Day Four
I sleep well. Exhaustion agrees with me. My dreams hold nothing of the past week’s terrors. In my dreams, I’m talking to my wife about a nightmare I’d had, where she’d died, and come back. She’d very understanding why this might bother me, but assures me that was only a dream.
I awaken suddenly, to Julia’s shouts. It’s full dark, and overhead the sky is awash with thousands of stars I’d never seen. As the lights of the city died around us night by night, the sky was coming back to life. By the faint illumination of the stars I can see the girl running along the asphalt of the road, revolver in her hand. The weight of it is throwing her stride off pace, making her awkward. I peer into the darkness beyond, seeing the forms on the road. The skin of the dead seems to glow in the moonlight, the colors of their clothing bleached by decay and darkness.
But, where the other wandering dead had shuffled along, staggering with pathetic slowness, these figures shambled, their spastic running much faster than anything we’d seen a dead body manage before this. As they grew closer, I stand, transfixed by the sight of the crowd, their jerky movements a backdrop of continuous motion behind Julia. Their faces shine with youth cut short, and their waxy skin gleams with tireless vigor.
With Julia, I turn to flee, but ahead of us, the highway stretches, far off the ground, offering no place to hide. We approach a sign, alerting drivers that the next exit was only five miles away.
We’d wanted to leave the city, after all.
With one last look back, we begin to run.
Not as much time to playtest last night, but I tried out a simple scenario with three survivors, just trying to get across a relatively large board arbitrarily filled with buildings. The whole purpose of this was to test out the zombie placement and scouting rules, as well as continuing to play with the ammunition rules. It's all related. How many rounds does it take to drop the average zombie, and how many will you absolutely have to kill in a scenario?
Two survivors (Amy and Ben) were armed with shotguns, while the other had a .357 revolver. The revolver carrier, Chuck, was a bit more sure-footed and quieter, and so he was acting as a scout. To place zombies, the players use tokens they gain while performing other actions. These tokens represent the attention the players are drawing, so loud or noticeable actions (like gunshots) can really rack up the crowds of undead. Tokens are placed in the first out-of-sight space nearest the character, and, when they come into view, each token contributes toward the chance a zombie is around the corner. If not, one token is removed from the stack, and the stack retreats around the next nearest corner.
I don't have the full psychological model up yet, but moving Charlie ahead away from the others was a pretty tense feeling, especially when I had him crossing intersections alone. Tokens accumulated in these intersections as the other two approached, meaning that zombies could be gathering, and separate Charlie from the others. Also, the long, narrow alleyways gave the characters few options for field of fire. Shooting targets between the two groups invited friendly fire.
When the zombies finally showed up, about a third of the way across the board, I had a choice to make. Open fire early, when they were a ways off, thus making reloading less frantic? Or keep moving, to start the shooting later on? Gunfire drew a lot of zombies, so I decided to press ahead.
At about two-thirds of the way through, a Horde showed up ahead of us. Zombie hordes are crowds of zombies that stretch off the map and out of view. There are ways multiple survivors can corral hordes, but I didn't have the time or ammunition to even try. Charlie opened fire, hoping to drive the living edge of the horde back far enough to dash past, into an alleyway that led to the other side of the map. No dice. Dropping a single zombie after using all six rounds, Charlie drops back himself, reloading frantically.
Amy and Ben begin to run, seeing the tokens adding up between them and Charlie, drawn by his gunfire. One large stack, almost certain to represent a zombie presence of some kind (another horde, perhaps), turns out to be nothing. The stack loses a 30% token, and retreats a few spaces away, around the next corner. This is the new escape route!
I consider holding Ben back, to clear out the lone straggler zombies that have appeared behind the group, should Amy find a mass of undead we can't fight through, and we need to retreat for a new route. I do this, and Ben succeeds in blasting apart two of the three zombies in sight. Charlie rushes back, running flat-out around the corner toward where Amy waits. His reloading efforts have only gotten him three rounds loaded before he abandons the effort. Shaky fingers, I suppose.
The horde advances, and Charlie starts forward, only to trip and fall while crossing a heap of debris. His gun goes flying. Collecting it, Charlie uses the rest of his movement to regain his feet. The horde presses forward, cutting off the escape route where Amy and Ben wait. Rather than aiming, Ben fights his revulsion (using a few dice) and approaches the horde, firing at point-blank range. First shot: Zombie down! Second shot, another zombie down! Last bullet: another zombie collapses, spine severed, but still alive. With an incredible stroke of luck, Charlie clears the horde from the entrance, and, though they advance once more, hindered by their injured member they cannot close the gap, and Charlie runs through.
All in all, a quick little encounter. Total playing time for this scenario: About an hour, including notes and a lot of thinking. The map (crappy hand-drawn diagram on a piece of paper), counters (glass beads), and tokens (coins) were the pits, and really slowed things down. This group's success seems like a lucky event, and I'm still concerned that the characters will be continually running out of ammunition. The core gameplay is there, but needs polish.
