More ZAMB

While it's on my mind here's some of Bryce's ad hoc artwork from this year's game that I mentioned in the last post.

Also, among the house rules I've been working on is a change in how the zombie attack works, rules for zombies affecting hunting pressure, allowing hunting of zombies instead of game to bring down the zed level, and possibly allowing the theft of victory points by allowing a player to skip the procreation phase and attempt to bond with an existing child. Player would need to roll 16 or higher on 3d6, +2 for watching the child, +1 for each other player attempting to lure the poor child away from its parent.

Miscon and Zombies Ate My Baby

Another Miscon ended with us playing ZAMB. Ten weeks later I still need to sort out some of the house rules, but a few things were immediately apparent;

• The rolls for crafters need to be changed to 3d6 instead of 1d6 for consistency
• We have tried several different ways for crafters to "cure" food - there needs to be a consistant method that doesn't vary too much. For next time it will be allocate 18 food and roll 3d6 the roll determines how many rations convert to non perishable, the rest are destroyed/lost.
• Bryce needs to do more drawings for the cards - they're great.
• Change the events table to 1 large one to be rolled and individual events that occur on doubles.
• Better zombie v tribe rules.
• Poker chips for food tokens. The record keeping system is sketchy and lends itself to  communal play while chips would make players feel they own what's in front of them.

Miscon follow up

While I had intended on running several miniature games this year, I ended up running just one, a Strange Aeons game. It went over well with the three players I had. Unfortunately I took no pics, but I will when I run it again at the August game day here in Missoula. I may even take it on the road for Spokane's upcoming game day as it is not too terrain heavy.

What did go over well was my Zombies Ate My Baby!  adaptation of Steve Jackson's Tribes (formerly Darwinopoly) game with eleven players. The play was relatively nonchalant until zombies broke through the defenses and ate half of the tribes children. Yep, half. Talk of annarcho syndicates and fundamentally capitalist systems went out the window as players turned to scavenging in hopes of finding better weapons which in turn led to a collapse of the food system and eventually a life on the edge.

The scavenge rules worked well, a couple of tweaks to the existing rules were made to streamline things, and the notes for next game are;

• The scavenge deck needs to be balanced. The MRE cards were too plentiful, though they saved the tribe. Make most of them smaller in size and perishable (Food Cache?).
• a better food counter needs to be made. Tokens slow down the play, but do keep people honest.
• Removing the breakage die roll worked. To balance it out double 3,4,5, or 6s break an item for a proficient user ( hunter with spear, gatherer with basket) 2-6 for a non proficient user.
• Pregnancy can be hard to remember - use a two sided token to mark the time.
• Starvation rule - adults may pay 3 food instead of four but move from strong/average to average or weak.