Army of Darkness

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Army of Darkness can refer to either an action horror-comedy movie from the 1990s that is decently popular with older /tg/ denizens, or else it refers to the official licensed adaptation under the Unisystem mechanics printed by Eden Studios.

The World of Evil Dead

To understand the setting of the Army of Darknes RPG, you need to know the details on the world it comes from; the world of Evil Dead. This was a trilogy of horror movies that began in 1981 with the original film, The Evil Dead. In this film, a bunch of college students come out to a remote woodland cabin, only to discover their getaway was poorly chosen; the last guy to use the place was a scholar of ancient texts who had come out here to study an ancient Sumerian tome - called the Naturom Demonto here, but later changed to first the Necronomicon and then the Necronomicon Ex Mortis in the subsequent films. Whatever name it goes by, it's a book of black magic, containing rituals for necromancy and demon summoning. And, wouldn't you know it, the dumb schmuck unwittingly cast one of the demon summoning spells, calling up a fiend that killed him - and also recorded himself doing so, meaning that these dumb schmucks inadvertently cast it themselves when they listen to the old crackpot's recordings to try and figure out what happened here. Under siege by body-snatching, zombifying demons, the students try to fight them off and are ultimately killed off, leaving a single survivor: Ash Williams.

This was followed by the first sequel in 1987; Evil Dead 2: Dead by Daylight. Part retelling, part sequel, it recaps the basics of the first movie's story, then has a new bunch of idiots show up at the cabin and inadvertently release the demons once again. This leads to more carnage and a botched banishing ritual that hurls Ash back through time to a vaguely Medieval Europe.

This becomes the setting for the third film in the trilogy; Army of Darkness (NEVER called "Evil Dead 3"). Stranded in the past, Ash is forced to help a local king battle against an outbreak of demons who have possessed a literal army of skeletons in order to recapture the Necronomicon and get sent back to his own world.

The Game

As a game setting, Army of Darkness doesn't really stray too far from the mold established by other Unisystem games. You have three different "Character Types", which roughly represent the power levels of the game; Primitive Screwheads (the weakest, suited for the gritty-type games), Heroes (moderately powerful, the "middle tier"), and Experienced Heroes (the biggest badasses, powerhouse). What separates these guys from the likes of the Character Types seen in All Flesh Must Be Eaten (Norms, Survivors, Inspired) or Terra Primate (Pre-Heroic, Heroic and Powered) is that Experienced Heroes are not your supernatural character type, but instead just get way more points to spend on Attributes, Qualities and Skills. In fact, Army of Darkness has no Supernatural Qualities at all, with the closest being the "Promised One" quality that lets you represent your character is an Ash-esque Destined Badass Type.

The corebook offers a complete atlas of the primitive kingdom where its namesake film takes place, and also offers up several alternative "Worlds of Darkness" for your gaming pleasure. Gilga-Ash has a similar time travel plot, but throws you back to ancient Babylon, in the days when the Book of the Evil Dead was first being assembled from human flesh and blood. War is Hell has a Deadite outbreak occurring during World War II (oh, those wacky Nazis - can't leave evil zombie-summoning magic trinkets alone, can they?) with the option to play either time travelers, temporal natives, or both. Finally, The Future Dead is a Post Apocalyptic setting inspired by the alternative ending to the Army of Darkness film, presenting a world where the Deadites have taken over.