Last entry I wrote that a locked door is a delay, not a wall. This week you can make the delay longer. Stand inside a building, pick a door or a window, and board it up.
Loud, and worth less each time
Boarding takes planks, and it takes energy, and it is loud. That last part is the one I care about. One plank doesn’t carry as far as a gunshot, but you don’t nail one plank, you nail a few, and every zombie in earshot gets a few chances to notice. It is the same trade as breaking in from the other side: you can’t get safe quietly.
Each opening has its own strength, and each plank you add makes it stronger, but not by the same amount every time. The first few planks do most of the work. Past that you’re spending a lot of wood and a lot of noise for a little more time. There are three looks a boarded opening can have, and you can read them from outside, so a building someone has spent an afternoon on tells you that from the street.
A boarded window is shut. Nothing gets in and nothing gets out. A boarded door is different: a person can still squeeze through it from either side, for extra energy. Only zombies have to chew. I want a fortified house to still be a house you can leave in a hurry.
What the zombies do about it
Zombies chew. One at a door with planks on it takes a bite every time it acts, and the planks come off a bit at a time. Inside you see it happening: the building panel flags the opening under attack. You don’t hear it; the walls still keep every sound out. A zombie won’t chew forever. If nothing keeps its interest it loses it and wanders off, and a zombie that hasn’t noticed you doesn’t bother with boards at all. It’s trying to get to what it last saw.
What this turns a building into matters most. Before this week a building was somewhere you went through. Now it can be somewhere you carried the planks to, spent the energy on, took the risk of the noise for. That’s a place you’ll come back to. I think it’s the first step toward anyone having a home in the city.
Give people a way to make one house safe and some of them will make it very safe and never leave. That’s fine for a night; it’s a problem for a week. Planks have to come from somewhere, food has to come from somewhere, and the door has to eventually give. Whether those three are enough to get a well-boarded player back onto the street is a balance question I can’t answer by reading the rules.