Toni sent me a text message asking me if VoW and I had some time to help her test out a game she made. I readily agreed, but being the jack ass that I am, I made the condition that if the game came alive or we got sucked into it, I would back out. After a few more texts were sent between the three of us, we established a time to meet at the Settlement.
I arrived at about 5 o’clock, which was pretty impressive to me given that I totally expected traffic to be atrocious. Since VoW was still battling the evils of traffic, I helped Toni set up the game. I didn’t get much of a chance to figure out the exact mechanics with the set-up alone, but Toni explained what she could along the way. The basic premise is to survive the game; there were two things that could befall you — the “Big Bad Stuff” within the game itself, or the other players. Since Vicki and I are more or less the most easy-going of the bunch, we were established as the v1.0 testers. For the most part, she just wanted to see if the game would even make sense before unleashing Bert and Yoss Mike into the world, since they would leave nothing but devastation and destruction in their wake.
The game reminded me a bit of Arkham Horror, only we’re not driven insane by the mythos. I suggested that one of her “Big Bad Stuff”s should be being sucked into the Arkham Horror game. She declared that that would probably be awesome but evil.
It was while Toni was separating the game pieces that I decided the name of the game was “Scurvy”. I accidentally read the name upside down and sideways and somehow decoded it in my brain as such. Unfortunately, scurvy is not one of the bad stuffs that can happen to someone.
When VoW arrived, we set up some chairs around the pool table since ’twas decided it would be less distracting there and got things started.
Toni started setting up the tiles of the board. There were something like eight districts and she was trying to vary it up a little. When we realized what she was doing, VoW and I jumped in as well. We ended up making a very stereotypical town (or city, not sure exactly what the population was); we had a wealthier area and a cheapside. I think I instigated the segregation, though. I saw there were trailers and I happened to pick up the water reclamation center, so naturally, I deemed it unworthy of the university and residential portion of the town and put it right next to the trailer park. It went down hill thereafter.
We had a laugh about the layout of the town, but we were quick to start playing. The player pieces we used were superhero pins acquired from Wizard World Chicago — I got to be Batman.
Basically, with the start of each turn, a “Big Bad Stuff” card is flipped over; after that, a twelve-sided die is rolled to determine whether or not there are “safe spots” — for example, if an eight is rolled, all yellow areas are safe (not an exact example). If you happened to be in a non-safe area you had to explain how you’d survive using the items you’ve picked up along the way and the other players decide if it’s plausible or not.
For the most part, it was a lot of fun for us. I mean, we came up with some crazy excuses and examples, but that was half the amusement of the game. We also made some suggestions, too. Like other areas of the town and the benefits of dice instead of a single die.
One of the “Big Bad Stuff”s to happen was heat-seeking missiles. I was unfortunately not in a safe zone, I briefly conferred with Mike about how a heat-seeking missile works exactly, and ended up going into the mall and hiding in the freezer of a Cold Stone.
I totally survived.
We had a minor pause for dinner and then resumed the game. Toni wanted to find out how fighting would work, so she and I had a throw down. I had a card for biological/medical waste that I didn’t know what to do with, so I threw it at her. I think I ended up using a grenade. ( “Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don’t you think?”)
As the hours drew on, Bert and Yoss Mike started to give us grief about taking so long with the game. I tried to point out that we were having fun and helping Toni, but Mike argued that we weren’t really helping with the logistics ‘cuz we weren’t trying to kill each other. Pfft. None of us seemed to really care ‘cuz we were enjoying ourselves, but eventually, I killed Toni and it was decided that VoW didn’t stand a chance against me since I blasted her with my decommissioned tank.
Various times throughout the game, I thought of me Da — the game totally seemed like something he would enjoy if anything for its “Kill Dr. Lucky” feel to it. I mean, I had a wheelchair as my vehicle for the majority of the game! How cool is that?
I forgot to mention one of the best parts; since we didn’t have any kind of pieces to indicate how much life, ammo, or fuel we had, we got to use Skittles. It was kind of a problem ‘cuz I kept eating them.
Regardless of what the boys thought, I think we had a successful first run of the game. I haven’t decided if I look forward to playing with the beta group (Bert and Yoss) or if I would rather just watch.
Whee Scurvy!