Alive Inside: Pick your apocalypse and fight to survive it

Alive Inside is a tabletop survival horror RPG from Headless Hydra Press.

The Kickstarter is to fund the quickstart rules, one supplement and the first setting, that of a zombie outbreak and adventures set in rural Vermont. The project’s ambition is to release core rules and other settings so you can pick your apocalypse and fight to survive it. There are more than two weeks left to run, and the Kickstarter has met funding goals.

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For free, you can download the Alive Inside Quickstart Guide from the publisher’s site, and that’s already been updated to version 1.02.

So, the Kickstarter funds the Quickstart, but there’s another version sometimes called (I think!) the Quickstart Guide that you can get for free now. The Alive Inside core rules might come later, depending on how well the project goes.

There’s also a Headless Hydra Press DriveThruRPG with a Pay What You Want product and reviewers of previous publications.

The project should now deliver character sheets, encounter cards, double-sized battlemap posters, a GM screen, poster art, art prints, pre-genned characters in survivor folios, blood splatter dice, a map of Kershaw County, Expanded Equipment and Adversaries (24 pages), the Kershaw Country Outbreak adventure (64 pages) and the QuickStart rules (64 pages).

5e touches Alive Inside, and you’ll see d20s in the mechanics, but Headless Hydra Press have merged in a d6 dice pool system, so you balance random with risk-reward decisions.

Player characters, also called Survivors, scrounge for supplies, combine their wits, and fight against horrific monsters. The Kickstarter includes a 1st-5th level adventure set in rural Vermont during a zombie apocalypse, but the Expanded Equipment and Adversaries booklet will also include adversaries for running scenarios involving an Al uprising, alien invasion, radioactive mutants, and supernatural abominations.

That Kershaw County Visitor Map, in digital, and $5 in Pledge Manager credit is the reward for backers at the $5 tier.

Then, at $25, backers are rewarded with the Quickstart, Kershaw County Outbreak adventure, the Expanded Equipment & Adversaries PDF and the Visitor’s Map. There’s also the survivor sheet/character sheet and a special mention in the quickstart guide.

At $35, backers are also given digital DM screens, digital art, encounter carts, pre-genned survivor folios and battlemaps.

Backers who can support at $60 or more unlock the physical products as rewards and Headless Hydra are up for sending Alive Inside worldwide. At this tier backers get all three books and the dice, blank character sheets, and poster map.

A deluxe box set is there to reward backers at the $99 tier, adding those physical battlemaps, more goodies, the GM screen, minis and art.

Headless Hydra go higher, though, with an apocalyptic warlord bundle on offer at $149 which layers on more digital and physical copies and a t-shirt with a VIP thanks.

The top tier, $225, has a healthy number of backers and just three slots left to add in a 3d printed Survivor RV mini and the name of a NPC.

The indie publisher estimates they’ll ship the whole Alive Inside campaign by December 2024. That’s a safe date but suggests we won’t see full rules next year and not before 2025 at the latest.