Reading is Still Fun. Da Mental?

12.04.2012

Last week I made one of my quarterly trips to the local bookstore. While making my way back from the bathroom, I detoured by the sci-fi section to see if there were any covers that caught my eye. There were a couple, so I tried my best to remember their names until I could get to an Amazon order screen.

I had left my iPhone in the car, so I couldn't snap a quick picture like I normally do. When I got back to the car I typed the names into a memo/note, but even 5 minutes later I changed "Only Superhuman" into "Being Superhuman". I try to actively remember 2 things and manage to forget 1 after 5 minutes. I'm like Guy Pierce in Memento!

I still have a couple of books to read from my last "hey, I need books to read!" scurry. Heck, one of them I even took a picture of in the book store with my iPhone, like I'm supposed to! Sometimes I'm in the mood to read, and sometimes I'm in the mood to pick out something to read. This time was the latter.

So what did I get and why?

Only Superhuman, a sci-fi novel with the word "superhuman" in it. It's not a superhero book, but it should be comic booky/sci-fi. Maybe. And I really like the cover.

The Mammoth Book of Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback. I've read 1 zombie book and it was ok. I want to read another. This one, besides having a cover that caught my eye, is an oversized paperback (7½" tall) as opposed to normal paperback size. I hate normal paperbacks now that I'm old and grumpy. They're so tiny and flimsy. In addition, this is not a book of short stories.

I have such odd reasons for giving in and buying books.

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Zombie Mall Play Test #3

12.03.2012

This play test was a solo game with Alex. The first thing I did was hand Alex the rules sheet(s) and not explain a thing, then check for what questions he had. Alex is excellent at reading game rules - he tends to not infer things not written, and what is written he interprets correctly. Luckily I know this from past experience, so I really wanted to see how he would do with the written rules. There are a couple of things not in the current rules: details about movement under certain conditions, mainly. This I figured I would explain when and if it came up.

The big change from the last play test was that instead of the 2 needed key Loot Cards being shuffled into the deck with the other 106 cards, I had pulled those 2 cards along with 2 cards of bad things out of the deck and set them aside. I placed 4 numbered Objective Tokens on the board, then placed a matching numbered Objective Token on each of the cards I pulled. Now Alex would have some specific spaces to go after. I also tweaked the zombie spawning a little.

The game started a little slow, and after about 10 turns Alex had gone to 2 of the Objective Tokens and gotten 1 of the keys. At this point he had to backtrack a little to go after the other Objective Tokens. At one point he got ganged up on by spawning zombies in the hallway and used up a lot of Health re-rolling. He made it to the 3rd Objective Token and uncovered the last key, so then it was a race to the Security Office. The challenge was that Alex was at the bottom of the board while the Security Office was at the top.

Alex had to use a combination of Health to re-roll and Adrenaline to escape when he had reached hallway to the Security Office and lost another combat, this time with no remaining Health or Adrenaline, so the true "you get bitten" scenario finally played out. It was time to see if he would spawn back on the board. Alex had 3 bite tokens, so he needed to roll 4-9 on 1d10 to spawn. He rolled a 0, which would normally mean "DEAD. OUT OF GAME. GAME OVER, MAN." Being a play test, he re-spawned like a winner, and only 2 spaces away from his keys dropped the previous turn.

In going back to get those 2 keys, Alex had to use all 5 of his regained Health, plus 2 Adrenaline (I think there were 4 zombies he had to fight before getting both keys). From there he made his way to unlock the security room door and then the radio, ending the scenario without indecent, but was wary of a couple of spawning zombies.

This game took just under 2 hours, which is much more to my liking. Having objectives to go after seem to make a difference, both in game play and how the player felt more focused rather than just running around looting. The drawback was that Alex quit looting the regular Loot Markers since he wouldn't get a key from them, and most of the time he drew something bad. I need to better explain what's in the loot cards. With that in mind, I went back today and made a list of what cards are helpful and which aren't. I originally thought the numbers were 60-70% bad, but it turns out:

• 53 "Good" Cards (49%)
• 28 "Bad" Cards (26%)
• 27 "Trash" Cards (25%)

I think the Bad Cards are noticed more because they are played immediately in most cases. A lot of the Good Cards depend on special circumstances so they may not actually be used. Everybody has been pulling Bad Cards while testing, though.

The changes for this game really made a difference:

• Objective specific markers give the player something to go after
• 1d10+1 movement through the whole game covers the right amount of terrain over the game. Those low roles really hurt.
• Players have a base 70% chance of winning combat - even then everybody has died in testing
• 5 Health & Adrenaline seem high to me, but people are still dying.

I've thought about changing combat to where the player only has a 60% chance of winning, and dropping the initial Health & Adrenaline to 4 each, but the current numbers seem to be working (since people are dying). I think lowering these may make people more apt to stop on the regular Loot Spaces if they know they can pick up items that will give them bonuses - I think if somebody started picking them up now and managed to get a gun card (which would give them an 80% chance to win combat) the game might be too easy.

For now, though, I'm keeping the combat, Health, and Adrenaline numbers I've got.

Next up, I update the rules with a couple of changes to make things more clear. I also have to start re-writing the more detailed rules that cover things I've been explaining. From there, I'll either have another Keith & Jer play test session or move on to some 4-player tests.

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Zombie Mall Playtest 2

12.02.2012

Last night was Zombie Mall Playtest #2, featuring somebody other than me playing. Jerry and Keith came over to try out the game. Gratefully they knew they were guinea pigs to help me tweak. The best part for me was watching someone else play something I designed. It wasn't a perfect design, but they stuck with it through the end and helped me out enormously.

By games end roughly 3 hours of game play had passed. That's twice what I want it to be, even with the learning curve of first time play and rules tweaking along the way. I even moved one of the needed Loot Cards higher in the deck, which cut out 10 turns of searching. Once Keith and Jer had the 2 key Loot Cards, play seemed to speed up - a combination of them running to the Security Office, not stopping to loot any tokens, and having a physical goal they were heading toward. Keith actually died about 2/3 through the game, and Jerry died in the Security Office near the end. Being a play test I forced them to arise and continue :)

Tweaks from the last play test included:

• Player Movement changed from 1d6 to 1d10+1 (had to take care of rolling a 0).
• And the end of your turn, you can trade 3VP for 1 Loot Card.

Since the play test scenario is a straight-up escape scenario, the Victory Points aren't really used for anything, so cashing them in for Loot Cards is a nice bonus. That bonus bit Keith a couple of times by spawning zombies right on top of him. Frustrating, but that's what a good chunk of this game is supposed to be. Evil game developer!

Thanks to someone else reading and interpreting rules, as well as having a strategy that I might not have thought of, I now have some more tweaks to make for the next play test.

• Better define when combat happens (there's no real "combat" phase of a turn)
• Better define the difference between Getting Bitten and Dying.
• Instead of the key Loot Cards being randomly shuffled into the deck to be found, have them marked by special Loot Tokens. This way the Players have a goal they can see to reach. Of course, the card they're heading for may not be the card they need. Evil game developer!

Most importantly, I have to cut down on the length of the game. I want 90 minutes, so far I've got 3 hours. Part of the nature of the game is that it feels as if it starts out slow while the zombies populate the mall with each player turn. About halfway through the game it gets crowded enough that you really start to get interested - the challenge starts. I don't think there's a plausible way to "start in the middle", I've just got to think of a way to get to the middle faster. Hopefully having the key specific Loot Tokens as objectives you can go after will help.

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Zombie Mall Playtest 1

11.27.2012

Tonight began play testing of Zombie Mall. Single player play testing, as I needed to take a first whack it it and see how the game plays with someone who knows the rules (I made up the rules, so I should know them). I was expecting a few tweaks here and there, and I wasn't disappointed. The game is supposed to be hard to completely finish - that's one of the reason you collect Victory Points along the way. Here's a few pics from my play session.

I took a break in the middle for dinner, but I think I ended up playing overall for about an hour. I played through 21 turns before I died. In those 21 turns I:

• Killed 28 zombies
• Had 27 Victory Points left
• Got 4 of the Loot Cards
• Was bitten by zombies 4 times before I finally died.

Looing back, it felt like I was spending most of my time spawning zombies. Here's how a turn would go:

• Roll 1d6 for number of zombies to spawn.
• For each spawning zombie, roll 1d10 for direction, then 1d10 for distance.
• For each zombie that spawned adjacent/on top of me, resolve combat (1d10).
• Roll 1d6 for my movement
• Fight any zombies along the way (1d10)
• Move 1d4 zombies 1 space
• Resolve combat if required (1d10).

Mainly I wanted to move farther per turn. Maybe 1d6 is too small? Maybe I should up it to 1d10?

After I died, I played through as if I had the door and radio keys needed to complete the scenario. It took another 10 turns to reach the radio, rolling normally for movement. Along the way I had to kill another 22 zombies, and I would have lost combat & been bitten 4 more times. So it would have been possible for me to complete the scenario, but highly unlikely.

Next I need to go through a 2-player scenario. Maybe after that I'll play around with tweaking movement.

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Zombie Mall - Beta Test Countdown

11.26.2012

Progress! My goal was to have the Zombie Mall play-testable by today. It is, as long as I'm the one testing it. I have all the components together, but updated, printed rules are lacking. But that's ok, I've decided I really need some "quick play/quick setup" rules for those that don't want to trudge through 14 pages (for now) of rules (Keith). Plus, a quick play outline will give me something shorter to edit while and after playing.

The past week had me making/printing the map and tokens. It was more of an adventure than I thought it would be. It was also the first time(s) I screwed up and couldn't cover it up. So here I will share some of those trials which foreshadowed tribulations.

Gameboard/Map

I decided to try printing the map on label paper - Staples had 8½"x11" full sheet labels, and although each store to print was only going to be 6"x6", maybe the labels would make the whole process easier than sticking tape and hoping things wouldn't curl up. Between stores and walkways, I had just over 30 pages to print and cut. In the middle of printing I had to change out for some fresh ink (luckily I planned ahead and had 2 sets of new ink on standby). All the sheets printed fine and I proceeded to cut everything down to size. I then got out my 30"x40" foam core board that I was going to mount everything on, and quickly found that I had printed the map on the back of the labels, i.e the non-sticky side.

I could have gone back and either tried to re-print everything on the cut sheets (that wouldn't have gone well) or just printed everything correctly, but 30 pages of ink feels like a lot of ink, so I went back to my original plan and got out the double sided tape and began taping everything to the board.

Although sized to line-up, reality & my cutting ability showed that everything doesn't line up perfectly. But this is beta testing, so it's good enough. For beta testing I think it's actually pretty good. It took the better part of 2 days to print & stick, and for that I'm happy with the results.

Tokens

I had read about making your own tokens with a hollow punch, so thanks to a $16 set off Amazon I thought I would give it a try. I printed off some ¾" circular tokens and added in a border to use with some bleed area. I printed it on the same label paper as I used for the map, making sure to use the correct side of the label page this time! I picked up some mat board from the framing section of Hobby Lobby, thinking that would give a nice weight and feel to the tokens. 80 tokens printed to a page. After pounding the hammer on the punch through half of them, less that half of what I punched were usable. Either the mat board was coming apart, or more often the punch wasn't going all the way through the paper and board. I'm a big guy using a 4-lb hand/sledge-hammer, this thing should be going through like a mother.

Once again, time to go to plan B. I was probably way past B, but this is my story. I had some 110-lb cardstock, which when sandwiched between 2 pieces of label paper didn't feel horribly flimsy. Not as nice as mat board, but good enough to do the job. Plus, this would let me print the token on the front and back. I would switch from round tokens to square so that I could hopefully use my paper trimmer to make quick work of this.

I went back and made square tokens instead of round tokens. Luckily I saved the original graphics so it was a simple cut & paste job. Simple, but there were still 50+ files I had to change, so it took a little while. Once everything was printed, as careful as I was, I couldn't get the front and back to line up perfectly. I now know the importance of the bleed area and how thick my home made bleed area needs to be. I fed everything through the paper trimmer, then cleaned up some skewed backs with a pair of scissors. Once again, although they could have been better I was surprisingly happy with how they turned out.

Stat Card

The stat card was the last thing I worked on - a little card to keep up with your health, adrenaline, and things that will modify your score. I took some screenshots from the rules and pasted them into the 4"x6" layout of the card, and I had enough room that I went ahead and copy & pasted little rules that would come in handy - help to keep you from looking things up while your learning too play. Taking a lead from Frag, I made a colored border around each card that can correspond to the color of your playing piece. Then I printed it all out on some 4"x7" Avery landscape greeting card stock.

The print was so small I couldn't read a damn thing.

I neglected that the screen shot resolution wasn't the printing resolution. So I backtracked and made the majority of the stat card in word, then tweaked it with some graphics. I still kept the colored border. There's a lot less information on the card - mainly the stats you're tracking - but it's legible now. There's still a spot in the lower right open, just begging fro some useful piece of rules info.

So now all the pieces are made. Either tonight or tomorrow I'll run through a game or 3 by myself with my quick-rules notes and see how things play out. From there I'll tweak and hopefully be ready to update the real rules and pass this along to Beta Test Group Alpha.

I don't know who Beta Test Group Alpha is, but thanks to me posting some updates on Facebook I've got a handful of people already interested.

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