Dice Game of the Living Dead

In a recent blog post Grudunza asked for more solo dice games and also presented his own western-style attempt in the genre. I haven't tried his game yet, but his post made me want to take a shot at the genre. And since I love zombies (in a platonic kinda way) I immediately started writing up a zombie dice game where you move from safe house to safe house trying to make it out of an overrun city.

Grudunza also linked to this game:  http://www.history.com/expedition/game/ which I've played quite a few times these last days, and my own idea is obviously more than inspired by that game and Grudunza's western. What I felt lacking about the expedition game is that the dice hold so many hazards that you'll rarely benefit from rerolling a good result even if it's not the one you're looking for. But on the other hand I like the stories the different hazards - snakes, crocodiles,  fever, lions - tell.

I'm not gonna post all the rules until I've done some more testing, but I think I'm onto something that might work. As it is you control a party of survivors trying to move to the end of a trail and have to stop in safe houses. Depending on the squares you land on you'll have to fight zombies, and in the safe houses you'll both have to spend supplies, roll an event and check to see if wounded from your party turn zombie. Also, reaching each safe house has to be done within a time  limit. 

Each round you roll 5 or 6 (I'm working on the numbers) survivor dice and 2 scavenger dice - both D6. The survivor dice can give you movement and dice to use when fighting zombies, but they can also end up spawning zombies or costing you valuable time. Right now I think you can reroll the dice as many times as you want, but you have to freeze all ones and transfer them to the zombie attack pool. But I'm also considering having only three rolls where ones are still frozen. Twos are time lost, threes and fours movement and fives and sixes are transfered to a fight pool. 

Scavenger dice are rolled at the same time and can also be rerolled. Ones generate infected survivors (that can turn into zombies and cost you dearly in the safe houses), but scavenger dice can also net you weapons, supplies, and survivors. You are also allowed to reroll these, but not ones of course. 

After moving and scavenging you have to fight zombies. Some are spawned by the dice, others by the square you move to. Fighting is done by rolling all your fight dice. You may reroll untill satisfied, but ones are turned into more zombies (attracted by the fight). After this you roll the zombie dice and then compare. Weapons can give you extra dice or the ability to reroll zombie dice. The result will either be surviving, loosing party members or maybe being infected. 

What I'm hoping is that a lot of the dice rolls will tempt you to push your luck. And also the idea of infected that can potentially wreck havoc amongst your survivors is to give you the option of taking a risk. They might not die right away, but in the next safe house they can both die and kill others. Also I'm hoping that the time limit will create tension while working your way towards the safe house, whereas supplies will only gradually prove a problem. In the first playtest I found it strange that you didn't really have to manage your supplies in the first half of the game, but thematically I think it makes sense - food is not a concern in the beginning of an apocalypse.  So I hope that you in the first part of the game will have to choose between stocking up on supplies for later use or taking a chance hoping that enough of your party will have died off.

So, that's it for now. I'll use this blog as a design diary. Status is that I've tried the game a couple of times and the write-up above is my thoughts on what might fix the issues I had. In the first version, for instance, scavenging was part of the basic roll (fives would allow you to roll for scavenging), but that made getting supplies and weapons far to difficult. Time was also not a part of the first version and I hope it can help generate some tension. So stay tuned for more updates.