The Walking Dead Boot Camp - Saturday

after playing throughout the weekend and talking about it to a lot of the other folks at the camp a few things kind of stuck.

Firstly Scaling, the beauty of the system is that walkers have a points value. If you up what you’re taking then the walkers increase at a set pace with you so you always have enough of a threat (or sometimes too much) So the scenario we played always felt like a challenge because the mechanics ensure it does. Even wording on the cards for events is often “each survivor” so the more the merrier.

Secondly initiative, I think in the threesome because you knew how the order would play out it lost a little (but only a little) bit of an edge. Random initiative just works but in the larger game the idea of using the dice didn’t work, it was practically impossible to wrest control and so it felt like one person held it for most of the game. The simplest solution we came across is one card per player shuffled and then draw. After that go in a circle.

The simplicity of the game is one of it’s defining qualities and it’s helped by the colour coded dice. Red is the worst, white is better and blue is the best, couple this with the 50:50 badge dice and you can do pretty much anything. Michonne tried to climb off the roof of the building and fell. The basic game rules cover this but with all the high terrain around using the dice can make it more interesting. The 4Ground apartment has three levels, so for each level you want to climb up or down from you roll your 50:50 die, on a badge you succeed and up you go, on a blank you fail and fall. The higher you fall the more likely you are to take damage, so failing the first would leave you on the ground but untouched. Failing the second you would drop and make a defense against one red die of damage and start prone. At each level move to the next highest die colour and once you’ve hit blue, if you’re insane enough to attempt such a heroic feat!, start rolling more blue dice instead.

The rules committee has done a superb job of working through Mark’s rules and try as we might we couldn’t break them, after that it’s really up to every group to see how they want to run with it. Work with the mechanics and I think that people will come up with some fantastic games.

I’m going back to look at vehicles now and see what can be done to lock them down, I may post my thoughts on it when I have something more substantial.

Take it easy folks.