Gangs and Looters - Introducing a New Enemy into Zombicide

[zombie57]

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"Gangs and Looters" has been designed from the ground up to add a new dimension to your gameplay while playing Zombicide.

Using core characters this ruleset adds NPC rivals in the form of gangs that you fight as well as Zombies and possibly Dogz if you have that expansion.

The new rules state that "The humans that appear as gangs and looters follow the same basic rules as the human player" which means they perform actions, they can be attacked by Zombies and they also want to kill you!!!

How is this possible ?

To make this work a Behaviour Logic Flow Chart has been created for control of the gangs. This is following a basic Yes / No question format that decides what the next action will be for the NPC. This is included on page four of the rulebook.

The NPC's have dashboard like ours, but these are known as Micro Dashboards. They will need to be printing, but are all available http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/101688/. This includes Season 1, Season 2 - Toxic Mall and Season 2 - Prison.

Below is an example...

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The rules are hosted at Boardgame Geek as well as a PSD for making your own custom Micro Dashboard. This can be used to vary the skills if required or add your own custom characters.

The rules and the PSD file are here:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/101688/

Below is the printed dashboard at 100% scale to show how it fits in perfectly with current game components.

For the purpose of rivial gangs, the character photo has been darkened to indicate that they are not on your side. As the PSD is available, if that does not suit, you can make your own if required and adjust as you see fit.

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The logic flow may seem a little complicated, but after a couple of goes it is natural.

This adds a whole new version of NPC that is automated and designed to cause as much trouble for the player as possible, if they were not in enough trouble as it is...

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Remember, these people are no longer your friends...

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[grefven]

Love it! Awesome. Well done.

 

[donnbobhardy]

I like the concept, and if Zombicide was a video game, I think I would use it, but it seems to me like this would slow the game down a lot.

Also, in terms of the flowchart, would it be more clear if it was a list? I'm picturing something like Final Fantasy XII's gambit system. If X, do Y. Else if A, do B. Else if C, do D. etc.

Are there any reviews or session notes available?

 

[zombie57]

Hi, it slows it just in fairness the first couple of times you do it but the rules are not overly compels so it soon becomes natural to do it without even checking the flow chart.

no gameplay videos of it, but it's something I use with my sessions and thought I'd tart it up a bit and give to all.

With regards to a list, you are right that would also work - there is the list on page 3 of the rules but not in a yes or no format.

I would suggest printing the flow chart and as you step through the questions just move a counter, say the skull head from Toxic Mall from icon to icon. A lot of that chat is simply giving information and prompts anyway.

 

[zombie57]

Gangs and Looters - Rules V3- AKA - No More Standoffs

Hello!!!

Just a note to say that the rules have been updated to version 3 to prevent a problem that happened during a session last night.

They are at http://www.datafilehost.com/d/dc1dfa93 until authorised by BGG and then they will be in the area mentioned in the posts above.

What happened ?

Last night while playing, we had somebody "new" to the game. Not a problem you would have thought, but something interesting happened.

They played differently to what was expected and actually off their own backs, mimicked the behaviour of the gangs and tried to avoid fighting. The gangs will actually try to avoid fighting Zombies if they can move away, well this player was trying to avoid everything!

So when the 12 came along and they happened to be nearby, we ended up in a standoff situation!

The gangs did not want to attack the player and the player did not want to attack the gangs!

Here is what happened on the map… ( the map was much bigger than this, but this is to highlight the problem )

- The three zombies are gang members for this example.
- The blue area is the zone nobody would enter.
- The player token is the new player on their own.

During play, the player would not step into the blue zone because of three gang members around the corner, he did not want to be attacked. He also did not want to open the door due to spawns. All he would do was wait!

The gang members following their logic would not move into the blue zone as it was next to a zombie zone as the logic is, players are classed as zombies in terms of movement control. This means that the gang members do not want to die so they will not purposely end up next to a zombie.

The gang members were also busy fighting spawns coming from their left as well, leaving then in a dead end from their choices although the road was technically going to the right. This was caused by the player not wanting to move.

The fix is as follows and detailed in the rulebook with the logic flow and also a written example.

Basically the first check for the gang member ( as they want to kill the players ) is to see if they have a clear path to the player. This check is only done if there is no zombies in the same zone as the player and no zombies in any adjacent zones on the path towards the player. If it’s a positive the gang member moves forward and the process starts again.

On its next turn ( assuming that was turn one above ) it can then attack the player and play will continue as expected. This stops the standoff scenario between a player who does not want to fight ( or has bad weapons ) and a gang who are not willing to move towards the target.

Rulebook Changes in V3

Section 2 – Heading Change.

Section 4 – Expanded to show the example in written form of the gangs moving next to a player to avoid a standoff. This also adds an example of an invalid turn that was touched on in the previous version but not written out. It shows how you can’t go from A -> B -> A when limited movement options. Makes gameplay flow easier.

Section 6 – New section that bumped other sections downwards. This talks about the goals of the gangs and looters and what to do in terms of gang goals if you are stuck.

Section 7 – Which was the old section 6, the behaviour logic flow chart has been updated. This is actually just two new boxes after the second question which is “Zombies in the same zone ?” if you follow the “no” fork.

Finally…

I apologise for this update, previous testing and playing had not encountered a player do what our new person did. So, the rules needed to be updated to reflect this.

As ever, thank you all and happy hunting!

 

[KSharkey]

I love the idea and the cards you made up look fantastic!