The eponymous Coil.
"A Storytelling Game of Tragedy, Mortality, and Freedom."
Life is a cycle: we're born, we live, we die.
But what happens when someone doesn't stay dead?
This fan-made game set in the Old World of Darkness asks that question, exploring just how far someone is willing to go to stay "alive" once given a second chance. It’s an extremely nihilistic world where your next meal may just be someone you cared for, or who cared for you. Perhaps, if you can fight off the survivor's guilt, the Fever and your Lich, you may just find an answer to it all. Or maybe you'll just become yet another Yuya.
The rulebook
and character sheet are hosted courtesy of Fandom VIP Mr Gone.
Tropes seen:
- Amnesiac Dissonance: When a zombie is Born, they'll remember very little of their previous life, which is represented in game mechanics as Whispers. The number of Whispers one begins with depends entirely on their state of decomposition, with those who start out appearing less like a human remembering more of their past life. By following Compulsions (routines they once had in life), they will eventually gain access to more Whispers. As such, when one becomes a zombie, a lot of things will change, to such an extent that a zombie would unlikely be able to recognize their old self. However, were a zombie to ever hit ten Whispers, then it will remember everything of their old life. Their old personality is reborn within them, andm as such, they have a few options: one consumes the other, relegating it to the subconscious; they are in equal balance; or they fuse, and the zombie will experience a third Birth.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: A possible result of transcending Mortality. Maybe. All that
Gobi has said about it is that it is possible, and that it is similar to Transcendence or Ascension.
- Bilingual Bonus:
- Grandes and Féos are Spanish for "large ones" and "ugly ones", respectively. The name of the Zahn cell comes from the German word for "tooth".
- Knochen, the name for the Living Dead who are too decayed to pass for normal humans translates as "bone" in German.
- Brain Food: If you're strong enough to crack open the skull, you can gain the maximum amount of Viscera for eating a human by eating the brain.
- Church Militant: The Echelons organize themselves with religious titles: the grunts are organized into Choirs, above them are Preachers who run the choirs. Parts of cities are overseen by Ministers who have their own special choirs, which are populated by under-priests, who spy on the choirs to make sure they stay good little zombies. Then there are the Cardinals who run the city.
- Crapsack World: Several Cells work to make the life of the average Living worse, since it makes it easier to feed that way. You know that charitable organization working to improve the nearby slum? The one that got shut down? It was cutting off their access to easy bodies.
- The Dead Have Eyes: Actually, that depends on their state of decomposition. If they don’t, then their Meridians provide replacements that equal the vision they had in life. To the point that many of them need glasses, just like in life.
- Enemy Without: The status as such for Liches, since they are the personal nemesis of every Zombie, and take the form of the nearest dead thing when a zombie is at its weakest. Note that ‘dead thing’ can include
animal corpses, the human they just ate, the nearest wooden house... - Evilutionary Biologist: Found in the Lanmora, Pulse Wave, and the Seraphim, to varying degrees.
- Fantastic Racism: Grandes consider Jackals disturbing, sick and twisted monsters for eating the flesh of the dead (they call it "ripened"). Jackals call Grandes murderers and cannibals. Both groups look down on the Féos, referring to them as the mindless Walking Dead.
- Government Conspiracy: Theorized to be one of the reasons that Hounfars seem to be lessening, that the government is covering up the news, possibly to keep the Living Dead isolated.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: What is the botch result for Impuestos? The Féos try to eat you.
- I Am a Humanitarian: What kind of Humanitarian is the difference though: Grandes eat the living, Jackals eat those already dead. Sometimes including reshuffled Living Dead.
- Mana: Viscera, the energy of life perverted into death. Zombies regain Viscera exactly the way you think they would - by eating people.
- The Masquerade: The Haze (the Coil causing the Living to forget) and the Zombies themselves make sure to keep the reality of the Living Dead a secret.
- Mercy Kill: This is the justification for the Mercies cell: they eat the dying/those who would commit suicide anyway, and keep it as painless as possible.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Jackals can gain Viscera from devouring zombies as easily as any other rotted flesh.
- Our Angels Are Different: There is a cell known as the Seraphim. They like to go for the Old Testament look. It isn't pretty.
- Our Zombies Are Different: They come in two playable flavors: Grandes and Jackals. Zombie bites are not infectious. All start as Féos, the Walking Dead, consumed by their Fever. After their Birth, they become either Grandes or Jackals, depending on how they got their Birth meal — Grandes eat the living and Jackals eat the dead. Around one in four Féos actually experience Birth.
- Shout-Out:
- Several, although probably the most humorous one is where the Zahn sneer down at a small internal faction that claims to have found evidence of an “international organization of blood-drinking aristocratic families has been manipulating the mundane population for the past several centuries as pawns in their own interpersonal wars and conflicts”.
- During one hounfar, a Pulse Waver used the Impuestos Viva to control a bunch of Féos to re-enact a dance sequence from a famous music video.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Sufficiently high levels in Erzulie allow the user to pull this off.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Salt, the bane of all Zombie existence. Theories include that its chemical properties interact poorly with the Zombie ichors, or that as the symbol of life it combats the unlife that zombies represent.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The leader of the Dalinari, Charlie Rayburn, goes from nice guy wanting to enact social change through eating the guilty, to this, to outright insanity.
