I’m Sorry Mr. Lucas… Your Cup Doesn’t Have Enough Brains
Posted February 16th, 2010 by Howard TaylerOur friend Stacy is moving to New York, and she emailed some of us Utah Valley Nerds for help on Monday. Among the help she asked for: “can somebody take these Star Wars miniatures off my hands?” Also, she offered me a chair.
I’m a sucker for miniatures, so I brought $20 to make it feel a little like a purchase and ended up with a car full of stuff. Sure, I drive a small car (2003 New Beetle) but there were a lot of miniatures there, including three unopened packages worth at least $120 all by themselves (an AT-AT Walker, The Battle for Hoth, and The Battle for Endor — very cool stuff.)
This morning I sat down and counted the unopened boosters and packages, and determined that Stacy sold me those Star Wars miniatures for around four cents on the dollar. Oh, and the chair I got was a $90 chair, so I made out like a bandit nerf-herder.
My friend Dan Wells (yes, that Mr. Monster book review was done for a friend), who is also Stacy’s friend, expressed an interest in the AT-AT Walker, so I called him over to split them with me. While I waited for him to arrive half-dressed and out of breath (I was disappointed — he arrived fully-dressed and relaxed) the Fed-Ex truck pulled up and the driver unceremoniously tossed a package onto the concrete porch of my house.
Usually Fed-Ex is for Sandra. She’s the one conducting all the business these days. Imagine my delight, then, when I saw that not only was it addressed to me, but it was from Steve Jackson Games.
Oh, the irony. I had $500 worth of WoTC/Lucasfilm product on my kitchen table, and the thing I was most excited about was the package from Steve Jackson. As you’d know if you read the dedication in the back of Under New Management Steve is a friend, and a while back he mentioned something called “Zombie Dice” on his Twitter feed. I went “SQUEE” (also on Twitter) and apparently that was enough for Steve to send me a copy once he had some to send.
(Have I mentioned how cool it is to have friends like Steve Jackson? My inner fanboy is regularly aquiver just reading email.)
To bring a long story to an abrupt close, I was happy enough to have the cup of Zombie Dice in my hand that negotiations went like this:
DAN: ”How should we do this?”
HOWARD: ”I’ll start the negotiations by giving you all of it.”
Dan chose not to haggle. We then played a quick game of Zombie Dice and he lost.
Why would I let all those Star Wars treasures go like that? Because once I was holding a game that I would actually play, and whose pieces didn’t look like they were painted by epileptic snow-monkeys, I realized that the Star Wars stuff was going to end up as clutter, and there was a LOT of it.
So I gave away the clutter, and I kept the dice. Sandra and I played Zombie Dice again during lunch, and I won again.
I should actually tell you about the game:
You’re a zombie, and the dice are your potential victims. When you roll, they either run, shoot you, or you eat their brains. If you get shot three times your turn ends, and you lose any brains you’ve collected during that turn. You can keep rolling until you’ve been shot three times, or until you decide to stand with the brains you’ve already collected. It can be assumed that you now get to eat them. (House rule: role-play that, or it doesn’t count). The first player to eat thirteen brains wins.
It’s a fast-paced, simple game of knowing the odds, and rolling to beat them. When you’re way ahead you can afford to take chances, and when you’re hopelessly behind you can’t afford to not take chances, but most of the time you’re going to roll the dice in the same way the Dealer plays Blackjack, playing it safe. You’re also going to meta-game by trying to goad other players into not playing it safe, in hopes of seeing them get blown away.
Zombie Dice takes up about as much space in your gamer bag as a can of Mountain Dew, only without the sticky mess. For a cup of brains, guns, and feet it’s surprisingly tidy. You have but two excuses for not bringing this game to a party: “I don’t own it” and “I’m an idiot.”
One of the things I love most about Steve Jackson Games is the thing that is best illustrated with the above anecdote. Steve packs more fun into a $13 cup than most game manufacturers put in a $50 box. Or a $500 stack of boxes, for that matter. George Lucas’ cup of franchise dollars may runneth over, but it doesn’t have half the brains that Steve Jackson’s cup does.
Explore posts in the same categories: Games, Reviews
February 16th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Howard, hows about an informal game of this at Penguicon, off of the event schedule?
February 16th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Do I need to bring my own can of dice? The kids have already grown attached to it, and may complain if it’s gone for an entire weekend. ;-)
February 16th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Damn. A shame about Penguicon. Play without me.
February 16th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
My seven-year-old fell asleep crying because he could hear me downstairs playing Zombie Dice with the 12-year-old and the 14-year-old while he had to be in bed.
It breaks my heart, but then again I’m pretty pleased to have a game in my hands that every single member of my family loves.
Steve Jackson Games for the epic win.
February 16th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
We’ve been playing (almost) exactly this same game for years, the high schoolers I work with and I. Made it up ourselves back in ‘07. We call it “dice game”, and use regular d6s.
We use ones instead of “blasts” . . . and it even takes the same number of bad rolls to lose your turn if you didn’t cash in your points for that round first. Same taking turns, egging each other on, etc.
Dang it.
Other than the zombie theme . . . dang. We could have been rich.
February 16th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
Actually, the game isn’t exactly the same. Sure, it looks the same, but not only do you have to be paying attention to the odds, you also have to be paying attention to how many of which colors of dice are left in the cup.
Green dice only blast on 1:6, and there are six of them. Yellow dice blast on 2:6 (1:3), and there are four of them. Red dice blast on 3:6 (1:2, or 50/50) and there are three of them. Drawing dice blindly from the cup, per the rules, means that you’re now counting dice as well as computing die odds.
February 16th, 2010 at 11:54 pm
So how many of the other sides are brains, and how many are feet?
February 17th, 2010 at 1:29 am
Mike:
Don’t sweat it. Of *course* I’ll be bringing this (and Cthulhu Dice) to LibertyCon. You know where to find me…
February 17th, 2010 at 6:47 am
There are always two feet on each die. Sides not taken by blasts are taken by brains. So green dice are easy victims and red dice are most definitely not.
February 17th, 2010 at 7:57 am
Cosmic Wimpout. Taunting people to defy probability with dice since I don’t know when but I found it in the early 90s.
More complex game dynamic but fewer zombies.
February 17th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Sounds fun! Reminds me of a game my wife brought home from Germany, but which we soon found out is played all over the place – Farkle. Played with 6 d6 as well. Actually, it’s different in many ways now that I think about it, but you are still trying to roll for keepers – 1, 5, or a scoring combination – like brains. Taking chances when you are way ahead or way behind definately applies though. So true!
February 18th, 2010 at 1:12 am
“One of the things I love most about Steve Jackson Games is the thing that is best illustrated with the above anecdote. Steve packs more fun into a $13 cup than most game manufacturers put in a $50 box. Or a $500 stack of boxes, for that matter. George Lucas’ cup of franchise dollars may runneth over, but it doesn’t have half the brains that Steve Jackson’s cup does.”
http://www.sfr-inc.com/dragondice.htm
As SJ himself once said, “Only steal from the best”…. >;)
February 18th, 2010 at 5:02 am
Cosmic Wimpout: I still have a set I bought at Origins about 1981–maybe 1982. It was very scary to visit my sister and see my niece and nephew playing this game they just found called…Cosmic Wimpout…have you ever heard of it, Uncle Fred?
February 18th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
I’ve got a big set of Dragon Dice — cool, but the odds tables get all but incomprehensible pretty quickly. Nowhere near as simple and as enjoyable as Zombie Dice. Also, the collectible nature of it makes it kind of annoying. It’s meant to be played competitively, and you can’t compete without spending lots of money to acquire the uncommon and rare dice.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:26 am
Howard Tayler Says:
February 18th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
> I’ve got a big set of Dragon Dice — cool, but the odds tables get all but incomprehensible pretty quickly.
I can send you copies of the odds tables my SO made for our gaming sessions — useful for assembling one’s Horde. :)
>Also, the collectible nature of it makes it kind of annoying. It’s meant to be played competitively, and you can’t compete without spending lots of money to acquire the uncommon and rare dice.
*All* “collectible” games are annoying in this way; the preferred solution being to prohibit the overuse of same (if someone has 20 examples of a “rare” unit, IT ISN’T RARE! :) ).
Also, I haven’t seen a _DD_ tourney in… ever. :)