Zilch/Agony: Appendices

Appendices

About Zilch

Author: Zach Tomaszewski (zach @ snarkdreams.com)

As a homebrew almost-boardgame, Zilch uses a wide range of gaming supplies and tokens pilfered from other games. For example, PC stats are represented by laying out 4 playing cards. A rack of Scrabble tiles represents your spells known. Dice and dominos are used to resolve skill tests and combat contests. Read on for more.

Zilch is meant to be a simple dungeon-crawling monty-haul RPG with boardgame-like mechanics but with the optional player options of a full RPG. The idea is to be able to sit down, whip up a few characters with little to no preparation, and have a fun evening. However, because of the RPG options, longer campaigns are also possible.

Some of the diverse specific goals and inspirations include:

Quick lite play

Beer-and-pretzel style play (possibly even with a few optional drinking game rules).
Rules constrained for sake of simplicity. For example, only 3 areas: Dungeon, Wilderness, and Town.
Quick setup.

Inspired by Microlite (and similar systems) for simplifying d20 and for the 4-skill system.

Boardgame-like

"Paperless" (or at least "pencil-less") play, especially for players. That is, no modifiers that need to be tracked between turns; character state should be obvious at a glance; very little math.
Boardgame style play, but using easy-to-make or scavenged game supplies from other common games in most people's closets.

Inspired by various dungeon-crawling RPG-lite board games, such as Descent: Journey into the Dark

Classic feel

Old-school traditional dungeon-based fantasy milieu. Easy to customize or tinker with (including changing setting, etc). Rules-of-thumb to apply rather than detailed rules for each possible situation.

Inspired by D&D and d20 for the history of fantasy RPGing and the general milieu.

DM-less play

One person should not be stuck with the role of DM. Instead, the game should be largely generated at runtime, with the possibility of passing the task of adjudicating back and forth each turn. This runtime generation includes the mission/story, the dungeon, and encounters.

Room to grow

When desired by players, should allow for rich, detailed, unique RPG characters that can grow/develop through play. (But should still be simple and fit on a one-page character sheet.) Strategic options in battle. A variety of challenges, opponents, and monster abilities. (There is some tension here with the lite goal.)

Inspired by the various dead and dying "RPG lite" projects of my own with good ideas that needed a home.

The name zilch started as a temporary joke acronym, and, as most such acronyms tend to do, it ended up sticking around. I started working on zilch during a time when I was supposed to be implementing an interactive narrative prototype for my dissertation. Any time spent on zilch was really a distraction from what I was supposed to be doing. Thus, zilch means "Zach's Implementation Lies Cold and Hoary". I also liked it because it is hopefully how much you need to spend to play: just download some free rules and raid your gaming cupboard for supplies!

Recommended Supplies

zilch was largely built around the supplies in my gaming cupboard. Here's what I recommend you use, and what you can substitute instead.

Zilch Rules

Playing cards: Used to track generate character attributes. One pack can be shared between all players when playing under the Lite rules.
Subst: Just write you stats on a piece of paper instead of laying out 4 cards.
Dice (d6s): You need at least 3 six-sided dice for skill rolls. It'd be best if each player had their own, but you could always pass them around.
Subst: None. This is the only supply you really need.
Dominoes: Those dominos with blank ends should be removed from the set before play. Draw one for each combat roll. You should be able to share a single pool/bag between everyone.
Subst: Roll two d6s instead of drawing 1 domino.
Poker chips: At least four colors (which can be assigned differently, if you prefer). White: Class chips and HPs. Red: Negative HPs; burning token. Blue: Rally markers; fatigue levels. Green: Poison counters; diseased token.
Subst: Other kinds of differentiable tokens, such as coins (pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters), colored beads, Risk game tokens, buttons, etc.
Miniatures: If desired, use RPG miniatures, chess pieces, player tokens from other games (Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Sorry!, etc.), or other whatever small odds and ends are handy. A battlegrid is not required, though.
Cribbage board. Used to track Swag.
Subst: Pennies, other tokens, or just pen-and-paper.

Agony rules

It is probably easier to forgo the playing cards and just use the character sheet. The following additional supplies will be needed:

Scrabble tiles: Represents spell knowledge and scrolls.
Subst: Just write the runes known on your character sheet.

License

zilch is Product Identity; everything else here is Open Game Content.

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15 COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Open Game License v 1.0 Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
System Reference Document. Copyright 2000-2003, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors: Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich baker, Andy Collins, David Noonan, Rich Redman, Bruce R. Cordell, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
Unearthed Arcana. Copyright 2004, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors: Andy Collins, Jesse Decker, David Noonan, Rich Redman.
System Reference Document v3.5 HTML compilation. Copyright 2007, Sovelior Meliamne & Jason Olaf Jensen.
Microlite20. Copyright 2006, Robin V. Stacey (robin@greywulf.net).
z20. Copyright 2009, Zach Tomaszewski.

zilch. Copyright 2010, Zach Tomaszewski.