[Games] Zombie Run Session #6 (15): Fighting Flagstaff
Zombie Run Session 6 (15): Fighting Flagstaff
(4 Jun 2011)
The Protagonists:
- Dominic Gaston Gerard: Confidence artist and rogue (“JZ”).
- Todd “T-Man” Burton: Parkour runner and reality show star (“SV”).
- Jacob “Stormcloud”: AWOL soldier (“Digital Rampage”).
The Extras:
- Angelina Hawke: Athlete, reality show contestant, T-Man’s girlfriend.
- Bernard: Well-trained dog, loyal to Dominic.
- Raven: Escaped test subject bird, pet of Jacob.
- Teenie Mae Mathis: Country girl and former(?) cannibal.
Retconning & Absentees:
GM Note: There was a bit of revision of the plans that were loosely discussed at the end of the previous session. The rescued women and kids were still sent off in the bus, but the group decided to send them with plenty of food and water for the journey, since there was more than enough at the motel cache than they could load up in their vehicles anyway. They decided there wasn’t any point in leaving it for the raiders, anyway, or simply destroying it all.
Also, “Greer’s” player was not present for this game, but it wasn’t clear whether this was just a momentary fluke and he’d be rejoining later, or whether he was out of the action. I therefore left it rather vague, allowing the players to assign him to night watch duty, but hand-waving that for purposes of any action taking place, he was either off on patrol, or in another vehicle that got separated from the group, or otherwise was “off camera” for the time being and not directly involved in the action.
Guarding the Den:
The group stayed on longer at the Wolf’s Den Motel after sending the bus of refugees along, in order to enact more repairs on the Frankencar, load up supplies, and work out their next course. They found a map in one of the motel rooms, heavily marked up, which appeared to show some sort of indications regarding towns that had been looted by the raiders, locations of other “depot” bases, and other marks they couldn’t make sense of (since there was no “legend” to go by) - which as far as they knew could just as well mean something like, “Lots of loot here - be sure to come back with a bigger truck!” as “Unspeakable horrors! Do not visit under any circumstances!”
Jacob set up auto-turrets on the roof, pointed in such a way as to cover the approach from the mountain ridge, just in case any zombies (or sneaky raiders) approached from that unlikely direction, while leaving obvious modes of entry such as the access road free of any auto-turret coverage - as he didn’t want to run the risk of random passersby getting gunned down by the turrets if they stopped in, or of their own number getting pegged during a rushed evacuation. Jacob refused to sleep inside, instead setting up a little camp on the roof (with thick furs and winterized bedroll and a tent he’d procured), as he trusted elevation more than walls to protect him from wandering zombie hordes, and he wanted easy access to the turrets (pointed away from his camping position, of course) in the event of any action.
Greer had rigged up a couple of claymores in one of the motel rooms, right behind where several motorcycles were lined up, as that room showed signs of being a main gathering room for the bikers, and hence a likely spot for the raiders to visit, should they return to the base. (Of course, everyone in the group was warned to NOT open the door, under any circumstances.)
During Dominic’s watch, he heard some radio noise from the “base” room, and ran in, overhearing what sounded like a Flagstaff raiding party calling in to the depot, trying to hail someone. Dominic, recalling some of the voices of the raiders he’d been listening in on while he was stalking the main lodge and killing them off one by one, expertly took on a fake accent and played along. There were a few stumbling points, as he wasn’t fully coached on the raider terminology or introduced to all of them by name, but his long experience as a con man served him well in covering up for any little gaffes. He got the news that the party had run into trouble from a heavily armed group, and lost their “big rig” and three bikes, but that they’d been in luck and found a group of stranded travelers blocked by a collapsed tunnel - easy pickings.
Dominic made up a story (mixed with a bit of truth) that the troublemaking party of survivors had made their way to the Wolf’s Den Motel, but that the gang had wiped them out handily.
After congratulating the “base camp” on the victory, the raiders let Dominic know they were on their way in to the depot, and their ETA was in about, oh, five minutes or so.
Dominic suppressed his alarm at this news, and calmly acknowledged and signed out … and then he dashed over to the other rooms and raised the alarm, waking everyone up and urging them to get their things together and be prepared to move out. While the others were groggily grabbing their things, Dominic rushed around to each of the vehicles, starting them up, driving them out to line up on the access road to roll out, and then left the engines running while parked.
Jacob grabbed two of the turrets, hastily shutting them off, but stumbled while trying to climb down with them in a hurry, and ended up falling … into a snow bank. He pulled himself out and dashed for his truck, “Silver,” while Teenie Mae was already setting up a “nest” in the back of the truck with the rear-mounted gun, and T-Man and Angelina were throwing things into the Frankencar.
Dominic switched his CB over to the channel the raiders were using, and kept up the banter as they got closer. One of the gunners in the raiding party somehow noticed the lack of the zombies on the fences, but Angelina joined in, faking a raspy chain-smoking woman’s voice and doing a passable job of pretending to be the (now dead) woman who’d been guarding the kids, at least for the purpose of buying some time - making up something about how she was (expletive) tired of that (expletive) smell and the (expletive) moaning when she had an (expletive) hangover, and so forth. Meanwhile, Dominic made up some business about moving the vehicles around to clear the way in, just in case any eagle-eyed raiders noticed the cars moving out.
So, the little convoy rolled out across the street to the abandoned Hunter’s Lodge Diner, parking their cars amidst the abandoned and parts-stripped hulks still sitting in the lot there, and turning off their engines and lights in the hopes of blending in.
The remainder of the raiding party rolled in. The bikes (each rider carrying a female passenger) predictably rolled up in line with the other bikes. One of the technical trucks, overloaded with loot, backed up to the main lodge. The other technical truck pulled into the main lot. Only the truck at the lodge was within line of sight of the group across the street, so Dominic set up his Barrett .50 caliber rifle, preparing to snipe the gunner on top of the technical, while the raiders started disembarking from their vehicles.
Dominic took the shot, taking out the gunner. At that same moment, someone opened the door to the “biker hangout” room. The two claymores’ effect was devastating, taking out not only all of the bikers and their rides, but knocking over both of the technical trucks, starting a large gas fire on the motel cabin block, and lighting up the night. Dominic and the others moved in, and easily mopped up what little resistance there was (and finishing off the dead who came back as flaming zombies). They shut off the gas, and attempted to get the fire under control. Two of the raiders survived, plus two women and a teen-aged girl (who had been in the trucks rather than tied to bikes). They tied up the raiders to the fence, and interrogated the women.
The women, it turned out, were from the same party that had been initially following the protagonists through the mountains, on the same road, but who had been stopped by a collapsed tunnel, and then ambushed by raiders while they were trying to haul rocks out to clear enough of the way to get through. For what it was worth, this refugee party sounded as if it would have been a source of trouble for the protagonists as well, if it had caught up, since the people in charge of it were more than a little unhinged and domineering, justifying taking various “desperate” measures against other survivors for the sake of their own little band.
Dominic, Jacob and T-Man discussed what to do with the raiders. After interrogating the raiders, they only further reinforced their suspicions that these guys were scum of the earth, so detached from civilized behavior that they could rationalize any sort of savagery in the name of “survival” (or personal amusement). They also learned that two other raiding parties were due to return sometime the next day.
No one was eager to carry about any sort of execution, per se, nor to drag the raiders along as prisoners.
In the end, they commandeered one of the surviving technical trucks, and transferred most of the gear from the Hummer over to it. They then moved a bunch of the stolen supplies to the Hummer, detached the trailer, and let the two women and the girl take that vehicle, directing them to continue on to Phoenix, and to avoid Flagstaff.
Dominic left the two raiders chained to the fences with a few boxes of vodka. They loaded up what supplies they could into the vehicles, gathering up several items that had been initially left behind in the panic, and hit the road.
Refueling Stop:
Whereas early on in the epidemic, they’d pretty easily been able to just refuel whatever vehicles they had by siphoning from gas tanks of abandoned vehicles on the way, the area beyond the depot, getting closer to Flagstaff, seemed to be fairly thoroughly picked over. Any vehicles they encountered had been drained dry of gas, and in many cases stripped of tires, lights, and various other components.
In Arizona, at a stop near White Mountain, Angelina spotted a convoy of vehicles, including a couple of technicals of similar design to those used by the Flagstaff raiders, and couple of big trucks - a big rig tanker truck, and a cargo truck, with makeshift “gun nests” built on top, where armed men with M-16s kept watch. A partially-armored sports car and several bikes completed the convoy.
The group came to a quick decision, opting to take advantage of the opportunity. They backtracked a bit to set up an ambush at an on-ramp, setting up both of the technicals with guns trained on the highway, while T-Man was ready with the Frankencar to create a diversion on the road.
They sprang their trap, sniping the drivers of the Flagstaff technical trucks, while T-Man drove out and played a deadly game of “chicken” with the on-rushing semi. Jacob, Teenie Mae and Dominic riddled the vehicles with high-powered bullets. Jacob’s technical took some significant return fire, damaging his brake lines among other things, but otherwise the battle was a largely one-sided slaughter. There was only one survivor of the raiders - one of the nest gunners who’d been injured when the big rig went out of control and came to a sudden stop in the median, and who found himself at spear-point when Angelina climbed on top of the tanker. He quickly surrendered, and, once ordered to do so, left everything and ran away from the highway, making for the foothills.
They were a bit worried, because one of the Flagstaffers had managed to get in a warning of the ambush, and from what they’d overheard, it sounded as if the Flagstaff raiders had air support. Nonetheless, they needed gas badly if they were going to make it over the mountain ridge, so they coordinated an effort to quickly fuel up the vehicles (taking diesel from the tanker for the two trucks, and siphoning unleaded from the sports car for T-Man’s Frankencar), swipe ammunition and guns, and to quickly grab any supplies they could. In the end, they left quite a bit behind, since they had no idea how much time they had before the “cavalry” arrived, but Dominic made sure to set everything alight so there’d be less for Flagstaff to get out of it.
After making it across another mountain ridge, the group established a temporary refuge in the town of Peridot, clearing out a large house with a large garage that appeared to have once housed a car-restoration enthusiast and his many unfinished projects. Killing off the zombies was a pretty routine affair by this point, and they set up the auto-turrets to help secure the perimeter. T-Man then had a nice, well-equipped shop to work on repairs (mostly to Jacob’s technical truck), and they had enough supplies to camp out for another day before resuming their journey. Angelina found a stockpile of “Air Soft” pellet guns, and claimed one to practice shooting with; she and Teenie Mae, after suiting up in heavy winter and hunting gear,
GM Note: I had a major stumble at this point in the adventure, because I had misunderstood JZ’s plans for which highways he was going to take to get to Phoenix and bypass Flagstaff, and I really needed to have printed off my map larger with a finer point of resolution, to make the alternate road routes clearer. I had mistakenly thought that the group was driving right up to Flagstaff but then just using some alternate roads to cut around the city - and thus putting themselves right in the middle of the Flagstaff raiders’ patrol area. Hence, once the group wiped out the convoy and stuck around to grab loot and to try to actually REPAIR Jacob’s truck, I figured there was enough time for one of the Apache AH-64s to get fired up, and for there to be a “welcoming committee” at the overpass.
As I ended up describing the Apache and its load-out, and the PCs pretty quickly figured out that the Apache was herding them toward something rather than using its nice, expensive, hard-to-replace missiles on them right away, and then I described the big ambush, and the players were expressing incredulity that the raiders could react so quickly (and I was expressing incredulity that unloading supplies and ammunition and refueling three vehicles and trying to make REPAIRS is something that could be done quickly), it became clear that the players had imagined that their route was going to keep them well clear of Flagstaff - far more than the route I’d mistakenly interpreted them as taking based on the verbal directions I’d been given. Note to self: Make them trace a line out on the map next time.
Anyway, we had to do a major retcon at this point. No Apache AH-64, no “welcoming committee.” I still left in the convoy ambush (even though I had originally plotted for the ripe pickings to be much closer to Flagstaff), and let them get their full tanks of gas and loot, but all that stuff about the helicopter, etc., didn’t really happen.
What was GOING to happen was that they’d be herded up to the “welcoming committee,” and then Burdick would give them an “offer they couldn’t refuse” to join up with the Flagstaffers, more or less getting back onto the adventure as written at that point, as the heroes’ competence would be something seen as a potential asset if put to use on the Flagstaff side. Of course, the heroes could just be looking for the first opportunity to bail, but they’d likely end up having to leave behind a lot of their stuff in the process.
Onward to Phoenix:
Although it was still bitterly cold at night, once they got into the desert they didn’t have to worry about such hazards as snowdrifts covering the roads anymore, and everything was spaced out far enough that they didn’t have to worry about massive pile-ups. Thus, they were able to make good time the rest of the way to Phoenix.
At Phoenix, they discovered that most of the roadways had been cleared, and there was even evidence of some makeshift emergency road work. The downtown area was sectioned off, with barricades along some highways that happened to encircle the area, and gates set up at overpasses, with semi rigs and trailers modified to be drivable “gates.”
When the protagonists disembarked, and T-Man introduced himself, the guards were impressed and explained that they’d been told to expect them, by a group of refugees on a bus who arrived a couple of days ago.
GM Note: The reception was going to be more neutral if the refugees had been sent on with NO food or water.
Procedures still had to be followed, and the travelers were asked a few questions, and given a quick token check to make sure there were no zombies being dragged along in someone’s back seat. There were no strip-searches, however; this far into the apocalypse, they’d figured out that zombification happens on account of any means of death, and the important thing was to make sure that nobody was left alone for a prolonged period, and certainly that nobody went about defenseless.
Hence, while they wanted to get an overview of any explosives or heavy weapons the group might be bringing into the town, they weren’t disarmed, just asked to make sure that any heavy weapons and explosives were secured.
The travelers were given a quick overview of the arrangements in Phoenix. Dominic sought out the famed “Mel’s Diner,” and traded for some fresh chili.
GM Note: Here, I mostly just covered things as described in the adventure, embellishing a little here and there as seemed reasonable to extrapolate.
The Phoenixites were happy to show hospitality in exchange for some news of the outside world and what the travelers had encountered. After hearing about the Phoenix initiative to collect books and other records for archiving, the travelers donated various medical research papers they’d acquired from UniMed, along with assorted books and magazines they’d scavenged from convenience stores and at least one post office along the way.
Dominic proved a capable story-teller, while T-Man and Angelina lent their star power, soon turning their arrival into a buzz-worthy event in the settlement. Jacob kept fairly low-key by comparison, just inquiring about the Tohono O’odham settlement, but finding out little, since there was no direct contact between Phoenix and any settlements that still might exist on reservation land.
The travelers spent a while in Phoenix, helping out with some of the projects, donating some supplies (such as the server box and UPS they’d acquired from the office building in Hickory), and getting new paint jobs for their vehicles (“bone white” for the Frankencar, and desert camouflage for the two technical trucks). T-Man managed to persuade the owner of a body shop to let him borrow some space to make some further modifications to the Frankencar, setting up a “tail-gunner” mount for a spare .50-caliber machine-gun, so Angelina could provide cover fire if need be.
In all, they got to enjoy the convenience of electricity, plus a chance to live in a pocket of civilization once more.
GM Note: It was a great chance to recover lost Sanity/Morale points!
A Special Mission:
The town council approached the group with a mission they hoped they might consider undertaking. As they explained, the Palo Verde nuclear facility was providing power to Phoenix and the surrounding area, but it was unique among the US nuclear facilities in not being built next to a large water source for purposes of cooling; rather, it had relied upon water reprocessed from sewage from the surrounding communities, and there was nobody maintaining those water treatment plants, post-apocalypse. Although the plant had many automated systems to assist in the event of emergencies, it was only a matter of time before enough things went wrong, without any human operator to fix things. What was worse, Palo Verde was directly west of Phoenix, and the prevailing winds in the region would likely carry any radioactive fallout eastward in a cone that would cover all of Phoenix and its suburbs. (And, of particular interest to Jacob, this would of course put the Tohono O’odham lands in peril as well.)
The council had come to a decision to shut down the nuclear reactor; they had been busily collecting information and archiving it in non-electronic form in order to have some way of preserving it once they lost electricity. They had among them an engineer who had worked at the plant before the outbreak, and who could administer the shutdown procedures, but he would need an armed escort group to protect him and to assist if need be, as they had fears of encounters with the Living Dead, or even raiders on the way.
Jacob quickly volunteered to help, since he felt it was his obligation to do anything he could to help protect his community … but first, he needed to visit his people and warn them of the threat, especially if this mission should prove unsuccessful, so they could make any necessary preparations.
The others were determined to assist Jacob, so while the town council had hoped to set out on this mission immediately, they agreed to allow the travelers a day to finish their business at the reservation, while the Phoenixites would gather together requested vehicles and supplies for the trip. Jacob left behind his technical truck, offering its use for the mission in the (hopefully unlikely) event he could not make it back, and in exchange borrowed a Humvee transport truck so he could haul the various supplies that he’d accumulated in hopes of delivering to his people.
Phantom Trucker:
So, the travelers set out immediately in the hopes of making a “day trip” to the fairly short distance to the Tohono O’odham reservation, drop off supplies, and then head back.
On the way, they had a brief and strange encounter with a big rig that showed signs of trauma (shattered windshield, lots of gore, no obvious sign of a living driver), coming down the road, head-on, in the wrong lane. Dominic and Teenie Mae each felt overcome with strange, alien sensations, but fought off the effect. (It was unclear whether or not T-Man felt anything at all out of the ordinary, but whatever it was, it left no impression upon him.) Although the rig seemed to be swerving deliberately to ram into each of the vehicles in turn, they managed to evade it, although Dominic ended up going completely off the road in the process. The rig kept barreling along, making no attempt to stop or turn about, and the travelers weren’t inclined to investigate further.
This was a “random encounter” I’d had in mind. It really just involved everyone down the line making Driving checks to get out of the way of a truck. A while back, I’d mentioned legends of “zombie truckers” turning while at the wheel, and having enough cognitive ability to keep the truck going straight until hitting a sharp turn or running out of gas. I figured this was likely my last chance to use it, so I tossed it in. I made Teenie Mae and Dominic take Spirit rolls to avoid being Shaken, because this was their first encounter with a “smart” Living Dead since being infected/mutated. Teenie Mae had become a “mutant” on account of her cannibalism, whereas Dominic had picked up a little something because of his … ah … very close if brief association with Mary Mathis. Dominic’s been having to make Vigor rolls each day, to avoid any further “mutation” progression, but ever since he took an Advance to increase his Vigor, he’s been reliably passing the checks, often with a raise.
This was NOT part of Zombie Run or War of the Dead as written.
The People of the Desert:
The small convoy rolled up to the outskirts of a fenced-off area with a couple of watch towers at the gate, beyond which they could see a short main street with a few basic buildings. There was apparently an armed guard in the tower, but eagle-eyed Jacob figured out that it was just a dummy in the tower, and that the real guards were hiding in the bushes, having been alerted to the approach of the vehicles some point distant. He disembarked, and strolled up to the bushes, hands out, and greeted his distant kin folk.
At first, they were wary, but then an older woman - a cousin of his - Maggie Stormcloud, came out, and exclaimed that this was Jacob, and last she’d heard he was all the way over in Jacksonville.
After the tension broke, several more people came out, and welcomed the visitors in.
Jacob came bearing gifts, and distributed all of the M-16s, .50-caliber guns, and other weapons, empty shell casings he’d been saving, medicine, and assorted other survival and a few novelty items (including a number of cheap toys he’d picked up at that souvenir shop, for the kids).
Plans were made for a small celebration to be held to honor Jacob’s homecoming (the last time he’d been there was when he was just a child), but this was interrupted by screams outside. They witnessed a strange man with taut skin, blood red eyes, and misshapen fangs chasing down and biting a woman. Guards immediately responded, shooting the man in the back, but the woman had already been bitten.
Jacob rushed out with his hatchet, ready to behead the strange man, but he had noticed the detail - that he had been shot /in the back/, and he had not yet risen in the time it took for Jacob to rush out to the street. Suspicious, Jacob went up and kicked the body over, eyeing his features, and comparing it to what he remembered of the “pseudo-zombies” that had attacked at the “Family” farmstead. He checked and confirmed his suspicions that the man was well and truly dead - and for all he could tell showed no signs that he was going to reanimate. Still, for the sake of completeness, and not wishing to tempt fate needlessly further, he went ahead and beheaded the man-turned-monster. He quickly checked with the guards and, even accounting for whatever transformation this creature might have undergone to reach its present state, they were quite sure that he was not a member of the Tohono O’odham, nor was he anyone they had associated with or could otherwise recognize.
Note: The presence of the “Chosen” at the Family’s farmstead was a deviation from Zombie Run as written, as I was incorporating elements from the Food for Thought adventure for War of the Dead.
Once Jacob relayed his findings to those within earshot, Dominic grabbed Teenie Mae and took her out to look at the body, demanding to know whether this matched the “Chosen” - those who had feasted on other humans for long enough that they’d undergone “mutations” and eventually become zombie-like in their animalistic desire to consume human flesh.
Teenie Mae confirmed that there was something similar about this - the misshapen fangs, the more feral features, the behavior, the discoloration of the skin - but there was still something different. The blood red eyes and the abnormally pale skin were unusual, and not something associated with such changes. For all she knew, this might be a “new kind of the Resurrected.”
They hardly had time to consider this further, before they heard shattering glass. A man came crashing out of the window of a trailer home, and struggled to flee, as he was chased by a mad woman who seemed alive, yet just as intent upon biting him as any zombie would. Jacob, with some regret, acted quickly and shot her in the head before she could pounce upon the man, prompting her would-be victim to wail and protest that it was his wife. The other gathered survivors quickly restrained him; the general consensus was that even if she didn’t look it, she had “turned,” and there was no help for it. (Even now, they had the woman who had been bitten earlier locked up in a room as “quarantine,” and the report was that she was already behaving erratically.)
Dominic, taking on a more conciliatory demeanor, managed to calm the man down a bit, and got out of him that his wife had gone down hardly an hour ago, upon the arrival of the visitors, to get some supplies from the grocery store that had been turned into a collective storehouse for food stocks. It was normally kept locked up, as a repository for stocks being gathered for the winter, but she needed a few items from the stores in order to prepare a special meal for the celebration. She had returned, looking unwell, and clutching a wound; she had been ambushed by someone or something that had broken into the storehouse, lying in wait.
The man had been in shock, not wanting to believe that it could have been a zombie, unwilling to tell anyone before he was sure. She didn’t seem to bear the signs of declining health as might be associated with a zombie bite, but her behavior became more erratic, she became less responsive, more wild and animal-like, and before he could restrain her, she attacked him while he was checking on her, and he - unwilling or unable to fight back - had to hurl himself through a window to escape.
I took this interlude from Outbreak in Hopewell, one of the free adventures from War of the Dead, but I tried to make some modifications to make it less … coincidental. For one thing, it’s such exquisite timing if these people have been pretty much fine on their own and then AS SOON AS the heroes show up, it all blows up. Hence, I tried to modify it a bit; it wasn’t just some random trip to the grocery store that resulted in the attack. Rather, it was a visit to the store house, in response to the heroes’ arrival, where a monster lurking amongst the food items attacked - and he might have lurked there for longer, eventually attacking the first person to disturb it, but the heroes’ arrival was the catalyst for it happening RIGHT NOW.
However, I didn’t get a chance to explain all these details to the players, and I could see that plausibility was taking a heavy hit that all this happened to occur RIGHT as they showed up. It got even worse when other outbreaks started happening.
Emergency Measures:
The elders immediately called for word to be put out, for all the outlying folk in their farmsteads to either gather within the secured area, or to lock everything up and hunker down - and prepare for a “fast zombie” attack. They rang the alarm bells, put out the word on the CB, and quickly distributed the M-16s that Jacob had donated. Word came in of others who had been bitten by this “fast zombie” and of unaccounted-for disappearances. It appeared that this monster had been very busy since it was discovered.
The protagonists helped the locals to keep a watch out for any more infected sightings; T-Man and Angelina were the first to spot an unexpected new arrival, however. A heavily-armored RV, with a plow on the front and a large cage-like frame on the back, flanked by a couple of motorcycles, was rolling in to the main gate area. The travelers rushed over to join the heavily-armed “welcoming party” at the gates, where they heard the leader of this new group introduce himself as Alexandro Cortez, claiming that a member of his group had been bitten by a Shambler in the nearby mountains, and they had been trying to recover him.
Dominic was immediately doubtful of this story (particularly that these folks were specifically referring to a “shambler” rather than something more generic like a “zombie,” when evidently this strain of infection produced a victim who could still run perfectly fine), and curious about how the cage fit into all this. He had strong suspicions that the “zombie trucker” they’d encountered earlier was somehow connected to this. Perhaps this was evidence of one of the “zombie generals” that they’d heard rumors about back in Jacksonville.
Before they had much chance to get any more information, however, they heard more screams and shots, as it seemed that several of these “pseudo-zombies” were now on the rampage at once, and within the fortified area.
Because, of course, rush-rush-rush! Got to have breakneck timing on these things. Or whatever. Seriously, though, it’s a bit of a stretch to tie all this together and make it seem like anything other than “amazing coincidence” as my players already seem skeptical, and expecting some sort of big explanation for it all … but I’ll give it a sporting try!
Note: Outbreak at Hopewell does not say HOW MANY Ferals are supposed to be there, nor whether the original Feral is supposed to be the infected team member, or a random man from town, or what. I assumed he was an outsider … but given the sudden influx of SEVERAL Ferals in such a short amount of time, I decided to go with the idea that when the Feral wandered into town, he had accumulated a small “pack” to come with him, made up of people ambushed and infected on the way to coming to this town. I’m also going to deviate a bit and suggest that Ferals, once they have enough time to progress and “mutate” further, look even less human than the “pseudo-Living-Dead” infected.
Little Alice, the psychic girl, gives me an excuse to give the PCs a bit more information than they could hope to gather on how this all happened, and what’s going on with Dominic, Teenie Mae, et al. If they speak with her, I intend to let her give them a little more mysterious exposition that I hope will help to fill in a few blanks.
Cliffhanger:
I cut off the session here, gave out XP awards, announced the next date (in two weeks), etc. I was going to skip the next session, actually, since it falls on Free RPG Day as I had hoped to run The Wild Hunt at a local game store as a way of participating, but none of the local game stores was interested. Bah.
We’ll pick up on the cliffhanger event and a gratuitous battle with several even-faster zombies.
Throughout this game, I made use of a few “Micro Machine” knock-off toys (“Micro Ridez” from the Toys ‘R’ Us “store brand” cheap toys), plus a few very small hand-drawn paper stand-ups for the bikes. While it’s nice to have miniatures-scale vehicles, I’ve found it useful to have “micro” markers for vehicles for the larger-scale vehicular action, similar to ship battles in Pirates RPG. I just need to work on the scale for my battle maps; I’m not very good at eyeballing it on the computer, and my area map for the Wolf’s Den Inn should have been printed 4x larger, with pieces taped together, so we could actually read the labels and have large enough squares to place the little car markers. I ended up having to use tiny dice instead.
I’ve also been using some old Hot Wheels City track segments and the knock-off micro cars for chase markers, though technically during this session we didn’t have any actual Chases as per the rules; I just used the markers for relative ranges, and moved the vehicles accordingly. I really, really regret not being able to find my “Thunder Road” board game pieces, which I believe are lost in my garage somewhere, or maybe in the attic; those are just about the right scale (around N-scale) to go alongside the knock-off Micro Machines to represent “road warrior-ish” vehicles.
Meanwhile, I need to “re-skin” the Frankencar and the Technical truck to reflect the new paint jobs. Tough luck for Jacob’s Technical Dooley, though: That’s a “Battle Machines” toy truck, currently silver, and I’m not planning on repainting that thing. If time allows, however, I might try to make a papercraft replacement that differs from the standard Technical design - a bit beefier, with “dualie” tires and such.