What is the best Solo Rules or Rules for FULL Coop for LNoE?

[wisdomknight]

(11-05-2012 03:59 AM)LabRat Wrote:  After I played ATOE, I started having ideas about solo play for LNOE and IFOS. I liked how the villains in ATOE would be able to do something every turn. The problem with translating this into LNOE is that the Zombie events are either Fight events which need a player's decision on whether it should be used or not, Normal events which can be played at any time, and Conditional events like Locked Door and Bickering which can only be played when certain conditions are met.

Fight events and Conditional events, for a supposedly AI-controlled Zombie horde, are tricky. Like I mentioned earlier, players can decide when to use the Fight events and that goes against the AI concept. Meanwhile, Conditional events, when known to the Heroes, make the Heroes want to avoid the conditions. What are you going to do when the Zombie hand is filled with Conditional and Fight events and the Heroes avoid fights and those conditions altogether? Players decide which cards get discarded?
Here are my recommendations to fix that, and this is likely the first draft of the Solo/full co-op rules that I'm creating:

ZOMBIE AI RULES
Dot rules: Zombies Autospawn, Zombie Horde (21) <optional?>

Zombie Movement:
• Zombie hunger now has a range of 3 squares.
o If there are multiple Heroes within the range of Zombie hunger, Zombies go after Heroes in this priority:
 Heroes carrying Scenario Items
 Heroes in buildings
 Heroes closer to the Town Center
 Heroes with less Health
o If there are no Heroes within the range of Zombie hunger, Zombies move 1 square toward the Town Center

The Zombie Deck
• Separate the Zombie Deck into 3 different piles: (1) The Fight cards, (2) the Conditional events, and (3) the Normal events.
• During the start of the game, instead of drawing new Zombie cards, players do the following to simulate the actions of a Zombie player:
o Draw 3 cards from the Conditional events pile and place them face up on the table. These 3 cards will immediately come into play when the conditions described on the card happen. If there are 2 of the same Conditional events, discard one and draw another as a replacement.
o Note: This would make it harder for the Heroes to avoid since they now have to avoid up to 3 situations – unlike the normal rules, if they know a Locked Door is in the Zombie “hand”, it’s easier to try and avoid that one condition for as long as possible, locking the Zombie “hand” and preventing other more useful cards to come into play.
o Draw 1 card from the Normal events pile and put that into play. This is considered to be the Zombie horde’s Action for the turn (kind of like an ATOE Mystery card).
o For each Fight, the players must draw one Fight card from the Fight card pile and put that into play.
o If any Event piles run out, just shuffle their respective discard piles back.

Again, this is just a first draft which is still untested. Anyone want to try this out?

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Sorry, I wrote that on MS Word and the indents don't seem to work on message board posts :/

Ingenious LabRat!
How about incorporating souond/noise into this (while searching, shooting, etc)?...like in Zombicide.

[LabRat]

@wisdomknight: Good suggestion! How does this look?

ZOMBIE AI RULES
Dot rules: Zombies Autospawn

Zombie Movement:
• Zombie hunger now has a range of 3 squares.
o If there are multiple Heroes within the range of Zombie hunger, Zombies go after Heroes in this priority:
 The last Hero to make a "sound" during the previous Hero turn (e.g. last one to fire a gun)
 Heroes carrying Scenario Items
 Heroes in buildings
 Heroes closer to the Town Center
 Heroes with less Health
o If there are no Heroes within the range of Zombie hunger, Zombies move 1 square toward the Town Center

Making a sound:
• Heroes can fool the Zombie AI by "making a sound" in two ways:
o Heroes can give up a move action to make noise.
o Heroes can fire a ranged weapon without targets during the Make a Ranged Attack step during their turn. They make the necessary ammo check rolls as normal.


The Zombie Deck
• Separate the Zombie Deck into 3 different piles: (1) The Fight cards, (2) the Conditional events, and (3) the Normal events.
• During the start of the game, instead of drawing new Zombie cards, players do the following to simulate the actions of a Zombie player:
o Draw 3 cards from the Conditional events pile and place them face up on the table. These 3 cards will immediately come into play when the conditions described on the card happen. If there are 2 of the same Conditional events, discard one and draw another as a replacement.
o Once a Conditional event "happens", it is discarded.
o At the start of each Zombie turn, draw a card until there are 3 Conditional events in play.
o Note: This would make it harder for the Heroes to avoid since they now have to avoid up to 3 situations – unlike the normal rules, if they know a Locked Door is in the Zombie “hand”, it’s easier to try and avoid that one condition for as long as possible, locking the Zombie “hand” and preventing other more useful cards to come into play.

o At the start of each Zombie turn, draw 1 card from the Normal events pile and put that into play. This is considered to be the Zombie horde’s Action for the turn (kind of like an ATOE Mystery card).
o For each Fight, the players must draw one Fight card from the Fight card pile and put that into play.
o If any Event piles run out, just shuffle their respective discard piles back.

[wisdomknight]

Yes looking very good.
Your ideas are a great man.

We need to incorporate a sound token of sorts.
To show where the zombies are targeting after said sound/noise.

Also normal searching and gun fire should cause a noise as well.

[Bokya]

Has anyone tried this yet? I've been busy with COPE and other games at the moment, and I'm wondering if I can reintroduce this game with an AI mechanic to my Game Group.

[wisdomknight]

Not yet Bokya.

I made a zombie movement dice to use with this.
Unless the zombies are affected by sound/noise or zombie hunger they will aimlessly wander (as zombies do).
So to simulate this I have a custom 6 sided die.
1 = forward
2 = diagonal right
3 = diagonal left
4 = right
5 = left
6 = backward

Obviously you would need to roll this for each zombie.
If the zombie will go outside the tile, just move to the next direction/space clockwise or re-roll.

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- Labrat's zombie hunger of 3 spaces seems ideal.

- As for spawning I would always use an even number of zombies at each spawn point. (so there is not decisions at all for players)

- Make sure you start them off facing a beginning direction and maintain facing the correct direction.

[LabRat]

I'll try it out this weekend. As for spawning, I've been thinking of rolling a random L-board and then rolling for clockwise or counterclockwise spawning. Oh and I'm thinking of either increasing the zombie hunger range to 4 or introducing line of sight as well.

@wisdomknight: Your rule for aimlessly wandering is good, but rather than backward I suggest that the zombie stays in place - what do you think?

[wisdomknight]

(11-08-2012 03:57 PM)LabRat Wrote:  I'll try it out this weekend. As for spawning, I've been thinking of rolling a random L-board and then rolling for clockwise or counterclockwise spawning. Oh and I'm thinking of either increasing the zombie hunger range to 4 or introducing line of sight as well.

@wisdomknight: Your rule for aimlessly wandering is good, but rather than backward I suggest that the zombie stays in place - what do you think?

Didnt even think of zombies standing still man.
Good idea, Ill have to test out all these variants myself and report back.
Please do the same as I think we have something good going here Labrat!

[Karden5048]

These rules sound very good to me. I will try them out as well and give some feed back. It also sounds like canceling a zombie card is even more important now than it has ever been, what with 3 conditional zombie cards.

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When told to choosing a hero you would need to choose a random hero, wouldn't you?

[Bokya]

Would increasing the Zombie Move be too dangerous for the Heroes? I'm wondering if it could be used to give the game more difficulty, while not making it impossible to win.

Also, how does the game work for some scenarios such as the mansion? Is it Zombie Hunger + Global House Hunger?

[wisdomknight]

(11-09-2012 02:45 AM)Bokya Wrote:  Would increasing the Zombie Move be too dangerous for the Heroes? I'm wondering if it could be used to give the game more difficulty, while not making it impossible to win.

Also, how does the game work for some scenarios such as the mansion? Is it Zombie Hunger + Global House Hunger?

Instead of increasing zombie move I would increase the amount of zombies on board at one time. It would be more like a Romero movie....very slow huge hordes. Thats what im going to test this weekend.