[The Infected] The Final Nail in the Coffin of Fox River

[joepub]

Eric,

I really like Darcy's idea of being able to funnel the monster/infected dice from PCs back into the GM's pool.

It does eloquently solve two major issues I faced: the PCs were both monsters by the end, one of them by the end of the second reel.
Our game had some pacing issues too, as I didn't put forward a lot of single or double die contests in reel three - it was mostly an all or nothing attitude by that point.

I'd strongly suggest incorporating that idea into playtests.
If you'd like, I can incorporate it into one of mine.

[Eric Provost]

Joe,

Tell me more about this...

It does eloquently solve two major issues I faced: the PCs were both monsters by the end, one of them by the end of the second reel.

That kind of concerns me.  The patch was intended to open up the possibility of a PC becoming a monster as early as the 2nd reel.  It seemed like a good idea.  Did it really suck that badly?

Also; Do you recall how often the players' use of their infected dice promped more infection and how many of those dice came from the GM's rolls?  Obviously the first of the PCs' infected dice had to come from the GM, but I'm curious how many of those dice they gave to themselves.

-Eric

[joepub]

Eric, I gave them most, but not all. I think they gave themselves 2 dice.

Being a monster means you're gone. Maybe you can still achieve your goal, sorta... I remember my Camp Nerdly 0 playtest, when my goal was "Save my girlfriend". I did that after I became a monster. I did that while my friends shot my kneecaps out trying to keep my disgusting self out of the safehouse. I did that with an axe strapped to my arm, because my hand had become too weak to hold it.

Some goals, you can be a monster and still rock the fuck out.

And some games, you can be a monster and although your goal is out of reach now, you can at least have fun turning on the fellow players.

But when you have two monsters and no regular PCs, and both goals aren't really achievable as zombies or with some NPCs dead at this point, it's kind of like... "Well, should we just attack each other now?"

Maybe this is a fairly limited situation. Or maybe we just didn't see some of the cool cues being a monster can bring about. But I got a sense of "oh, we hit empty now" from the players when both became monsters.

Which brings me to one final point: With goals being secret, and some goals being tied to NPCs, it's possible that I accidentally kill off an NPC a player found vital to their goal. Maybe this could be addressed in some way, even if just a note in the text about how if you make an NPC vital to a goal, how you should treat them in terms of gameplay (and, like, should they be written on an NPC card?)