QZ play report 2

Quarantine Zone

Around 9:00 Saturday evening our heroes heard a surprising broadcast crackle over the radio.

-" To anyone still alive out there, we have a helicopter and are landed on the roof of the University, we will take as many passengers as we can, but we leave at midnight. Don't be late!"

Gathering up some weapons the 3 heroes set out.

There was a quick scuffle in front of a local KFC which resulted in the destruction of all three zombies. One hero thought she recognized one of the undead but was able to pass a nerve check and take it out. Another hero killed a zombie but her fireaxe broke. One of the zombies was wearing a backpack which contained pistol ammo, unfortunately no one had a pistol.

The heroes busted into a hardware store and quickly grabbed a bunch of loot, replacing the broken axe.

At the top of a rise, at an intersection on the Trans Canada Highway, the heroes were able to look down and see many zombies milling about at the next intersection. They decided to go left and cut through a plaza.

Although initially they planned to loot a liquor store they just ran past when they realized zombies were inside.

They kept going and ran through a big grocery store, meeting a mob of zombies near the back exit.

2 Slouchers, 2  Juggernauts, a Crawler and a Twitcher were all quickly defeated, although one hero was mauled by a Juggernaut.

The heroes kept moving a looted another larger hardware store, this time looting bicycles and a whole bunch of weapons. They decided to bike down the road behind the University and then hike through the forest trails right up to the back of the school, thus bypassing a lot of the crazyness they suspected was on the main road up to the school.

All went according to plan and they arrived at the helicopter with just minutes till midnight.

(I was getting a bit drunk and their plan sounded good, so I pretty much just gave it to them at this point, and more or less handwaved  their trip through the woods and escape by helicopter.)

It was pretty fun overall and I think everyone had fun. I learned some stuff too, which I will post under a new rules article soon. But the main thing I learned is not to let the players dictate too much to me. The player plan to go the long way around was very clever, and definitely should have been rewarded. I shouldn't have just given them a free pass though. QZ while a simple system, does require prep, most of the prep I think needs to go towards taking familiar locales and "zombieapocalypsizing" them.

The forest behind the school should have been burned out and cut back. There should have been a overrun military style perimeter close around the school- sandbags and fences, maybe a minefield. An abandoned shanty town on the grounds of the school would have been badass and creepy.

It is easy to think of the places you know as they are, but in QZ you need to throw some curve-balls and change stuff up. Just because your players know what a nearby location looks like now doesn't mean it is going to be like that in QZ- thats the big attraction for a game like this, in my opinion.

More on this later.