My House Rules

[deepfreeze]

Just thought I would post some of my favorite house rules. Some of these I either took or modified from other house rules I've read so they might be familiar. I do not recommend always using all of them, but just options to add before the game begins for fun.

4 Player
-3 Human Players with one controlling 2 heroes. If a humans only hero dies then they always respawn, but if the hero with 2 heroes has a hero death then the new hero goes to a human who previously only had one hero.

Favors Zombies
1. Heroes in the same room are considered in the same square for zombie event card "this could be our last night night on earth" but the card can only can be played when there are NO zombies in the ROOM.

2. Lights Out - Cannot target an unlit square of the house with gun (no shooting AT darkness, you can shoot FROM darkness)
-zombies roll 2 fight dice but humans win on ties.
-zombies that start their movement in the dark can move two squares.
-item torch cancels lights out for all adjacent squares also. (up to 9 squares)
-flare gun cancels lights out for entire room for 2 turns if fired at any square within a house (including both misses and hits on zombies). Can be fired through a window even if not adjacent (into window but not at any particular zombie just to light up house) normal hit rules apply when shooting at window from distance.

3. if 7 or less zombies then autospawn.

4. Wounded - heros lose one movement space ON THE TURN FOLLOWING a new wound.

5. Heros pick 4 out of 5 randomly chosen to start. Subsequent heroes are always random.

6. Locked Door - remains in play but can be unlocked from the other side (meaning the opposite side from the one that stopped player movement)
-unlock is considered a part of exchange turn and player must be in front of the door.
-heroes can give up a turn and hand weapon to break down a locked door.
-unlocking doors with key - heros can keep the key if they stop on the other side of the door
-driving tractor into building also creates an exit

Favors Heroes
1. Dramatic Wound - doubles on a tie (two 4s vs 4) hits both zombie and human (unless human wins on ties by stipulation)

2. Father joseph begins game with torch (not if fire is a scenario specific search item)

3. The general store allows you to pick up non-gun items from discard pile AT RANDOM.

4. The hangar is one large door (humans can move diagonally out of hanger) but locked door locks BOTH SPACES.

5. Tractor - humans place tractor with at least part in cornfield (only used if farm piece is in play). Requires gas OR keys to start. Moves immediately after starting d3 killing any zombies or heroes it runs over. --After tractor is started it cannot be stopped, cannot turn, and moves 3 d3 plus 2 moves per additional gasoline. Always moves 1st in Hero turn and must move FULL d3 roll (even if this kills a hero or crashes).
-Any zombie/hero run over is killed immediately. For each zombie/hero run over roll a 6 to stop up thresher permanently breaking tractor.
-Zombies may move onto the tractor from the side and fight driver (while being driven tractor is functionally 1 space) and move with it, 3+ zombies on tractor breaks tractor permanently. Tractor continues until it runs out of gas.
-tractor will crash if it hits another vehicle or building and humans can exit house from crash location over tractor (at this point squares under tractor are normal for movement purposes)must move FULL roll (even if this kills a hero or crashes)
-Jenny gets +1 movement on tractor, can stop the tractor, and can turn the tractor ONE degree at a time i.e. transition from straight to diagonal and next square diagonal to straight.
-zombies roll an extra fight dice while on tractor

Scenario Specific

Find the Townsfolk
-He's not here! - once a townsfolk is found in a building no more townsfolk can be found in that building (if another is found reshuffle into top half of deck and redraw card.
-Place the townsfolk marker on the building to remind yourself that no more can be found.

Alone in the dark - Use as an epilogue to main game.
-If hero survives they start the full game with any items they possessed at the end of the game.
-Zombies get 1 additional zombie per item. (2 zombies/chainsaw or shotgun)
-If hero dies then they begin full game as a zombie hero in place of one of the normally spawned zombies.
-Zombie Hero counts as 3 normal zombies and is not placed during the setup (must be spawned at the end of a turn)

Die Zombie Die
-item card is REMOVED FROM THE GAME on discard after picking it up using building specific pick up.
(cannot sit in the hangar picking up flare gun repeatedly. Or sit in police station with shotgun.)

[Irish Daigle]

The Die Zombie Die specific house rule seems a little wonky. I would think, essentially, that all you have to do is make some kind of marker that notes a building-specific pick up has been gained already and cannot be gained again.

My problem with that is, sure, it makes sense for some stuff (a police station will only have a few shotguns at any rate), but gaining gasoline from a gas station doesn't strike me as a one-time only thing. Or healing kits from the hospital for that matter.

[deepfreeze]

That rule is to prevent the lame building camping strategy (hero just sits in the hangar and picks up flare gun every turn) which then causes the zombies to be lame and run away from the heroes. This would be just as lame if the hero was picking up a medkit every turn.

I think Die Zombie Die is a terrible scenario for that reason, and I don't understand why anyone would play it more than once to learn the game. That was just my attempt to fix it for people that do play it.

I agree that placing a marker once building specific pickup is used would also solve the problem in basically the same way by preventing additional pickups. The only difference is that removing the card would allow them to use the pick-up again if they found another card, while using the counters would prevent the building pickup from ever being used again.

I think the simplest solution to reconcile the two ideas is not to play die zombie die haha!

[labrys]

Some of these rules are pretty cool. Could be turned into zombie/hero event cars - remains in play, or as "Dot cards"/ optional special scenario rules that could be added for certain dot costs.
I like the "Dramatic Wound" causing a wound to both on doubles equalling zombie die. Its really funny when the zombie rolls a 1 then the hero player (who was previously smiling) rolls snake eyes!

[cauchi39]

i like your ideas for the tractor

[Yogeh]

i liked some of these rules, i might use some of these myself, like the Townsfolk rule, we played that and pretty much someone always camps the whole time in 1 spot and find half the townfolk, so this is a good one to use.

[ch82]

I like these rules