Zombie RV campaign: Pics from two convention games (5/12)

[mikedemana]

Thanks everyone! I appreciate the kind words. Actually, the convoy is headed to "big sky" country where the population density is low. They're hoping the zombie density is equally low out there.

Lots of time working on the various things for the trailer park, and I won't officially call it done. I will likely buy another trailer or two when I see Bad Goblin Games at Historicon in July.

The game mat is a 4'x3' neoprene, two-sided one. I forget the company it came from as I purchased it at a game store. I believe they were out of France, IIRC.

Look's like my numbers will be a tad smaller this time. Not six...more like 4-5 players.

Mike Demana

[Legionnaire]

Lovely setup Mike  ,  beautiful table packed with lots of goodies.

Nice to see some more zombie gaming cropping up. I have slowed down myself due to having things I had to deal with and other little side projects that needed to be finished.

Looking forward to a detailed report.

Regards,

Legionnaire.

[mikedemana]

Unemployed...? In Greenville? - Zombie Road Trip: Part 2

The convoy of survivors had nearly made it to the Indiana state line when they decided they would be better off stopping somewhere to scavenge for more supplies. Near Greenville, they spotted a quiet looking trailer park. No signs of zombies were anywhere, and no people could be seen moving about. This seemed to be their best chance to find some food, gas, medicine, or even weapons. The convoy sent eight ahead in two RVs to investigate and explore, while the rest remained with the other vehicles. The recon group split up, with four approaching from each of the long sides of the trailer park. Things were still quiet, so they exited their vehicles and began to sneak forward.



For this game, I had four players, each controlling two survivors. I was using a 4'x3' board with a dozen buildings in two rows, separated by a dirt road going down the center of the trailer park. A water tower loomed over the center of the board on one edge. Instead of fixed spawning points, as is typical in a game of Zombie RV, I had 12 potential places (each building) for new creatures to spawn each turn. Dividing the trailer park into two halves roughly on line with the water tower, the players would roll a d6 for the which building would be the spawn point on each half of the board. Then they would roll for how many. That way, threats would be coming from both sides of the board, and the players could not "know" where new ones would appear. If a building had already been searched when rolled, the zombies would instead come from the treeline nearest the building. And yes, the zombies could spawn in a building a survivor was currently inside and searching (but not yet found anything). That never happened, though, but fairly quickly, the zombies seemed to be everywhere on the board!



All 12 buildings could potentially have supplies, but the player's mission was to get eight supplies and then get back to their vehicles and escape. I also gave them a chance for each cache of supplies to also include a weapon or extra ammo, if they rolled that. Joel's characters (Earle and Jimmy) teamed up with Mike W's (Reef and C.J.). They began in the center of the side of the board opposite the water tower. Keith's characters (Junior and Roman), with their companions Mike S's Coop and Daisy, began in the shadow of the water tower. Each group of four split into teams of two and sought out a building to investigate.



Mike W's C.J. ran forward and onto the deck of the trailer with the metal bars over the windows. Just as C.J. reached for the door, he heard a familiar moaning sound from behind him. Three zombies had just spawned from the building behind him and began shuffling towards him. His companion, Reef -- a new guy the convoy had just picked up -- fired at the zombies, killing two. C.J. disappeared inside the trailer and ducked inside one of the rooms, closing the door behind him. He heard Reef continuing to fire, and then begin to curse loudly. "I'm jammed, C.J.! I'm out of here -- heading back to the RV!" Quietly, C.J. cursed the faithlessness of his new companion and peeked out the corner of one of the windows to keep an eye on the zombies. They seemed to be following Reef. That was good news, at least. They seemed to have forgotten he was there.



Not far away, Jimmy and Earle were creeping quietly between a rusted home made from a shipping container and a trailer painted bright pink. They heard the gunfire and flattened themselves against the shipping container building. Slow shuffling footsteps sounded like they were just on the other side of the building, so they crouched in place, hoping not to be noticed. On the opposite side of the board Junior and Roman dashed up onto the wide deck of a large trailer that seemed to be in pretty good shape, other than dirt, trash, and leaves piled up around. Across the little lawn between it and the neighboring, heavily damaged trailer, Coop and Daisy were moving forward to investigate, too. "Check inside," Junior whispered to Roman, "I will cover you from out there." Roman pulled his hoodie up and pushed open the door of the trailer.



Much to my surprise, the player controlling Reef was serious -- his rifle-armed character who'd rolled a "1" (out of ammo) did flee back to the trailer and jump inside, gunning the engine. I let him move the trailer back and forth along the edge of the table, which was really all he did for the rest of the game. He did try to run one zombie down, but only knocked it off its feet. Poor C.J. cowered inside as the zombies circled the trailer where he was hiding. They were drawn by the gunfire of Earle, who would shoot at the group of zombies, then dash off out of their movement range. The tactics of Earle "the Rabbit" would be put to the test as zombies spawned from all around him in this game. As the zombies were distracted, Jimmy ducked inside the container building and began searching.

End Part One...

Mike Demana

[mikedemana]

Part Two...

Meanwhile, zombies began to notice Junior standing on the corner of the deck keeping watch, and shuffled towards him. A Fast Zombie led the charge. Once a large group was within range, Junior let off two blasts of his shotgun, killing several and physically hurling others back. More zombies began to converge on Junior, and he continued blasting away until he ran out of ammo. One zombie clambered up onto the deck and clawed at him, but Junior smashed its head with the butt of his shotgun. Hearing his cursing, Roman dashed out onto the deck. "Found some supplies," he said, shoving things into his backpack, and you might want these!" He tossed a belt of shotgun shells to his friend, who snatched it and quickly began to reload as more zombies shuffled into view.



Seeing his distress, Coop began firing at the growing horde of zombies, killing two. Daisy dashed out of the fire-damaged trailer slinging her pack onto her back, "I'm good!" she called, "Let's move!" The two moved towards the water tower just as a trio of zombies emerged from the trees behind them. The trailer Daisy had just searched came up as the spawn point, which meant they arrived in the trees behind it, instead. As the two dashed off, pursued by zombies from both sides of the street, Earle sprinted across the dirt road. He had rolled an extra action, so he stopped at the corner of the building and blasted away with his rifle twice. The zombies redirected and began to converge on Earle.



Meanwhile, Roman had darted back inside the trailer, planning on ducking out the back door to search Swingle's Schwarma Shack across the street, when the coast was clear. Junior quietly snuck off the porch and crossed the lawn, hoping not to be noticed. Earle's friend Jimmy also ran across the road, firing his pistol. He followed Junior behind the damaged trailer. Zombies followed them both, streaming around both sides of the building. "Damn!" both cursed simultaneously. With nowhere to run, each turned to face the oncoming zombies. Junior's shotgun barked twice, while not far away, Earle's rifle fire cracked out. Zombies fell, but soon Junior and Earle were in hand-to-hand combat with zombies hungering for their flesh. They heard the sound of Coop's rifle and Daisy's pistol, though, as the two fired on the zombie horde. Junior hoped that the gambit would draw the zombies off.



The zombie attacking Junior swung wildly with its claws, but missed. The burly survivor then bashed in the creatures forehead with the butt of its shotgun. As he saw more closing in, he cursed again, and ran for the RV parked nearby. Jimmy quickly followed him into the vehicle, shutting the door behind him. This left Earle alone and in a bit of a lurch. A stream of zombies closed in on him, led by a Fast Zombie clothed in nothing but bright red underwear. Her claws tore through Earle's leather jacket, but the survivor shrugged off the pain. Another zombie closed with him. Earle heard the door of the RV opening and closing, and began edging backwards that way. He battled fiercely, and shoved himself free for a moment of the zombies' flailing arms. When he did, he heard shots ring out and the snap of bullets whistling past his ears on either side. Both zombies dropped as his friends covered him from the windows of the RV. Seeing an opening, Earle dashed for the vehicle himself, ducking inside and shouting, "Go, go, go...!"



Meanwhile, with all the commotion, Roman had been able to sneak across the street, using the burnt out hulk of a vehicle as cover. After what seemed like forever waiting for the zombies to shamble a safe distance away, he sprinted for Swingle's and dove across the counter top into the small, stone building. While waiting, Roman had been shaking his head, watching as Reef drove the other RV up and down the lane on the other side of the trees, alternately revving the engine then skidding to a stop. "What the freak is that guy doing...?" he mumbled. When the new guy returned to the corner intersection and slid to a stop, Ramon waved at him frantically at him. Once he caught his eye, he mouthed the words, "WAIT...FOR...ME!" He got a thumbs up and a grin. Ramon shook his head, again. "Crazy mutha..."



Coop and Daisy were on the run, again. They had eased the pressure off their friends, but were attracting the attention of a lot of zombies. Daisy would quickly enter a trailer to search it, while Coop tried to hold off the zombies with his rifle. Once Daisy had found something worth scavenging, she would exit the trailer, and add her pistol to the firing to slow down the zombies. Once they stemmed the surge a little, they would dash for the next building in the trailer park. As they were outside the last one, they heard honking as their RV sped around the corner. Earle and Junior's heads were hanging out the windows shouting at them to get in. Needing no further encouragement, the two survivors darted for the van and jumped inside. On the other side of the trailer park, C.J. was doing the same. Roman held the door open for him as he sprinted inside. C.J. shouted, "I'm in, now let's get out of here! Reef, you are a crazy sonofabitch...!"



There were some close escapes, but all eight survivors exited the board inside one of the survivors' RVs. They scavenged nine caches of supplies and rolled well enough to find a couple more weapons or extra ammo. This would keep the convoy moving well into Indiana, and keep their bellies full. Earle certainly had the closest calls. He was hit by zombies twice, once rolling the necessary "6" to pass his Grit Check. The other time, the zombie rolled only a "Flesh Wound." Junior also had very good fortune, too, never seeming to miss when a zombie closed the distance and was within striking range. Mike S's Coop and Daisy were seriously good "team players." Whenever one of their group was about to be overwhelmed, they fired like crazy to draw off the zombie hordes.



Reef's "peace out" as soon as he ran out of an ammo was a disappointment. The player contended that he couldn't do anything since he was out of ammo. I told him that there are survivors in every game of Zombie RV that we play who are armed with only a melee weapon. He could run. He could search. There was plenty he could do besides leave his companions to do all the scavenging for supplies. Driving up and down the lane beyond the line of trees in the RV wasn't going to accomplish much. In the end, he did provide pickup service Roman and C.J., who had been cut off from the rest of the group. So, the "new guy" wasn't completely useless.



I was happy with how the trailer park looked. The water tower is a great, iconic rural America terrain piece, too. The system of moving spawn points worked really well, I thought. I like it better than the one I've been using. It raises the danger level and limits the somewhat cheesy "rabbit" tactic of having a fast player continuously run back and forth to distract the zombies. Instead, the players stepped up for each other, firing to support group members who were in trouble. Except in scenarios where a single spawn point makes sense, I may keep this mechanic of moving spawn points for most of my scenarios. Its hard to use the word "realistic" in a zombie apocalypse game, but it certainly makes more sense.

Hope you enjoyed the full report here... 

Mike Demana

[Legionnaire]

As always Mike, a very detailed and exciting recounting of the action on the tabletop, along with some excellent photographs. High wargaming standard indeed! I would've been quite dissatisfied with having gone through that effort to plan and set up the game to have "one player not really playing it,  because of one bad dice roll"  , but I hope the others more than made it up to you and had the fun intended.

Regards,

Legionnaire.

[Sunjester]

A great report Mike and a fantastic looking table.

[Rick]

Absolutely fantastic stuff - your trailer park terrain is a joy to behold and provided a really entertaining game. Rotating several different methods of handling spawn points will keep things fresh for the gamers and keep them on their toes - they'll have to continually update their tactics. Nice one!

[CapnJim]

A.  The trailer park sure looked the part...

B.  Great report.  As far as the new guy's questionable activity, it happens.  During our Vietnam games, I have to bite my tongue at one of our players' tactical decisions...

C.  In any event, well done!     

[Freddy]

Great table and game!

For random zombie spawning, I use the following system: there is a pool of d6s which is increasing in every turn by 1, also increasing by every loud gunshot or other loud activity. When it is bigger or equal 6 (note that with the gunshots it can be way above, a PKM with a loader shots 5 per activation in my system), I roll all the dice and with each 6s a zombie appears (In my game it is 1 per surivor on small table, in bigger tables it could be more per 6 or counting 5s or 4s too). I just roll a direction dice for all of the newcomers (basically just d10s, watching their pointy end), and they enter from the table edge the dice is pointing. It is a great system as it forces folks to hurry without an actual time limit (I hate those) and tracks the element of noise without too much bookkeeping. You can easily introduce other scenario-specific factors (some things like detonations or scripted happenings add more dice), Human soldiers for example get extra d6s not for the noise but for the troops in contact by the end of the turn.

[Spinal Tap]

Fun report, and I really can't get over how fantastic your table looks.

[Cat]

That's a great spawning system Freddy.  Tucking that away for application in whatever game rules.

[Khusru2]

A great table and game. The spawning points is similar to what I did in County Road Z GAME. EXCEPT i did 8 points, corners and middle of each side. The dice decide where they appear.
I think you were too hard on the new guy. As we've seen in The Walking Dead and other series, not everyone is a hero. You need to yellowbelly for difference and reality.

[mikedemana]

I think you were too hard on the new guy. As we've seen in The Walking Dead and other series, not everyone is a hero. You need to yellowbelly for difference and reality.

Interestingly, we played a Star Wars skirmish last night and Yellowbelly did great! He was bold and aggressive as the Rebel Alliance player. Maybe he was just reacting to that natural 1 "out of ammo" rule. It does stick in the occasional player's craw. I'm thinking of implementing the rule where, for each stash of supplies you find, you get a re-roll token.

Thanks for all the kind words, everyone! Oh, and I ran this same scenario twice at a convention this past weekend. I'll post some pics soon...

Mike Demana

[hubbabubba]

Excellent table Mike

[mikedemana]

I thought I would post some pics from the two games of "Zombie RV - Scavenging in the Trailer Park" at a local convention the previous weekend. Technically, these two games were not part of our campaign, but I figured I'd go ahead and put them in this thread anyway. Some of the miniatures are the same ones the players use, of course, but it was two unrelated games I ran.



The setup was once again my trailer park. The spawn points were random and zombies would come spilling out of two buildings rolled by the players. I divided the 4'x3' mat in half, with a spawn point in a building on each side each turn.



The games were part of our HMGS Great Lakes (our local chapter of a historical miniatures organization in the U.S.) effort at Buckeye Game Fest 2025. We were there to entice the mostly board gamers to try out a miniatures game or two. I thought Zombie RV would be a perfect fit. I realize it's not technically historical minis, but that Zombiecide players and others would see it as an easy jump from cardboard to fully 3-dimensional miniatures battle. Plus, my trailer park looks really nice when all set up. And a nice looking table is a key part of recruiting players to your game, I've found over the years.



Still, neither of the games I ran (Friday night and Saturday morning) went off completely full. I had four players Friday and five on Saturday. Zombie RV scales very easily, though. So, it was no problem to adjust to less than six players. I simply changed their victory conditions on how many supplies they had to scavenge and get off the table.



The main complication in this game is that the "spawn points" are inside the trailers -- where the supplies are! Once a building has been searched, though, it can no longer spawn zombies. Instead, any zombies rolled for that building appear in the treeline on the board edge closest to it. Yes, that means you could move into a building and suddenly have zombies spawn there at the end of the turn! Surprisingly, that happened only once over the course of both games. Woody, that survivor, immediately fled the trailer and decided to look for easier pickings...ha, ha!



Both games saw the players collecting the necessary number of scavenge tokens and (mostly) escaping off-table. On Friday, they lost poor Coop to a horde of zombies while fleeing back to their vehicles. I let the players arrive in 1-3 vehicles, which they position in contact with a board edge. Their survivors must exit by one of the vehicles. It does not necessarily have to be the one they arrived on -- just any of their three vehicles. When Coop went down, he and Big Bass had been living dangerously, battling zombies in hand to hand. Coop began the game climbing the ladder to the water tower, firing away at zombies until his rifle jammed. With a horde of zombies waiting for him at the bottom of the ladder (only Fast Zombies & Nasty Zombies can climb, I ruled), he decided to take a risky exit. He leapt from the platform, landing on the wooden outhouse behind one of the container buildings. I told the player to roll a "Quickness (Dexterity) Check," and to roll HIGH. Wouldn't you know it, but she rolled a six on 1d6! High enough, I said!



In the Saturday game, Mophius was the one swarmed over by zombies and taken down. His partner, Jackie, was in contact with a Fast Zombie at the end of the game, but I ruled that she would have been able to break contact and flee off-table safely. So, each group lost one of their survivors to the ravenous zombie hordes, and might have lost more on Saturday if I played it out to the bitter end. I think the mobile and random spawn points makes for a much more challenging and interesting game. I will likely continue to find a way to use that mechanism in future games. For the trailer park, there were 12 buildings. I simply numbered then 1 to 6 with two different colors of dice (dividing the park into 2'x3' sections, in essence). The players would roll for which trailer spawned the zombies on each half of the board, and how many.



Everyone seemed to have a good time playing Zombie RV. Nearly all of my players were new to the game, so it was fun to introduce folks to these simple, fast-play rules. I saw a number of players using their phones to scan the QR code I had on my game sign to go to the page on Wargame Vault where you can download them for free. Author David Bezio of Grey Area Games wrote a winner with these rules.



Hope you enjoyed the photos!



Mike Demana