decided that a month into it, there would armored vehicles scattered about, out of fuel, maybe some it scuttled by the abandoning crew, but most of them intact, just out of ammunition and fuel.

The mental image of zombies banging on the sides of a Bradley as it sat, forlorn and abandoned in the streets of a major city, became a major mental picture for me. It summed up heroism and futility.

I needed a system for called shots and damage therof, and while many people may think d20 never had it, a read through of the 3.0 DMG will disabuse that notion. I grabbed it, modified it, and called it good.

Eventually, I had the mechanics done. My artist and I were constantly fighting about when artwork was finished. He wanted completely finished artwork, profressional quality. I wanted half-finished drawings. "Talented amauter" to quote myself at the bar with a whiskey coke in front of me. Eventually, he finally agreed to it, if he could finish key points like faces, hands, etc.

It was a departure from the in-vogue photo-realistic full color drawings everyone else was doing. While everyone else was doing perfect artwork, I was having drawings done that "looked like they were drawn on the back of an MRE case from memory" and loving it. They captured the "feel" I was going for. Drawings that were abandoned part way through when the neccessities of survival reared their head. I even had him do some pieces of art on lined notebook paper and scanned those in. Although my insistance of a pen and ink picture drawn on the back of a cereal box was eventually shouted down, I still think it would have fit.

I also got photos from the Department of the Army Public Relations Office. All of them were given to me to insert into the document, and we altered them into either drawings, or into polariods. Many of them had "words scribbled on them" or "author notes"

Then, I had to figure out flavor text. Believe it or not, fluff text can make all the difference in whether or not a product can grab someone by the face and pull them into a book.

At first, I used just snippets, all unconnected, like many products, then suddenly changed my mind. I had the mIRC logs for the first test group, and I began modifying what happened in the playtest for what became known as "The Diaries of Becka."

That was probably one of my best ideas. I took a peace activist college student who engaged in martial arts and power lifting, who was young, niave, and innocent, and dumped her into The Rising. I showed the world through her eyes, through her actions. Through her loss of innocence when she participated in nerve gassing a pack of Feral Children, to her giving birth when she was struck by a bullet into her body armor. I kept her as feminine as possible in the environs she lived in. Her love for her friends and common-law husband never wavered, and she went through tragedy and triumph both. The entries were alluring, almost addicting. I found myself rooting for her and her friendsto survive, but unwilling to make things easy on her.

The mystery of Sylvia's past was a constant in the flavor text. Everyone knew she was lying about manning a refugee post, that laptop with the Department of Defense and Homeland Secuirty logo's on it seemed to contain information that should have been unavailable. She spoke of a broken oath, and was a hardened killer.

I decided that I'd go through exactly what had happened to her, and give players a chance to survive it. Thus, Hold At All Costs was born.

Then I tried to market it out. ENPublishing loved it, but Jason Parent admitted he couldn't put it out, it was too dark, too brutal, but he loved it and didn't want to see it "candied up to be acceptable" so he helped me market it out to a few other people.

Most publishers liked it, except for the sheer brutality. The flavor text most slated for cutting was the "Trial" section. Where the iconics carry out a field expedient trial for a bunch of child raping scumbags, and the females use air pressure powered nailguns to kill the rapists after they are found guilty. ("The Defense rests!") If they refused to back down, I took my ball and went home. I was beginning to think I'd have to market it myself, and really wasn't looking forward to it. I knew how tough advertising, layout, and all the rest was, and, well, I'm lazy. I could do it, I just didn't want to.

Finally a company I was doing freelance work expressed interest in checking out the manuscript for the core book and the barebones sequels I had written. They blanched slightly at the violence, but agreed that it was a necessary part of the setting. So it went virtually untouched (I removed a lot of the military equipment to get it under a certian page count, but I knew it would go back into the Hold At All Costs series, so it would see print again.) to the shelves.

Almost everyone who bought it loved it, although the fact that someone was going around on ENWorld claiming it was the d20 Modern of FATAL, and claiming it revolved around rape, bothered me. Not because of what they were saying, but because they never came right out and said it, they just told other people that.

I made a few mistakes in the first book. The funniest one was the fact that I accidently listed an M1A2 Main Battle Tank as having a hardness of 2045 and 250100 hit points was the funniest. There are some things I'll probably alter for the five year anniversary reprint, and I'll probably expand upon it.

But you can't just release one book, and figure it'll support itself. You need companion products. It needed something, and I figured what better than the Independance Day Massacre. I've been told it's one of the most difficult to survive introductary adventures people have ever seen. While there is plenty of room for combat, combat only assures death. The pregenerated NPC's had inner-group conflicts (The bounty hunter who is now teamed up with the person he came to grab) and the amount of weaponry was minimal. It made for a serious test of player's abilities.

But man, did I have a fun time writing it!

Then came the Blood & Guts/YotZ crossover. The first in a series of 11 modules. Hold At All Costs Zero. A military game based off of unclassified after action reports from various sources. I bit off a lot more than I thought when I started this series, and it looks like the second book will be the YotZ version of the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in sheer size.

HAAC0 has been called a "zero tolerance" module. Not because the players can't choose their own paths, but because there is no tolerance for error. But, while it may be called a difficult adventure, I've never had any complaints it wasn't any fun.

Then came Fleshmongers. This took me a long time to write, and had me reaching for the alcohol bottle on many occassions. I did about 2 months of research on real world, modern day slavery. From the child sex palaces of Singapore to what law enforcement agencies have found when they bust up a child prostitution ring. To the slave labor of North Korea, to the slavery in Africa. I'm pretty much a soulless monster in many way, but this stuff made me want to put my head on my table and weep. The time it took to create Fleshmongers wasn't the writing it, it was coming to grips with what the real world was like.

I took a break for awhile after that. The survivor's tales, the photographs, and all the other material deeply affected me, and combined with a serious screw up in my medication, left me deeply depressed.

Then came Marauders. Another group of douchebags, but not as difficult to write as Fleshmongers had been. The Reavers were more horrible, but researching them didn't feel like it was blackening what little soul I had left. About this time Katrina happened, and I managed to pull strings and go beyond what the press and the official line stated. I was quietly passed pictures where there were dozens of bodies floating in stagnant, trash filled water. After action reports of armed gangs taking on the military and police. Roque police officers, and the dead who had been left behind in the hospital or old folks home while those who were supposed to care for them ran away. Report after report of armed clashes. (Author's Disclaimer: I can neither prove nor disprove the documentation I was handed, and all of it was subsequently destroyed. I do not know the real names of the people who handed this off to me. So no, you can't see it, and I don't know who really gave it to me. Get fucked, ghoul!)

So Maruaders came out. I'm surprised nobody bitched that I put some thought into standard D&D for Marauders, including examples of Elite fantasy groups.

Then came "Jackals & Maggots: To Rule In Hell!" A bunch of the nastiest assholes that the PC's could butt heads with. Skinheads, extremist bible thumpers, and best of all: Cordelia's Pack. A lot of fun to write. There's five more of those, waiting on artwork and timing.

Richard Fannon, a fan of YotZ who converts it to Unisystem for his group (showing me that YotZ was truly successful. It went beyond the mechanics and rule set, becoming something more), who wanted to do the Havens book. I only had about 15 pages for that sourcebook, so I deleted my stuff and told him to run with it.

About this time, I read what Kevin Sembedia did when he had freelancers work for Rifts. I'd had my own problems with Palladium (all the way back from 1995, I can hold a fucking grudge) so I interested to see that it really sat with his micromanagement of the line, rather than any problem with my writing. I had planned on not giving up an ounce of control over the YotZ world and products, but reading what KS had done made me sit down and seriously rethink my position.

Richard Fannon had done some writing for Maruaders, and I knew his view of the world of YotZ matched my own in many ways, so it wouldn't be a clone of me. I'd made a vow not to micromanage YotZ, and told him to run with it.

During this time, I was working on Traders, Rotting Backdrops, Death Knell of a Small Town, and the HAAC line. I'd also written Vossburg Superfortress, another RPGObjects crossover. Even better, Green Ronin had told me I could reference "Ultra-Modern Firearms" in the books, so I started adding more weaponry and not bothering to reinvent the wheel.

Then, the artist for Dead Future showed me a bunch of stuff he'd done, and Marion Samuel Lefferts was born. Between the two of us, we whipped out 15 issues of the Survivor's Guide to Risen America between the two of us. That put us at having over a years worth the manuscripts, completely finished.

YotZ is still a pretty much niche game, but it is growing. The fact that it  continues to be supported has gone over well with the d20 Modern PDF market, and the commitment to keeping the same standards has impressed a lot of people.

Year of the Zombie may not be for everyone, and it isn't the most popular d20 Modern campaign template out there (I bow to Chuck's Blood & Relics to that in my humble opinion) but it went from a drunken mIRC bet and  a smart assed comment by Jason Parent (No, I didn't take offense. We were both pretty drunk when he said it: "If you're going to do it, fucking do it, quit talking about it and get off your ass.") to a mildly successful product line.

I'm still not sure how it happened.

So why is this called "Choosing a Path" then?

Well, I'm at the point where I have to choose a path to take again for the Year of the Zombie line. I can steer back toward more light subject matter, or I can stick with the current course, and keep doing stuff that is dark and brutal.

It's a brutal old world out there, despite what many people thing. That's not say that I 'm one of those people who "bleed whenever someone else is hurt on another continent." I've seen the elephant a few times myself, and experienced the darker side of humanity. I've even seen the darkness within my own soul, and am aware that in many ways, I'm a monster too.

The "structure" books are almost finished. Havens and Traders will be the last of the structure books. After that, it will be time to detail the world and people of Year of the Zombie, including a book of tenative timelines for GM's to use if they aren't sure the apocalypse would progress.

When I start detailing the world, I have two choices:

Quote from: YotZ Core BookI stood next to Sylvia, the Hemmit idling as it kept the pressure in the compressed air tank and the nail guns that we all held in our hands. Cindy stood to the other side of me, tapping the nailgun and staring at the men kneeling in front of the three of us.

Sam was staring with eyes like fire, his uniform looking pristine and clean. Greg and Sylvia stood in their desert BDUs, pistols at their hips. I still wore my sports bra and spandex shorts, gauze protecting the burns on my back. Buck was wearing his biker leathers, spattered with blood, and chewing on a cigar. He took it from his mouth and stared.

"Start when you're ready." Buck growled. Sam was tapping his fingers on the butts of his pistols. A slow tap that I had seen before. He wanted to draw. He wanted to kill. Greg was walking back and forth, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Robert was working as hard as he could, and we could hear the crying of the child inside the vehicle. Greg stopped, turning to face the kneeling men.

"By the powers vested in me by the Armed Forces of the United States of America, the Martial Law Executive Order, The War Powers Act, and Survival of the Fittest, you are all hereby charged with slave trading, rape of a minor, and child molestation. How do you plead?" Greg's grey eyes were like flint.

"We didn' do nuttin' you can prove, soldier boy!" One sneered.

"I wan' mah lawyer!" another cried.

"I enter a guilty plea for my clients." Buck snarled. "The defense rests."

"You can't do that!" "Hey, that ain't right!" "I ain't guilty!" "Oh lordy, these boys is gonna kill us!" all sounded out.

"Prosecutor?" Greg asked, nodding at Sam. Sam ran forward and began kicking one man in the stomach, yelling: "You did it, we know it, you did it, you fucker!" When he was out of breath, he stepped back to where he had been standing. The man he had been kicking, a man whom we had seen shoot a little girl in the head when she bit him, stayed on the ground, curled up and crying from Sam taking his boots to the scumbag.

"The prosecution rests." Sam panted.

"I find you all guilty, and sentence you to death." Greg smiled a smile that never touched his eyes. "Ladies."

They began screaming, cussing, crying and trying to pull free of their bonds. Cindy, Sylvia and I walked down the line, pressing the nailgun to the back of their heads, at the nape of the neck, and pumping three or four nails into each one.

One managed to break free, and Sam drew his pistols in that blindingly fast draw he had perfected. Two shots rang out, both of them hitting their targets. The man screamed as his knees blew onto the grass, the blood bright in the morning sunlight. Greg drug him back by his long greasy hair, and I bent down and fired two nails into his face stapling his mouth shut. His screams and pleas muffled, I, rolled him over, and put too more into the back of his head.

They begged for mercy, and although they didn't know it, we were showing it. Sylvia, Cindy and I had wanted to shoot out their knees and elbows and leave them for the zombies.-From the Diaries of Becka

Which is the standard, or write more nicey stuff, which so far hasn't really reared it's head.

Some people tell me that characters like Nick Rage...

Quote from:  MaraudersZero Hour
  Nicky is a stereotypical spoiled rich boy. Born of wealth, he's never wanted for anything or had to work hard in his life. His monthly allowance from his parents is more than some people earn in an entire year. He's strong and fit and fast thanks to the best physical trainers money can buy, but he's still a selfish dick at heart.

  When the Rising occurs, Nick is driving around in his Jaguar, and hits a Riser. When he gets out, the Riser attacks a good Samaritan and kills him despite Nick's best efforts to save the man. When the Riser goes after a small girl, something inside of him snaps, and he manages to kill the Risen man with a rock.

  Grabbing the young girl and throwing her bodily into his Jaguar, Nick hits the road with a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that everything is about to change.

  He also secretly feels a fierce exultation at the idea that sickens him.
Day 15
  Nick has gone through a tremendous change in a little over two weeks. He has saved people from the Risen and put down those who Rose despite his efforts to save them. He spent two weeks defending an emergency relief station in the center of a major city, paying close attention to what the soldiers would teach him, and risking his life time and time again. He has burn scars across his forearms from dragging two children out of a burning car, and a nasty scar above his eyebrow from where a tire-iron struck him.

  The relief station has fallen, and Nick (Now known as Quick Nick) has led the two remaining soldiers and twenty civilians out of the city and into the countryside in a moving van.

  Nick appears more confident than he really is, and thinks that he is as good as he will ever get, but the dice are rolling, and Nick is caught up in things beyond his control.
30 Days
  Nick is still growing and emerging from his cocoon. He led the survivors out of the city, and they insisted on holing up at a large 2-story high school despite Nick's reservations. A week later, when he came back by, they were all dead, and the few survivors he had found and was bringing back to the large school where the others had holed up were left with only him.

  Despite his misgivings, he led them again outside of the suburbs, heading for the Interstate and out of state. He refuses to lead the group, instead sticking to being a "ground pounder" in his own words. He's not sure what it means, but he idolized the soldiers that died in his presence that called one another that, or self-described themselves as that.
90 Days
  Nick has become hardened by the death around him, the loss of the people who travel with him, and still works for the strongest he meets. He's discovered that the skills he's picked up from those willing to teach him make him a valued member of any community, but the sight of walls and the presence of noncombatants make him twitchy and nervous.

  Nick suffers from nightmares and PTSD by this point, as he's been the sole survivor of raiding parties repeatedly. He travels from settlement to settlement in his hummvee, content to raid, trade, and keep on the move.

  He is not even aware of the fact that he has not had sex since the night before the Rising, he no longer tries to feel alive by drowning himself in sex, but rather is completely engrossed with his daily fight for survival.

180 Days
  By this time Nick is somewhat famous in nearby settlements, and the rumbling sound of his hummvee is a welcome noise to many communities. Nick has perfected the solo scavenging art, often taking payment for raiding the most difficult targets in the region. He is famous for managing to steal hundreds of books from a local universities library right out from under the nose of the religious crazies who inhabit the place.

  His coverall clad form, with a shotgun dangling from one hand and his chipped machete in the other, has become a welcome sight by traders. After his famous massacre of a group of fleshmongers who were victimizing local settlements he is considered somewhat of a folk-hero to locals.

  His name has changed from Quick Nick to Nick Rage from the stories that a few reavers or fleshmongers that have escaped his wrath have told in local settlements. While his face is twisted in fury as he fires the battered and well used Mossberg and swings the chipped and worn machete, he never says another word.
Year One
  Nick spent two months missing, and most residents of local settlements thought he was dead, completely unaware that he was recovering from injuries he received killing an entire 18 strong Wolf Pack. When he returned, his scarred face was barely recognizable, and his gravelly voice from his nearly lethal slashed throat often made people flinch away from him.

  However, Nick no longer cares about how others view him. The leader of the Wolf Pack was the same child he had saved over a year ago from his first encounter with a Riser. He trades fairly, and often generously, bartering mainly for fuel, ammunition, and food. Many local communities will give him the supplies he asks for out of gratitude and awe, but he still will leave behind critical supplies.

  Nick still suffers from a bad case of PTSD, and has a serious case of thousand yard stare.

Year Five and beyond
  By this time, Nick has grown beyond mere mortality, instead becoming a figure of legend. Many times Nick has come roaring out of nowhere to the rescue of convoys and travelers, and more than one settlement scout or excursion team has stumbled across an encampment of reavers or fleshmongers that had been wiped out to man. In these encampments, severed heads, now Risen, are often left littered around the encampment, with only shotgun shells, food, and fuel missing.

  When he does arrive in a settlement, or is seen by convoys, he is quiet and soft spoken, his gravelly voice pitched just loud enough for whomever he is speaking with to hear. He barters only for ammunition, food, water, and fuel, offering immensely generous terms.

... From Maruaders should be cut out, and more gentle and "politically correct" characters should be inserted.

I've been told that YotZ has "too dark of a feel" to it and should be made more politically correct. That the constant theme of a daily fight for survival, not against the zombies, but against the other survivors, is focusing only on the bad parts of humanity. These people call for the world to be brightened up, for the majority of people not to be selfish with their own goals and agendas (some hidden, some not) not being so pervasive.

I've even had people complain about the fact that in the world of Year of the Zombie, the haven known as Vossburg Superfortress, a former Supermax Federal Prison, is a shining beacon of hope, while a group of poli-sci students who created a haven is a horrid mixture of fascism and socialism where second and third class citizens are treated as property.

In other words, they want me to convert YotZ into what political correctness and society WANTS to see, wants to believe.

They want the government to be the only source of evil, soldiers who abandoned their posts and kill everyone to get their way, and police officers who are crooked and have no redeeming qualities.

So I have a choice of which way I can go. I can keep writing the way I am, or I can give into market pressure, and when I begin detailing settlements and adventures, I can follow the Hollywood-esque requests by people who tell me:

"I'd buy it if it was more like..."

I reviewed YotZ, and still maintain that it's all kinds of awesome.  As a long time All Flesh GM I find the information Tim provided about military preparedness and the time scale of the Rise to be incredibly useful.  In AFMBE terms, it's essentially a really detailed, fleshed out dark Dead World.

And I'll cop to being one of the reviewers who criticized the Wolf Pack, the bands of cannibalistic feral children.  Basically while I think they're pretty cool and would make for a good encounter, I don't see them becoming universal like its put forth.  And the rape was a bit much for me, I prefer to leave that stuff off camera myself.

But Tim, don't go soft on us.  If I don't want that stuff front and center it's easy enough for me to leave it in the background.  Like you said, the stuff doesn't exactly wallow in it, just has it as part of the setting.  I think that people finding the dark statements YotZ disturbing is what makes it so memorable.  Remind the reader that the setting is full of cannibals that want to eat your face, and odds are good that the guy next to you would toss you to them if he needed to save his own ass.  Give us a good kick in the teeth.

Also, the most important bit is that Tim understands the central truth of the zombie genre, that the zombies are not the real threat.  They are more of an environmental hazard.  It's the other survivors that'll fuck you every time.

Quote from: MaddmanI reviewed YotZ, and still maintain that it's all kinds of awesome.  As a long time All Flesh GM I find the information Tim provided about military preparedness and the time scale of the Rise to be incredibly useful.  In AFMBE terms, it's essentially a really detailed, fleshed out dark Dead World.

And I'll cop to being one of the reviewers who criticized the Wolf Pack, the bands of cannibalistic feral children.  Basically while I think they're pretty cool and would make for a good encounter, I don't see them becoming universal like its put forth.  And the rape was a bit much for me, I prefer to leave that stuff off camera myself.

Actually, your criticism of the Wolf Pack was nothing compared to some of the criticism I got for including them. I got everything from bitching that I made children combatants to accusations of worse where the wolf packs are concerned.

While I acknowledge that not all children would become members of a wolf pack, I still feel that they would crop up more than people think.

As far as your concerns with rape come, you aren't someone who claimed that the books revolved around them, that is the d20 Modern version of F.A.T.A.L. with the way I treated women within the document.

I just felt it needed addressed, not ignored. ::shrug::

QuoteBut Tim, don't go soft on us.  If I don't want that stuff front and center it's easy enough for me to leave it in the background.  Like you said, the stuff doesn't exactly wallow in it, just has it as part of the setting.  I think that people finding the dark statements YotZ disturbing is what makes it so memorable.  Remind the reader that the setting is full of cannibals that want to eat your face, and odds are good that the guy next to you would toss you to them if he needed to save his own ass.  Give us a good kick in the teeth.

That's pretty much what I try to do.

QuoteAlso, the most important bit is that Tim understands the central truth of the zombie genre, that the zombies are not the real threat.  They are more of an environmental hazard.  It's the other survivors that'll fuck you every time.

Thanks. That's a compliment that warms my drunken little heart.

Quote from: T-WillardSo I have a choice of which way I can go. I can keep writing the way I am, or I can give into market pressure, and when I begin detailing settlements and adventures, I can follow the Hollywood-esque requests by people who tell me:

"I'd buy it if it was more like..."

You know the people with Hollywood-esque requests?

FUCK THEM.

Consider your game sold.