Tuesday, November 28, 2023

A Rawer Zombie Apocalypse

 We played two sessions of Zombie World. The group liked it, but we made some tweaks, here they are:

The Survivor Deck was unconfortable due to its constant shuffling and circulation around the players. In the second session we implemented bags with color tokens, each player with its own bag, using the same results distribution: 1 Gold = Triumph, 1 Silver = Opportunity, 3 Green = Edge, 6 Blue = Miss.

Edge results felt more "fail" than "sucess", and that's a good thing, because in Zombie World system you 're-roll' the PbtA 2d6. For example, if the move tell you to Draw Savagery and you have 3 in that Stat, you roll 3 times 2d6 (without reposition) and take the best result. A companion could Mark Stress and give you 1-3 extra re-rolls (=Draws).

Players discovered that Stress wasn't bad at all, and used it indiscriminately. Sure, you take 1 new Trauma when fill you Stress Track. But, Traumas didn't feel 'traumatic' enough (negative).

When promted with the decision: "Mark Stress or Draw from the Bite Deck" or "Mark Stress or Suffer Serious Harm", they always marked Stress. And since Stress and Traumas weren't bad, they never used moves to clear Stress.

So, in the second session, we made an experiment: everytime you Mark Stress, a Stress token (Red color) was put inside the bag, until you clean it. A Stress token is equal to a Miss. This solution created a better economy, interesting interactions between players, a sense of urgency to 'fix the bag' before danger came, and a more tense apocalypse.

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