Cannibal Contagion

A Game of Psychobilly Zombie-go-Nuts

“Thrown into a world gone mad…

Where the dead won’t stay dead…

Where your best friend can become a murderous cannibal in a matter of minutes and won’t stop at anything in her quest to hunt you down and eat you…

…your characters must survive the chaotic forces of flesh-eating psychopaths that seek to consume them, and figure out just what the hell is going on – and how they can stop it. To help you, you’ll have an arsenal of savage weapons, and maybe some super-special hidden tricks up your sleeves. Better hurry up, though, ’cause the clock’s ticking, and when the stroke falls, all hell will break lose – like it hasn’t already!

Cannibal Contagion is a game of mental stress and violent survival against hordes of supernatural cannibals. The players use high-stakes playing-card battles to determine the outcomes of their actions, with a heavy focus on pure primal narrative and totally badass action. These pages contain a complete role-playing game, with rules detailing character creation, mechanics for resolution of mass-character conflicts, methods for generating your own custom Contagion effects, guides and advice on how to set up and run games, examples of rules in play, and a slew of quick-draw tables to help you jump right in and play without a moment’s notice. Read these rules, grab your friends and a deck of playing cards, and get ready for some zombie-murdering survival comedy (and horror!) adventures.

Playtesting

Cannibal Contagion is currently in a stage of “open beta” playtesting. The playtest rules are available for download. You can download them here, and also use that link to see any updates.

What makes Cannibal Contagion Different?

If you’ve ever looked through the shelves of your favorite local gaming store, I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed at least a couple of other games that already tackle the “Us Against the Undead” shtick. You may find yourself wondering what makes this game different from those other games. Perhaps thoughts such as “Man, another Zombie game? C’mon, bro, try something new!” have crossed your mind while looking through the book up until this point. But have no fear, this game brings something new to the table, and I’m here to tell you what that is: Cannibal Contagion is actually a role-playing game about Zombie survival, and not just a default role-playing game system with some Zombie monsters tacked on top. Those other games are lots of fun and several of them grace my shelves at home, but I never quite felt that they successfully brought the Zombie and the RPG together as one – as such, this game was written to fix that.

In Cannibal Contagion, the mechanics are built entirely around the concept of survival against the dangers of a mind-controlling enemy. Zombies are of course one of the most popular versions of that danger, but aliens, parasites, spirits, vampires, wendigo, and fundamentalist religious cults could all be effectively handled with the exact same approach: mechanics which could very quickly turn You into one of Them. How are Body Snatchers, Zombies, and Possessing Spirits really all that different? In this game, the abstract Infection rules are incorporated tightly into the core system, making the true threat of the Undead – that you might become one of them! – part of almost every action the characters take.