“Word of advice,” the Colonel said from the other side. “Don’t tease the zombies.” - Peter Watts, Echopraxia
City Outskirts, Z+14
The rumour around the base is that there are zombies everywhere and it's only a matter of time before martial law is declared. Certainly the base has been fortified, all leave is cancelled, and Morgan and crew have been tasked to deliver supplies to the checkpoints that were set up a day or so before to contain the civilian population.
Allen is driving, and pulls the land rover over at the edge of a cluster of buildings.
"Satnav says we're here," he says. Morgan, who has been following their progress on a paper map, says: "Well, we're not. No checkpoint," he gestures out of the window at the lack of their destination. "I reckon we want the next street south."
"Hardly worth moving the rover for that."
"If you think that, you can carry the crate." Allen decides the crate is too heavy for that and manoeuvres the rover towards the next street.
"Movement," calls Morgan, as something catches his eye over a low wall. Before he can react two zombies have hurled themselves at the rover, and in his haste to wind up the window Allen crashes the rover into one of them, stalling the engine. Morgan, Campbell and Baker bail out and open fire on the zeds, each cutting one down.
"Mind where you're pointing that thing!" Allen yells from inside the vehicle; Baker's bullets missed him by inches.
"It won't start," Allen says.
"Keep trying," Morgan orders. "Baker, Campbell - pick up that crate and follow me."
"Why do we have to carry the crate?"
"Because I've got the stripes, and I say so. Get to it." Grumbling, they heave the crate out of the back of the rover and follow Morgan towards the delivery point. Out of their line of sight, three gangers enter the block, drawn by the sound of gunfire; as they move forward, they find a first aid kit left behind by someone.
It takes Morgan and his troopers less than a minute to hoof their crate to the delivery point, but there is no-one there to receive it.
"Where is everybody?" Baker asks.
"That's... a lot of blood," Campbell says. "You think the zombies got them?"
"Maybe they were those zombies we ran into," Baker suggests. Morgan shrugs.
"All right, there's nobody here, let's move on to the second checkpoint. They can have double rations."
As they turn and start making their way back out of the building, Campbell and Morgan see movement out of the corners of their eyes, but too late; the lead ganger plugs Morgan with a large-calibre pistol; luckily it's just a graze, and Morgan retaliates with a short burst from his assault rifle, dropping him immediately, obviously dead. While his men take cover by the wall, Morgan steps out into the street and fires at the surviving gangers, taking them all out.
As he moves cautiously to check out the fallen gangers, and Baker and Campbell slog up behind with the crate, two soldiers emerge from the building where the second checkpoint was set up, and wave Morgan's team over to join them.
In the distance, they hear the sound of the land rover coughing into life.
At this point I call the game, as there's nothing to stop Morgan & Co. completing their delivery, and I decide to ignore the secondary objectives and search tokens. Again, strictly the soldiers should have been enemies, but that doesn't make sense in context, so I rule they are friendlies.
GM Notes
All Things Zombie, which is my touchstone for survival horror, operates on a drumbeat of two sessions per game month, so I decided that Morgan's adventures should be 4d6 days apart. I rolled 13, so we're now at Z+14.
The setup, using Grimdark Future Star Quest: Primary objective = Delivery, secondary objective = Capture, 5 search tokens. The top left table quarter, where the heroes enter, has two search tokens; the top right, one search token; bottom left, one search token, one delivery token, and the initial wave of sentries (two zombies, drawn from the ATZ R&R Deck), and the bottom right, one delivery and one search token.
I blew up the 24" square town battlemat to the recommended 48" square, and found that made the game too long, as the objectives and waves of enemies can be quite far apart; so next time we'll stick to 24" on a side - one thing I've learned over the years is that most games don't break if you shrink the "table", they just speed up. The scenario generator and NPC AI are still working pretty well, but the campaign duration looks somewhat arbitrary, and the secondary objectives and search tokens slow things down even further; I'll probably ignore those going forward. The ATZ R&R Deck did sterling service as it always does; it can stay. SWADE worked as well as it usually does, although Our Heroes drew a lot of really poor initiative cards.
Credits: Rules - SWADE, Grimdark Future Star Quest, All Things Zombie Risks and Rewards Deck. Map: Loke Battlemats, expanded from 24" square to 48". Character tokens: Fiery Dragon.
Andy... you gotta stop making me thinking I should start up an ATZ game alongside my other solo games. Enjoying this one!
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it! I tend to limit myself to one solo game at a time, but switch them up often. And for me, ATZ is pretty much the ultimate solo game (although how much this one counts as ATZ is open to debate, I feel).
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