Welcome!

What is this?

Infected is a tabletop roleplaying game about living through (or failing to live through) an eldritch apocalypse.

What do the characters do? 

They fight the dead, look for safe places, husband their resources, get hungry, tired, and stressed, heal and blow off steam, get infected, squabble with each other some, fortify their location, travel from here to there.  Pulling the camera back, they look to get long-term security, and then to build on that.

What do the players (including the Guide) do? 

The players declare what their characters are doing.  Players are expected to 'be on the side of' their character all the time; if you're not advocating for your character, well, nobody else is gonna be. The Guide takes the actions of the players, nods along a lot, refuses the sillier bits, presents and pushes the active elements of the situation, and calls for rolls when they'd be a good way to handle actions. The Guide also 'sets stakes', telling the players how they can spend the dice that come up successful on rolls - including to stop bad things happening as much as make good ones happen. The Guide doesn't roll dice. 

How does the setting reinforce what the game is about? 

The apocalyptic setting pushes for action and scarcity.  It means the Guide always has fodder to put 'survival pressure' on the characters, all the time, and has creatures and challenges at their fingertips to bring to the table.

How does character creation work with what the game does? 

You pick a character type, and customize; it takes all of five minutes. The character types all are good at (and pretty centered on) things that survival groups need. 

What types of behavior does the game invite? 

Besides the basic action, the structure of the game encourages playing characters as a bit mercenary, ready to be brutal about cutting losses and handling resources.

How are behaviors rewarded or punished in the game? 

Playing generous good guys is pushed against by needing to feed everyone (though groups are free to take that as a challenge, of course; it's just meant to make things harder). Being all lone wolf is a nice way to die fast. 

How is narration and credibility divided in the game? 

Almost purely in traditional-gaming fashion, with the exception that the Guide never "hides mechanics" for extra credibility. The Guide just decides things. 

What does the game do to command engagement?

The Guide does that, by pushing and present opportunities, dangers, and mysteries. The game supplies a bunch of those, as well as ways for the Guide to organize them into situations, and advice on getting the characters deep into those situation.

What are the resolution mechanics of the game like? 

You roll a number of of d12s equal to your action rating (a number from 3-6, on your sheet as a series of dots). Dice that score under your relevant attribute (a number from 5-8) are counted as "hits". Then you spend your hits to get good stuff and avoid bad stuff - whatever the Guide sets as "the stakes".  There's a whole list of actions that are likely to be worth rolling dice over, with ready-made stakes and quick notes on ways to change those up.

How do those reinforce what the game is about? 

The mechanics mean you will often need to make choices on how you use hits. Get hit, and take this Shamble down, or avoid all the hurt and hope your allies do better? Use up resources on this, and do well, or hang onto them, and do poorly. Lots of that. 

Do characters in the game advance? If so, how? 

They do!  They get XP, and improve stats and skills, paying more and more the higher they raise those numbers.

How does that reinforce what the game is about? 

A competent group can move from run-and-hide to fight-and-win to establishing and defending, into a post apocalypse where they're doing okay. Or not. 

What sort of play will the game to help a group achieve? 

Fairly light entertainment, a bit of shock and horror of the sort a horror-action movie can give. Strategy, creative planning, priorities and dickering over those. And, of course, the characters may well be near the edge of desperation, and players will be able to feel why.

What areas of the game receive extra color? 

The undead themselves have a whole ecosystem going on, which in turn meshes with a whole string of action in the rules where characters can get infected, get a bit of symbiotic action with the awfulness, and so on. This is to give a lot of room to interesting and weird stuff - making the blight cthonic, letting the characters turn into half-dead monsters, bringing on an "alien earth" post-apocalypse will all be on the burner as options. The fictional "future history" presented in 218 (a free download, written as a "riff" on RPGnet) goes into this stuff in a lot of detail.

What does this game do that similar games don’t? 

I've cut away most of the things that games often have just because "you need one of those", without paring down into ultralight territory.  Everything in the game is about, and tuned to, the undead apocalypse.

I'm interested!

Excellent! Over on the right side of this page, you'll see a link to the Infected archive, which includes fiction, art, and to the current version of the rules. Click away!