Going Wild to Create the Free Zoo Mafia RPG Quick Start

September 17, 2022

Zoo Mafia RPG began a while ago with a simple misheard comment and now here we are releasing a free Quick Start packet of the game out into the world. It’s a wild new direction for Nerdarchy and we are more excited than ever before about what lies ahead. We’ve shared video design diaries of the development process and live streamed our first playtest and I thought it might be fun to give some looks behind the curtain of the Zoo Mafia RPG Quick Start version now available for folks to Go Wild, Do Crime and Don’t Let the Humans Catch You around their own gaming tables. I’ve also got a bit of future development plans to share, so let’s get into it.

Hard mechanics and narrative freedom

Before going any further you ought to snag your own free copy of the Zoo Mafia RPG Quick Start, which you can do right here. I’ll be mentioning elements of the game throughout and with your copy you can follow along.

We had a few design goals heading into creating this packet. It had to include all the Playbooks we made for the playtest as well as an introductory Job for Zookeepers to run and most importantly we focused on selling the sizzle. Personally I feel like the Zoo Mafia name does a ton of heavy lifting. I’ve floated this past several people including non-gamer friends and they all get it right away. This is a great sign!

My own favorite indie RPGs often have what I call a party game feel. Any time a group of people are gathered together you can pull up a party game and be playing in short order. To this end it was super important to me from a design perspective to make sure each Playbook fit entirely on a single page. Originally we worked in a landscape orientation so the Playbooks had three columns, which separated the material nicely into the crunchy mechanical stuff like Stats and Markers, all your Moves and all your Equipment.

Changing gears to go with a vertical layout gave elements more space to breathe. It also created space for tracking XP and Forwards. Nerdarchist Ted ran the Runaway Rum Job for some friends and discovered the little box I’d created on the Playbook was precisely the size of the custom Zoo Mafia RPG dice we had made. He asked if that was intentional but I must admit it was not. Pretty neat though, and something we’ll make more useful in later iterations.

When it came to the look of the Quick Start the idea was blending elements reminiscent of a typical zoo’s welcome brochure with those suggestive of the crime component of the game. Like every other designer I know I’m my own harshest critic. In my defense though we focused our energy on the text first and layout was a bit rushed. Nerdarchist Ted’s trip to Lumley Castle as a special guest Dungeon Master for D&D In A Castle approached quickly and he wanted to bring copies of the Quick Start along to give out to people there and run some games of it too.

Both Dave and Ted have run the introductory Job several times and we’ve already gotten lots of great feedback and fresh ideas for the game. One thing all the playtesting so far reinforced is feeling confident about divorcing characters’ animal type with mechanics. Players in each game choose to play animals they think are cool, fun and interesting, often learning more about those animals in the process and making those discoveries fun parts of the game during play.

While I’m not particularly analytical about game design in a deeply mechanical way, I do strive to understand what a game’s mechanics suggest about the gameplay experience. This is part of what makes me so excited about Zoo Mafia RPG. Comprising about three pages in the Quick Start I don’t imagine the final version of the game will get much more complex than this. Nerdarchist Dave helms the wheel as the lead designer for this project and he did a terrific job giving the game enough variation through dice results with a satisfying amount of manipulation through player choice. As in all things in my life I strive to find the balance in the middle and I really enjoy the interplay between hard mechanics and narrative freedom.

Developing Runaway Rum for the Quick Start felt really special since it is based on the live playtest we streamed, in which I was a player. Working as a professional in the RPG industry already feels like a pretty awesome dream come true. Helping create the experience being shared with so many others as their introduction to a game I’m helping develop is one of those extra special moments. The regular ol’ RPG nerd in me enjoyed this process a lot too. Breaking down someone else’s prep work and notes while playing, identifying the important part of each segment and then presenting it in an accessible way for others was a great experience.

A game of our own

Wowie wow wow did we generate a ton of ideas while developing Zoo Mafia RPG Quick Start. We love whenever folks get excited about the game and offer suggestions because we’ve got a brainstorming list going already. When we see the same concepts coming up and they’re things we’ve got on our list we get even more excited to see where we can take this game. My personal favorite is Zoo Mafia RPG: WITSEC. What happens to animals when their Markers come up? Maybe they get put into witness protection…

As a matter of fact when my turn in the hot seat comes back around with our Tuesday night group over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel I’ll going to dabble in a bit of Zoo Mafia mischief myself. Rather than set things in the default Prohibition Era I’m going to indulge something I’ve had a powerful hankering for since last year and that’s an Old West campaign. This Zoo Mafia RPG: Old West campaign will see what happens when the animals in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show start to Go Wild and Do Crime.

Working on Zoo Mafia RPG feels like a bold new direction for us and with everyone on board creating a game that’s not only fun but representative of the kind of game experience we want to share it’s incredibly exciting. We’ll continue tinkering with the Quick Start packet based on playtesting and feedback, which we hope you’ll become part of and join the Family! You can get your paws on the alpha Zoo Mafia RPG Quick Start plus stay in the loop with all future developments right here.