In the four months since it's initial release, the Year of the Zombie series has been the highlight for my gaming purchases. The quality is consistently high, the layouts are good and the production values are excellent. I should further note that the author and publisher both treat their audience with a degree of respect by providing mature, well-researched material rather than merely a shallow coverage of a true cornerstone of the modern horror genre.

Year of the Zombie - Fleshmongers (YotZ-FM), consists of a 50 page full colour PDF version (including 1 full colour cover page, 1 table of contents page and 2 OGL pages) and a 49 page printer-friendly version (no cover page, but including 1 table of contents page and 2 OGL pages).

YotZ-FM, UKG's latest product written by Tim Willard, tackles the area of slavery and those who make use of it in a post-apocalyptic world. It is a product aimed squarely at a mature audience who are willing to address and attempt to understand this area of social interaction that many rightfully find deplorable, disgusting and demeaning. Once again, however, the author handles this type of content without being gratuitously violent or unnecessarily flippant, describing an entirely possible horror of a kind different than the zombie hordes that roam the near-dead world. These are not nice people and, as Tim Willard states in his Author's Forward "This is a book of villains, their tactics, their methods, their equipment, and how they operate. No glory, no misunderstood diamonds in the rough, no showing a better society through slavery."

While the author's forward hints at what is ahead, the two-page introduction firmly sets the tone for the product at the outset. The social norms of the world have been turned on their heads and the strong can and often do take advantage of the weak. Where strong law enforcement once kept the scum of society in check, The Rising (the dead coming back to life) has swept away all of the barriers for those who would force their vile and violent ways upon others for their own benefit. As with Year of the Zombie, Tim Willard displays the roleplaying aspects of the flavour and "crunch" detailed in the product through vignettes as seen through the eyes of the iconic Year of the Zombie characters. We come to understand and share their abhorrence of what has become of certain members of humanity and, at the same time, are provided with a villain with an all too familiar face.

After the introduction, YotZ-FM leaps into a description of the likely appearance and tactics of slavers. Whether by identifying marks or a particular style of dress, slavers are revealed as the wretched jackals that they are, hunting their own kind and reveling in their power over the weak. Ranging in degrees of sophistication from a few hooligans with a van to entire communities marshaled and deployed with military precision, the slavers depicted in this product can provide a broad range of challenges, with a selection of strategies used by slavers and slaving communities provided here. The author also provides information relating to the degrees and forms of slavery likely to occur in a YotZ game, all of which could just as easily plug into most other post-apocalyptic games.

Also included amongst the appearance, tactics and forms of slavery is the Slaver Occupation. While I certainly appreciated its inclusion, the occupation would be out of place in a YotZ game beginning just prior to or immediately following The Rising, or any other apocalyptic event for that matter. Occupations are meant to be a background to a character and it is hard to imagine that many slavers would have had the opportunity to practice their craft prior to the social and legal norms of society falling to pieces. With this in mind, it would certainly be appropriate for several years into The Rising or for almost any other post-apocalyptic game where people could conceivably grow up with the Slaver Occupation as a real choice for their futures.

Add to the above a group of slaver equipment packages similar to those found in The Game Mechanic's seminal D20 Modern product, D20 Modern Player's Companion, and you have a well-rounded grouping of mini-chapters. The YotZ tradition of providing tables is continued here with the welcome inclusion of five tables enabling a GM to quickly determine random slaver equipment, including the relative quality of each piece of equipment. The author goes so far as to provide the common contents of slaver vehicles, both for beginner and established slaver groups, as well as seven new pieces of equipment likely to be found in the hands of slavers, ranging from netguns to shock collars.

Following closely behind the equipment section is the "first half" of the centrepiece of YotZ-FM: 15 pages of sample slaver NPCs and groups. Three groups are provided in small, medium and large group configurations respectively: a despicable four-man slaver group having coalesced from a common desire to inflict pain on the weak, a medium sized group of former mobsters and a paramilitary group of neo-Nazi skinheads. Of note in this section are the statistics provided for the first group of slavers, The Black Lake Boys. Statistics aren't just included for their initial incarnation as they would be shortly after The Rising, but also progressive statistics for six months and one year into The Rising. This creates the perfect recurring villains, starting as barely more than scum and evolving into something far more dangerous and violent. I particularly liked this inclusion. It makes for easy use in a game without limiting the GM to running this slaver group as a one-shot irritation.

Immediately after the sample slaver groups is the 11 page "second half" to the centrepiece of YotZ-FM: details on running slaver communities, as well as example communities ranging from a frightful "hillbilly family" led by an ironfisted matriarch up to full-sized communities that make use of slaves to tend their crops (one of the least hideous uses for slaves). These 26 pages cover quite a gamut of possibilities for slaver groups and slaver communities, with various tables for creating these demand-and-supply complementary groups spread throughout. At the end of this chapter, the barest rumours of Legendary Communities are supplied. While it is not implicit in the rumours of these massive communities, it is at least suggested that each community uses slavery in some way. It is also possible that UKG and Tim Willard are seeding the hints of future products in the Year of the Zombie range.

YotZ-FM is rounded out with 5 pages of sample vehicles, including statistics and descriptions of how they are equipped and very basic information on their crews. I thought that this section should have gone with the rest of the equipment, either by bringing the rest of the equipment to the back of the product or pushing the vehicles back before the sample slaver groups and communities. Regardless, these vehicles help provide even more "grit" to the acrid tone maintained throughout this product.

The layout is ok, but I would have preferred the two-column format used in the core Year of the Zombie PDF. Two-column format is just easier to read and digest, especially when moving between flavour, diary-style narratives and crunch. There are also at least a handful of editing errors in this product that were almost completely absent from Year of the Zombie, which is surprising. The artwork is, with the exception of a single piece of equipment, done in pencil. This flows well from the diary-style initiated in Year of the Zombie and complements this gritty and brutally realistic exposition of the post-apocalyptic world of slavers and slavery. The full colour PDF makes good use of electronic bookmarks, making it very easy to navigate from section to section.

Year of the Zombie-Fleshmongers is a good, solid product, roughly comprising 60% flavour and 40% game mechanics, so there's something for any buyer looking for a PDF covering slavery in the post-apocalyptic genre, especially in the D20 market. Far from resting on their laurels, author Tim Willard and publisher UKG Publishing have listened to their fan base and further improved the quality of their products while tackling difficult content for a mature audience. Year of the Zombie-Fleshmongers depicts slavery with enough vividness to spark the imagination and evoke horror without falling into a gratuitous trap of being "hardcore for hardcore's sake". At no time is there a feeling that this product has been written to, in any way, glorify or excuse slavery and as the author notes in his Forward, ?Slavery is the ultimate expression of the strong dominating the weak, and stripping away the rights and the basic humanity of other people?, something that is far from a worthy goal for heroes. Almost everything here makes sense, if not in placement then certainly in tone, and Tim Willard has provided us with a worthy and most detestable group of villains. And really, what are villains for but to provide moral, mental and physical challenges to a group of PCs?

If I could give a rating out of 10, this would get a 7, but out of 5 it deserves its rating of 4, if only because of the provision of high quality content at this price point. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The production values are high, the content caters to a mature audience without being gratuitous and the mechanics are good. I like that this PDF could be used for other post-apocalyptic games. I particularly liked the inclusion of sets of statistics for a group of slavers as it evolves over time.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I didn't like the layout and would have preferred the two-column layout used in the Year of the Zombie core book, if only to make it easier to read and digest. The placement of certain sections also seemed unusual. As with any product of this type, more samples are always good.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

This is the product that made me want to run D20 Modern.

As a long term gamer, I've built up a fair library of RPG products in print and in electronic format. As a dedicated buyer of RPG products in PDF format (for cost and usability purposes), including well over 100 PDFs from almost 40 different publishers, I've had the opportunity over the last few years to read a lot of PDFs that vary in quality from "waste of money" to "money well spent - I'd spend it again". This product sits squarely at the money well spent end of the scale.

Year of the Zombie (YotZ) has 8 chapters spread over it's 152 pages (including 1 cover page, 1 advertisement page and 2 pages for the OGL) that cover the world as it would be if George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead movies had come to "life". YotZ is the first in a series to be released by UKG Publishing.

The chapters are as follows:

Chapter 1 - Campaign Types: what kind of zombie game are you running? Chapter 2 - Time of Death: beginning the zombie campaign Chapter 3 - The Dead Walk: zombie templates Chapter 4 - Those Left Alive: new player classes Chapter 5 - Cause of Death: additional threats and hazards Chapter 6 - Lands of the Dead: locations of interest Chapter 7 - We?re Jacked Up & Good to Go, Sarge! Chapter 8 - Alternate Rules

Beginning with Chapter One, the author addresses the type of zombie game that a GM intends to run. While these may seem obvious, the 4 different types of zombie campaign give a clear direction as to where the author envisions this product being usable. Ranging from one-shot "Nobody Walks Away" games to long-term "End of Civilization" campaigns, the author ensures that each form of zombie involvement in your campaign is well covered and seeds several ideas for a GM as they read through. This chapter also covers variations to the style, including Dark and Gritty, Heroic and Mysteries After Death (an Arcana focussed style).

Chapter Two covers the timing of the zombie contamination threat. Advice for meshing YotZ into pre-existing campaigns as well as starting off with YotZ as the basis for a campaign is included, as well as more detailed examinations of beginning a campaign, ranging from a beginning a few days before the outbreak starts to a post-apocalyptic vision of the world overrun by zombies.

The first two chapters are pure gold for a GM intending on running a zombie contamination game and are well worth reading more than once.

Chapters Three and Four begin the "crunch". Various zombie templates are covered, including everything from the slow shambling zombies of Night of the Living Dead to the energised sprinting zombies of the newer Dawn of the Dead movie. The author made a conscious decision here to avoid the Return of the Living Dead zombies for several reasons, principally because a game involving them would be short and ugly for the players (intelligent, unkillable zombies? Unnecessarily nasty and uninteresting for a long-term game). The classes included in Chapter Four are, with one exception, designed for a YotZ game. Only the Lawman prestige class could reasonably see use outside of a YotZ or post-apocalyptic game. While new classes and feats are seen by some as almost obligatory in D20 products, these classes are flavourful and seem well balanced.

Chapter Five continues the flavour mixed with "crunch" and is focussed upon other hazards and threats in a YotZ world. Biological, chemical and nuclear warfare are covered (though the author does caution against heavy-handed use of these weapons), foreign troops on US soil, rogue military units, police, army, navy and air force troops are here and post-apocalyptic favourites such as slavers and raiders are included. Sample statistics are provided for every type of NPC threat. Disease, food/water and radiation are also covered, often with detailed tables relating to their use. Reference is also made to the Blood and Guts series of PDFs from RPGObjects as useful additions to a campaign that may be focussed on militarily inclined PCs (another good set of PDFs, if not narrowly focussed).

Chapter Six covers locations of interest. Everything from various types of military installations to mortuaries to airports are detailed here. Almost every likely (and even unlikely) destination for a group of survivors is detailed.

Chapter Seven covers new military equipment, including weapons, vehicles and other survival equipment. This is a solid chapter and gives a good jump-off point for anyone looking to increase the military flavour within a YotZ campaign.

Chapter Eight provides a series of alternate rules, including systems for bartering, improvised armour, specific hit locations, horror and insanity. Another good chapter of crunch targeted squarely at the zombie campaign flavour.

Throughout YotZ, sidebars provide specific advice for other areas that a GM may intend to include. Advice for robots, cybernetics, Arcana and Shadow-based D20 Modern games is given, along with brief discussions on how they may be implemented and affect the YotZ campaign.

One touch that I particularly liked throughout YotZ was a running story written as diary entries for a character named Becka. Through these diary entries, we gain a clear picture of how Becka (and the other characters) are affected by the crunch and flavour being described in the main text. The effects of radiation, the jubilation and trepidation of finding a military bunker and the disgust we should feel for slavers is all described in an engaging manner by Becka. These diary entries also help break up the intensity of taking in the amount of information we're given in YotZ.

There are very few editing errors for a product of this size and certainly none that made any descriptions unclear or unusable. The one pet peeve that I had was the poor bookmarking. With PDF technology being very customisable, I'd expected better bookmarking in this product. With only a listing of "Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3...", I found it a pain in the rear end to go back to the table of contents, and then use the bookmarks to jump to the page. The bookmarks should really have been a copy of the table of contents. Of course, if you intend on printing it, this won't be a problem.

The artwork is flavourful, spaced well and generally simple, though there are a couple of choice pieces. Some pieces are photographs of equipment or locations, while others are simple black and white drawings. Though the artwork is not the focus of this product and most of the 152 pages is given over to descriptions, advice and crunch, the artwork provides a good page balance while reading and gives a clear impression of the author's intentions on any particular page. There are also a handful of colour maps in the style of other UKG map products, meaning that a high quality is maintained in those few included in YotZ.

In short, I liked it. The concept is engaging, the crunch is flavourful and virtually all of the non-crunch information is directly applicable to games of this style, even those not using the D20 Modern system.

Go buy it already ! <br><br><b>LIKED</b>: A lot. Money well spent that I'd spend again in a heartbeat.

The concept is engaging, the crunch is flavourful and virtually all of the non-crunch information is directly applicable to games of this style, even those not using the D20 Modern system.

Read my review above for more details of why this is the product that inspired me to run a D20 Modern game.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The bookmarking was my pet peeve here. PDF bookmarks should be a copy of the table of contents.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

This is one of the best series of supplements for any fantasy game that I've had the pleasure of buying in the last 20 years.

It's well written, easy to use and contains "must-have" fantasy marketplaces, making the job of the GM a lot easier.

This product covers markets for goods relating to farmers, fishmongers, winemakers, textiles and clothing, bakers and butchers. It also includes a good livestock and monster market, including cattle, dogs, horses, goats, poultry, sheep and swine.

Another bonus is that it doesn't just cover markets. It also has a number of businesses that slide right into the marketplace theme, including public and private baths, a courier service and a laundry service.

Throughout Kaiser's Bazaar A, convenient and concise tables cover prices for goods and services, as well as map-fragments to cover various parts of the market.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Clear, concise, easy to use with little-to-no work required to fit it into any running campaign. I'm a happy customer and likely to be a repeat one at that.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Nothing. I'm so happy with the product that I bought the other "Kaiser's Bazaar" products.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

This is one of the best series of supplements for any fantasy game that I've had the pleasure of buying in the last 20 years.

It's well written, easy to use and contains "must-have" fantasy marketplaces, making the job of the GM a lot easier.

This product includes coverage of markets for spices, tobacco, musical instruments, spells and magic, spell components, scribe and artist supplies, cosmetics and glassworks.

Another bonus of this series is that it doesn't just cover markets. It also has a number of businesses that slide right into the marketplace theme, including an apothecary, a tattoo artist, an astrologer and a scribe.

Throughout Kaiser's Bazaar B (as with the other "Kaiser's Bazaar" products), convenient and concise tables cover prices for goods and services, as well as map-fragments to cover various parts of the market.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Clear, concise, easy to use with little-to-no work required to fit it into any running campaign. I'm a happy and repeat customer.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Nothing. I'm so happy with the product that I've bought the other "Kaiser's Bazaar" products.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

This is one of the best series of supplements for any fantasy game that I've had the pleasure of buying in the last 20 years.

It's well written, easy to use and contains "must-have" fantasy marketplaces, making the job of the GM a lot easier.

This product includes markets for wood, pottery and metals. The metals market in particular is very useful with tables listing mundane, alchemical, magical, elemental, extraplanar, celestial and infernal metals and alloys.

Several service businesses are included with bankers, commodities brokers, coin changers, coopers and woodworkers.

Throughout Kaiser's Bazaar C (as with all of the "Kaiser's Bazaar" products), convenient and concise tables cover prices for goods and services, as well as map-fragments to cover various parts of the market.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Clear, concise, easy to use with little-to-no work required to fit it into any running campaign. I'm a happy and repeat customer who can hardly wait for the release of other products in the "Kaiser's Bazaar" series.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Nothing. I was so happy with my "Kaiser's Bazaar" products that I bought the rest of the series as well.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

From start to finish, this is a top notch product.

This product goes from history to daily life to magic, all without breaking tempo or leaving any area untouched. The amount of cultural information is staggering and presented in an entirely RPG-friendly manner, providing highlights for areas that gamers are likely to be involved in ranging from crimes and duels to trade and travel. Without compromising the integrity of the historical and cultural information, the Fuzion system is effortlessly slipped into the setting and, even if the Fuzion system isn't your cup of tea, there are several pages of conversion information for many other systems.

The artwork is good, adding to the flavour of the product without being intrusive. The charts and sidebars are clear and easy to find. The ever-important indexing, referencing and table of contents is superb (an area many gaming companies barely give a cursory glance before publishing). Distances are converted into Imperial and Metric, along with the authentic-feeling Sengoku terminology. And O, the terminology ! Pages of name lists for men, women, surnames, first names, upper class, middle class, lower class, titles for priesthoods, titles for the military, titles for workers and peasants. All these things, completely rich in authenticity and clearly explained.

I've never been someone to just buy the latest product from a company because I already own some of their other products, but Mark Arsenault and Gold Rush Games might have just changed that.

I can't wait for more !