WORLD WAR Z (for fans of The Zombie Survival Guide)

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from Fangoria.com:

Max Brooks' ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE sequel

Former SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE writer Max Brooks has a follow-up book to his best-selling ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE due early next fall from Random House. Titled WORLD WAR Z, the tome is another deadpan look at the undead genre. “WORLD WAR Z is an oral history of the future zombie war,” Brooks tells Fango. “The idea is that 10 years after the great global zombie epidemic, I go around the world as a reporter and interview survivors. The book is a serious-intentioned collection of their stories. All the rules of THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE apply here. Basically, anyone who has read the first book could survive in the second one.”

As with his first effort, the comedy scribe (son of Mel) keeps the laughs off the page. “This one’s pretty much straight darkness,” says Brooks, who has fielded Hollywood offers to turn THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE into a movie and has already spun off the book into a popular college lecture tour. “WORLD WAR Z’s a serious oral history with an emphasis on authenticity. With the exception of a little creative license, I’ve tried to make everything in the book real. Well, except the zombies.”

For each hour he spent penning the nearly 400 pages of WORLD WAR Z, Brooks says he spent another five hours researching and fact-checking everything (weapons, military protocols, medical terminology, foreign cultures, etc.), an intensive process (learned from Tom Clancy!) that totally caught him off guard. “I knew I’d have to do a lot of homework,” he notes, “but I could have never known how much I didn’t know! Some of the real-world facts I discovered were a hell of a lot scarier than the living dead!”

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The full article can be found HERE
Amazon.com listing HERE

(Apparently, the film version is due out in 2008.)

pax
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[Killer Cyborg]

Absolutely AWESOME!!

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I loved the Zombie Survival Guide, now it seems that I have to go buy yet another book…

Well, you've got until September to save up for it

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What happens in September?

The book is set to be released in hardcover on September 12, 2006. List price is $24.95.

[Kalinda]

Just finished reading World War Z for the second time (in one week!) and I have to say that it's a very well done book with lots of potential source material for games. It's a broad overview of the zombie war told after the fact through interviews with a wide variety of people who fought in and survived the conflict. There's little actual description of fighting in the book, but it's riveting and at times touching all the same. I highly recommend it as both a book and a game resource.

Between this and the survival guide, you could easily set up and run a long term game, or a series of shorter games in the World war Z setting. Possible scenarios include playing investigators or soldiers sent to deal with small outbreaks in the months and years leading up to the final huge outbreak, standard survival horror, with the PCs being normal people trying to survive the panic as things fall apart, or military games in which the PCs are soldiers trying to hold back the hordes and rescue innocents. You could also run a long term game with the PCs taking on the roles of major players in the efforts to rescue as many people as possible, form strong defenses and 'safe zones' where the humans can rebuild and eventually counterattack to reclaim the world from the undead.

Like I said, all manner of undead killing goodness.

[Trooper Jim]

I read both books, and loved them both. WWZ was a very fast read for me. I really got into it. I think it would make an awesome game setting, myself.

[Chuck Lang]

Do you need to read the Survival Guide before reading WWZ?

[Chuck Lang]

Absolutely not,

However, there are a few easter eggs hinting at the "Civilian Survival Guide" in World War Z for those of us who read the former.

Great books both of them, I have had World War Z for only 3 weeks now, and I just finished my second reading tonight. My Zombie Survival Guide, on the other hand, is well read and even has its cover duct tapped from some of the beating it took.

The main reason I ask is because I've been trying to weigh in other RPG books I want to get and $12 brings it above the comfortable spending level for me. Thanks for the info.