Welcome to Mortiston, USA!
Welcome to Mortiston, USA! is a multi-platform zombie campaign setting written by Mark Cookman and published by Scrying Eye Games.
By Aaron T. Huss
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Welcome to Mortiston, USA! is a campaign setting guide for a zombie apocalypse that takes place in the city of Mortiston. It is multi-platform and based in a fictional town with no given location so that it can be placed anywhere within the US (most appropriately in the continental US). While the basics of the zombie invasion is obvious, the setting concentrates more on the people, the place, and the given timeline surrounding Mortiston and its new zombie population.
Designed for multi-platform use, Welcome to Mortiston, USA! contains stats covering Savage Worlds, Outbreak: Undead, OGL (d20 Modern), Pathfinder, and Rotworld. This is prevalent in the personalities stats and in some of the location stats. Otherwise the book is written from a very universal stand-point for easy adoption into any system. Even if you don’t want to use those listed, the descriptions contained within provide ample direction to run your own zombie campaign in whatever system you prefer.
CONTENT
The introduction sections contain very valuable information including a city map of Mortiston noting the included locations, a primer to the campaign setting, and the ever-important timeline up to Z-Day. Even if you don’t use the personalities within the book, the map and the timeline are enough to build an entire campaign from with plenty of detail in subsequent pages.
The Personalities of Mortiston provides a listing of 19 people of interest within Mortiston and includes an in-depth description, locations during the different outbreak levels, stats for the given platforms, and a list of equipment (without stats). These are representative of the NPCs available in the game along with providing a reference for player characters being created.
Places of Interest in Mortiston is much like the personalities in that it provides more detail about what can be found in Mortiston (with many locations being tied to a personality). 29 places are detailed and includes background information, a description, a look at what personalities are there, relationships that location has with the different factions of Mortiston, available resources, a look at their timeline in relation to the campaign’s timeline, and Stronghold stats for Outbreak: Undead.
The Factions of Mortiston details the different groups that reside in Mortiston, adding to the chaos about. This is a brief look at what the different groups are and further details can be found in the personalities that are part of those groups.
Post Z-Day Timeline of Mortiston is the detailed timeline of events after Z-Day occurs and the zombies are loose.
Behind the Veil: Gamemaster’s Notes provides further notes for the game master to use when running the campaign including a look at what other options are available for enhancing the chaos or giving the player characters some direction. This includes a look at other locations within the city that don’t require full detail.
What Will Michael Do? is a bit of a secret for those playing the campaign and thus will not be revealed. Just know that this adds depth to the campaign and setting for the game master to use.
OVERALL
Welcome to Mortiston, USA! is a great zombie campaign setting filled with opportunities for memorable game sessions. The best part is that the campaign is not scripted but rather is presented as a large listing of people, places, and events the player characters can interact with and possibly change. The end result is truly dependent upon how the player characters act and react to what’s going on around them.
RATINGS
Publication Quality: 8 out of 10
Welcome to Mortiston, USA! is a good-looking book. The content gets a little squeezed here and there to save space but otherwise looks good. The best feature in regards to quality is that every personality and every location has an accompanying illustration. This really helps to further flesh out the details of the character for any given platform, providing another outlet for flexibility and options to the game master.
Mechanics: 10 out of 10
Keep in mind that Welcome to Mortiston, USA! has plenty of stats for personalities and the ones for Stronghold in the locations section. But that’s not what makes this a 10 out of 10. What makes the mechanics so perfect is that everything within is detailed in a way that the game master can easily translate everything into their own mechanics given the applicable details, descriptions, illustrations, and whatever other information is contained therein. Because the campaign is not scripted from beginning to end, the game master can further translate this into different scales of difficulty depending upon the groups desires.
Desire to Play: 9 out of 10
Welcome to Mortiston, USA! makes a great campaign or at least a great sourcebook. Its presentation makes the campaign setting quite valuable to those wishing to run a zombie apocalypse. By providing stats for different platforms, direct translation into multiple systems is made that much easier. But possibly the most desirable aspect is its flexibility. The player characters are the definite driving factor to the outcome of the campaign, not the campaign setting itself.
Overall: 9 out of 10
If you’re looking for an easy way to jump-start a zombie apocalypse campaign, Welcome to Mortiston, USA! is a valuable resource and campaign setting. It basically has everything you need except for the zombie stats. Just plug-in the zombies you wish to use and away you go!
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