Desert Island RPGs

When, as now, I find myself working long hours far from home, I get less time to prepare for gaming sessions, but more time in the car to think. This week, my main topic of thought has been what gaming activities I can keep up under the current gruelling work regime, and which have to be cut back further. Then, I thought of the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs.

For those unfamiliar with the show, the premise is that a celebrity is cast away on a desert island, with a music player and one compilation album. During the programme, the celebrity explains why they picked the 8 tracks on that album, which are played in turn. The castaway is also allowed one luxury item, and one book, as well as copies of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

ASSUMPTIONS

You (and enough friends to make a gaming group) know that you will be cast away on a desert island. Don’t worry about food, accomodation etc. You may assume that you have pencils, paper and dice.

However, 8 games is too many to give a tough choice, and it’s the choice and the reasons for it that are interesting.

What three gaming items would you take with you, and why? What would your book and luxury item be?

MY CHOICES

The gaming products:

• Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition. If I could only take one game, this would be it. Works for any genre, works with or without figures, works as a skirmish wargame.
• All Things Zombie. This comes lower down the list because it needs figures – I picture us drawing a playing area on the beach and using pebbles. However, it serves many purposes; it’s a game in its own right, it’s a setting for SW, it’s a skirmish wargame if you drop the zombies and just use military (or police and ganger) figures, and it’s an AI opponent if the rest of the group don’t make it ashore (or exile me to the DHARMA Initiative end of The Island after too many Total Party Kills).
• For the final item, I really can’t decide between Beasts & Barbarians Golden Edition, which is my favourite SW setting, and Stars Without Number, which has outstanding tools for setting creation. What do you think?

The book and luxury item:

• I could cheat and take my fourth gaming product as a book, but instead I shall choose The Complete Chronicles of Conan by Robert E Howard, which is a snout (in the dark) ahead of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in my affections – although it was the latter that ignited my interest in fantasy and science fiction, and indirectly led me into roleplaying games a few years later.
• A repurposed oil tanker full of Glenmorangie. Obviously, the group were travelling on it when it ran aground, and the penguins from Madagascar have trashed the radio.

OVER TO YOU

What would you pick, and why? Answers on a comment please…

Blackman, Z+94: Discretion

“Discretion is the better part of valour.” ― William Shakespeare

“Discretion is the better part of not getting exsanguinated.” ― Jim Butcher

SETUP

Z+94, 4th April 2013: It’s the start of a new month, so Mike deducts one food unit from his stock (p. 55). Mike is staying in the suburbs for a while, and has decided to clean out a small group of houses as a base of operations. He only needs one to sleep in, but it would be easier if the rest had been cleaned out as well. Thus, I’ll be playing a Take Back scenario (p. 70). I choose the Day Part as Daytime (p. 66), and note that the Encounter Rating (p. 53) is 3. Mike’s Rep can’t get any lower than 2, so there is no point rolling for Lack of Sleep.

As usual, I’ve picked an existing map rather than generate one using the rulebook, and also as usual, it’s The Village from Cry Havoc Fan, set up in Hex Map Pro on the iPad, and counting one inch per hex – a bit small as tables go, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. As per p. 53, there are 1d6+2 vehicles; I roll a 4, so there are 6 vehicles on the table. There’s no particular way of working these out in the rules, but it seems reasonable to me that most of them are sedans or small vans.

There are PEFs in areas 3, 4 and 6, with Reps of 5, 6 and 5 respectively (p. 60). With the player tactical group only having one figure in it (Mike), there are 1d6 zombies on the table at the start; I roll 6 of them, then 1d6 for each to get its clockface direction from Mike as per p. 46, and get 214652. Mike enters from section 9, and moves a full 8" move onto the table before I place the zeds, putting his back to the wall of Building 1 as it may be some time before he activates again, and I don’t want him to be rushed from behind. Thanks to the rule that zeds must be 12" away from Mike to start with, and if that’s not possible, they rotate clockwise until they fit on the board, a small herd of zeds develops in section 7 of the board.

There are no special rules about placing vehicles, so I place them as if they were PEFs, which works as well as anything; that puts them in sections 363622.  Here’s the board at the end of setup, which took just under half an hour because I’m a bit rusty; I’ve marked the board sections for you. The white square at top left is the ER, the red and green squares are activation dice (using Hex map Pro’s built-in dice roller), and the tan octagon is the turn counter.

TURN 1

Activation: Mike 1, zeds and PEFs 5. All PEFs activate, as does Mike, but the zeds are dormant. Since the PEFs have a higher die roll and have activated, they move first.

PEF6 is easy; it must pass 2d6 on the PEF Movement Table (in the Quick Reference Sheets at the back of the book), so moves 12" towards Mike, staying in cover at all times. I decide to let it walk through walls, as until it is resolved, it’s just where Mike thinks something might be; it closes up to the corner of Building 4′s yard, as per my usual house rule that given a choice between getting closer and staying in cover, PEFs stay in cover.

PEF5a rolls 4, 1 vs its Rep (5) and passes 2d6, so it moves into the corner of Building 2. PEF5b does likewise (rolling 3, 3) and winds up next to PEF5a.

Mike ducks into Building 1, and since it has no PEF inside, I check if there are zombies (p. 47, Meeting Zombies in Buildings). this triggers a Defining Moment (p. 64). I roll 6d6, with any scores of 5 or 6 counting as a zombie (because these are the ‘burbs). I roll 553346, so there are three zeds inside. Mike has a shotgun, but with a miserable Rep 2 he needs a 6 to hit anything, and that has to be on the first die, as anything after that counts as "second or higher target" and will miss automatically. So, using it as a club, he lays into the zeds.

We start with a Charge Into Melee test (I’m working from the QRS sheets now). Mike rolls 4d6 vs Rep on the table – 2d6 as normal, +1d6 for Rage, +1d6 for being a Survivor. He rolls 3655 and passes 0d6; zombies always pass 1d6, so they have beaten him and move straight into melee (zombies having no ability to shoot at him, fortunately).

The first zed rolls Rep (3) d6 and gets 625, scoring one success as only one of the dice has scored 1-3. Mike rolls 3d6 (Rep 2, Rage) and scores 625, also one success; but he gets an extra success for being a human fighting a zombie. As Mike scored one more success, the zed is knocked down and Mike rolls 1d6, which on a roll of 1 will kill the zombie. He rolls 5, and it’s still in play, but now prone.

Zombie #2 rolls 314 and gets two successes; Mike gets 411, counting as three successes as he’s fighting a zed, and again knocks it down – he rolls a 3, so doesn’t kill it.

Zombie #3 rolls 255, one success, and Mike gets 526, so knocks the third one prone also, but on a roll of 6 fails to kill it.

TURN 2

Activation: Mike 1, Zeds 5. Hmm, same as last time. PEF5a and 5b both pass 2d6, and would close in, but like PEF6 they can’t get any closer. The zeds fail to activate, so that leaves Mike smacking the ones inside Building 1.

You’ve seen how that works; however, because the zeds are prone, Mike is now rolling an extra 2d6, so he manages to kill one, and knock two down as they stagger to their feet.

TURN 3

Activation: Mike 2, Zeds 3. All PEFs activate and pass 2d6, but they can get no closer. The zeds activate and go before Mike; let’s look at the melee first, where we find Mike clubbing both zeds back to the floor as they try to rise. Even Rep 2 Survivors have a chance in melee, it seems.

The other zeds have nothing to home in on, so move forward in the direction they were facing, turning left or right at random when they bump into things. The one in Building 3′s yard amuses me briefly by rattling around inside the yard, before straightening up and heading for the open gate. Which reminds me, I forgot to roll for the door Mike entered building 1 through; never mind, that’s a house rule anyway.

TURN 4

Activation: Mike 4, zeds 1. PEFs and zeds continue to move as before, but the zeds climb to their feet unopposed and claw at Mike, who knocks one down but is evenly matched against the second.

TURN 5

Activation: Mike 1, Zeds/PEFs 4. This time, both PEF5s pass 1d6, so they move away from Mike. The zeds bumble around as usual, and there are the first signs of the traditional conga line starting to form up along the edges of the board.

Meanwhile, Mike is still locked in melee with two zombies, both of whom he knocks down. I should get him a sword or something.

TURN 6

Activation: Mike 5, zeds 2. All the PEFs pass 2d6 and move back where they came from. Zeds shamble around aimlessly outside, while inside Building 1, the melee continues… and Mike clubs both zombies back down again as they try to stand up. How long can this go on, we ask? The problem is that while Mike’s Rage and Survivor status are giving him enough successes to beat the zeds, they aren’t giving him enough successes to actually kill them.

TURN 7

Activation: Mike 6, zeds 5. Nobody moves, the PEFs because they can’t get any closer without breaking cover, and the rest because they don’t activate.

TURN 8

Activation: Mike 4, zeds 2. Much the same as the last few turns, except that Mike finally gets enough successes, and rolls low enough for damage, that he kills both zeds. Phew!

TURN 9

Activation: Mike 2, zeds 1. Mike uses his activation to loot the building; he rolls 2d6 vs the area’s Encounter Rating (3), scores 6, 5, and finds nothing. Oh well.

Meanwhile, outside, the zeds are in a full-blown anticlockwise conga line, except for one maverick who is going clockwise.

TURN 10

Activation: Double 1 – random event. I really must print that page out separately, it’s the only one I use now apart from the QRS. Naturally, it’s an 11, and Mike twists his ankle again. Note to self: Pick up some grunts, then there is a chance that one of them might twist and ankle instead.

TURN 11

Activation: Double 4 – random event. This time, a 10; Mike has the wrong reloads, and once his shotgun runs out of ammo, it stays that way for the rest of the game.

TURN 12

Activation: Mike 4, zeds 2. One of the PEFs passes 0d6 so stays put – usual outcome, different reason. The zeds conga around the board edges.

TURN 13

Activation: Mike 6, zeds 2. Stuck inside a building with no line of sight to or from zeds is as good a way to fail to activate as any, I guess. However, next time the zeds activate, one of the zombies will shamble past the open door, and then it will be able to see him.

TURN 14

Activation: Mike 2, zeds 1. Since this is a Take Back encounter, Mike has to kill all the zeds to win. Looking at the board, I can see that if he attacks the closest one in melee, none of the others will be able to see; so Mike hobbles out of Building 1 and lays into it with his crowbar, while the rest shuffle around the board edge. Mike rolls 2d6 vs Rep for Charge Into Melee, and gets no successes (rolled 3, 5). Although zeds have no guns, it’s still worth rolling for this, as if Mike manages to beat the zed, it counts as unarmed on the first turn of melee, and thus rolls one die less.

The zed rolls Rep (3) d6, scoring 315 for two successes; Mike rolls Rep (2) d6, plus 1d6 for Rage, and gets 315 – two successes, bumped up to three because his target is a zed. Mike rolls 1d6 vs the number of extra successes he gained (one), and on a 5 has just knocked the zed down. It’s a start.

TURN 15

Activation: Mike 3, zeds 5, and only the PEFs activate; PEF6 notices that it can now get closer without being seen, and joins the other PEFs in Building 2.

TURN 16

Activation: Mike 5, zeds 3. Mike has two zombie activations to finish this melee and bug out, or the others will heave into view and notice it. As they shuffle forwards, the life-or-death struggle goes on; the zed fights for its not-quite-life and rolls 312 for three successes, then Mike rolls 33241 and gets five successes; he rolls a 1 on 1d6 for the melee result, and kills it outright. However, as he has not activated, he can’t move, and stands in plain sight, panting heavily, slimy crowbar in one hand.

TURN 17

Activation: Mike 1, zeds 3 – everyone activates and the sequence is PEFs, zeds, then Mike. PEF5a is bored and wanders off, having passed only 1d6; since it moves 12" directly away from him, it’s now outside Building 5. The zeds conga as usual. Mike hobbles back to Building 1 and hides in the corner, minimising the chance of anyone seeing him.

TURN 18

Activation: Mike 1, zeds 2. PEFs 6 and 5b hold in position; PEF5a flees again, hits the board edge, and joins the zed conga line.

Mike needs to resolve all PEFs to win, so he now switches to the shotgun, fast-moves up to Building 2 and barges in (I roll 1d6, using a house rule, and get a 3; the door is closed, but not locked). He rolls 2, 4 vs Rep for the fast move and passes 1d6, boosting his move to 10"; he only needs 7" to get into the building, but any hostile shooters are more likely to miss if you’re fast moving, however far you go.

I now roll 2d6 vs local ER for each PEF; PEF6 gets 3, 2 and passes 2d6 so is an actual contact – I roll 1d6 on the Contact Days 30+ table and get a 1, Gangers; I roll again on the How Many table, adding +1 as directed by the previous answer, and get a 5. +1 = 6; Player Group + 2, or three Gangers. PEF5b gets 2, 3 and is also a contact – a 4 on the Contact Days 0+ table tells me this is zombies, and a 3 on the How Many table tells me there are 1 + 1/2 d6 zeds; I roll a 4, so that’s three zeds.

We now go to a Meet and Greet situation (p. 62), which happens before anyone else gets to do anything. First, I need to load up the PEFs; the zombies are easy, but I need to roll for the gangers on pp. 74-75. Rolling 1d6 for the table to use for each, then 2d6 for each ganger on the relevant table (this is why it’s better to do it ahead of time), I see Mike has met gangers 6 and 8 from table 1-3, and ganger 7 from table 4-6. The stats I need for the moment are:

• Kev (6 on 1-3 table): Rep 3, Shotgun, Rage.
• Fred (8 on 1-3 table): Rep 4, Machine Pistol, Runt.
• Jeni (7 on 4-6 table): Rep 3, Machine Pistol, Hard As Nails.

Fred has the highest Rep, so he’s in charge. Fred and Mike now each roll Rep d6, looking for successes; Mike gets 6, 3 = one success, while Fred gets 2331 = 4 successes. Consulting the Ganger Meet & Greet table, I see that when players score less than Gangers, Gangers Walk the Walk – i.e., start fighting. We go directly to the In Sight check (p. 17) , where each figure rolls Rep d6 to determine the sequence of events. Mike rolls one less die than usual because he is the active figure.

(Note that although the Gangers are all Grunts, and thus must follow the Grunt Actions for in-sight resolution, it’s obvious in this case that they will all fire.)

Mike gets no successes (rolling 4); Kev, 1 (rolling 345); Jeni, 0 (rolling 644); and Fred, 3 (rolling 1341). Fred goes first, and fires three shots at Mike (his weapon has 3 targets). He rolls 1d6 for each shot (scoring 445) and adds his Rep (4) to each one, giving him scores of 8, 8, and 9. The first 8 misses Mike because he is fast moving (told you that was worth it), the second 8 misses because this is the second shot, and the 9 misses because it is the third shot. I roll 3d6 to see how many zeds this attracts; 443, so no new zombies.

Kev goes next, and fires his shotgun at Mike. As it’s a shotgun, although the target rating is only 3, he rolls 6d6 for hits, counting the best three for attacks but all of them for tight ammo; he rolls 445445. No ones there, so he hasn’t run out of shells; he counts 545 as hits, but rolls 6d6 for fresh zombies, getting 525521 for three new zeds. He adds his Rep (3) to the three best dice rolls and scores 8, 7, 8; all of those miss – again, Mike is saved by fast moving. The new zeds turn up at Kev’s 6, 4, and 8 o’clock (in each case, twice the score of 1d6).

Jeni and Mike go simultaneously. I roll for Jeni first, and she gets 553, which gives her scores of 8, 8, and 6; all misses thanks to the fast move, and she scores 425 for zombies, getting a new one at her 10 o’clock. Mike fires his shotgun and gets 356554, counting 565 for hits, no ones so tight ammo doesn’t apply, and 151631 for zombies, generating two new ones at his 2 and 6 o’clock.

I now face a quandary. As I understand the rules, there is no rule saying he can’t use up his remaining movement to break contact; but that will leave him in view of half a dozen zeds and three hostile gangers, and unlikely to activate. So, I invoke the Leaving the Table rule on p. 33; all humans roll 1d6 + Rep, and any who score higher than Mike can shoot at him as he runs off, although he counts as fast moving – that sounds like a better bet.

Mike rolls a 6 and adds Rep 2 for a total of 8; go Mike! Fred rolls a 3, adds Rep 4 and gets a 7 – too slow, Fred. Kev rolls 1, and let’s just draw a veil over that, shall we? Jeni rolls a 3, adds Rep 3, and also fails to beat Mike’s score. Mike is removed from the table.

AFTERMATH

Mike failed this encounter, since he did not clear the board of the opposition. He can’t roll to improve his Rep, and there is no point rolling to see if he lost any Rep, because it can’t go any lower. Well, that was a bust, but ATZ encounters are like aeroplane landings – if you can walk away, it was good enough.

CURRENT STATUS

Mike Blackman:* Rep 2 MM Survivor, Pep 2, Sav 1, Poser, Rage. Shotgun, crowbar, knife, backpack. Food 1.

Suburban Area: Body Armour 9, Food 29, Fuel 14, Luxuries 28, Medical 7, Weapons 25.

STATISTICS

This encounter used 18 zombies and four humans, and took about three hours to play and write up – it’s hard to apportion time between those, as I write things up as I go. Mike’s appalling Rep is also boosting the encounter time, as he often fails to activate.

Emergent Settings

This is probably something a lot of you have been doing for years, and I’ve only just cottoned on to; you don’t need the whole setting to begin with, you only need the places the PCs are in currently, or could reach by the next session. Then, you add bits as you go, as the need for them emerges; the campaign-level version of random dungeon generation on the fly during a session.

This isn’t a sandbox; a sandbox is more or less worked out in advance, whereas the emergent setting is the GM launching himself into empty space with only some dice and random encounter or terrain tables for company.

LARGER THAN LIFE

I could drivel on about the theory of that, but let me show you an example instead; let’s use THW’s Larger Than Life as a random generator, although there are of course other options. Rather than playing through the adventure (that might come later), let’s look at the structure of the star’s travels from scene to scene. As this is an example, to create a shorter story than the Rules As Written would produce, I’ll rate each clue as a +4 die roll modifier on the Advance the Story Table rather than the official +1 (or my own usual +2).

Let’s assume a Rep 4 Star. The tables on pp 28-29 of LTL and a couple of dice rolls tell me that the Star must rescue someone from a Rep 4 slaver. I decide the Star begins in a Metropolis, one of the largest cities in the setting, because the tables seem to direct one inexorably towards a Lost World, and once you’re there, it’s quite difficult to get away again. In my mind, this is a space opera setting, as that’s the next game up on my schedule.

Using the tables on pp 30-32 to generate the skeleton of the adventure, I get these results. I’ll assume the Star passes every challenge along the way, for simplicity.

0. Start in a Metropolis (A). Learn of missing person.
1. Get Info from Someone.
2. Travel to a different Metropolis (B) by commercial airliner. Let’s call that a spaceship. Star is being followed and there is a Stand Up Fight when he arrives at the second Metropolis.
3. Get Info from Someone.
4. Travel to a third Metropolis (C) by commercial airliner – errm, sorry, spaceliner. No encounter.
5. Find an Object.
6. Travel to a fourth Metropolis locale by train. OK, we’ll call that a monorail taking the Star to another location on Metropolis world (C). No encounter.
7. Find an Object. Big Bad shows up and tries to capture the Star; we’ll assume he fails.
8. Travel to a Civilized locale by Auto. That sounds like the Star has acquired a gravsled to take him to a smaller city on world (C). No encounter.
9. The Final Scene.

Hmm, not at all what I expected; but then THW games never play out the way I expect, which is one reason I like them. In this case, I’ve generated a simple starmap:

A — B — C

And on planet C, there are two really big cities (which are connected by a monorail) and a smaller one (which isn’t).

Is there a hyperspace route of some kind between planet A and planet C? I have no idea. Maybe one would show up, in the third or seventeenth adventure, and maybe it wouldn’t. If using this setup for an ongoing campaign, I’d say Planet A was the PCs’ homeworld, and (to facilitate transferring the starmap to a hexgrid later on) it could have no more than 6 adjacent planets. Eventually, all those slots would be used up, and it would become clear which (say) Exotic world the Star had to go to – although it might take more than one travel scene to get there.

ENTER STARS WITHOUT NUMBER, STAGE LEFT

Now, at this stage, the planets are not terribly interesting, because I haven’t fleshed them out. In LTL, I would apply large doses of inspiration or imagination to fill in the blanks; but I can be lazy, and apply a stucco of Stars Without Number instead. Notice the key aspect of mashing up rules sets; as long as you use one game to fill in a completely blank area in the other, things are fine; you only start to tie yourself in knots if you try to merge two rulebooks in an area that they both cover. ( I feel comfortable recommending SWN as an add-on to anything, not only because it’s good, but also because it’s free.)

In this case, the part I like best about SWN – world tags – fills a gap in the LTL rules. Rolling two tags for each world, and using the GM tables in the back of SWN to generate a culture and name for the world randomly, I get this:

Planet A – Guizhou: Altered Humanity, Pilgrimage Site. Alright then, the missing person is an altered human, of a type that people travel through space to meet, and the Big Bad wants one of his own – or knows someone else who would pay good money for one. (I could use the Enemies, Friends, Complications, Things and Places lists in the tag and some dice to figure out who the Star needs to meet, where, and so on, but I leave that as an exercise for the interested student.)

Planet B – Sutton: Freak Geology, Abandoned Colony. Since I already know it’s a metropolis, and thus heavily populated, the colony must have been abandoned by an alien species. At this stage I don’t need to know anything about them except what the ruins look like – and oh look, SWN has a table for that. What about the freak geology? Hmm. Well, the first thing that springs to mind is Plateau, from Larry Niven’s Known Space series; a planet with a hellishly dense atmosphere, and one tiny habitable area on top of a freakishly tall column of rock. That’ll do.

Planet C – Sinqit: Alien Ruins, Heavy Industry. More alien ruins; OK, let’s have them be left by the same race to save time. I’ll say that both the big cities (Giddah and Baytlahm) are dedicated to heavy industry, and the smaller one (Tisit) is near the ruins, and hosts both a research community and a hidden slaver cult. I have no idea why I typed cult there, but you have to admit it makes things more interesting than "gang".

CODA

Looking at the structure as the Star would see it, there are six encounters – let’s say two sessions of play.

Session 1: The Star (PC) learns of a missing person, and has to persuade or intimidate someone to give them a clue. The clue takes him to another world, where he is ambushed at the spaceport and a fight ensues. After this, he must gain another clue from an NPC.

Session 2: The Star must travel to a third planet, and solve a puzzle to find an object. This leads him to the location of another object, but it’s a trap the Big Bad has laid to capture him. The Star commandeers a gravsled, and a chase ensues, culminating at the alien ruins for the final showdown.

See how easy this stuff is with the right tools? The whole thing above took less than an hour to do. Actually, I quite like this adventure now, and might finish it off, or at least use this method for my next solo space adventure – the idea has crossed my mind to use this very technique for creating adventures for my face-to-face group, as well.

The Dojo Gang, Z+28: Grenade Fishing

It’s now January 18th for the Dojo Gang, and they have moved into the suburbs, where there is a small military base, now hopefully abandoned. NS has decided he needs a flamethrower, so they plan to stroll in and take one.

For this encounter only, since the group has specified raiding a military base for decent weapons and body armour, I allowed them to declare Items they found as either one.

SETUP

The Dojo Gang (Gouda Killem, GM, NS, and Hardcore Hank) enter the board from section 7. Gouda as declared as the tactical group leader, as while he and GM both have Rep 5 now, if Gouda leads he can stop GM indulging her Greed by looting. The assorted mountain bicycles have been left off-map.

The PEFs are Rep 4 (in the Inn), Rep 5 (building 3) and Rep 6 (building 6). Seven zombies initially, placed as per the rulebook.

GAME PLAY

NS climbed into Building 1 through the window, and encountered a lone Ganger who opened fire on him, drawing more zombies, before NS cut him down with a katana.

Meanwhile, all PEFs were resolved, two of them boosting the Encounter Rating to 5, and one revealing itself as a squad of five soldiers, no doubt placed to guard the base.

Neither side felt especially forgiving, and so grenades were exchanged through the doors, but thanks to Star Power the Stars survived and the soldiers did not, except for the Rep 3 medic, who got lucky. Many more zombies were generated by the bangs, and started to close in on Our Heroes.

The group methodically searched the cluster of buildings, then repaired to the roof of Building 4, throwing a grenade into section 9 to draw the zeds away from them. At this stage they had met all requirements for self-improvement except killing a zombie each, and hit on the idea of taking it in turns to throw a grenade into the mass of zombies, on the basis that this would probably get them at least one each, and continue to draw the zeds away from them. That explains the mass of live and dead zeds milling around sections 8 and 9.

Meanwhile, several random events occurred, including a couple of zombies bursting out of cupboards and Building 6 bursting into flames – we decided that must have been where the flamethrowers were kept, and that one had been set off by a stray round.

The soldier medic recovered and fled, unfortunately straight into a group of zombies, who promptly devoured him. While the zombies were distracted by fire, grenades and the dying medic, the Gang withdrew to the Stables in good order, where they found a Hummvee – Gouda had previously found some car keys in Building 4, to ensure that he had some when he next saw a vehicle.

The group debated whether to clear the place out and take up residence, as they have too much stuff to carry now, but decided it was too big, and they should try again somewhere smaller. So, they roared off through the Alep Gate in their new Hummvee (not shown), letting Hank drive so that he could run over one of the zeds by the gate and thus fulfil all his victory conditions.

Sorry, the end-of-game picture is a bit blurry today.

AFTERMATH

The only character who improved anything was Hardcore Hank, the Grunt, who promptly beat Gouda’s Keeping It Together roll by a wide margin and left the party, taking large quantities of food and a couple of weapons.

Having looted all the bodies, the group now has more armour and weapons than they can comfortably use. Fortunately, they now have a vehicle to carry it.

CURRENT STATUS

Gouda Killem, Rep 5 Survivor. Pep 3, Sav 2, Runt, Born Leader. Body armour, pistol, crowbar. Food 3, Fuel 2. Fireman’s axe, nailgun, map, compass, lighter, commlink, propane lantern, backpack, 2 grenades.

GM, Rep 5 Survivor. Pep 3, Sav 2, Greedy, Medic-2. Body armour, shotgun, fireman’s axe. Food 4, Lux 3, Med 4. Shovel, mirror, commlink, pink Dora the Explorer backpack with compass, jack-in-the-box, glass cutter.

NS, Rep 4 Survivor. Pep 2, Sav 3, Brawler, Rage. Body armour, shotgun with bayonet and flashlight, katana. Food 6, Fuel 1. NVG, grappling hook and rope, binoculars, commlink, large backpack, blowtorch, large can of deodorant spray, mountain bike.

Hummvee. BV 6. Fuel 6. Contains 5 assault rifles, 2 grenades, binoculars, 4 x pistol, BAP, road flare, 4 body armour.

The Neighbourhood: Body Armour 4, Food 28, Fuel 14, Luxuries 24, Medical 3, Weapons 17.

-o0o-

I can see that for the next session we’ll need to look at encumbrance – as they have a Hummer, they can hang on to it all, but some of them now own more than they can carry on their persons.

For the group, though, February approaches, and we’re switching back to our normal diet of alternating Shadowrun and Savage Worlds games; ATZ will be the reserve game for when time is short or inspiration fails, as it can be set up and played very quickly. When next you see the Dojo Gang, expect a Take Back scenario in the suburbs, as they find a place to stay.

Credits: Map – the Caravanserai from the Cry Havoc! Fan website. Figures – zombies from Zombie! boardgame, other figures eM4 prepaints. Additional rules – CR2 Final Version for grenades.

Statistics: The game lasted 17 turns, roughly 90 minutes, and used 38 zombies and 10 human figures.

Blackman, Z+80: Let’s Twist Again

It’s been a busy week, and there wasn’t time for a group session at the weekend, so I decided to use my spare time constructively – that is, by playing more All Things Zombie.

For Mike Blackman, would-be road warrior, it’s now 21st March 2013, Z+80. Mike hasn’t eaten in a long time, so I decide he will move back into the ‘burbs where the tins of spam – and zombies – are more numerous. So, it’s a Search scenario; I prefer those in urban or suburban regions, as you can win the encounter earlier on; in rural locales, I find it better to use a Take Back scenario, as you might very well not find anything, but you can clear the board.

SETUP

I was going to use one of the nifty maps Lee Sweeney pointed out to me, but I already had the Village from Cry Havoc! loaded in Hex Map Pro on the iPad, so inertia won, as it often does these days. I set one hex as 1" because it’s easy, which makes the board a bit small at 16" x 26", but as I’ve said before, these rules are really hard to break, and a small board won’t do it; it just speeds up play a little, and with Mike’s current Rep of 2, that’s useful, as he will fail to activate two turns out of three.

We begin with Mike entering the board from section 7, with two PEFs in section 5 and one in section 6, all three of the beggars Rep 6. There are 2 + 1d6 = 4 vehicles, which I place as if they were PEFs in sections 1, 3, 4 and 4. There are three zombies, at Mike’s 2, 6 and 8 o’clock, rotated around until they fit on the board. The game board now looks like this:

I thought it might be useful to label the board sections and show the borders between them, so I added those. You’ll see some of the labels later are on sideways – sorry about that, I was playing the game “vertically” and it didn’t occur to me at the time that I always post the pictures “horizontally” so they fit on monitors better.

I don’t bother rolling for lack of sleep, because Mike’s Rep can’t get any worse than it is already, poor guy.

TURN 1

Activation: Mike 3, Zeds and PEFs 6. Rep 6 PEFs always activate and always pass 2d6 for movement, so they all move 12" towards Mike, staying in cover at all times. As usual, I apply my house rule that given a choice between moving closer and staying in cover, PEFs will stay in cover.

This leaves them all lined up inside the yard of Building 3, glaring at him like something from Hitchcock’s The Birds.

TURN 2

Activation: Mike 2, Zeds and PEFs 5. The zeds still fail to activate, and the PEFs can’t get any closer without breaking cover, so Mike moves. Mike fast-moves, rolling 2d6 vs Rep (2); 6, 2 and he passes 1d6, meaning his move this turn is 12". He runs to the corner of Building 5 and flattens himself against the wall. Since the PEFs rolled higher for activation than he did, he moves after them, so they stay where they are. Mike can now see a vehicle crashed into a tree in section 3.

The white square is a turn counter, while the coloured squares are the activation dice for Mike (green) and zombies (red), using Hex Map Pro’s dice roller.

TURN 3

Activation: Mike 4, Zeds and PEFs 3. Mike doesn’t activate, but everyone else does. The PEFs follow him and squat on the other side of the wall he’s backed up against; the zeds shamble 6" in whatever direction they’re currently facing, which conveniently takes them towards where they last saw him.

TURN 4

Activation: Mike 6, Zeds/PEFs 5. Nobody moves, Mike and the zeds because they failed to activate, and the PEFs because they can’t get any closer.

TURN 5

Activation: Mike 5, Zeds/PEFs 3. Pretty much a repeat of turn 3, with the zeds coming up on the edge of the board now.

TURN 6

Activation: Mike 2, Zeds/PEFs 6. Again, although the PEFs always activate and always pass 2d6 to move closer, they go before Mike; which means they don’t actually move. While the zeds pause for breath (all that shuffling takes it out of you), Mike fast-moves up the board toward the vehicle in section 3. He rolls 2, 5 against Rep on 2d6, and so passes 1d6 and moves 12".

A little metagaming here; in the real world, danger could come from anywhere, but in the game, I know any attackers will be on the board somewhere. So, I turn Mike to cover as much of it as possible. This is why he needs a companion; someone has to look out behind him, since attacks from the rear are vicious.

TURN 7

Activation: Both sides roll 4, so there is a random event, and for the first time I turn to the rulebook. Oh look, it’s an 11; Mike twists his ankle again. He really ought to get that ankle looked at. This happens in almost every game with Mike, for some reason.

TURN 8

Activation: Mike 1, Zed/PEF 4. As the zeds can’t see any people, they are Rep 3, so miss a turn. The PEFs realise Mike is in section 3 now, and stampede towards him. Meanwhile, Mike fast-moves; as he has twisted an ankle, he only counts 1d6 for this, but rolls a 2 so still passes 1d6, and has a move of 10" (8" normal move, +4" for fast move, -2" for twisted ankle). That doesn’t bother me, he needs much less than that to reach the crashed car, but will still count as fast-moving if anyone shoots at him, which is all I wanted.

After a quick skim of the rules, I can’t see anything that says there should be anyone (or anything) inside, so I decide this car is empty. Mike clambers in, because then he counts as concealed. As per p. 39, at this stage of the outbreak in a suburban area, it’s out of fuel on a roll of 4-6 on 1d6. I roll 1, so it’s still operational, and then 4 when checking if the keys are in the ignition; as that roll is more than 1, Mike will have to hotwire the car if he wants to use it. Let’s search the car, shall we, Mike? That’ll have to wait, though, as he needs to spend an activation doing it.

TURN 9

Activation: Mike 1, Zed/PEF 4. Hmm, same as last time. The PEFs close up, and stare at him through the windows. Mike searches the car; only one person can search a car, but there’s just him, so that’s OK. I roll 2d6 vs the Encounter Rating of 3; 1, 5 passes 1d6, so Mike finds a food unit. Hurray! I would imagine he eats some of it, as it has been weeks since he had any real food.

TURN 10

Activation: Mike 1, Zeds/PEFs 5. Mike’s on a roll here. Pausing only to stuff his pockets and backpack with food, he exits the vehicle and fast-moves along the top of the board towards the car parked in section 1. He has now achieved the encounter objective, but he needs to kill a zed to gain a chance to improve his Rep, and given its parlous state, that is definitely worth a shot. I roll 2, 4 and again Mike passes 1d6 and moves 10", flattening his back against Building 1.

TURN 11

Activation: Mike 1, Zed/PEF 4. Wow, four activations in a row! The PEFs move up as always, and Mike fast-moves to the next car, again getting a 10" move. The car is fuelled, but there are no keys. Mike looks out of the windows, and has line of sight to two of the PEFs, so I resolve them now by rolling 2d6 vs location ER (3) on the PEF Resolution table.

For the first, I roll 6, 6 and pass 0d6 – just Mike’s nerves playing tricks on him. For the second, I get 2, 4 and pass 1d6 – there’s definitely something out there, and the ER increases to 4. Good for looting, bad for getting shot at.

TURN 12

Activation: Mike 4, Zed/PEF 1. Ah well, it had to happen sometime. As the highest Rep that activated, the PEF moves up as close as it can. Then the zeds finally move, hit the board edge, and start shaking out into the traditional conga line.

TURN 13

Activation: Mike 6, PEF/Zed 3. Mike doesn’t activate, the PEF can’t get any closer without being seen, and the zeds shuffle around the edge of the map.

TURN 14

Activation: Mike 3, PEF/Zed 1. A repeat of turn 13.

TURN 15

Activation: Mike 1, Zed/PEF 5. Mike searches the second car, and finds a second food unit. Excellent. For the previously-explained reasons, nobody else moves.

TURN 16

Activation: Mike 1, Zed/PEF 5. Still lucky, Mike. Mike sees he is within range for the shotgun, and pokes it out the window to blast the zed moving up the left-hand edge of the board. As per p. 23, he rolls 6d6 to hit, counting the best three for purposes of hitting and all of them for purposes of running out of ammo. He rolls 362363, and uses 6, 6, 3 as his rolls to hit. I add his Rep (2) to each of those dice and get 8, 8, 5. The 5 is an obvious miss – any roll of 7 or less is – but looking at the Range Combat table, both 8s hit. (8 misses "if second or higher target", but it’s the same zombie, so I guess both hit.)

As soon as I fire, I must roll to see if the gunfire attracts more zombies… I roll 6d6 (one for each shot), and get 612331; any results of 5 or 6 in the ‘burbs are a new zed, so I deploy one more, 12" from Mike. I roll a 3 for direction, meaning it would be at his 6 o’clock (you just double the score to get a clock face direction), and then rotate that vector clockwise until the new zed fits on the table, facing Mike, but it doesn’t activate on the turn it is placed.

Now for damage. It doesn’t matter if I use the Easy To Kill rule (which would apply) from p. 49 or not, as Mike’s Rep is the same as the shotgun’s Impact – 2. I roll 1d6 for each hit, and get 6, 2; the 6 is higher than the Impact, so Knocks Down the zed, but the 2 is the Impact or less, and so puts the zombie Out Of the Fight – which for a zed, kills it (p. 49). I flip the counter to its grey side in celebration, as Mike has now met all the victory conditions for the scenario.

As my beloved wishes me to clear snow from the drive at this point, I call the game and Mike uses his movement to exit the board while I exit the house with shovel in hand.

AFTERMATH

Mike rolls 1d6 to increase his Rep, and gets a 2. I am unimpressed, but the dice roll what they roll. As the ‘burbs look like a good compromise between loot and safety, Mike will stay here for a while, so it’s worth checking what loot there is; I roll this as per the Availability rules on p. 57, then deduct the 2 Food Mike has already found.

I suppose strictly speaking I should keep track of resources left in previous areas, but that sounds like high effort and low fun, so I won’t bother. The primary purpose of Over Fishing is to force characters into a new area from time to time, and in my experience that’s usually triggered by a shortage of food.

The next adventure should be a Take Back encounter, as Mike looks for a place to stay for the next few weeks. He definitely does not want to spend another winter living rough in the boonies. Also, he is reaching the limit of what he can carry, so he needs a safe place to store things. At Rep 2, he can only carry 4 Items (twice his Rep), which are currently the shotgun, the knife and the backpack (counts as two items). However, he can carry twice his Rep in items inside the backpack, which are currently a crowbar and two units of Food; that means he can only carry one more item.

CURRENT STATUS

Mike Blackman:* Rep 2 MM Survivor, Pep 2, Sav 1, Poser, Rage. Shotgun, crowbar, knife, backpack. Food 2.

Suburban Area: Body Armour 9, Food 29, Fuel 14, Luxuries 28, Medical 7, Weapons 25.

The Dojo Gang, Z+21: Hardcore Hank

Gouda Killem, GM and NS are now in week 3 of the outbreak, and as Stars have automatically been promoted from Citizens; they chose to become Survivors.

Incidentally, the map is from SPI’s Sniper! – scanned, enlarged until one hex is an inch across, printed and laminated. As you can see, the first sign of an impending zombie outbreak is that all the buildings turn from rectangles into rhomboids. Figures are a mixture of Mongoose Battlefield Evolution (representing zombies), some beads from the local bead shop (representing PEFs) and eM4′s prepainted SF range (representing everything else).

SETUP

The group are playing the Escape! scenario for Z+21. To succeed, they must cross the board diagonally from top left to bottom right, pick up an NPC Grunt, then cross the board diagonally from bottom left to top right.

I decided they only deserved one Grunt between them, as a group of 3-5 Stars should be able to get by on its own. After some time poring over the available Grunts, and overruling the suggestion from NS that they pick the one with the most loot, kill him, and steal all his stuff (not 100% sure he’s a Survivor, that one) they accepted TM’s choice of Grunt #2 from the Survivors 1-3 table on p. 75. This worthy they dubbed "Hardcore Hank the Hacker" or "Triple-H" for short.

Things are off to a bad start as they begin with 18 zeds on the board, and two of the PEFs are Rep 6. There was some discussion of abandoning the game and walking straight back off the board, but they decided to press on.

EARLY GAME

The group broke into what must have been a garage, since they found a moped, a glasscutter, and a very large can of deodorant. Unfortunately they made a noise breaking in (failed Savvy test) and all the zeds moved to the noise. The Defining Moment and one PEF resolution increased the area Encounter Rating to 6. Gouda Killem and GM decided to hunker down and wait for the zeds to pass; Gouda wanted to race across the street and enter the building with the PEF in it, but that would have left Greedy GM alone in the garage for who knows how long.

NS, meanwhile, had thrown his mountain bike over the neighbours’ wall and followed it. Realising that a failed Fast Move roll would leave him alone in the street with a dozen zombies, he hid as best he could in the garden.

Risking a peek out of the window, TM noticed that one of the zombies was in fact a normal human in makeup. Regrettably they never talked to him.

MID GAME

Crossing the street, they discovered a group of soldiers who demanded they turn over their weapons and go home. By succeeding handily at a Pep challenge, GM persuaded them to rescue the human hiding among the zeds, and the party then ran out the back while the squaddies were distracted.

Abandoning the earlier idea of looting all the buildings – there were just too many zeds around – the group used their stolen mountain bike and moped to charge down the main street towards the opposite corner of the board.

GM played true to zombie movie stereotypes by twisting her ankle at a critical moment, but avoided the bad effects by riding pillion on Gouda’s moped.

In the shot above we see the first wave of all the zeds attracted by the moped’s engine noise catching up to the party, while the conga line that has formed up from zeds bouncing off walls, fences and board edges marches to the sound of the moped.

By now, I’ve run out of Mongoose soldiers to act as zeds, and NS has replaced them all with the pawns from the Zombies! boardgame.

The human hiding among the zeds has taken advantage of the distraction to leave the board, and the soldiers decided to move into one of the buildings and hole up.

The white die at top centre is Fenton the dog, who appeared early on and has been chasing them with his entourage of zeds ever since. I think he appears often enough to get his own mini, I’ll see what I can find.

LATE GAME

Picking up Hardcore Hank, the group started back, but were cornered by zeds and had to dive into a building. The zeds near the big red die (ER tracker) have lost sight of their quarry, while the ones on the other side of the building turned back into the board and are now moving into an inconvenient place.

END GAME

Hank and Gouda, on the moped, were swarmed by zeds thanks to a poor Fast Move roll. They were moving too fast for me to catch them, but as you can see from the Knocked Down zeds they managed to cut their way out and escape into another building. Gouda had to leave his moped behind, but found another mountain bike in that house, as did Hank.

Meanwhile, NS and GM had thrown the cellphone GM recovered in the previous scenario into the road, where its ringing drew the zeds away once they’d lost sight of the fugitives, helping them to escape. A tied activation roll saw Hank vanish, but he was picked up later.

AFTERMATH

GM failed the encounter, as she didn’t kill any zeds; but NS and Gouda both succeeded, and Gouda increased his Rep. Hank decided to stay with his buddy Gouda.

They’re still intent on robbing a military base, as NS has decided the weapon of choice for the Zombie Apocalypse is a flamethrower.

CURRENT STATUS

Partly so I don’t lose track, and partly so you can share my amusement at their choice of looted Items…

• Gouda Killem: Rep 5 Survivor Star, Pep 3, Sav 2, Runt, Born Leader. Food 2, Fuel 1, bike, pistol, crowbar, one-handed axe, nailgun, map, compass, lighter, commlink, propane lantern, backpack.
• GM: Rep 5 Survivor Star, Pep 3, Sav 2, Greedy, Medic-2. Food 3, Luxury Goods 3, Medical Supplies 3, shovel, one-handed axe, mirror, commlink, pink explorer backpack with compass, jack-in-the-box, glass cutter (for getting through windows without making noise).
• NS: Rep 4 Survivor Star, Pep 2, Sav 3, Rage, Brawler. Food 1, Fuel 1, kendo Body Armour, shotgun with bayonet and flashlight, katana, night vision goggles, grappling hook and rope, binoculars, commlink, mountain bike, large backpack, blowtorch, large can of deodorant (improvised flamethrower).
• Hank: Rep 5 Survivor, Pep 4, Sav 3, Brawler. Food 3, Luxuries 1, Body Armour, BAMP, bicycle.

REFLECTIONS

I was surprised they got away alive, especially after being mobbed by zeds twice, but Brawler, Rage, Survivor and a two-handed melee weapon are a powerful combination.

So were they.

Blackman, Z+73: There’s an Old Mill by the Stream

The ATZ adventures both for Mike Blackman and Don Savage are now self-sustaining; I find this with most games, after a few sessions ideas for scenarios just flow naturally out of what went before, and then I feel more like I’m watching the story unfold than making it up.

4th March 2013: Z+73. Mike’s out of food again, but at least the weather’s improved.

Let’s see how Mike does with the watermill, shall we? I’m feeling lazy today, so no didactic writeup; just the narrative. There was no involuntary encounter for March, so Mike eats what’s left of the food he got last time, and goes looking for more.

This is a daytime Take Back encounter in a rural area. I’ve started experimenting with other things Hex Map Pro can do for me; the white square at the top left of the picture is a turn counter, and the green and red ones at the top right are dice – Hex Map Pro allows you to declare a token as a die or dice, so you can also use it as a dice roller.

Above is the board at the start of the encounter.

Mike moves into cover by the watermill door, uncertain whether to go in or to resolve the PEFs first. He needs a defensible position in case he fails the next 3-4 activations, which is entirely possible. I decide to modify my house rule for door state following a discussion on the THW mailing list; roll 1d6: 1 = Open, 2-3 = Closed, 4-5 = Locked, 6 = Barricaded by previous visitors. I roll a 4, and this one is locked, so I add a little token in Hex Map Pro so that I don’t forget that. (Tokens can be various different sizes.) That makes Mike’s decision for him, let’s do the zed and the PEFs first.

Mike fast moves up the board to get line of sight on as many PEFs as he can. (The bridge is normal terrain, but I decide each water hex reduces movement by 2".) This turns out to be all of them. Thanks to the low ER (1), all the PEFs resolve as false alarms. Just the zed to deal with then, plus whatever is in the house. The zed wades across the pool at 2" per hex towards where it saw Mike last. It does this for a couple of turns, during which I also get a string of doubles on activation, but not random events.

By turn 9, all that dancing about is over, and Mike circles around a tree to get a shot at the zed without coming into charge range. He manages to knock it down despite only being Rep 2, but only just. Luckily, no zeds are attracted by the gunfire. However, next turn we get a random event, and Mike twists his ankle again. The zed recovers while he is hopping around swearing (and not activating), then runs at him, but his strategy of staying out of charge range is looking pretty good.

After a lot of messing around with nobody activating, Mike activates and charges the zed, which counts as unarmed for the first round, and kills it. Being a Raging Survivor is good for this sort of thing.

Mike walks back to the watermill and tries a Savvy Challenge to pick the lock. Astonishingly, he passes 2d6 (no, really – rolled two ones!) and succeeds. The door opens, and even better, there are no zombies inside. That means a Defining Moment, which results in the ER increasing by one. Mike rolls to see what’s inside his new home, and finds… nothing. Oh well, can’t have everything.

Mike meets the criteria for a Rep increase, but rolls a 1 and stays at Rep 2. About par for the course with my dice rolling.

• Mike Blackman:* Rep 2 MM Survivor, Pep 2, Sav 1, Poser, Rage. Shotgun, crowbar, knife, backpack.

Reflection: It looks like the main factor driving game length is the Star’s Rep.

Happy New Year, everyone! I’ll be back in a couple of days with more silliness for your amusement, and mine!

All Things Zombie: PEFs and Factions

We’ve skipped a couple of our usual Saturday sessions, due to the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Christmas, so I’ve spent some time thinking about PEFs for the co-op game. I want a way of creating PEFs quickly during play, without having to prepare beforehand or slow the game down by looking things up; and I want some factions in the play area, to keep things interesting for my players in the long term – a sandbox environment to generate adventures, if you will.

INSTANT PEFS

Rather than look up the tables, I decided to use a simple die roll to select groups from my collection of eM4 prepainted figures:

1. Police. Used to represent gangers after Day 30. (Don’t read anything into that, I just don’t have enough gangers otherwise.)
2. Recce Squad. Used to represent survivors after Day 30.
3. Recce Squad. (I have two Recce Squads, thanks to a sale at my FLGS.)
4. Chequers Gang. Gangers.
5. Mercenaries. Citizens.
6. Roll again, at least until I get some more figures. Or I could use the Aliens set if I wanted to worry the players.

Then, I just haul out the relevant group, and that’s what the PEF is. To my mind, each of the eM4 groups has an obvious leader, who will be Rep 5, Pep 4, Sav 3; an obvious runt of the litter, who will be Rep 3, Pep 1, Sav 2; and three normal guys, who will be Rep 4, Pep 2, Sav 3. Most groups picked this way will be 5 figures, but this is the same pool of figures that gets raided for Stars and their Grunt sidekicks, which will mean some groups enter the table short-handed. I’ll adopt a rule from earlier versions of ATZ, and not bother with attributes for NPCs. (For Savage Worlds, I’d rate the leaders as Experienced Soldiers, and the Rep 3 or 4 members as Soldiers.)

Gear: THW games often suggest you pick a figure for your Star, and he or she has whatever the figure has. I’ll extend that to NPCs; they have whatever the figure has. Three of the figures have medical kits, so they have medical supplies; none of them have obvious food or luxury items. Too bad, the Stars will have to loot buildings for those. To compensate, though, there are a lot more figures with body armour than the tables on pp. 74-75 of ATZ: FFO would suggest. One or two of the figures have backpacks, which I will allow players to search as if they were buildings, so long as what they claim to find would fit inside a pack.

Zeds: I’ll use the Mongoose Battlefield Evolution figures for zombies until I get some proper zeds. They’re the only ones I have enough of, and I need to replace the red and green pawns with something that shows facing – facing is important in ATZ. Or maybe I’ll try the free download zed standees from Pinnacle’s website.

SIMPLIFIED LOOT TABLE

This is more for solo play, really; it allows me to run games using just the encounter tables in the QRS, without looking up what’s on the bodies in the main rulebook. I crunched some numbers about who carries what, and came up with this as an alternative to looking up loot on ATZ: FFO pp. 74-75.

When a figure is vanquished, roll 1d6 for each of Food, Luxury, Medical and Body Armour to see what it’s carrying. (Actually, I suppose I should roll for armour when the figure appears, as it may affect combat.)

• Food: 1-3 figure is carrying one unit, 4-6 it has two units.
• Luxuries: 1-2 none, 3-6 one unit.
• Medical supplies or Body Armour: 1-5 none, 6 one unit.

That doesn’t give the correct relative frequencies, but in the long term it averages out at roughly the right levels.

FACTIONS

The lazy way to add these is to say that each encounter table (for example, Gangers 4-6) is one faction, a recurring ally or enemy. I did some analysis of who has how much of what compared to the averages, picked some likely-looking leaders for the groups, and let my mind wander for a bit. I won’t bore you with the percentages, but this is what I came up with; numbers in ( ) show which group member I mean when I say someone is the leader.

Citizens 1-3: The Commune. Led by a council of four equally capable leaders, David (2), Kim (3), John (10) and Michelle (11), the Commune has no surplus of anything, and is short of everything; charitable players could easily befriend them. They have more women than most groups, however, and if things get bad enough they might be tempted to swap them for something edible; any of the ganger or survivor groups would be credible partners in that trade.

Citizens 4-6: The Farm. Led by Robert (10), a Born Leader, who has three right-hand women; Amy (2), Angela (4) and Melissa (11 – a medic). This faction has more female members than any other; they also have a surplus of Food, which they will trade for Luxuries or Medical supplies.

Gangers 1-3: The Kings. Led by Chris (7), a Greedy old man. The heir to the throne is his Fast grandson Will (4). They prefer to trade Food to get Luxury goods and Medical supplies, although they have no actual medic.

Gangers 4-6: The Jacks. Nominally led by Brian (2), who is Dim; the power behind the throne is Tammy (12), Brian’s young mistress. While she is the ruthless brains of the outfit, though, its heart is Mark (8), a badly injured (Rep 2) but charismatic consigliore. The Jacks would also offer Food and ask for Luxuries or Medical supplies.

Survivors 1-3: The Righteous. These are led by Mary (12), a mature but Agile female, whose second in command is Richard (2), a young male Brawler – I picture him as heading up the Arm Militant, who defend the rest of the Righteous. The Righteous are intended to subvert the post-apocalyptic trope of the mad, vicious fundamentalist Christian group; these guys are indeed fundamentalist Christians, but they have retained their essential decency. (That will please those of my group who are devout Christians, and worry those who play Silent Hill.) The Righteous have a surplus of both Food and Luxuries, but need Medical supplies (and a medic who can use them).

Survivors 4-6: The Libertarian Militia. The Militia is a group of doomsday preppers who have been waiting for this day for years. They are well-equipped, well-prepared, and well-organised. They are nominally led by Jeff (12), a mature male Poser, but the real power is with Scott (2), a young male and a Born Leader. This group has the lowest number of female members, and if they cannot adjust their gender imbalance by civilised means, at some point they will probably raid one of the Citizen groups and steal some women. Like the Righteous, the Militia have Food and Luxuries, but want Medical supplies – they had envisioned an apocalypse, but not one with this much disease or this many injuries.

So, short version: Everyone wants Medical supplies, and almost everyone would swap Food for them. If the campaign gets sufficiently grim and dark, Citizens 4-6 might offer women to Survivors 4-6 in exchange for Luxury items, while Citizens 1-3 might offer women to Survivors 4-6 for Food, and any of the ganger or survivor groups could raid either of the citizen groups for women. (It would be equally valid to say that all groups are ~50% female, but preferentially send males out scavenging, so the players meet more men than women; but a darker interpretation lends itself better to the classic damsel in distress scenario and is more in line with my original inspiration, the movie 28 Days Later.) Less disturbingly, any of the 1-3 groups might offer any of the 4-6 groups Items or Resources to gain access to their medical skills; and Stars with that skill in their tactical group could probably find employment too.

I did think about doing a large-scale map showing which faction was where compared to the Stars, but lacked the motivation to do so. Maybe later.

Blackman, Z+42: In Country

1st February, 2013: Z+42. Mike is cold, hungry and footsore, but at least he got out of the city alive. He needs food and a roof over his head. He also needs someone to watch his back, but he’s not ready to admit that to himself yet.

SETUP

Behold a part of one of the maps from Lock n Load Game‘s All Things Zombie – the Boardgame. Is it not a thing of beauty? I used it extensively in my off-camera experimental games, and thought that posting one blog game with it would be "fair use". The actual picture was exported from the relevant Vassal module, imported into Hex Map Pro, and expanded to 500%, which makes the cars about two hexes long – which I think is roughly correct for scale, since I work at one inch = two yards. The actual map is about four times this size, I’m just using the top left quadrant. You should see the rest of ‘em.

Anyway, Mike wanders on from the middle of section 8 as usual, and there are the obligatory three PEFs: Rep 6 in section 3, Rep 5 in section 1, Rep 6 in section 6. Blimey, they’re well ‘ard in the country, aren’t they? There are also 1d3 zombies per human, in this case one, and that’s how we like it, frankly. It’s 12" from Mike at his 2 o’clock, which puts it next to PEF6b. Mike can see that PEF, so I resolve it right away; I roll 2d6 vs Encounter Rating (1), and get 5, 6 = pass 0d6; it’s nothing to worry about, just a case of nerves.

This is a daytime rural Search encounter. Mike is looking for food.

PLAY

Turn 1: Activation: Mike 1, Opposing Forces 3. Good heavens, Mike gets to move? Best be about it, then. He fast-moves towards the gas station; he rolls 2d6 vs Rep (2), gets 4, 1 and passes 1d6, so boosts his move to 12". This is often worthwhile even if you don’t go any farther, as it makes it harder for people to shoot yo – and who knows what those Possible Enemy Forces are? The zed shambles 6" after Mike, moaning. PEF5 rolls 6, 6 for its movement and stays put. PEF6 moves as close as it can without breaking cover.

Turn 2: Activation: Mike 3, OpFor 5. PEF5 closes up through the gas station, staying in cover. A bit of metagaming here; that’s what I was hoping for, as the chances of meeting something nasty are reduced if the building has a PEF in it. Once I’m inside, PEF6 will move out into the open, which means I can resolve it once I’ve cleared the gas station.

Turn 3: Activation: Mike 4, OpFor 1. PEF5 moves away, and the zed shuffles closer.

Turn 4: Activation: Double 2 – no random event as 2 is more than the local ER of 1.

Turn 5: Activation: Mike 5, OpFor 1. PEF5 moves up close and personal again, and the zed shuffles in for the kill.

Turn 6: Activation: Mike 4, OpFor 5. PEF5 moves away. As I’ve mentioned before, they do this a lot, which puzzled me until I realised that so long as it hasnl’t been resolved, the PEF represents Mike thinking about where something might be, not actual movement.

Turn 7: Activation: Double 3 – no random event.

Turn 8: Activation: Mike 1, OpFor 3. The zed is close enough to get into melee this turn, so it’s good that Mike activates first. He brings up his pump shotgun and fires three rounds at the zed. He rolls 1d6 + Rep (2) for each one, and gets 2, 3, 6 – even with his current lousy Rep, the last one hits. Mike now rolls 1d6 vs Impact (2) for damage; a 4, and since this is higher than the Impact, the zed is knocked down. Being a zed, it doesn’t roll for recovery, it automatically spends its next activation standing up. I roll 1d6 for each shot – since this is a rural area, each 6 will draw another zed. I roll 231 and no new zeds appear.

Mike hasn’t moved yet, so he decides to Charge Into Melee (p. 30); the zed automatically passes 1d6, and Mike rolls 4d6 – Rep 2d6, +1d6 for being a Survivor, +1d6 for his Rage. He rolls 2156 = pass 2d6, more than his opponent, so he charges home and the zed counts as unarmed. Mike now rolls 5d6 to hit the zombie in melee; 2d6 for his Rep, 1d6 for his Rage, and 2d6 because the zombie is prone. 32545 = 2 successes, which is bumped up to 3 because the target is a zombie. It’s not clear to me from the rules whether the zed can fight back, but I decide to let it, so it rolls 2d6 – Rep 3, -1d6 for counting as unarmed. The zed gets 23 = 2 successes. Mike rolls 1d6 for damage and gets a 3; the zed is knocked down again, which means it can’t act this turn.

Turn 9: Activation: Mike 3, OpFor 2. Mike can’t go, and the zed is standing up, so no fighting this turn. Both PEFs stay put, no doubt watching the fight through the windows.

Turn 10: Activation: Mike 3, OpFor 2. Again. The zed is back on its feet, and melee continues. The zed is now rolling 3d6 as it no longer counts as unarmed. Mike is only rolling 3d6 as it is no longer prone. Successes: Mike 4, zed 1; sadly Mike rolls a 5 and knocks it back down again. PEF5 wanders away, possibly to make some tea, as the fight looks like it will go on for some time.

Turn 11: Activation: Mike 4, OpFor 5. Mike and the zed stare at each other, unable to bring their claws or gun butt to bear.

Turn 12: Activation: Double 1 – random event 5, very interesting but can’t happen so I roll again and get 10; Mike brought the wrong ammo, and if his shotgun runs out, he can’t reload it.

Turn 13: Activation: Mike 6, OpFor 4. PEF5 wanders back, sipping its tea, while the melee continues. Mike gets two more successes than the zed, and knocks it down again.

Turn 14: Activation: Mike 6, OpFor 5; nobody moves, as both PEFs would close up but can’t do so without breaking cover.

Turn 15: Activation: Mike 2, OpFor 5; Mike is rolling 5d6 this time as the zed is prone again. He gets 4 successes, the zed one; Mike rolls 5 for damage and knocks it down more.

Turn 16: Activation: Mike 2, OpFor 3. The zed uses its turn to stand up, and Mike scores 3 successes to its one; he rolls a 2 for damage, which is less than or equal to the number of successes more than the zed he got (3-1=2), so his opponent goes Out Of the Fight, and since it’s a zed, that kills it. PEF5 wanders away again.

Turn 17: Activation: Mike 2, PEFs 4. PEF5 comes back, and Mike fast-moves over to the building and steps inside. (I rolled for to see if the door was locked; it wasn’t.) This brings him face to face with PEF5, which I now resolve – nothing there, so I remove it from play. Notice that since there was a PEF in the building, I didn’t have to roll for zeds or a Defining Moment. PEFs in buildings are your friends. Mike closes the door behind him.

Turn 18: Activation: Mike 6, PEF 4. The remaining PEF moves 12" towards Mike, as he can’t see it. (There may be windows, but he is facing the other way.)

Turn 19: Activation: Mike 6, PEF 4. Again. The PEF moves up to the other side of the closed door and lies in wait.

Turn 20: Activation: Mike 2, PEF 5. The PEF is already as close as it can get. Mike uses his activation to search the building; he rolls 2d6 vs Encounter Rating and gets 1, 4 = pass 1d6; he finds a unit of food, exactly what he needs.

Turn 21: Activation: Double 2 – no random event as the ER is still 1.

Turns 22-24: Mike didn’t activate, and the PEF is as close as it can get. I picture Mike slumped on the floor, back to the door, panting – and wondering if those scratching noises outside are anything to worry about.

Turn 25: Activation: Mike 1, PEF 6. Mike has no idea what the PEF is – or if it’s even there – but he has what he needs for today; he has succeeded in his search, killed a zed, and done this without Running Away or going Out Of the Fight. Time to call it a day, Mike. He fast-moves through the house, out of the door opposite (also unlocked, fortunately) and runs off the board.

AFTERMATH

Mike gets a chance to roll for Rep increase, but rolls a 1 and blows it. He has found some food, but still counts as being on half rations until March.

CURRENT STATUS

Mike Blackman:* Rep 2 MM Survivor, Pep 2, Sav 1, Poser, Rage. Shotgun, crowbar, knife, backpack, 1 food.

REFLECTIONS

Thanks to his Rage and Survivor status, Mike is still dangerous, even at Rep 2. I expected the game to flow more quickly in the country, as there is less going on; but the number of activations Mike missed due to his appalling current Rep more than made up for it.

Blackman, Z+35: Better Lucky Than Good

"They’re all going to end up like that. Bio-mechanical weapons driven by meat batteries. Never have to be fed or recharged. They just keep going…" – Return of the Living Dead 3

Now, does that refer to the zeds, or to the survivors, I wonder? Let’s see…

25th January 2013: Z+35. Mike Blackman is going to run out of food soon – he doesn’t have enough to get to the next area on foot. So, like it or not, he needs to go back into town. This last few days, he’s taken to talking to himself. More muttering, really.

"Jenny dead. James gone, blaming me for it. God knows I blame me for it. I’ve got nothing left to lose that I care about. So bring it on, zombies. I got shells here with your names on ‘em."

He chambers a round and walks into town, moving like a machine, thousand-yard stare sweeping the streets.

What he has forgotten is that in the Zombie Apocalypse, it’s not the zombies you need to worry about…

SETUP

Mike is still in the city, and needs to get a vehicle or another food unit before he can safely move on. He’s not sleeping so well these days; he rolls on the Lack of Sleep table and I see he only got 4 hours’ sleep last night; however, he rolls 2d6 vs Rep (3) and gets 2, 2 – he passes 2d6 and so suffers no ill effects.  He enters the board from the road in section 8.

PEFs: Sections 5 (Rep 2), 1 (Rep 6), 2 (Rep 6). Zeds: 5, at 4, 12, 4, 8 and 6 o’clock, rotated as necessary to fit.

Mike can immediately see the PEF in section 5, so I resolve it. This turns out to be three gangers; numbers 10, 5 and 8 from table 1-3 (I’ve decided that characters in a given group should all come from the same encounter table in future; you’ll see why soon enough); the boss has Rep 4. He can also see the PEF in section 2, which is another three gangers; numbers 3, 4 and 3 from table 1-3; the boss has Rep 5.

Six gangers and five zeds? Bring it on. Mike’s past caring.

PLAY

Turn 1: Activation: Double 5 – random event 11, Mike twists an ankle. Obviously, he is not fully recovered from his earlier leg trouble; his movement is now 6" and he can pass no more than 1d6 when fast moving.

Turn 2: Activation: Mike 4, Opposing Forces 5. The group of gangers in section 2 activate and roll on the NPC Movement table, scoring 4, 4 and passing 2d6. As they are currently neutral, they move towards Mike and try to interact. However, it seems reasonable that on the way they deal with the zombie right in front of them. G4A moves up behind the zed and "pops the weasel", rolling the minimum number of dice allowed for his Big Ass Machine Pistol (which I assume is one), and killing it automatically. Such are the benefits of getting behind a zed in ATZ: FFO. The gunshot generates another zed, 12" from G4A at his 6 o’clock; this happens a lot in town, you basically move the zeds around – if the one you kill is closer than 12", this can be a good trade-off. The remaining PEF leaves its building and sneaks up to the corner, that being as close to Mike as it can get without somebody seeing it. Nobody else moves.

Turn 3: Activation: Mike 6, OpFor 4. Mike is still watching the oncoming gangers, judging their intentions. PEF moves up to the corner of the next building. One group of gangers passes 1d6 and moves up to a building to enter it, presumably to search for loot; the other continues to approach Mike. Those zeds who can see humans move towards the closest ones; the rest stay put. (Zeds have Rep 3, but activate as if Rep 4 when they can see food, i.e. people.) I think 5" (which I consider to be 10 yards in real distance) is close enough to interact, so we go to the Meet & Greet table. Mike rolls 2d6 (Rep 3, -1d6 for being outnumbered at least 2:1) and the gang leader rolls 5d6 (Rep 5), both looking for successes (rolls of 1-3). Mike rolls 1, 4 and scores one success; the ganger rolls 35125 and scores 3 successes. The gangers choose to Walk the Walk and draw their weapons; we go to the In Sight test.

The gangers roll Rep d6, less 1d6 for being the active group. Mike rolls Rep d6. All are looking for successes. The gang leader rolls 6131 = 3 successes. His sidekicks are both Rep 2, and score 6 and 6 respectively – no successes for them. Mike rolls 35 and gets one success. The gang leader goes first, and fires his BAMP at Mike – three shots. He rolls 1d6+Rep for each, and scores 11, 7, 8. The 11 hits; the 7 misses because a 7 always does, and the 8 hits because the ganger is still firing at the same target. This draws one more zed at G4A’s 12 o’clock.

I can’t find the definition of a BAMP in the rulebook, but the difference between a normal pistol and a BA pistol is +1 impact, so I decide a BAMP must have Impact 2. The ganger rolls 1d6 for each shot that hit Mike, trying to roll under that Impact. He rolls 6, 1; the 6 knocks Mike down and he must immediately take a Recover From Knock Down test. Mike rolls 2d6 vs Rep, 64 = pass 0d6. As a Citizen, that means Mike is Obviously Dead; time to break out the Star Power dice. Mike rolls Rep d6, and gets 311 – three successes, which reduces the OD by three steps, to OOF, to Stunned, to Carry On – Mike is just prone. The second hit rolled a 1, which is always Obviously Dead; Star Power dice to the fore again, and Mike rolls 363, reducing the OD to OOF then Stunned. Mike can’t do anything until he has spent a full activation recovering, so he can’t shoot back.

The two other gangers in that group fail to act, having rolled no successes for In Sight.

Turn 4: Activation: Mike 6, OpFor 2. The unengaged gangers enter their building and encounter 4 zeds. The engaged ones move up to Mike’s prone body to check him over, with five zeds closing in. Two of these will get into melee if not stopped, so the group fires at them. The two Rep 2 gangers pick one zed each and fire; both miss. Their boss fires one round at each of the three closest zeds; he rolls 554, adds his Rep and so gets 10, 10 and 9. The 9 misses as that was the third target. He rolls 1d6 for each hit, using the Easy Kill rule on p. 50 since he is not being charged, and rolls against his Rep rather than weapon Impact to drop the other two. He rolls a 3 for the first and a 5 for the second – easy meat. The gunfire draws another zed, 12" away from him at his 12 o’clock.

The group now has Mike at their mercy, which is probably non-existent, so I use the Cheating Death rule (p. 6) and end the encounter. Mike is whisked from the table as if by magic, which has the dual advantages that the gangers don’t kill him and don’t steal all his stuff.

Mike is knocked over by the bullet impact, but for some reason only dazed. The gangers close in, shooting down approaching zeds with ruthless precision. They stand over him, and the leader lines up his machine pistol on Mike’s head. Suddenly, there are screams and shots from along the street – those looting the building are under attack.

The three standing over Mike run to help their friends, and somehow Mike manages to force himself to his feet, limping away down the alley before the rest of the zeds can get him.

The screaming and gunfire behind him go on for a long, long time.

AFTERMATH AND REFLECTIONS

Mike’s luck goes from bad to worse. He is still alive, but using the Cheating Death rule reduces his Rep by one point. Since he failed the encounter, he rolls 1d6 to see if he loses any more Rep, and rolls a 1; that would reduce his Rep by a further point, but as per p. 71, Rep can never be less than 2. Neither of his skills exceeds his Rep, so they don’t go down either.

Mike’s next encounter will be in February. I may as well do the campaign admin while I’m at it; Mike burns a food item. He also travels to a rural area (which would cost another food item as he is on foot, so therefore he is on half rations this month; that would reduce his Rep by one, but it can’t get any lower than it already is). Rural areas have an Encounter Rating of 1; I roll 2d6 vs ER to see if he has an involuntary encounter, and get 6, 6 – definitely not. There’s no point rolling for lack of sleep before the next encounter, since the worst it could do would be to reduce his Rep, which can’t get any lower – I may as well take advantage of that where I can.

There’s nobody left in the city now, so you get to see a new map next time!

CURRENT STATUS

Mike Blackman:* Rep 2 MM Survivor, Pep 2, Sav 1, Poser, Rage. Shotgun, crowbar, knife, backpack.

Statblocks for ATZ Stars are really compact, no?