I purchased this book under the impression that I was going to drag a handful of players through a zombie infested city, instead I found a book that will allow me to not just run a game for 4 or 5 friends but for a club of 50. Once I seen that the O's through out the book are to check off what has been looted and the endless empty room descriptions are there for me to write in extra notes to say "group 1 ransacked, group 2 used as supply dump and group 3 died in here" this book after a little bit of reading will allow plenty to have minimal preperation games that will keep players on edge and demand creative play. I cannot recommend this book enough to people that want to play in a semi-historic setting with endless oppertunities for tension and horror.

It's hard to not draw comparisons with the video games, Darkest Dungeon or Bastard Bonds, while reviewing this supplement. The players are probably criminally accused, doing penance for some crime by being forced into servitude and likely execution by undead. The meat of the book is backstory and city layout, with informational box maps that can serve as guides for making your own maps but, not seriously for direct use. The PDF is bookmarked, which is good, making it easy to navigate between different sections if you are using the book in real time. The loot tables have items that are sensible for the setting and quite mundane which is fine but each of these items is preceded by a number of O's that I don't understand the significance of. The loot is so mundane that it could have been represented by a table reference for boring loot, rather than listing each candlestick or old boardgame you find in a drawer of an empty bedroom. This is a setting book. While there is a 40ish page bestiary, which holds very versatile ideas for different kinds of zombies and hoards, the book is for atmosphere and there is perhaps, too much of it. There are so many details that you may never need to know and this is a hard turn for the publisher, who normally puts out supplements with much less detail under the assumption that GMs are capable of combining and creating to assemble their list of minor nothings when they need to. As someone who is a fan of their previous works, I find myself skipping through heaps of this book. The lore is fascinating and not a single aspect is wasted though and that is what I really need to immerse myself, then my players in this world. The maps are useful but the breakdowns of each room, especially when empty, are not. Is it worth it? Yes. Is it perfect? No but none of it is necessarily useless to everyone, just not useful to more experienced GMs. I highly suggest getting this if you like to read to yourself for several weeks before starting a game though, as again, the lore is top notch.

It would take a lot of prep work for this book to be usable at the table, which is a shame since if it was better organized it could be a pickup and play City crawl.

The lack of a proper side index makes it difficult to flip to one section of the city vs another quickly. I'm physically cutting the sides of the pages on my copy to make it usable but it would be better if this wasn't needed.

It also tries to add a mechanic related to sound attracting zombies based on how far away they are but I have no idea how that would be used practically since you would need to keep track of every zombie within 1600 feet. Probably it would just be easier to invent your own random zombie system than use the one in the book.

Also since it's trying to be compatible with 4 different systems(DnD5e, Grimdark, LotFP, MB), the bestiary entries can feel bloated, pushing out the page count and making it harder to use.