Zombie Town...Build as you go Zombie Apocalypse Survival Game

Here's a sneak-peek at a side project of mine that I've been playing with for about six months.  I've been playing with card board hand drawn tiles with friends and family up to this point, but I'm about ready to run my first batch of official cards.  Once I do this I'll feel better about allowing others to play test, as they will not only get to comment on the game play, but the look and feel of the cards and tiles.

Zombie Town is getting close to being ready, but my biggest problem has been maintaining focus on this, I keep coming up with more game ideas, that I seem to have to pursue enough to get a good idea about how the game would "feel", then I go back to Zombie Town for a little bit.

Essentially Zombie Town is a typical zombie apocalypse game, the survivors are attempting to accomplish an objective, but they don't know what it is until all the streets have been placed, only then do they finally draw the mission objective.

The map is constructed by alternately linking Crossroads with Streets, such that the tiles "fit" together.  Then once the streets are gone an objective card is drawn, and the buildings can be explored.  The objects range from finding particular items and reaching a specific tile, to fixing a vehicle, to fortifying a building, to last man standing, to first one to 50 kills, to each drawing there own objecting, and more.

The end result is a game with very high replay-ability that you don't know what you really want for a map until you have your objective, but by then the map is already fixed, and they just have to explore the building.  I'm thinking of an alternate style where the building can explored as well earlier, but they could not cause the map to grow in height or width, so essentially you would need to know where the roads were going before a building could be explored...little more complex to explain, so I'm leaning toward the other where of initial planning.

The difficulty mechanism is determined by the over all activity level.  It's assumed there are infinite zombies, but only those near the activity are initially drawn to the area of the survivors.  The activity level increases by one for every turn a survivor takes, and again at the end of each round based on the number of noise that was made by the survivors over all.  The more the activity level increases the harder the game will get, as the main determining factor for what type of creature is encountered is based on the current activity level.

The enemies are collectively called "Zombies", but the actually type of creature encountered can be anything from a rat swarm or infected animal, to a shambler (slow moving once dead human) to various types of infected humans (faster moving still considered to be alive), to the Zombie-King (similar concept of a Rat-King) and then there's the Horde (a large mixture of various types of creatures gathered in an area).

The Streets and Crossroads really determine the map size and shape, the Building are where the majority of the items can be found.  In the typical game the buildings cannot be explored until all the road cards have been explored.  There are four more types of cards: Events (drawn by first player at the start of every Survivor phase), Items (drawn when a player removes a search token from a tile), Doors (drawn when a survivor attempts to enter a building), and the Building Propose (used to determine the type of building that was explored, or sometimes the current use of the building).  These are in addition to the Objective deck that was previously mentioned.

The current thinking is to possibly release the "Basic" version with just the Streets, Crossroads, Objectives, Events and most items, to keep cost down and allow people to try it out cheaper, than have a "Buildings Expansion", that will add the Building Tiles, Doors and Building Propose, as well as more items...and possibly other cards.

The game can be scaled by adding more Street & Crossroad cards that must be exhausted before building can be searched, this can allow for more people to play or could be used to increase the difficulty.  Or the opposite could be done as well, where less cards to be used to allow for less players or a solo version, or to increase the likely hood of winning.  Guideline will be provided for recommended number of players for easy, difficult and hard-core games.

Crossroads or Intersection cards:

Street cards (join Crossroads together, and provide location of building doors)

Building cards show the interior of building and the interior layout and possible interior room exits (these exits are trumped by roads, in which case they become doors).

HitDice Complexity Scale

One of the design goals of the Hit Dice gaming system was to only use as much complexity as the game required.  To do this I really have defined four attribute levels, which I'm color coding as Bronze, Copper, Silver and Gold.  These are simply game categorizations, that will essentially define in rough terms how complex the game mechanics are.

The simplest games will use only the Bronze level ones, these are essentially the core attributes or Stat block items that every game that uses the HitDice system needs to function.  Games that use only the Bronze level will function a lot like a board game.

This "Simple" games will essentially define base levels for all other stats that the game will allow/require.  This means that some of the games may still use a Gold/Silver/Copper level ability, but rather than every hero having a different value, they simply define every hero to have the same Rank, so rather than echoing it on every character sheet, it's simply defined at a global level...as well as defining a rank for all undefined items (I'll cover that a bit later).

Bronze level items are essential the heroes Pools (things like Life, Energy, Destiny) as well as a hero's Speed.  So that every HitDice game allows these items to vary between hero's.  But for the simplest of games they may define a hero as having 10 Life, 5 Energy, 4 Destiny and 4 Speed, which are modifiable via items found or skills learned, but essentially every one is playing the same build.

Copper level games allow for different combat abilities ABCD: Accuracy, Battle, Control and Defense.  These games allow for the basic hero archetypes to begin to be defined.  You can have high-Health/high-Battle tank types, or high-Accuracy/high-Destiny shooter types.  Typically the archetypes will have high in a couple, offset by low in others.

At the Copper level is where the basic combat heavier or skirmish games will typically fall as the basic archetypes along with equipment/loot stacked on these will make for sufficiently complex battles to be created.

Basic role-playing board games types, as well as overlord style games will fall into the Silver level.  These add the idea basic skills that a hero will be able to do.  These will fall inline with the archetype expectations of what that hero "should" be able to do.

Here would be a typical "Silver" level character card:

A "Copper" level would essentially have all the smaller circle abilities removed, and "Bronze" level would just have the Health, Energy, Karma and Speed, along with a generic Attack.  Though to it may state something like -1 with two-handed weapons or +1 with ranged attacks, which is similar in function as the different attacks, but handed with another mechanic rather than adding other types of attacks.

Now at the Copper level using a convention such as Skill and Item cards, you can get the same variety as the Silver level without having to define the Silver level skills.  This would work by possibly defining all skills at Rank 2, then having abilities like "Keen Vision" or "Magnifying Glass" granting a +1 Rank each to the skill of "Searching".  Then you can get the same variety as the Silver level with Copper level attributes, but custom game mechanics add the require level of complexity.

Gold level games would essentially to the traditional RPG type games that would give similar game play experience as Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder or Savage Worlds.  These define all the standard skills on a per hero customizable on archetype/template basis, that are further customizable through hero advancement.

Essentially their would be a Platinum level of a HitDice game, this would expose the underlying hidden attributes that are used in the defining the base archetype templates, but since these are really not used after character creation I typically don't list them on the Gold hero sheets.

I'm currently spending most of my free time working on Zombie-Town which is essentially the simplest game I have using HitDice rules on, which falls into the Bronze level.  Then I've got Dun-Jion which has both Copper and Silver type rules, but only Silver hero card.  For the Copper level you just don't really use the skills.

Then as a double-check and end-to-end complexity check I've been working more on the full RPG version of the rules as well.  This has caused a few ripples through the general game mechanics as I've worked out how I wanted the game to function at that level, and what the implications of the change would be at the other levels.

So getting back to the increasing complexity and adding variety of the Bronze level game.  In Zombie Town (ZT), I simply define all attacks rolls are done at Rank 1, then add the weapon modifier onto that rank.  Same thing goes with "Searching", in advanced games (Silver+ level) this would use perception, but for ZT searching is defined at a Rank 3 roll, adjusted by the location modifier and possibly item modifier as well.  Hero's in ZT still add variable play styles and function as they have different pool values and speed attributes, but other than that are mostly defined by their equipment.

This about sums up the complexity scale, so that people can roughly determine the games implementation of the HitDice rule set.  Essentially Bronze and Copper play more like board games, where Silver and Gold begin adding more traditional RP elements to the game.

Dun Jin, Build as you go "Dungeon Crawl"

Dun-Jin is a fantasy map building game that uses the HitDice gaming engine.  The objective of the game can be randomized or selected, in either case all players know what the goal is at the beginning of the game.  Everyone starts in the entrance/exit chamber and may proceed in any direction that is available.


The game uses random Hex shaped tiles, that are broken into two decks, Halls and Rooms.  When exploring a Hero typically draws a Hall tile, but if there is a door they may draw a door card and is successfully bypassed, then they get to place a Room tile behind this door they explored.

I'm currently torn right now by using a Random Token system to be drawn after a room tile (which is the current implementation) or to implement this directly on the Room Tile cards (which would improve the art), but also increase the size of the Room Tile deck and lock the number of entrances to that particular room.  The current implementation is to Draw a room, and then Draw both Room Token and Contents card.  The token must be drawn first as some room types don't get a contents card, but rather have their contents specified.

The game objective is recommended to be chosen by player consensus, or possibly voted on, but many different schemes can be applied here.  For first time play the one of the co-operative objectives are recommended, where the party is playing as a team to "Win" the scenario.  There are a number of different types of these as well, but the common goal is to "Defeat the Boss" or "Pay the Toll".  In every type of game there is always an "End of Game" that is based on the number of turns or collapsing corridor mechanism, if this occurs then all players lose.

I'm playing with the idea of a "class-less" basic version where, essentially your skills are weapon dependent, so changing to a different archetype is essentially as easy as switching weapons.  That said, I do have classes or more correctly character types created, that probably will make it into the base version, which will make different characters more adept at different skills, these also have different starting items.

The heroes in the game can advance using a number of different methods, by exploring tiles the hero earns exploration tokens, these can be spent to improve various abilities.  By defeating monsters a hero earns Experience, which can be used to learn different skills and abilities.  By finding various support characters in the dungeon they my buy different items from them or learn different skills at the cost a gold, possibly with an exploration token or experience point cost as well.

Other ways to improve your hero is by finding items or materials to craft your own items out of, or by finding a shop in the dungeon one can buy (or even steal) items from these locations.

This game is designed as either an intro to a fantasy RPG with definite loss/win criteria, with some elements of role-playing mixed in.  The game is much more mechanical than a traditional RPG, but could be used as an introduction as to what an RPG feels like, as far as having a character with equipment and skills, and using these to the best of your ability to accomplish a goal.

The game also has the concepts of character advancement, shopping for items, crafting better gear, and a few other mechanics such as traps, puzzles and decisions that one would find in a typical RPG, but again these have a much more game-mechanical feel then what they would find in a full role-playing system.

I'm working on a number of different expansions to this game, which will allow it to be played as a 1:1 skirmish style or team vs team for more than two players, as well as an Overlord expansion where one player will setup scenarios for the other players, which will get even closer to a traditional RPG, but still bound many of the rules in more of a board game "feel".

The ultimate "end of the rainbow" idea here being, the full release of the HitDice RPG engine, with essentially everything learned in each of the other games will now fall into the Game-Master (GM) and Players realm, in which the story is told by the GM and players each control a hero in a fully open game system.  This was actually the first thing that I created, but have been working to fit it into a "step by step learning framework", that could be mastered one expansion at a time, as a road map for kids or introduction to adults that haven't played an RPG before.

All of these games will exist in the same "Game Universe" which is the already created world of Kraterra, the land of the Crater.  Which will not only help solidify the link for one expansion to the next, but provide increasing world knowledge from those that progress from "Dun-Jin" to ...

Modular RP System

Through my 30+ years of gaming I definitely see from the mistakes of the other gaming companies (TSR and Wizards of the Coast), and I can see these and other what things really works well.  Then expanding on the different ideas that I've learned from the multiple game types within the single HitDice game system, here is what I'm thinking about when it comes to the campaign style RPG.

The game needs to maintain the modular feel, somewhat the way that the old GURPs system was developed, but more so in terms of rules, and not so much in terms of genre (but it seems they would be just as plug-able).

In 2nd edition AD&D I liked the "Complete" series of books, but at the same time I didn't like the cost, as the collector in me had to have them all.  I largely skipped 3.5 and PathFinder  from the stand point of having to own everything, and the in 4E I was back at it, and pretty much have every book, even though I have many problems with the game system...Which is sort of why this blog started with me having to "fix" all the issues I had with 4E missing many of the RP elements of an RPG.

Anyway, back to what to keep and what to throw away...The "Red Box" set was great, it gave you Fighter, Magic-User, Thief, Cleric and even gave you Elf, Dwarf and Halfling as classes, but it only gave you 1st to 3rd level.  On top of this is gave you and adventure and monster stats for only the most basic and common creatures that one could expect to encounter from 1st to 3rd level.

I do like this idea, and I'm thinking that the above, combined with the "Iron Heroes" style of "The One Ring" has even a better idea.  This way it leads to sort of the ultimate in simplicity and streamlining of play.  By removing the Arcane, Primal, and Divine archetypes from the game, players still get to choose from Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Archer, Rogue, Thief, Assassin, Martial-Artist and Knight type characters, again leaving out the advanced abilities of these archetypes to keep the rules lean.

Items can still possess magical properties, and so can creatures, but GM's can opt not use these and simply play an "Iron Heroes" campaign, or if GM's want to allow the Arcane archetypes, that supplement can be used to add spells, wands and potions to the game to give the Wizards, Summoners, Alchemists, Warlocks and Sorcerers choices within a campaign...Then Divine, Psionic and Primal would have additional supplements that would fully wrapper the rules that encompass these types of archetypes.

The game system is not one that is "Level" based, it's a skill based mechanic, such that the levels found in D&D and Pathfinder don't exist, however the game-play style is what you would find in these systems from about 4th level to probably what a 10th or 12th level character would be in Pathfinder (those more familiar with 4E leveling it would go from about a 6th level character to probably 18th or so).

So with that leveling scheme in mind the "Basic" books in a supplement would essentially start a hero about 4th level and allow them to progress until what they might look like around 8th (or just about paragon in 4E language).  Then the advanced supplements would allow the heroes to achieve what one could do in the next level range.  To me there would be little advantage in explaining beyond that, as so few players even get to that range.

Thus characters are "Heroes" right from the start, they can hold their own in most situations so long as the battle is 1:1 or something that is seems a "Hero" should be able to deal with, such as a ruffian in a tavern, or goblin ambush.  That said, there is no such thing as an "easy" battle.  In HitDice, with the exploding dice mechanic, any attack roll can seriously mess up a hero's day, but same can hold true of the hero's attacks.  Combat is almost like double the damage with half the hit points compared to other D&D like games, but armor essentially adds temporary health to a hero.  So, battles typically have fewer combatants than other RPGs and they typically end faster, and the surprise is often a major factor in the out come.

On top of this, with the game being a "Skill-based" game there is no traditional "Class", so your defined by your skills, and each hero would begin progression in 3 to 4 Pathways, so even with the basic "Iron Heroes" lists, there would probably be 15 different Pathways of which you would start with 3 or 4 of, and the degree to which you master these essentially determines your Archetype, as does your Attributes.  So even if you were playing what might be a Fighter, you'd really be a Sword master, Armor Proficient, Tactician with arena experience.

Additionally there would be a campaign supplement that would aid in giving depth to a character, this would essentially a campaign world guide for the player which would grant them the choice a species, a background, and a career, all of which would broad the choices for the players of how to develop their hero, as well as to make them more unique.

Something that I see as a must for the initial box-set is a set or character templates with essentially all decisions made to create many classic hero archetypes, such that people can literally "just pick and play", much like pre-gens at a con.  Advanced players can use a point-buy system to alter these or start from scratch, but these and the next few choices in each Pathway for hero advancement would all that the basic game would require.  These become essentially the "classes" even though this is a class-less game.

I've discovered that so many people don't want to create a character when trying out a new game system, they really just want someone to make the choices for them and give them a recognizable archetype to play, and then they can determine very quickly if its something that they are interested in continuing.

Also for GM's...Who remembers the Monstrous Compendium?  Another awesome idea, that was so poor executed it failed in my option...What they did was to publish monster on 3-ring binder paper, so that you'd only need to bring the required monster to the play session.  What they did however was to publish different creatures on the front and the back of the pages, such that you'd end  up with scenarios that were impossible to alphabetize after a while (they published many differ monster sets) so you'd end us with many pages that had a "Ca..." creature on one side and a ""De..." on the other, then you'd get a "Da..." and "Ea...", or a "Bo..." and "Do...".

Great idea!  The implementation just sucked...So, I'd publish monsters on a two sided card, say 5x7, image and main stat block on front, details and ecology on the back.  Some creatures like "Lycanthrope" or "Dragons" may require separate cards for more background or miscellaneous information, but these will be organized too as "stand-alone" cards, such that alphabetizing will remain intact.  Additionally, the creatures would be organized in such a way that you'd get common creatures in various packs, and then themed creature packs such as "Swamp and Jungle", "Caves and Dungeons", "Dragons" and "Undead and Spirits"...so that the first monster book you get isn't half filled with Demons and Devils, especially princes and lords that really no one actually battles and never really needs a stat-blocks on.

With all these "supplements" one might complain about having to carry so many different booklets around to track all your hero's abilities, but I think I'd alleviate this with "Power Cards".  I know that many gamers complained about 4E's use of cards, and that it was a detraction from play...but I think that power cards would be the perfect reference material for players.  I admit I'm more of a card junkie though, and understand that making these a "requirement" of play may be going too far, but I think to allow players a reference deck is better than carrying multiple source books around, and trying to remember what ability is in which book.  So I think each supplement would either come with or allow the purchase of a separate reference deck.

With the cost of even low volume cards less then $0.25 per card, $10 might include all the cards in a given supplement, but with print on demand or self print PDFs, players can print their own cards and crop them in a card sleeve at pennies per sheet of nine cards.

Not to blast Wizards of the Coast again, but I could never understand how the company that pretty much re-invented artistic gaming cards create such shitty cards for 4E.  In my option, if they would have done up the power cards with special symbols and cool layout they would have sold like wild fire.

I too like the idea of "Item Cards" where all the card really has is an image on it, and the description or powers of say a magical effect would be on a separate card.  This would again allow mixing pictures with various magical effects, and not allow players to instantly recognize a previously found magic item from the image they had come across in another campaign.  These I definitely see an optional, but I can't help but want to try them in a campaign...

So in summary I'd like to hear the thought from any readers about the ideas that I'm pitching here...which are essentially a narrow scoped initial box set that gives you everything you need to start an Iron Heroes type campaign with minimal reading, and then small inexpensive supplements for players, and the GM would have monster packs or adventure kits that would come with new monster cards, and come with or allow special adventure kit cards for items discovered in the module.

The box-set will cover basic game play, core mechanics and basic GM information, but it is the adventure that will append the core rules with what ever they need to enhance game play.  These will be separate from the adventure and describe the rules in a stand alone manner, possibly with alternate optional rules.

The Hit-Dice Gaming System

Re-Branding "Open Gateways" as "The Hit-Dice Gaming System"...As not longer is this project specific to an RPG, is more of a Pen and Paper gaming system that you can "plug" nearly any type of game into.  What I did was to start with the RPG version that I've been working on for a while now...Then I started simplifying it.  It began while I was putting the Quick-Start Rules together for the Alpha testers, while at the time the RPG campaigns I'd been in fell-apart/wrapped up, so I was playing a number of systems at Cons and the weekly RPG time slots were becoming filled with cards games and board games.

It was about this time that I began appreciating some of the simple systems that I was playing at the time, Doom and Descent had a nice RPG feel, but were lacking in some areas, as well as having some issues with game balance.  I began ratcheting the "Open Gateways" RPG back to better serve the game style as well as time and commitment level of the "Overlord" style games, this was fairly straight forward...taking an RPG to an Overlord style.

While this conversion was occurring, I was playing a lot of full co-op games...specifically D&D Drizz't, Zombiecide, Arkham Horror, FlashPoint and Pandemic...These games seem to have a nice time-bounded nature to them and especially Drizz't and Zombiecide also had campaign style play that could be done as well (or at least seemed like it could be added fairly simply), additionally they did not seem to suffer with the lack of having a player control the monsters/zombies.  So I took the rules one step further, and added some random elements for level design.

With this complete, I thought any Co-op game could be turned into a PvP game with just making a "group goal" an individual goal, and the first player to reach it wins, but rather than solely playing against the games random elements, I thought a PvP style game would play better with a way to "Screw your neighbor" mechanic...so one was developed.

At this point I realized what I had was a "Engine" for lack of a better word, that provided mechanics that could be shared between just about every style of game I could thing of.  So I began putting some time into polishing the design for a co-op style game that I could play with my family, which included kids (ages 7 to 18).

Co-op games work great as teaching style games, since the party has a shared goal, and the advanced players can guide the newer players in forming a better strategy for their turn that better serves the group's goal.  I've found that some kids like to be on the same side as other players for the "shared victory" condition, that way its okay to lose, so long as everyone else has the same result.

The Overlord variant of Co-op play, is a step toward mastering the mechanics of a game, that pits a group of players not only against the random elements of the game, but allows the player that is acting as the overlord to insert their own strategy into the game.  The Co-op players are no longer to predict exactly how the opponents will move and act, since their is a human intelligence controlling them

More competitive gamer's I've found enjoy the PvP style games, as they get to further their understanding of the rules, by not only mastering the game mechanics, but having to compete against against other players improves everyone's abilities.

I know that many players enjoy the challenge associated with figuring out a whole new rule system, and often have seen certain players seem to thrive on the fact that they can adapt to new rules faster that others, so they like to change things up, playing a different game each week, and trying to improve on strategies of the past weeks.

So, to aid in improving and simplifying in my HitDice game mechanic, I've created two games of different genres to help prove the simplest versions of the HitDice mechanic.  This games are "Zombie Town", which is a map building post-apoc survival game where the Survivors draw a random objective (each objective is nearly a whole new game type) and work toward completing it before the activity level on the streets makes game play impossible to survive any longer.

The other game is similar dungeon exploration game where there exist a number of different "mission-types" and the Hero's explore the dungeon in either Co-op, PvP or first Hero to complete the goal style of play.  During which the hero's can explore the dungeon, enter rooms, fight monster gather treasure, even buying better items or crafting enhancements can be done.  This might feel like a mash-up of Super Dungeon Explores, Dungeon, and Lords of Waterdeep.

Both of these games have the terrain cards and rules complete, but I'm still working on the other miscellaneous cards in the decks.

The whole idea behind HitDice, is "One Mechanic" that works for everything from simple card/board game to fully functioning Pen & Paper campaign style RPG and everything in-between.  These first two games are just as much to introduce my players to the mechanic as it is to flesh-out the basic creatures and final stats of the creatures.  The creatures in Dungeon Tiles are the same stat-blocks that are going to be in the full blown RPG, with the only different being the relevant information about the creatures.

With the "one mechanic" everything will be sort of "plug-able" into any other game, as with Zombie Town and Dungeon Tiles, the game play is very similar in how one explores, open doors, and attacks an enemy.  With the difference being the types of foes in the game and the items that are found.  With Zombie Town focusing more on what a typical zombie survival game cares about, and Dungeon Tiles definitely has the feel of a "mini-RPG", complete with a supplement that turns it into an Overlord style game.