31 Days of the Walking Dead - Day 05

Day five but also March 30^th, 2010 for on this day I walk into Gyro’s basement (Man-Cave, Game Den, Dungeon of Forever Adventures, what-have-you) expecting to play anything, but, the best game EVER! At least for me anyways… I probably said, “this is awesome!” about a hundred times that night.

The game of such uber-ness? Fear & Faith by Ganesha Games.

By that time we had already played Songs of Blades and Heroes enough that it was, and still is, a great go-to-game for a tabletop miniatures fantasy game. But what about modern era? I really wanted to carve my niche in the group and I was wanting to do something with zombies and modern horror. That day it came at me like the horrible infection you would suffer when a crazy house-less guy, who later turned out to be a zombie came at you on your way home and bit you on the arm, in the form of Fear and Faith.

Fear & Faith takes the Songs of Blades and Heroes rules and adds the spice that makes modern horror such a fun genre to play in. It has just about every horror related goon you can think of. And if it doesn’t? Well Ganesha allows you to make up any creature you want with a nifty character/monster generator. It has vampires, it has werewolves, it has machete-wielding maniacs and best of all it has people… survivors really… for the hordes of zombies, the other guy fields, to snack on!

Fear and Faith is a very simple game to pick up and once you’ve run through it once or twice you’ll be a pro. This game utilizes a D6 based system and mechanically there are only really two stats you have to worry about. “Quality” and “Combat”.

“Quality” affects the overall ability to activate your characters. For each character you have on the field you can activate them, through a predetermined order, with the roll of one to three dice. This is a bit of a gamble depending on your characters’ quality score. Say you have a “Quality: 3” character, well you will need to roll a three or higher to successfully activate that character. The gamble is if you roll two or more dice and fail on two or more dice, your turn ends. So, if you roll two or more failures on your first character, your turn ends and you do no get an opportunity to activate your other characters.

“Combat” affects your fighting ability. If your character is engaged with a foe in hand-to-hand combat, each player involved rolls a die. You must both achieve your combat scores or better to successfully trade blows. If a figure fails his roll he is thrown to the fate of the dice roll. If his opponent rolled an even number he is knocked to the ground. Whereas with an odd number the figure is pushed back a base width away from his opponent. It is very quite simple and straightforward.

My likings for the mechanics are not what drew me to Fear and Faith however. Although easy and simple are a good prerequisite. The theme and overall feel I have while playing this game just sucks me right in. It’s AWESOME!

(Personal experiences of Fear and Faith may differ from game to game. Biscuit can not be held responsible if your love for this game does reach the level of awesome he has achieved.)