[Actual Play] Zombie Cinema
At Day of Games I instigated two games of Zombie Cinema, which means I've played it 5? times now - the most exposure I've had to any indie game in terms of number of experiences.
I really like it. I like the simplicity of the mechanics, the flexibility of the setting while still constraining the story. I like the intra-party dynamic it creates. And I think it captures the Zombie feel very well.
But at the same time, to me it's the logical end-point of the Indie-game divergence from "role playing" as I knew it when young. Many Indie games provide an implicit or explicit story skeleton. Zombie Cinema has a board. Many indie games abstract the character, measuring their story weight rather than any personally identifiable characteristic. In Zombie Cinema your character is a plastic counter on a board - that's all.
It has the simplest dice mechanic I know of - the players divide themselves up over each conflict, and the side that rolls highest wins. Zombies win ties. There's no adding, subtracting, multiplying. Nothing.
So, as the apogee of the Indie-game movement, the game's progress is inexorable and utterly predictable. The zombies advance, PCs fight amongst themselves and get eaten or escape. This is the outcome no matter how lacklustre your group is: it is, as previously said, inexorable. The zombies advance. Period.
The downside to this is that your stories really don't have to make an awful lot of sense. Prior action does not constrain future action in any way whatsoever. The only real restriction on player narration is effectively their own sense of what constitutes cause-and-effect within the context of the story they're telling.
So this game is at once tightly constrained, and unlimited.
What you need, therefore, like with all Indie games, is a group who can all get rapidly onto the same page, riff off each other and bring drama to the table. Dead weight is a killer. All the players need to be able to confidently frame scenes, form a tight relationship web, and do a small but significant amount of mechanical judging.
If you love Zombies, you'll love this game.
That's all.
I really like it. I like the simplicity of the mechanics, the flexibility of the setting while still constraining the story. I like the intra-party dynamic it creates. And I think it captures the Zombie feel very well.
But at the same time, to me it's the logical end-point of the Indie-game divergence from "role playing" as I knew it when young. Many Indie games provide an implicit or explicit story skeleton. Zombie Cinema has a board. Many indie games abstract the character, measuring their story weight rather than any personally identifiable characteristic. In Zombie Cinema your character is a plastic counter on a board - that's all.
It has the simplest dice mechanic I know of - the players divide themselves up over each conflict, and the side that rolls highest wins. Zombies win ties. There's no adding, subtracting, multiplying. Nothing.
So, as the apogee of the Indie-game movement, the game's progress is inexorable and utterly predictable. The zombies advance, PCs fight amongst themselves and get eaten or escape. This is the outcome no matter how lacklustre your group is: it is, as previously said, inexorable. The zombies advance. Period.
The downside to this is that your stories really don't have to make an awful lot of sense. Prior action does not constrain future action in any way whatsoever. The only real restriction on player narration is effectively their own sense of what constitutes cause-and-effect within the context of the story they're telling.
So this game is at once tightly constrained, and unlimited.
What you need, therefore, like with all Indie games, is a group who can all get rapidly onto the same page, riff off each other and bring drama to the table. Dead weight is a killer. All the players need to be able to confidently frame scenes, form a tight relationship web, and do a small but significant amount of mechanical judging.
If you love Zombies, you'll love this game.
That's all.