Shotgun Diaries: The Mechanical Hound Mod

     I had just finished teaching Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and wanted to enrich the reading a bit with some exciting character interaction. It was time to turn the mechanical hounds of the novel on the students with the help of John Wick’s lethal little game of zombie survival, Shotgun Diaries.

Here is the procedure:

• Students read the novel.
• Students read the rules concerning survivor types.
• Students create survivor types based on the main characters of the novel, complete with specific skills.
• The teacher assesses the students’ understanding the novel’s characters.
• Students read the rest of the rules.
• The teacher quizzes the students’ comprehension of the rules. 
• The students play the game.
• The teacher watches to see if the rules are played correctly as a way to assess reading comprehension.
• Most of the characters die.
• The teacher and the students reflect on the game and the congruency of the novel’s characters with their own versions of the same in relation to their behavior in the game.

Zombies and Team Building

    

    

     I was consumed by zombies last night. That’s right, in the middle of the Allegheny River, I was transformed into an all-you-can-eat buffet for the undead.  BUT, IT WAS WORTH IT.   In the process of becoming sausage for the soft casing that is zombie esophagus, I realized that John Wick’s Shotgun Diaries is a fun way to work on team building skills. The game takes place after a zombie apocalypse, and each of the players takes on the role of a survivor with a specific skill.

Types of Survivors and their Special Talents

• clever survivor=Macguyver
• dangerous survivor=weapons dude
• fast survivor=speedy
• sneaky survivor=stealthy
• strong survivor=Mr. Physical
• helpless survivor=not much hope without help

     These characters must work together in order to survive, for if a character takes a risk outside of her skill, she cannot roll any dice.  She NEEDS the others.  In addition, if the characters work together, the dice rules give them a better chance at not becoming bloodlunch.  But, here is the fun part.  Certain rolls require the character to narrate their character to safety in a manner interested solely in self-protection.  Though you might WANT to help your friends get into the bank vault along with you, the dice might say otherwise.  You may have to close the door behind your own panicked self, leaving your partners to fend off some blood-drooling bank tellers obsessed with the currency of their colons.

     But this moment of self-preserving fear does not have to last the rest of the game.  You can immediately begin your road to redemption by figuring out ways to join your friends and help them survive.  That is, if you can survive.  The dice mechanic in the game does a great job of simulating the desperation found in zombie movies.  In some of them, no characters survive.  It is easy to die in these flicks and in this game, especially without the help of your friends (see Night of the Living Dead and Dead Snow).  GO TEAM!

Bonus:  Here is a fun way to get the players’ attention before beginning narration.

• Inject fake blood into an old, junk CD player.
• Play “With a Little Help From My Friends” by the Beatles while explaining the concept of the game.
• Smash the radio with a baseball bat, sending it across the room.
• Dim the lights and replace the Beatles with some creepy ambient music or your scary music of choice.