Solitaire: Rad Zone Totality

The apocalypse was as sudden as it was unexpected. The sun, whose light and radiation, had been the source of life and energy for time immemorial, changed. Its radiation spiked. Within days, billions were dying of radiation poisoning. Ecologies collapsed as flora and fauna perished. Governments rushed to impose martial law and ration clean food and water. It was too late. The world’s electronic infrastructure was fried, rendered useless, and with it, communication and so many devices that humanity had come to rely on. The lucky found refuge in underground fortified Rad Bunkers or heavy concrete buildings, leaving anyone outside to a life of irradiated banditry and lawlessness. Yet even those inside the bunkers needed more to survive. Materials, food, water, medical supplies, fuel, equipment, raw materials, and more. Ideally, survivors who can help ensure the long-term survival of everyone in the bunker, and maybe, even beyond. It means going out into the irradiated world on the other side of the bunker door. Always at night, and never longer than twenty-four hours, lest a bad dose of radiation is suffered. And for the same reason, never more than two excursions in a row. This is the future of Rad Zone Totality – The Print and Play, Roll and Write, 1-2 Player Game.

Rad Zone Totality – The Print and Play, Roll and Write, 1-2 Player Game is a post-apocalyptic, solo game of exploration and survival in which the player will direct the movement and action of his character across a series of maps. For each excursion, this is divided into three maps. The first shows the terrain to be covered on the journey to the city, the second a building in the city which the character will explore, and the third, the journey home to the Rad Bunker. Each of the three maps is marked with a square grid on which there are symbols for Low Levels and High Levels of radiation, Bandits, Car Wrecks, Survivors, and Peril. Some of these are worth investigating—Car Wrecks, Perils, and definitely Survivors, and some are definitely worth avoiding—the Low Levels and High Levels of radiation, and the Bandits. In fact, combat in Rad Zone Totality favours evasion rather than fighting. All of the maps come as print and play. The player chooses the three maps for his character’s excursion, whereas the various encounters and Missions are all randomly generated.

To play Rad Zone Totality – The Print and Play, Roll and Write, 1-2 Player Game, a player will need some colour pencils—red, green, and yellow work best, and three six-sided dice. Ideally, the dice should match the colours of the pencils. He will also need to be able to print out the various sheets required to play.

When play begins, a player has a team of ten characters who will go out on the Missions. He also has ten Survivors, who do not go out on Missions. A complete game of Rad Zone Totality is ten Missions. The player wins by surviving the whole campaign of ten Missions and preventing the Rad Bunker’s Survivor count from falling to zero or by increasing the Survivor count to twenty. If the Survivor count is reduced to zero, the player definitely loses. Although initially designed as a solo game, Rad Zone Totality – The Print and Play, Roll and Write, 1-2 Player Game includes rules for two players who work together rather than against each other. The solo roleplaying game is published by DR Games, following a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Rad Zone Totality begins with character creation. The base character is simply defined with just a name, a Trait, and four Fable Dice. A Trait is rolled randomly. For example, ‘Patient Watcher’ enables a player to re-roll three Radiation Scan dice per location or ‘Sprinting Burst’, which lets him run past an NPC before an encounter is triggered. Further Traits are gained for completing Missions. Fable Dice are used for rerolls of any die roll, but are a finite resource and do not regenerate. Essentially, when a character runs out of Fable Dice, he is out of luck. A character can have an animal Companion, such as a fox or a horse. An animal Companion provides an extra Fable Die and an extra ability. For example, the fox is particularly good at sensing radiation hotspots and so the character being accompanied by the fox ignores a Radiation Icon on a Journey Map, whilst the horse speeds up travel between the Rad Bunker and the city. A character can also have an Affliction, which might be a ‘Busted Foot’, which slows travel by hour, or ‘Scaly Skin’, which gives the benefit of long leather gloves (which prevent hand damage), but appear too scary to keep or gain an animal Companion.

A Mission is played out on an Episode Sheet. This has spaces for the Character Sheet in the middle, plus spaces for the ‘Journey To’ and ‘Journey From’ Charts as well as the ‘Mission’, ‘Equipment’, and ‘Gathered Resources’. There are tracks for the ‘Time Line’, twenty-four hours long and a ‘Radiation Slide’ to track the amount of radiation damage suffered. There is also space for the ‘Extra Vigilant Doubles’. These are four numbers, decided upon by the player, which if all four numbers are rolled as doubles during the Mission, will grant the character a bonus at the end of the Mission. To begin an episode, the player places the Character Sheet on the Episode Sheet and rolls for a Mission on the Mission Inbound Table. For example, ‘Water Leak’ states that the Rad Bunker’s water tank has a crack in it and water is running empty. The character has to gather six Water, but if the character fails, four Survivors flee! To this, a player can add a Side Mission, which makes the overall Mission more challenging and whilst out on the Mission, can also locate ‘Rumours to Confirm’. Doing so reduces the resources the characters need to scavenge on the Mission.

An Episode of Rad Zone Totality is played out over three stages. The ‘Journey To’ and ‘Journey From’ stages each have their Journey Chart. These are marked with the various Event Icons. Each hour is spent moving across the terrain, interacting with or avoiding the Event Icons as best they can, but if a character gets too close, he can trigger an Event Icon. These can be positive or negative, with the Survivor, Peril, and Bandit all necessitating further rolls on their own tables. Specifically for the Bandit encounter, is the ‘Combat Evasion Table’, which lists various means of dealing with the Bandit, such as using an animal Companion or the ‘Sacrifice Loot’ option. Rad Zone Totality – The Print and Play, Roll and Write, 1-2 Player Game includes some twenty small for the travel to and from the Rad Bunker.

The second of the three stages is the Locations stage when the character will explore one or more buildings. Some thirty or so floorplans include a church, factory, gym, large house, office, police station, retail centre, school, and more. These are done in an isometric view as opposed to the flat view of the Journey Charts, and are marked with doors, individual rooms, and radiation hotspots. Every location is different, including what can be found there, and is accompanied in an earlier section by the ‘Search Matrix’, which provides loot and encounter tables specific to the various locations. Before a character begins exploring a location, his player checks on the number of NPCs—and potential Survivors—that the character might encounter. From turn to turn, the character scans for radiation, his player rolling randomly to determine the radiation in the squares ahead of him. He then attempts to plot his way forward via the safest path possible. Sometimes he will find radiation hotspots, sometimes low spots. Naturally, he wants to find the latter, not the former. Eventually, either because he has explored sufficient locations or he has run out of time, a character will want to return home. Once the character is back at the Rad Bunker, the player can check to see if the mission was a success or a failure, whether or not Survivors were gained or lost, and so on, before preparing the next Mission and the next Episode.

The two-player option for Rad Zone Totality – The Print and Play, Roll and Write, 1-2 Player Game adds a new set of more challenging Missions and provides twenty large grids for the Journey Charts for the travel to and from the Rad Bunker to account for the two characters rather than the one. These are played separately in that Encounters are handled individually, rather than both characters dealing with them. The larger Journey Charts add an extra Encounter, the ‘Manhole Cover’, which enables a character to travel more safely underground. Similarly, the larger Locations are included for the two-player option, but there is nothing to stop both characters exploring a smaller Location. Other than this, the play of the game remains mostly the same. What it means is that the characters are not working directly together, although they can still communicate and pass information back and forth to enable them to progress together. So, this is more playing in tandem than together and whilst the option is perfectly playable, there is a slight disconnect between the two characters.

Playing Rad Zone Totality – The Print and Play, Roll and Write, 1-2 Player Game is very much a procedural game, but it balances the need to roll on its various tables, for everything from the nature of the Encounters on a Journey To and Journey From the Location to the radiation levels at a Location and the Resources found in a Location, with decisions as what direction to move in, what Encounters to have or avoid, and so on being entirely in the player’s hands. Similarly, the player is free to select what Journey Charts he wants to use on his Journey To and Journey From the Location, as well as the Location. It needs adjusting to upon first play, a player working through the procedure at the heart of the game and book itself, but actually learning to play as he goes. Once learned, there are enough Journey Charts and more than enough Locations with Resources and Survivors to be found, which together create enough variation for Playing Rad Zone Totality to be repayable.

There are other options too, Playing Rad Zone Totality, though these are not explored within its pages. Since it is primarily a solo game, it lends itself to Journalling, a player creating his Characters’ attempts to survive on their excursions from the Rad Bunker. This is helped by background information about the setting, including how the apocalypse came about and the irradiated threats the characters will face. Similarly, these elements could inform the basis of a more traditional roleplaying game, the Locations and their associated content in the Search Matrix forming the basis of places that a group of Player Characters can explore and scavenge. The tone of Rad Zone Totality is far less fantastic than the settings for most post-apocalyptic roleplaying games, but that means its content is easy to slip into the setting or the setting’s more fantastical elements be layered on that content.

Physically, Rad Zone Totality is cluttered, with a lot of tables and elements that at first, makes it a daunting prospect to read through. However, it takes the player through the game step-by-step on a learning curve that is actually far from difficult. It just looks more difficult than it is. Otherwise, the artwork, mostly black and white, is decent, and both the tables and maps are clear and easy to read.

Playing Rad Zone Totality – The Print and Play, Roll and Write, 1-2 Player Game is a challenging game in which the player can explore a world radically altered from what it was just a few months ago and work—rather than fight—for the future of the Survivors in his Rad Bunker. It is grimmer than most post-apocalyptic settings, but the use of maps and floorplans gives the game a real sense of exploration, of what might be found, and what has been lost.