Frequently Asked Questions
These are some worthy questions people ask regularly about Zombie Cinema. You can send in your own questions as well if you want to.
Q: How do you play the game, exactly?
A: Well, this fine thread actually has some pretty good content about that. Do check it out.
Q: What is the exact timing of different actions that can happen? Specifically, as players can sacrifice “at any time”, what does this mean for the other possible events of play?
A: Sacrifice is the only action the players can trigger outside of the normal flow of play. Sacrifice can be declared in response to any other event, such as a conflict resolution. It can even “save” a character from dying after it has already been established that the player lost a conflict and the pawn has been moved to the space with the zombie pawn. In fact, the traditional procedure before any character’s death narration is to ask whether any player wants to save the character. The same possibility of cancelling an imminent step is available when your own character is escaping – you can prevent this by declaring a sacrifice and moving back a step.
One thing sacrifice cannot do is to move pawns in between conflict resolution and the adjustment of pawns that immediately follows. So you can’t roll the dice, lose a conflict and then move your pawn to meet the zombie pawn before you’d have had to move down anyway. Another way of saying this is that you can’t create extra movement just with smart timing – you get to choose when to declare a sacrifice, but that can’t turn into extra moves no matter when you make the sacrifice.
Q: Can you play the game with more than six players?
A: Absolutely! Just add more dice and pawns for the extra players. The game will last quite a long time with many players, though. It can get exhausting if the players can’t pace themselves.
Q: When does the round marker change hands?
A: As the rules describe, the marker stays with the starting player until a conflict is tied, at which point it goes to the currently active player. The purpose of this arrangement is to regulate the movement of the zombie pawn around the board. For some reason many players at one point misunderstood the purpose of the token to be as a turn marker.
Q: How am I supposed to play this game, again?
A: Some people have complained that the rules are terse – and they are! I wrote the rules of the game with brevity in mind, so players who don’t have much experience with this sort of story game can feel a bit disoriented. Luckily for these players, I’ve written up some resources to help out.