My Quarantine Zone game uses 6 character attribute stats that form the acronym B.R.A.I.N.S. The 'I' used to stand for 'Intelligence' but I have decided to change it to 'Ingenuity' instead. I understand using Intelligence as an ability score in some settings and some game systems but for what I am trying to portray in Quarantine Zone it does not work as well. In a present day- post apocalyptic world featuring regular people as protagonists I think ingenuity will be a better choice than intelligence for representing a character. In Quarantine Zone I want it to be more important for a character to display: 



than for that character to have a high IQ score. I would rather a successful skill test for picking a locked door be represented by an ingenious character using chewing gum and a paperclip than that character just being somehow smart enough that they know how to pick a lock.

So I got a bunch of my pals together Saturday night and we played a quick game of Quarantine Zone. Just another playtest really, we didn't get much further than character creation and played through a kinda long combat- it started to drag out so we ended it and went for beers. I got some pretty decent feed back and the players seemed to like a couple of things. I also pinpointed some areas that needed fixing or  further development.

The biggest thing to come out of the session is that I have decided to rethink one of my original game concepts. One of my big selling points for the game was that when you play QZ you are encouraged to set the game in you real-world location. After a few sessions I have realized this might not be the best approach. I think that instead of trying to do a rules lite real world simulation type thingy I should rework QZ into a sandbox type map crawl.

I was thinking I would get a big sheet of 1inch graph paper and draw out the roads and buildings of a town onto the sheet. I figured each square would represent a kinda abstract sized portion of the city, like a road/street would be 1 square wide and individual city buildings would usually take up 1 square each. Using this model I could draw out fairly large areas onto each sheet, and then just keep track of where each sheet meets up with the other sheets to make bordering territories. Like one sheet could represent "Downtown" and an adjacent areas could be "Lakeside" and the "Industrial District" for example. The more I think about using this method the more I like it, I can make up some cool random encounter charts and seed each map with cool locations and stuff. This way I can leave alot of the control in my player's hands and let them decide how they want to try to survive in the zombie filled sandbox.

Hopefully I  have done a decent job explaining what I plan to do but I will also take some pictures as I start drawing out the maps.

Another problem area was in combat. In my combat rules it was wayyyyyy too easy for PCs to end up breaking their weapons in combat. Nearly every player broke their weapons within the first few rounds of battle. The problem was that anytime a 1 was rolled on the damage chart a weapon would break, and the way it worked out was that the better a player did the more likely it was that their weapon would break. To fix this I am adding a simple correction to my weapon damage rules:

 "Only the highest dice result applies when rolling on a weapon damage chart."

This fix should work out nicely because you will need to roll all 1s on your damage roll for the weapon to break. Obviously the more dice you roll the less likely it will be for all of them to come up 1s, whereas there is a 1 in 6 chance if you only are rolling 1 d6.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. Hopefully it is semi-readable. Comments and questions are welcome.

-Cheers!

  

   

-Officer of the Law (costs 3 skill points)
Before the outbreak you worked in law enforcement. During the first few days of the outbreak police forces took enormous casualties, heroically defending barricades against a rapidly rising tide of undead. Many bitter survivors are desperate for someone to blame for the outbreak . If your character is openly acting as a law enforcement officer (in uniform) and you encounter another group of survivors roll their initial reaction as you would normally. If the reaction is positive increase it by one step to create a better positive result (from wary to friendly), if the initial reaction is negative though decrease it by one step to make a worse negative result (from unfriendly to hostile). In certain situations when you are called upon to make an ability check for something which relates to law enforcement the ZM (Zombie Master) may give you a modifier d6 to represent your expertise and training.


A character with this trait begins play with a police uniform, a pistol, a sturdy police baton, and 6 + 2d6 bullets.

-Pistol Owner (costs 1 skill point)
You either owned a pistol before the outbreak or you were able to find one since then. You begin play with a pistol and 6 + 2d6 pistol bullets.

-Shotgun Owner (costs 2 skill points)
You either owned a shotgun before the outbreak or you were able to find one since then. You begin play with a double barreled shotgun and 2d6 shotgun shells.

-Rifle Owner (costs 2 skill points)
You either owned a hunting rifle before the outbreak or you were able to find one since then. You begin play with a hunting rifle and 2d6 rifle bullets.

- Walking Arsenal (costs 1-3 skill points)
You are very fond of your weaponry and try to have the perfect weapon for every situation. You may take this talent up to 3 times, each time you take it you may increase the number of weapons you may carry by one.

-Hoarder (costs 1-3 skill points)
You hate to throw things away... you might NEED it later. You may take this talent up to 3 times, each time you take it you may increase the amount of gear you may carry by one.

-Survivalist (cost 1-3 skill points)
You like to plan ahead and always try to stock up on supplies. Before the outbreak you already had some gear stashed away. You may take this trait up to 3 times, each time you take it you may select a piece of survival gear which you will begin play with. 

-Brawler (costs 1 skill point)
You are particularly burly and have seen more than your share of fistfights over the years. In melee combat you may get an extra modifier d6 on your Brawn checks.

-more to come.

Cheers!

Quarantine Zone uses regular old d6s to resolve everything so I thought I should try to spice them up a bit. I bought some crappy dollar store dice packs and borrowed some bright red spray paint from one of my friends - he does alot of spray paint and stencil on canvas artwork and he is very talented. Anyway, I sprayed the red paint on the end of an old toothbrush until it was dripping wet and then flicked the paint off onto my pile of dice. I tried to vary my flicks so that in some spots big drops appeared and some areas only got a light mist. They took a long time to dry but I think they came out pretty good ->



-Cheers!

To make a character for Quarantine Zone you need some paper and some dice. Quarantine Zone uses only standard six sided dice.  I recommend at least a small handful of dice for each player. It would ease play if you have two types of easily distinguishable dice ( two colors of dice or different sizes) but not strictly necessary.

Quarantine Zone is set approximately 6 months after a massive outbreak of the zombie virus swept across the world. Each player should try to imagine for themselves a tough survivor who has managed to last this long using wits and luck. What does your character look like? What did your character do before the apocalypse? How did you manage to survive this long?

To start with each player should write a name for their character at the top of a sheet of paper and write the names of these 6 abilities in a column down the side of the page.

Each Player character has 6 ability scores-'B.R.A.I.N.S.'

Brawn- How physically tough and strong a character is. Used in hand to hand combat and to resist illness.

Reflexes- A character's speed and agility, also used to measure manual dexterity.

Attitude- A character's ability to connect and make relationships. Used in social situations.

Intellect- The knowledge and mental skill of the character. Determines starting skill points and used to resolve intelligence based checks.

Nerve- A character's ability to stay calm in difficult situations and overcome fears. Used to shoot ranged weapons.

Search- A character's ability to notice details. Used to scavenge supplies.

Now roll 6 dice as d3s (1-2=1/3-4=2/5-6=3) and note down your results on a scrap piece of paper. Assign one of your dice results to each ability score above. This should give you a score of between 1-3 in all of your abilities.

Each character will start with:

• One sturdy melee weapon ( a baseball ball, length of metal pipe, or meat cleaver )
• One random piece of gear.
• One backpack.
• Three cans of food.
• Three bottles of water. 

 Each character is also assumed to be carrying some simple miscellaneous equipment such as can-openers, and similar minor stuff as well as seasonally appropriate if not ideal clothing and footwear.

Unless otherwise noted a character may never carry more than:

• Two weapons.
• Three pieces of gear.
• Six cans of food.
• Six bottles of water.

There are certain Talents which can be taken to increase how many weapons or pieces of gear a character can carry. These encumbrance rules are meant to be simple and represent the survivors trying to travel light and be self-sufficient, carrying only their own gear in case of separation or mishap.

-Ok, so good start here. Talents and Traits to come, as well as equipment lists.

-Cheers!

Something I didn't specifically mention in my last post was that Quarantine Zone  doesn't use health points.  If a character gets seriously injured they will accrue a bloodied token, taking +2DC on everything they do until healed.  Every time a character gets injured they are significantly less able to overcome challenges until they eventually are caught by zombies and devoured.



Survivors are more likely to win combats against single zombies but it will be difficult to "kill" them, whereas zombies are far more likely to injure and kill humans if their attacks are successful. I expect combats will be battles of attrition that players would be wise to avoid. PCs will inevitably loose if they try to take on a zombie horde. These rules are meant to be tough on the players, combat against zombies should never be undertaken lightly- a single mistake could spell disaster later on. I wanted to set it up so there will be desperate struggles to save wounded friends which have been grabbed by zombies.

More on this later-

comments and questions are welcome