Review for Infected Zombie RPG Scenario: Keep Your Friends Close

I've been following the Infected Zombie RPG for a while now.  It has some amazing post-apocalyptic art, great plot hooks, and exceptional support from the designer.  Recently, Immersion Studios (publishers of Infected Zombie RPG) released a scenario for the game and I was keen to check it out.  Immersion Studios sent me a pdf of the module, for the purposes of this review.

Keep Your Friends Close builds on the existing fiction of the game, as described in the rule book.  This won't affect your ability to run the module if you don't have the main game though; this scenario could be dropped into any number of post-apocalyptic game campaigns, or run as the one-shot that it's described as.

The PCs are part of a diplomatic crew in the service of a warlord's railways. A particularly crucial train is coming through the mountain bottleneck to dock with an oil refinery. The whole railway is short on oil, due to mounting attacks from enemy-affiliated groups, and this train only has enough diesel to get through this route. But something's not quite right in town. Though they're friendly enough, there's an underlying tension. Something is up...

The art is realistic and very good.  The NPCs are fleshed out well and many are fully statted out.  The story is well-crafted, and will appeal to a mature audience--there are some serious things happening in this scenario, and Immersion Studios believes you can handle that.

A few times, the tactical locations of the PCs in relation to the NPCs will matter, so you'll want to be clear about locations, range, and spacing if you play this scenario "theater of the mind."

There is a lot going on behind the scenes in this adventure; the GM will need to keep in mind how the actions of the players affect the NPCs, as well as how and when NPCs will affect and interact with the players.  I would consider Keep Your Friends Close to be an intermediate to advanced scenario to run, potentially very challenging for a newer GM.  I strongly recommend reading through the entire module before running it, as a lot of events are time and reaction dependent.

Finally, you get a lot with this scenario, for a low price.  I recommend picking it up, for your post-apocalyptic needs.

Keep Your Friends Close scenario

Infected Zombie RPG