Graveyard Earth Review
Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 12:46 pm
Ok. Here we go. I received a copy of Graveyard Earth in my last Christmas Grab bag and have sat down and read it cover to cover.
First off. Nice front cover. The art is really cool there. The book is listed as written by Matthew Clements. The Fifth Sourcebook in the line.
It weighs in at 64 pages and $13.
So it's not a large book by any stretch. I'd actually thought it was a bit larger. one of the 96 or 116's, but it's not. It's 64.
Taking out art that leaves you with 50-55 or so pages of text. There's not tons of art in this one.
Now for the substance. I'd like to start this review by saying: I like Matthew Clements' work. He's done some good books for Palladium. So I was really looking forward to this one.
With that said, it's not his best work.
These are the bullet pints advertised.
The state of the world. Adventure ideas galore.
Survival tips and many random generation tables for travel, survival, and Safe Havens around the world.
The Zombie World Tour presents how the Wave and the Zombie Apocalypse have played out across the globe. Every country in the world has been touched and changed by the rise of the dead.
Random Safe Havens by region.
Many Random Tables for Settings, Safe Havens and more.
Random Survivor Leaders, Zombie Threat Level Table and more.
Trapped abroad? How do you get home in a zombie-filled world? Data and tables for aircraft landing conditions and travel by road and by sea.
A must-have book for players and Game Masters alike.
Adventure ideas for every corner of the world.
Starts with a little bit of opening fiction. Half a page or so. Not bad. Dude's having a bad day. Then it goes into "a dead world" and "Alternate Campaign settings" By this it's about half a page on Developed countries vs non Developed countries. A bit on how different governments responded to the wave and rise.
Sounds neat? Pretty cool? Could have been. Just.. Wasn't. It's a paragraph each. Saying pretty much "Nice countries got it hard as they treated the zombies like sick people and tried to help them. Countries run by mean dictators just started blowing folks away. Dead or not"
This was the first indication I had that something might be 'off' with the book. I'm not sure --why-- but many of the entries are just.. shallow. Now this might be due to a very small page count, so you can't go into too much detail in any one thing, or it might just be that these are pages that were shaved off a bigger book. I'm not sure. But many of the entries through the entire book are very very shallow in their depth. Just barely grazing the surface of the topic being discussed at the time.
There's a page an a half or random location tables. One for which continent you re on. Then there's tables for the US, Canada, Mexico, SA, Europe, etc. With subregions there. US For example has Northeast/Newengland, Midwest, Floridia and the south eastern coast, deep south, Texas and the south west, Colorado, utah Nevada and western interior, PNW, Alaska and the Caribbean.
Then we get to the "ZOMBIE WORLD TOUR"
YEAH!!! One of the big selling points of the book.How other countries and parts of the globe look and or delt with the wave and the zombie rise. This starts on page 10 and goes through page 24. So, that right there might give you pause. That's not a lot of room to give information on 100s of countries and 7 continents etc. It actually gets worse.
For one, large sections of text are almost zombie like in their repetition.
It goes by sub region, like the one's mentioned on the tables above. Each entry has 'The wave' ' The Dead rise' and 'world of zombies' entries. But they repeat themselves over and over. Only the region and city names change for the most part. Big cities? LAND OF ZOMBIES!! Well yeah we know that. If nothing else we're 5 books in on this RPG alone but those playing Dead Reign are going to be zombie fans and they know that cities are swarming with the undead. But it's stated.. over... and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and over taking up word count and page count, over and over and over and over and over.
"those that fled the cities, fared much better"..... Over and over and over and over.
"Those in remote areas will face fewer zombies. (Be that.. Mountains, or remote wilderness, extreme climates) Over and over and over and over.
Now 1) This is information we all pretty much knew, but 2) It really is Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.
Considering that it's only 14 pages for the information, if you took out that repetition, you might only have 5 pages of information. It really is repeated that much.
Now, there are variation. Each region has a different name. And there's different cities, and or countries in there. But the same thing is repeated so much that it reads like a broken record.
Every once in a while you see minor details that are of note. There are caves in the deep south, Cheyenne Mountain in the Interior, (Where people might be surviving, or everyone inside might be dead) Portland burned to the ground creating alot of fused zombies, etc, but these details are spread among the entries and are not that regular.
This is also where..... Hurm.. what to call it.... "Stereotyping" Seems to run rabid. Canadians? Are all loggers or Mounties or Eskimos! Mexico? Full of Drug Cartels that run everything and ride around in pick ups with machine guns. These come up in a later section but you start seeing them here in the slight variations.
There's just not much information here. Industrialized countries got zapped hard. Cities suck. Wilderness is better but then the people run out of supplies and have to venture back into the cities.
If you typed that out and then collected all the 'differences' from the entire world tour (Other than the sentence above) you'd have 4 or 5 pages. Maybe. MAYBE.
Then you go into encounter tables. Broken up by the same regions above. This is where that. Stereotyping gets really bad. I'm not kidding. Canada has three things you can roll. Burly loggers with axe handles and pics.... Mounties (Half of whom have their horsys!) And or Inuits. That's all you run into, in Canada.
Mexico? Cartels. Farmers, Rancheros, or Federales! South America? Rebel Groups, Llama farmers (I'm not kidding) Ranchers, or Indigenous peoples. Middle East,: Taliban, Religious guys. Rogue Military's Or US/Coalition forces (More on these later)
These... tables are....well "Racist' isn't the right word. I don't really know the right word. Stereotypical to an alarming degree? I mean.. "Canada's just loggers, mounties and Inuits?" Mexico has been reduced to Cartel Drug dealers, and Federales? It'd be almost funny, but.. it's kinda not. I felt a bit uncomfortable reading it. Again it's not 'bad' for the most part, but it is glaring. I'm not sure if it's 'offensive'.... I'm sure some could easily see it that way.
On page 31 it starts for Potential Safe Haven Locations:
It starts... by yet again telling us that cities are bad, because "The reason is simple: zombies by the gazillions" (Direct quote). Hospitals are bad. (And we all know why) and Walmarts and stuff are bad, because everyone rushed to them during the wave and rise.
Then it goes into some possible safe haven sites in Developed urban environments. These are kinda interesting nd a bit larger than other entries in the book. Amusement arks, Churches, Farms, Graveyards, etc. As a note it encourages Malls, after saying Walmarts were death traps.
Another point of note, they REALLY like parks and nature preserves. That entry itself gets almost a page. Kevin steps in and starts talking about ones around the palladium offices. (You're told it's him writing. I'm not making an assumption) The entry is quite large (Especially compared to others in the book) It gets a page, (Split over two) While Police Stations for example get 1/4th a page and Skyscraper would only get 1/6th a page
Those were nice. Nothing ground shaking but nice. Page 36 starts "Global Regions of Note" Mines, Mountain Retreats, oil fields, Stadiums, and a good entry on Missile Silos. Again, you start to see that sterotyping again. Canada's entry. "Logging camps. Mine. Hunting lodge. Ski resort" Mexico: Caretel Hacienda, Isolated llama ranch, Military compound. It kinda punches you in the face. There's a few gems spread around in here. Castles in Europe, and mention of the underground catacombs like under Paris and the Vatican.
Just a couple of pages on these tables though.
Then another big selling point o the book. "Walled Cities"
Someone asked about these in another thread.
Sadly it fails in delivering it. It's a page of information. Total.
Of that information it's just.. bleh. It contains 'Ancient walled cities" which they do point out are few, and far between these days and often just built up and into normal cities, including houses and businesses built into the walls these days making them less than really useless.
Then Castles. Which I guess you could consider cities in the old days. Then "modern military stuff" sort of like the Green zone in Iraq. (But it's been stated most of those were overrun from the inside out during the wave and the rise. Then debris barriers and natural boundaries. Like 'Valleys'.
That's it? Really? *looks around and shakes book* Very disappointing.
A page or two on safe haven ships. More repetition. "Boats are good!..... Till they run out of gas. Then they have to return to shore where there's gazillions of zombies waiting to eat you. You see that a few dozen times in the book.
Then it goes into A thousand Miles of Dead. "Getting home in a world ruled by zombies"
A bit of information on how we lived in a global community and thus, lots of people were in different countries when all this went down, and want to get home. Then random tables on why you might have been overseas or such. (Not sure that's needed. I mean you know if you were a student, or military unit deployed, etc. But like many Palladium things, the "Totally random RP experience" seems to be big and built in)
How do you get home? Land. Air or Water. (You're told this.)
It then gives tables like "Random car problems" and Road encounters. The problems, eh. Any GM could figure that in half a second though the Road encounter's table could be useful. Then it does it with planes and boats. Problems like "Flying is hard. Landing is hard, especially with out knowing if the runway will be clear, and boats are great till (Yep you guessed it) You run out of fuel and have to return to land. A few more random tables here.
There's a some what neat "Survivor Leader Table" With things from Celebrity Rockstar, to Outbreak investigator. This table I could see getting used if the GM just wanted something off the cuff. It'd be like finding Tom Petty in charge of those guys in that one Cosnir flick. lol
Then come the Survival Tactics from Brad Ashley.
You get two pages on "Don't get treed" and why it sucks. In a book this 'small' with other entries clearly neutered save for GLARING sterotypes.. two pages on "Don't get up a tree" and actual tactics on how to get out of a tree... *winces* There's a page on the 20 items that Brad Ashely carries with him. neat for those gamers that are not... gamers. lol Or survival trained. Thing is most gamers I know, know how to outfit their chars', but this is still nice to see. I was a bit surprised to see them suggest 2 or 3 gallons of water per person at all times. It's smart. It's logical. It's VERY VERY VERY needed. Water that is. It's just strange to see it typed out, that of your gear, they say you need to dictate 8 to 24lbs to water carried on your person at all times. That's alot of water to be toating around. Heavy water. It's totally needed but I've never seen someone with 3 gallons of water on them at all times, + survival gear +weapons.
The next 5 or so pages are on US forces over seas. About how they are deployed and either... want to get home, or are saviors of their area (At least for a while)
One important note here. It -does- say straight up that DR is set in 2008. Thus there's loads of military in Iraq and such, and are very different from 2015. Then it talks about getting home. which is 90% rehash of the other section saying the same thing. Except military units are more prone to have pilots and things to fly which might make it easier. A nice subnote on Subs.
The last page and a half gives a few story hooks.
So that's the book. I won't say it's 'bad'. But it seems like... it might have been more? and got hacked apart for space? Or... might have been less and slapped together to make a book? Some entries are severely lacking, some are strangely big (A page on parks and how awesome they are and over looked, two pages on how not to get in a tree and rules and suggestions on how to get out of a tree?) Loads of Repetition. And that ----weird--- stereotyping thing.
It... didn't deliver for me. I mean technically it touches, as briefly as possible the points from the bullet points but .... It's like.. you're advertised an awesome meat lovers pizza! And they tell you how awesome it is. And you order it, and you get a cracker with a slice of cheese, a pepperoni, a sausage and a bit of bacon on it. It's all there, but it's just the smallest taste of what was promised. With no real explanation as to why you're only given that taste.
Not a bad book. Alot of stuff you likely already know. Alot of wasted space.
is it worth the $13? Eh... I don't regret buying it. (Like I have a couple of books) But I wouldn't rush out to do so, had I known.
It's more than "JUST" tables, but.. .yeah. Well. Your mileage may vary.
I like Matthew Clements work. This one just wasn't his best. Not sure if he was constrained or what.
First off. Nice front cover. The art is really cool there. The book is listed as written by Matthew Clements. The Fifth Sourcebook in the line.
It weighs in at 64 pages and $13.
So it's not a large book by any stretch. I'd actually thought it was a bit larger. one of the 96 or 116's, but it's not. It's 64.
Taking out art that leaves you with 50-55 or so pages of text. There's not tons of art in this one.
Now for the substance. I'd like to start this review by saying: I like Matthew Clements' work. He's done some good books for Palladium. So I was really looking forward to this one.
With that said, it's not his best work.
These are the bullet pints advertised.
The state of the world. Adventure ideas galore.
Survival tips and many random generation tables for travel, survival, and Safe Havens around the world.
The Zombie World Tour presents how the Wave and the Zombie Apocalypse have played out across the globe. Every country in the world has been touched and changed by the rise of the dead.
Random Safe Havens by region.
Many Random Tables for Settings, Safe Havens and more.
Random Survivor Leaders, Zombie Threat Level Table and more.
Trapped abroad? How do you get home in a zombie-filled world? Data and tables for aircraft landing conditions and travel by road and by sea.
A must-have book for players and Game Masters alike.
Adventure ideas for every corner of the world.
Starts with a little bit of opening fiction. Half a page or so. Not bad. Dude's having a bad day. Then it goes into "a dead world" and "Alternate Campaign settings" By this it's about half a page on Developed countries vs non Developed countries. A bit on how different governments responded to the wave and rise.
Sounds neat? Pretty cool? Could have been. Just.. Wasn't. It's a paragraph each. Saying pretty much "Nice countries got it hard as they treated the zombies like sick people and tried to help them. Countries run by mean dictators just started blowing folks away. Dead or not"
This was the first indication I had that something might be 'off' with the book. I'm not sure --why-- but many of the entries are just.. shallow. Now this might be due to a very small page count, so you can't go into too much detail in any one thing, or it might just be that these are pages that were shaved off a bigger book. I'm not sure. But many of the entries through the entire book are very very shallow in their depth. Just barely grazing the surface of the topic being discussed at the time.
There's a page an a half or random location tables. One for which continent you re on. Then there's tables for the US, Canada, Mexico, SA, Europe, etc. With subregions there. US For example has Northeast/Newengland, Midwest, Floridia and the south eastern coast, deep south, Texas and the south west, Colorado, utah Nevada and western interior, PNW, Alaska and the Caribbean.
Then we get to the "ZOMBIE WORLD TOUR"
YEAH!!! One of the big selling points of the book.How other countries and parts of the globe look and or delt with the wave and the zombie rise. This starts on page 10 and goes through page 24. So, that right there might give you pause. That's not a lot of room to give information on 100s of countries and 7 continents etc. It actually gets worse.
For one, large sections of text are almost zombie like in their repetition.
It goes by sub region, like the one's mentioned on the tables above. Each entry has 'The wave' ' The Dead rise' and 'world of zombies' entries. But they repeat themselves over and over. Only the region and city names change for the most part. Big cities? LAND OF ZOMBIES!! Well yeah we know that. If nothing else we're 5 books in on this RPG alone but those playing Dead Reign are going to be zombie fans and they know that cities are swarming with the undead. But it's stated.. over... and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and over taking up word count and page count, over and over and over and over and over.
"those that fled the cities, fared much better"..... Over and over and over and over.
"Those in remote areas will face fewer zombies. (Be that.. Mountains, or remote wilderness, extreme climates) Over and over and over and over.
Now 1) This is information we all pretty much knew, but 2) It really is Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.Over and over and over and over.
Considering that it's only 14 pages for the information, if you took out that repetition, you might only have 5 pages of information. It really is repeated that much.
Now, there are variation. Each region has a different name. And there's different cities, and or countries in there. But the same thing is repeated so much that it reads like a broken record.
Every once in a while you see minor details that are of note. There are caves in the deep south, Cheyenne Mountain in the Interior, (Where people might be surviving, or everyone inside might be dead) Portland burned to the ground creating alot of fused zombies, etc, but these details are spread among the entries and are not that regular.
This is also where..... Hurm.. what to call it.... "Stereotyping" Seems to run rabid. Canadians? Are all loggers or Mounties or Eskimos! Mexico? Full of Drug Cartels that run everything and ride around in pick ups with machine guns. These come up in a later section but you start seeing them here in the slight variations.
There's just not much information here. Industrialized countries got zapped hard. Cities suck. Wilderness is better but then the people run out of supplies and have to venture back into the cities.
If you typed that out and then collected all the 'differences' from the entire world tour (Other than the sentence above) you'd have 4 or 5 pages. Maybe. MAYBE.
Then you go into encounter tables. Broken up by the same regions above. This is where that. Stereotyping gets really bad. I'm not kidding. Canada has three things you can roll. Burly loggers with axe handles and pics.... Mounties (Half of whom have their horsys!) And or Inuits. That's all you run into, in Canada.
Mexico? Cartels. Farmers, Rancheros, or Federales! South America? Rebel Groups, Llama farmers (I'm not kidding) Ranchers, or Indigenous peoples. Middle East,: Taliban, Religious guys. Rogue Military's Or US/Coalition forces (More on these later)
These... tables are....well "Racist' isn't the right word. I don't really know the right word. Stereotypical to an alarming degree? I mean.. "Canada's just loggers, mounties and Inuits?" Mexico has been reduced to Cartel Drug dealers, and Federales? It'd be almost funny, but.. it's kinda not. I felt a bit uncomfortable reading it. Again it's not 'bad' for the most part, but it is glaring. I'm not sure if it's 'offensive'.... I'm sure some could easily see it that way.
On page 31 it starts for Potential Safe Haven Locations:
It starts... by yet again telling us that cities are bad, because "The reason is simple: zombies by the gazillions" (Direct quote). Hospitals are bad. (And we all know why) and Walmarts and stuff are bad, because everyone rushed to them during the wave and rise.
Then it goes into some possible safe haven sites in Developed urban environments. These are kinda interesting nd a bit larger than other entries in the book. Amusement arks, Churches, Farms, Graveyards, etc. As a note it encourages Malls, after saying Walmarts were death traps.
Another point of note, they REALLY like parks and nature preserves. That entry itself gets almost a page. Kevin steps in and starts talking about ones around the palladium offices. (You're told it's him writing. I'm not making an assumption) The entry is quite large (Especially compared to others in the book) It gets a page, (Split over two) While Police Stations for example get 1/4th a page and Skyscraper would only get 1/6th a page
Those were nice. Nothing ground shaking but nice. Page 36 starts "Global Regions of Note" Mines, Mountain Retreats, oil fields, Stadiums, and a good entry on Missile Silos. Again, you start to see that sterotyping again. Canada's entry. "Logging camps. Mine. Hunting lodge. Ski resort" Mexico: Caretel Hacienda, Isolated llama ranch, Military compound. It kinda punches you in the face. There's a few gems spread around in here. Castles in Europe, and mention of the underground catacombs like under Paris and the Vatican.
Just a couple of pages on these tables though.
Then another big selling point o the book. "Walled Cities"
Someone asked about these in another thread.
Sadly it fails in delivering it. It's a page of information. Total.
Of that information it's just.. bleh. It contains 'Ancient walled cities" which they do point out are few, and far between these days and often just built up and into normal cities, including houses and businesses built into the walls these days making them less than really useless.
Then Castles. Which I guess you could consider cities in the old days. Then "modern military stuff" sort of like the Green zone in Iraq. (But it's been stated most of those were overrun from the inside out during the wave and the rise. Then debris barriers and natural boundaries. Like 'Valleys'.
That's it? Really? *looks around and shakes book* Very disappointing.
A page or two on safe haven ships. More repetition. "Boats are good!..... Till they run out of gas. Then they have to return to shore where there's gazillions of zombies waiting to eat you. You see that a few dozen times in the book.
Then it goes into A thousand Miles of Dead. "Getting home in a world ruled by zombies"
A bit of information on how we lived in a global community and thus, lots of people were in different countries when all this went down, and want to get home. Then random tables on why you might have been overseas or such. (Not sure that's needed. I mean you know if you were a student, or military unit deployed, etc. But like many Palladium things, the "Totally random RP experience" seems to be big and built in)
How do you get home? Land. Air or Water. (You're told this.)
It then gives tables like "Random car problems" and Road encounters. The problems, eh. Any GM could figure that in half a second though the Road encounter's table could be useful. Then it does it with planes and boats. Problems like "Flying is hard. Landing is hard, especially with out knowing if the runway will be clear, and boats are great till (Yep you guessed it) You run out of fuel and have to return to land. A few more random tables here.
There's a some what neat "Survivor Leader Table" With things from Celebrity Rockstar, to Outbreak investigator. This table I could see getting used if the GM just wanted something off the cuff. It'd be like finding Tom Petty in charge of those guys in that one Cosnir flick. lol
Then come the Survival Tactics from Brad Ashley.
You get two pages on "Don't get treed" and why it sucks. In a book this 'small' with other entries clearly neutered save for GLARING sterotypes.. two pages on "Don't get up a tree" and actual tactics on how to get out of a tree... *winces* There's a page on the 20 items that Brad Ashely carries with him. neat for those gamers that are not... gamers. lol Or survival trained. Thing is most gamers I know, know how to outfit their chars', but this is still nice to see. I was a bit surprised to see them suggest 2 or 3 gallons of water per person at all times. It's smart. It's logical. It's VERY VERY VERY needed. Water that is. It's just strange to see it typed out, that of your gear, they say you need to dictate 8 to 24lbs to water carried on your person at all times. That's alot of water to be toating around. Heavy water. It's totally needed but I've never seen someone with 3 gallons of water on them at all times, + survival gear +weapons.
The next 5 or so pages are on US forces over seas. About how they are deployed and either... want to get home, or are saviors of their area (At least for a while)
One important note here. It -does- say straight up that DR is set in 2008. Thus there's loads of military in Iraq and such, and are very different from 2015. Then it talks about getting home. which is 90% rehash of the other section saying the same thing. Except military units are more prone to have pilots and things to fly which might make it easier. A nice subnote on Subs.
The last page and a half gives a few story hooks.
So that's the book. I won't say it's 'bad'. But it seems like... it might have been more? and got hacked apart for space? Or... might have been less and slapped together to make a book? Some entries are severely lacking, some are strangely big (A page on parks and how awesome they are and over looked, two pages on how not to get in a tree and rules and suggestions on how to get out of a tree?) Loads of Repetition. And that ----weird--- stereotyping thing.
It... didn't deliver for me. I mean technically it touches, as briefly as possible the points from the bullet points but .... It's like.. you're advertised an awesome meat lovers pizza! And they tell you how awesome it is. And you order it, and you get a cracker with a slice of cheese, a pepperoni, a sausage and a bit of bacon on it. It's all there, but it's just the smallest taste of what was promised. With no real explanation as to why you're only given that taste.
Not a bad book. Alot of stuff you likely already know. Alot of wasted space.
is it worth the $13? Eh... I don't regret buying it. (Like I have a couple of books) But I wouldn't rush out to do so, had I known.
It's more than "JUST" tables, but.. .yeah. Well. Your mileage may vary.
I like Matthew Clements work. This one just wasn't his best. Not sure if he was constrained or what.
But anyway, please take care; thanks a bunch, and have a good day.