Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Day 7: "Dining Out" (Part 1 of 2)

Game 4: "Dining Out!"

This game is my first use of the Shotgun Diaries inspired rule “No One Gets Left Behind!” found on an early blog post. It seemed to work well, but you be the judge.

This scenario is a Discover mission, with Michael, Lisa, and Kaylee looking for more food as while the grocery store in game 2 was a success, more is needed. Scenario occurs in the morning; I rolled a D12 for the time being 8am. The sky is clear with much of the smoke from the smoldering building in Section 9 not inhibiting visibility.

It's Day 7 of the outbreak, and police forces are collapsing but the military hasn’t been mobilized yet. This is important as you’ll see later in the Battle Report.



The map is laid out as follows:

Section 1: Two buildings/Trailers
Section 2: Third trailer
Section 3: clear
Section 4: Apartment/parking lot
Section 5: Clear (Road Intersection)r
Section 6: Woods
Section 7: Clear
Section 8: Restaurant
Section 9: Burned out building

I ran out of complete buildings so I put up a roofless frame and said it burned out. I rolled a D6 with results being 1-3 fire is out; 4-6 fire still smoldering. I got a 4, so still smoking

Our trio of Michael, Lisa, and Kaylee will come in on foot from Section 7, on foot walking down the road towards the restaurant.

Three Potential Enemy Forces (PEFs) are generated. The first one is behind the apartments in Section 4 (Reputation 2), The second PEF is placed behind the trailer park in Section 1(reputation 3) and the last PEF lands in the clear section 3 (Reputation 3) but is in the southern part north of the Section 6 woods.

Cars on the board are generated randomly. I rolled 3 cars (from Random Vehicle Table posted earlier in blog). One is a sedan in the apartment parking lot, the second is a SUV located in front of Section 1 trailers. The last is a fire truck in front of the burning building. No firefighters though, nor bodies. Curious…?

Zombie placement is now 5-6, and 3 are generated. Lots of 3’s coming up this game! The first is in Section 1, second in section 4, and the last is in section 5; right in the crossroads!

Turn 1
Survivors: 3 PEFs: 3 Zombies: 6

Doubles means a Random event is rolled with result of 7, building on fire, which I will take as the smoking rubble in Section 9. Its fate!

Survivors move 8” toward restaurant west side.

PEFs: The Rep2 moves around the apartments into the parking lot its full 8” toward the group and enters line of sight (LOS) of the survivors. The Rep3 PEF between the trailers moves to Section 4 but out of LOS and behind the apt. Complex. The Rep3 PEF north of woods (Section 6) moves into the trees and remains out of LOS.

The PEF in LOS at the apartment parking lot is rolled for on the PEF resolution tables and is resolved as an NPC group, an equal number to the survivors so that would be 3 figures. The group rolls as 2 women and one man. Man (Rep3) is Police, one of the women is police (Rep4) as well, and the second woman is a civilian (Rep4.)

Michael gets 2 pass dice on the In Sight test so the survivor trio isn’t surprised. NPCs only get 1d6 pass so the survivors get the drop on them.

Michael goes for the “Meet and greet” roll, and rolls 5 dice (he gets +1 dice for being having the Born Leader attribute.) Policewoman gets 1 dice while Michael gets 3. Next roll-off leaves the Policewoman with 1 dice and Michael now with only 2 dice! The final roll leaves Michael the victor with 2 dice! These three join the survivor group.

Welcome to Sebastian a Rep3 Policeman with a BA pistol, Jennifer a Rep4 police with a submachine gun, and Neeva a Rep4 civilian with a shotgun. We just quadrupled our firepower!

Busy turn 1! But why would they join so readily? The Chain Reaction system reveals all next turn!


Turn 2
Survivors: 3 Zombies: 2 PEFS:4

PEFs, Rep 3 moves into the parking lot (and LOS) while the rep3 in the woods remains stationary.

The PEF is resolved as gangers! Seven hostiles no less. Their leader is a rep5 and takes an Awareness test. Others are 3 Rep3s and 3 rep4s. All armed with assault rifles??? This is bad!

Going for his or her guns, Michael uses a “No one gets left behind!” die for this test. Both ganger leader and Michael pass 3 die the first roll. Second he gets 3 pass dice while Michael gets 2. Finally the ganger leader gets 0 pass while Michael gets 1 pass. Good thing I used that die; though things could still get ugly real quick.

The Gangers fire and then duck to cover, but no one is hit.

Among the survivors, nobody gets their In Sight test so move along. Survivors move toward the rear of the restaurant and open back door.

The gangers are the only humans in sight now so the Zombies converge on them. The Zombie from in front of the apartments charges one of the gangers. Zombie goes down in melee, though all 7 gangers fired at it before the melee. Which means more zombie generation rolls! Four zombies are generated. 2 from South (following the road from 7) and 2 from the west; from inside apartments.

Turn 3
Survivors:3 Zombies:4 PEFS:6 Gangers: 2

Zombies converge on the parking lot

Survivors move inside the back door of the restaurant.

The Gangers pass their insight test and follow their leader in pursuit of the two place and their new friends. Deciding to cut the survivors off they enter the front of the restaurant.


End Part One


Monday, November 14, 2011

Those Who Remain Journal

Hello All,

In order to facilitate the publishing of Battle Reports I've decided to create a support blog just for the fiction. I'll be importing the already written stories over there during the coming week so if you're a fan of the fiction then future stories about Michael, Lisa, and Kaylee will be found at:

http://thosewhoremainjournal.blogspot.com

The Game 4 BatRep part 1 will be up tomorrow!

Zombie Chow

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Zombie, Run!

     Just ran across this planned ultra-immersive game that you play while actually running for exercise. Its on preorder now for $12 and season 1 covers up to 30 missions.     I think I'll be getting it...so long as I don't have to actually buy an Ipod or Android to play. I like my Sandisk, thanks!

Check it out at:

http://www.zombiesrungame.com

Zombie Chow

Monday, October 31, 2011

Considerations about Fiction

Hello,
     Happy Halloween, and here are some thoughts on the Those Who Remain blog. Game 4 isn't up yet because the fiction is taking a lot longer than I thought. So, what I'm considering is starting a fiction-only blog that will link to this one that gives the fiction for a given game there while here I give the All Things Zombie BatRep. This way, I can keep BatReps coming and not have everything grind to a screeching halt because my writing muse is on vacation.
     What do the readers think? Would you prefer the fiction jumped over to another blog to keep the BRs coming? Do you prefer the combination style that has been done in the past? Is the fiction worthwhile?
     If not (and I haven't gotten much feedback on the fiction) I can just dump it and go for straight ATZ goodness. No hurt feelings here, as this blog is as much for my followers as for my own pontifications. ;)

Zombie Chow

Thursday, October 20, 2011

To PEF or not to PEF

     I've been busy writing up my Game 4 fiction and slowly getting towards publication. While passing the time I've been reading other battle reports, including Vampifan's at his site located in my "Reported Outbreaks" list below. Look for the "ATZ Campaign" label to read them; they're great in describing how ATZ works in detail.
     Anyway, I found something else I'd been doing wrong. Instead of having both starting zombies on the table as well as PEFs (Potential Enemy Forces) you're supposed to just have one or the other. Which brings me to something Oliver/Whiteface says on his blog (also below in the Reported Outbreaks blog)
     Basically, its whether or not PEFs are good or bad for the game. Originally I really liked them (they're in game 4 too) but I'm beginning to become concerned about how rough they are on play. Like Whiteface, I too ran into some problems in game 4 with them. Though they did provide some recruits they also caused some serious problems. For instance, I set up the 4x4 foot table and I only got my team into one building before having to run off the board! It was quite an action packed building to be sure, but still.
     I'm beginning to wonder though if I should go back to 'original' All Things Zombie and just have encounters within buildings and random Z's on the street. The idea of changing the PEF table was suggested on the THW yahoo group as another option. Perhaps reducing the number of PEFs to 1 or 2 might help as well?
     Has anyone else had these problems? If so, how did you fix them? Granted, Ed says in the books that there are games where you just can't win and have to run; and I'm cool with that. But I'm just concerned with the increase in danger the PEFs are creating...and I'm not even through the first week of the Zombie Apocalypse!

Zombie Chow

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Zombies Arise?

Hey all,
     Sorry for the delay in posting, but a combination of factors (putting together game 4 BatRep, keeping my wife from turning into a zombie-she's sick, oh yeah-work, etc.) has kept me busy.
     To keep all occupied, here's a house rule for All Things Zombie I'm considering adding in for the future.

Zombies Arise!
     When a human is killed, two dice are rolled and his/her Reputation are subtracted from the total number. If the resulting number is positive, the body stays dead. On a negative or 0 result, the body stands up as a zombie. The number of turns before the new zombie arises is the difference between the body's Rep in life and the final number result.
     If a body is the victim of a Zombie Feast, the number of turns the feast lasts is subtracted from the figure's Rep in life. If a positive number, it stands up at the end of the resulting feast; with the assumption that such is why the feast ended because the body was now a zombie. If the number is a 0 or negative, not enough of the body was left to stand up in the first place and should just be considered meaty chuncks.

What do you all think? Too lethal for Survivors?
Zombie Chow

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Determining Random Vehicles in ATZ

Like in Sunday's post to randomly generate buildings, the below table is for generating vehicles found on the tabletop.

Commonly Found Vehicles By Area
***Urban
Roll Vehicle Type
2 Big Rig
3 Bus
4 Motorcycle
5-7 Pickup Truck
8-9 Sedan
10 Sports car
11-12 SUV

***Suburbs
Roll Vehicle Type
2 Big Rig
3 Bus
4 Motorcycle
5-6 Pickup Truck
7-8 SUV    
9-10 Sedan
11 Sports car
12 RV

***Rural
Roll Vehicle Type
2 ATV
3 Big Rig
4-5 Motorcycle
6-8 Pickup Truck
9-10 SUV
11 Sedan
12 RV


As with the buildings list below, I've set the tables for the North/East Texas area as to frequency of vehicles in a given area. Feel free to change the bell curve at need.

Zombie Chow