My gift unto you all - Dead of Night, a simple zombie RPG

Dead of Night

Introduction and character creation

Dead of Night is a simple zombie survival roleplaying game. It's made for playing on forums and the like, requiring only a few d6s. Also, there is no particular need for a person to actually run the game - following the rules automatically creates a character, generates a place to start in, and then takes it from there.

Creating a character is simple. Choose a name, gender, and a build from below. You begin with 10 hitpoints, and 2 attack and defense. Record your final stats on a scrap of paper, or post them in the forum thread.

Male: +1 Attack
Female: +1 Defense

Large: +1 Attack, -1 Defense
Tough: +3 Hitpoints, -1 Defense
Wiry: +1 Defense, -1 Attack
Average: No change

When performing an action, roll 3 dice. These dice must be rolled at the end of every post, and detail the events of the next post. The first dice is your combat, the second is your locate, and the third roll is your luck. The effects of each roll are explained below. In addition, you must roll 2 dice when going to a different area of the city - this is your explore roll.

Combat

The combat dice is used if the area you are next in contains zombies. As you do not know if it does when you roll the dice, roll it anyway. As for wether it does or not, we'll go into that later. If it does, do the actions in the table according to what you rolled.

1 - take 1 damage per zombie.
2 - take 1 damage per zombie, then do 1 damage.
3 - take 1 damage per 2 zombies, then do 1 damage.
4 - take 1 damage per 2 zombies, then do 2 damage.
5 - take 1 damage per 3 zombies, then do 2 damage.
6 - do 2 damage.

All damage taken is modified down by your defense. For example, if you take 4 damage but have 2 defense, you only lose 2 hitpoints. All damage dealt is increased by your attack - if you roll a 2 with an Attack stat of 3, you actually do 4 damage. You may allocate damage as you wish between anything in that combat (including other survivors), but any damage not enough to kill a zombie is lost at the end of you turn (if you are attack by 2 zombies with 2 hitpoints each and do a total of 3 damage, only 1 is killed. The other point of damage is not enough to kill, and is lost). Damage can never be a fraction - rolling a 3 when 5 zombies are attacking results in 2 damage, not 2.5. Damage is always rounded down.

When you run out of hitpoints, you die. If your luck roll when you died was 6, you actually survive with 1 hitpoint. Otherwise, you die and return as a zombie. YOur character is dead, and a single 2 hitpoint zombie is placed in the area where you died.

Locating items

The locate dice is your chance of finding a random item. The item chosen must be relevant to the area it was found, and must be worked in somehow. For example, it would be possible to find a gun in a police station, but not in a park. Note that in an English game, it would be unlikely that you would find a gun in a house. The table below gives some examples, but feel free to use others, within reason. You may always choose something of a lower level than what you rolled - rolling a 6 allows you to choose anything from the table or roughly equal in power.

1 - nothing.
2 - sticks, stones, batteries, shards of glass, clothing, police badge.
3 - hammer, pole, torch, keys, lawnmower, shovel, thick clothing.
4 - ammunition, knife, baseball bat, crowbar, spray paint, food, bandages.
5 - pistol, medikit, ration pack, police uniform, canned food.
6 - rifle, body armour, GPS device, phone, crossbow, grenade.

A few items are explained below.

Improvised item, small - like a hammer, glass, sticks, etc. Increase Attack by 1 if it is used.
Improvised item, large - shovel, crowbar, etc. Increase Attack by 2 if it is used.
Melee Weapon - sword or knives. Increase Attack by 2 and Defense by 1 if it is used.
Thick Clothing - winter clothing or a coat. Increase Defense by 1 if worn.
Body Armour - police or military armour. Increase Defense by 2 if worn.
Medikit - Restores up to 5 Hitpoints, shared between as many people as you like.
Bandages - Restores up to 2 Hitpoints to a single person.
Improvised throwing item - stones and bricks and such. Increase Attack and Defense by 1 if used. 6 shots.
Pistol - increase Attack and Defense by 2 if used. 6 shots.
Rifle - or any other larger firearm. Increase Attack by 3 and Defense by 2. 10 shots.
Grenade - or molotov cocktail. Kills 1/4 (round down) of the zombies in an area.

Luck

The luck dice is used for a bit of everything. In essence, you can "spend" your luck roll to have various effects on the game. If you run out of hitpoints but your luck dice shows a 6, you can spend the roll to return to life with 1 hitpoint. If you roll a 6 on the luck dice, you can instead spend it to increase your Combat or Locate dice by 1. When moving to a new area, the luck dice must be spent on that - it cannot be used for anything else.

Exploring

Exploring is done easily. Roll your 2 explore dice and consult the table below. Do not add the result, consult each seperately. You may choose which of the two you actually go to, or you can stay in your current area instead. The table shows a roll, then two locations. The first location is for the first roll, the second for the second.

1 - House, Doctors
2 - Factory, Police Station
3 - Shop, House
4 - Church, House
5 - Office, Town Hall
6 - House, Subway

If a map is being kept, put a new block in any direction that you could reach from your current block. If one person is managing the map for all players, make sure to put a note for which direction you are travelling to allow them to put it in the right place.

For this, your luck dice comes into play strongly. Apply the following event based on your luck dice.

1 - A zombie horde is in the area. Their number is equal to triple your highest dice roll.
2 - Zombies are in the area. Their number is equal to double your highest dice roll.
3 - There are a few zombies in the area. Their number is equal to your highest dice roll.
4 - There are 3 zombies in the area. However, your locate roll increases by 1 for this turn only.
5 - This area is clear, for now.
6 - This area is clear, for now, and your locate roll increases by 1 for this turn only.

A short example. Sally, a female average survivor (Attack 2, Defense 3) is exploring into a new area. She rolled a 2, 3, 2, 4, 6 as her rolls on her previous turn. This means her combat dice is 2, her locate dice is 3, her luck dice is 2 and her explore dice are 4 and 6. Consulting the table, she sees that she either ended up at a church or a subway. She chooses the church. Her luck dice tell her that there are zombies equal to double her highest roll - 6. So there are 12 zombies there. Her combat dice - 2 -tell her to take 1 damage per zombie, then do 1 damage. So, she takes 12 damage, minus 3 for her defense of 3, for a total of 9 damage. She then does 1 damage back, plus 2 for her attack of 2, killing a single zombie. The other point of damage is wasted. It'd probably be in her interests to run away round about now.

Every time a player explores, if a map is being used, 3 more zombies appear in every area with no survivors in and fewer than 30 zombies in. If there are no such areas, 3 more zombies appear in the 2 areas with the fewest survivors in. In the case of a 3 or more way tie, put 3 zombies in each of those areas. If a map is not being used, then zombies do not regenerate over time, as players cannot return to cleared areas anyway.

All hail the creator of the Legion! The creator givith us awsome!

You read and understood it all? Fantastic. Anyone feel like a game sometime? I could do the map, if nobody else wants to.

I understood enough and i'm sure i'll get the hang of it fast enough. And I'm game for a test run any time

your epicness knows no bounds and i understud moast of it to

Wonderful. What bits didn't you understand?

docrters?

A doctor's surgery, what else? Source of medikits, some drugs and pamphlets about AIDS. Could be a hospital too, but basically something along the lines of "medical facility".

ok cool il play then

Awesome, shall I handle the map, or shall we all do it?

i havnt the time sorry

Fine by me, I can do it. Prepare for MSPaint!

lol nice

Okay, 3 things. I've started off a game, look in RPG section for it.
Secondly, to roll dice, put (roll="1d6")A number(/roll) in your message. Obviously, replace a number with the number of dice you want to roll, and replace () those brackets with [] these ones.
Lastly, I've made a map template. The little boxes in each corner are for the number of zombies, and the box at the bottom is for the name of the area.